Educator Develops College Course for School Leaders Focusing on Building Cultures of Integrity

May 29, 2012 - PRLog -- ROCKPORT, Maine – Dr. Marcia Adams O’Neil, a former superintendent of schools in Massachusetts, is working with a team of academic colleagues and staff members from the Institute for Global Ethics to develop a college credit course that will focus on building school cultures of integrity. The course, to be given at the Northeast Consortium for Staff Development offered through Endicott College, will examine typical ethical issues that educators face in the K-12 environment and how to proactively address ethical dilemmas.

With more than 28 years of experience in education, Dr. O’Neil has been involved in curriculum development at the district and local levels and was a classroom teacher for sixteen years. The IGE associate also has led ethics training for superintendents and teachers employing the Institute’s Ethical Literacy® process in building ethical cultures. She currently holds a position with the Massachusetts State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, serving as the regional assistance director for southeast Massachusetts where she is assisting district leadership to help improve low performing schools.

Dr. O’Neil first became involved with IGE about five years ago when she and a group of fellow educators sought to develop a woman’s educational leadership network with an emphasis on ethical responsibility. She attended ethics training sessions at IGE in Maine and returned to Massachusetts intent on providing district leaders the training necessary in building ethical cultures within their school systems.

“The IGE process appealed to me as a former superintendent,” says O’Neil. “It was clear to me, in my work over the years, that ethics and ethical decision-making was a real need not only in terms of personal responsibility but also for all types of educational communities and groups. The real value of the IGE approach is that people could work together in finding shared-values and protocols they could agree on in processing conflict and ethical dilemmas.”

Dr. O’Neil also points to the solid research that stands behind the IGE process for building school cultures of integrity. “This is what gives the IGE process its ‘legs,’ so to speak. The IGE model is not prescriptive but is really based on establishing a framework that lets parties themselves do the thinking required to reach resolutions of ethical dilemmas.”

For information about the Ethical Literacy® Learning Community, visit http://www.ethical-literacy.org or call +1-207-542-1546.

About the IGE
Founded in 1990, with offices in Rockport, Maine, and New York City, the Institute for Global Ethics (http://www.globalethics.org) is an independent, nonsectarian, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting ethical action in a global context. IGE’s challenge is to explore the global common ground of values, elevate awareness of ethics, provide practical tools for making ethical decisions, and encourage practical action based on those decisions.