Moral pedagogical leadership: perceptions of secondary school students

Abstract

This article analyses the perceptions that 4th grade students of secondary education have about their moral development to determine what kind of moral pedagogical leadership they value most. We examine how powerful the influence that teachers exert on their moral development is, in comparison with other contexts, and which strategies used by the teachers have more moral impact on them. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to 131 Spanish students, whose results were analysed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and MAXQDA. In addition to the expected family impact, adolescents acknowledge the moral influence of their teachers, especially those that teach humanities subjects. They value teacher character strengths connected with closeness, empathy and affection far more than methodologies based on technology. These results point to the need to strengthen the affective and emotional dimensions of the psychopedagogical orientation of teachers to forge the kind of bond that moral leadership requires.