FACTORS AFFECTING ETHICAL COMPETENCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS: A MULTI-LEVEL STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING

Abstract

The ethical competence of primary school administrators enables them to conscientiously deal with the day-to-day challenges occurring from their professional roles in academic and professional contexts. These tasks can only be achieved if the administrators possess ethical competencies by attaching importance to ethical values and standards according to determined ethical codes in their school management. Despite the growing emphasis on school administrators’ ethical competencies and little attention has been given to this issue, the purpose of this survey was constructed to examine the significant factors that impact primary school administrators in the northeast region of Thailand using a multi-level structural equation modelling. The researchers employed a multi-stage sampling method to select a total of 1280 primary school teachers and administrators from every cluster in the northeast region to be respondents. A quantitative survey design using a five-point rating scale questionnaire was utilized as an instrument. The instrument was validated its content validity using judgemental approach encompassing literature reviews and evaluated by five experts while reliability test to 30 panels with Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.985 indicating the instrument was reliable. The researchers started to explore the data using assumption tests before testing whether the identified factors could fit with empirical data. At the final stage, the effects of causal relationships on primary school administrators’ ethical competence were examined. The initial finding showed that a total of three factors were found to be significant factors in the ethical competence structural model within and between levels respectively. Moreover, the structural model of ethical competence of primary school administrators was congruent with the experimental data, with χ2 =314.088, df = 281, χ2/df = 1.117, CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.990, RMSEA = 0.014, SRMR within level = 0.074, and SRMR between level = 0.053. On top of that, the strongest significant factor affecting the ethical competence of primary school administrators between levels was the organisational structure (β = 0.727), and within levels was ethical intelligence (β = 0.659). Consequently, the researchers presumed that the structural ethical competence model for primary school leaders has a goodness of fit with the obtained data. Currently, there is lacking of previous studies that can be used as the foundation for the researchers to be built upon to achieve our research aims will be our limitation. Therefore, the implications of this study only limited to observed factors that affecting primary school administrators’ ethical competencies in north-eastern region of Thailand. The implications of this study revealed that primary school administrators should focus on all the six factors, namely organizational structure, organizational culture, and ethical climate between levels and ethical leadership, ethical intelligence, and motivation within levels to develop their ethical competencies. Lastly, the outcomes of this study imply that the structural model is indicated to by primary school administrators to enhance their ethical competency levels as our main impact to the field of educational management.