ABSTRACT
Ethical dilemmas and their possible resolution are a consistent issue facing educational leaders at all levels in today’s pre-K through graduate schools. While these dilemmas are serious, they are not all of the same magnitude, and the question oft en relates to the intensity of any given issue. It is in this vein that turbulence theory 1 has been successfully applied as an aid in understanding and responding to challenges of ethical decision making in educational settings around the world. Th is chapter will examine the origins of turbulence theory, the four levels of turbulence, and the use of the turbulence gauge, the underlying dynamics that escalate and reduce levels of turbulence, and turbulence theory’s relevance to ethical decision making for educators.
IT STARTED ON A NEW YEAR’S EVE FLIGHT As a child, I was a good fl yer. From the time of my fi rst fl ight in 1956 from Idlewild Airport in New York (later renamed in honor of President Kennedy) to Nassau in the Bahamas, and throughout his teenage years, getting on an airplane was nothing short of a dream trip in a modifi ed spaceship. Even as a small child, he always held fast to the idea that no matter how cloudy, rainy, or snowy the surface conditions, a few minutes aft er takeoff , and a few thousand feet of altitude, the sun was shining and he would be able to look down on a vista of earth unimaginable only a hundred years earlier.
