Date of Award
Spring 2026
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Educational Leadership and Policies
First Advisor
Kathleen Marshall
Abstract
Students with disabilities are suspended and expelled at disproportionate rates. Previous research regarding principal decision-making has focused on decision-making broadly, and it has been predominantly qualitative in nature. School-level administrators frequently make disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities and report experiencing ethical tension in the process. Stakeholder, organizational, legal, and personal interests have been identified in the research as sources of ethical tension. The purpose of this study is to identify which factors cause the greatest level of ethical tension for administrators when making disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities and to examine the relationship between administrator’s perceived level of ethical tension and their likelihood of recommending a disciplinary removal. An online survey was administered to principals and assistant principals in North Carolina and South Carolina. Results indicate that administrators experience moderate levels of ethical tension across stakeholder, organizational, legal, and personal competing interests with stakeholder interests producing the highest levels of ethical tension. To examine the relationship between ethical tension and exclusionary discipline decisions, principals were asked to respond to disciplinary vignettes with both their level of ethical tension and their recommended consequence. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a small negative relationship between ethical tension and recommendations for suspension or expulsion for threat or physical aggression behaviors. No correlation was identified when the data was analyzed for all behavior types. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant differences in means for ethical tension across behavior types. Overall results indicate that administrators experience moderate levels of ethical tension when making disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities. However, this tension does not appear to significantly influence their decision to impose exclusionary discipline.
Rights
© 2026, Sarah Te Scaffe Tew
Recommended Citation
Tew, S. T.(2026). Principals as Disciplinary Decision Makers: Ethical Tension and the Use of Exclusionary Discipline for Students With Disabilities. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/8878