Abstract

The increasing economic needs of Mauritius to position itself as an intelligent nation state in the front line of global progress and innovation, mounting pressures to improve the quality of schools, and the shortcomings of various educational reforms over the past two decades have prompted Mauritian education authorities to seek ways to raise educational standards. Reflecting the Mauritian government's 'quality' agenda and its focus on the work of school leaders, this paper reports the findings of research exploring Mauritian principals' views about how a leadership focus on systems thinking could create major changes for school improvement processes directly impacting teaching and learning. Whilst confirming the lack of a systemic focus in Mauritian schools, the paper brings new thinking to understanding the critical role of the school leader for systemic improvement of the total educational system in Mauritius with social justice as the platform for transformation. The paper further reviews an empirically developed and theoretically sound framework that builds on a set of values and ethics that underpin Mauritian principals' leadership practices. The central claim is that this framework could be applied in realizing and sustaining the vision of transformed learners for quality education. Significantly, the paper discusses school leadership from an ethical perspective, often silenced in the literature, and is a serious attempt to relate morality and ethics in educational leadership.