Program to Enhance Ethical Leadership of College Counselors in Chongqing, China

Background and Aims: The core of leadership for college counselors in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is ethical leadership, and the legal professional identity and responsibilities of college counselors with the fundamental mission of education in China require the group who distributes to colleges and universities across the PRC with good ethical leadership. The purposes of this research were to 1) Investigate the components of ethical leadership of college counselors, 2) explore the existing situation and desirable conditions and needs for improvement of college counselors in Chongqing, China, based on the components finding, 3) develop a program (draft) to enhance the ethical leadership of college counselor in Chongqing, China, 4) evaluate the feasibility and suitability of the program. Materials and Methods: The research included 4 phases. Phase 1 was to find out components of ethical leadership components with indicators through the conceptualized process of components of college counselors taking into consideration contextualization and related research of college counselors, after which the integrated results of components with its indicators will be checked through expert consultation; Phase 2 was to find out the current situation and desirable conditions and needs for improvement of college counselors in Chongqing through quantitative study with data analysis of results of a questionnaire. From 406 respondents as sampling through stratified random sampling in Chongqing Universities and colleges, Phase 3 was to draft a program to enhance the ethical leadership of college counselors in Chongqing, China, based on the study in Phase 2, and interview 10 experts. The 70:20:10 model was employed as based principles, which has also been confirmed by Phase 4 to evaluate the feasibility and suitability of the program by the five experts, resulting in the data including average and standard deviation of feasibility and suitability. Results: The general results found that 1. components of ethical leadership of college counselors included 1) Integrity, 2) Fairness, 3) People/Orientation, 4) Ethical Guidance, 5) Role Clarification, 6) Power Sharing, 2. The current situation of ethical leadership overall was at a high level, whereas the desired situation that requires was at the highest level. The improved needs of ethical leadership of college counselors from the highest to the lowest in sequence were ethical guidance, integrity, power sharing, fairness, role clarification, and people orientation. 3. The six main guidelines from a qualitative study with specific aims of every item and corresponding methods were found out, 4. Experts’ evaluation of every item ranged from high to the highest suitability the average value in suitability is from 4.00 to 4.60, which means every item's suitability level is high or the highest, while the average value in feasibility is from 4.00 to 5.00, which means every feasibility item level is high or the highest. Conclusion: The study found that ethical leadership for college counselors includes six key components, with the current level being high and the desired level being the highest. Experts rated the suitability and feasibility of the leadership guidelines highly, indicating strong support for their implementation.