Thwarting or Enabling the Preparation of Ethical Professionals? Challenges for Teacher Education

• In Event: The Moral Work of Teaching: Preparing and Supporting Practitioners

Abstract

Despite the ethical nature of teaching, the maintenance of a clear moral orientation to the daily practices of teaching is not necessarily developed and sustained, simply by the fact that one joins the profession. Teachers need to acquire ethical knowledge about all aspects of their curricular, pedagogical, evaluative, and interpersonal choices and actions; an awareness of the moral nuances of their work and the capacity to reflect on how their own formal and informal behavior within schools and classrooms either honors or subverts ethical virtues. This paper reports qualitative results from an empirical study exploring whether and how teacher education programs familiarize teacher candidates with the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching. These results indicate that curricular, ideological, and practical experiences thwart the promise of heightening the sensitivity of prospective teachers to the moral work of teaching. The objective of this paper is to analyze these research findings and describe the challenges and tensions that threaten to impede progress in the pursuit of desirable ethics curricula in programs of teacher preparation. A further objective is to offer recommendations of a curricular and pedagogical nature to overcome such impediments and enable the education of teachers who are more attuned to their future ethical responsibilities. Ultimately, the paper argues that the challenges facing teacher education programs, that result in the current inadequacies, and that would likely emerge as a result of trying to implement the recommendations offered, are intertwined and need to be confronted together.

Author

• Elizabeth Campbell, OISE/University of Toronto