ABSTRACT

Teaching may be viewed as an inherently and fundamentally ethical and moral practice (Tate, 2007; Buzzelli and Johnston, 2001; Campbell, 2003; Hall, 2001). Here, the term ‘ethics’ is used to mean a philosophy or way of thinking about the moral principals of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice, and caring and non-caring. This chapter discusses some aspects of teaching as an ethical practice, taking into account a sociocultural perspective. First, teaching as an ethical practice has a knowledge base, including dispositions and values, which can be learnt by teachers as part of their initial education and ongoing professional development. The ethical and moral knowledge base of teachers includes an understanding of procedural justice of due process, universality, impartiality and fairness (Strike, 1990); social justice and the responsibilities of teachers (Noddings, 1992); respect for the autonomy and reason of students (Snook, 2003); truthfulness (Tate, 2007); consequences of actions (Husu and Tirri, 2003) and commitment (Sanger and Osguthorpe, 2011). Much of this knowledge base is in the contents of relevant Codes of Ethics, which are developed by the professional teaching community as a documentation of ‘the collectively agreed-to ethical standards for the practice of teaching’ (Strike, 1990: 48). The codes of ethics are important as teachers work within both the contractual nature of teacher employment and the limits of public trust (Hall, 2008). Teachers’ work differs from that of parents (Katz, 1980) – for example, in the levels of attachment, intensity of affect, bias and

a set of rules to be blindly adhered to, but is a guide to teacher decision-making, taking into account contextual factors. The basic ethical dilemma for teachers, according to Snook (2003), is that as teachers we must respect the autonomy of the students to have their own beliefs, behaviour, values and lifeplan, but at the same time we have an obligation to change the students’ beliefs, behaviour and values as part of our teaching and the mandated curriculum. In addition, we as teachers are obliged to foster the development of students’ own reasoning – that is, that the student can give his or her own reasons for their beliefs, behaviour and values. Thinking for oneself means one does not have to rely forever on the views of others. These two aspects of teaching as an ethical practice, at least in New Zealand as a democracy, are a requirement of an ethical teacher-student relationship. Ethical teaching practices are seen as a guard against the abuse of power and authority in the teacher-student relationship. A second aspect of teaching as an ethical practice is the protection of the welfare of the students and doing no harm to them, given the students’ dependency, vulnerability and powerlessness. This aspect of ethical practice is related to teaching as a caring practice and the ethics of care, which is based on relationships and responsibilities (Noddings, 1992), as discussed in Chapter 6. In using an ethics of care, moral decisions are made based on ways of sustaining relationships and connections (Gilligan, 1982). Ethics of care need not be viewed in opposition to ethics of rights, justice and fairness, which are seen to be governed by moral reasoning, universality, impartiality, principles and rules, but can co-exist with them (Katz et al., 1999). As noted previously, Noddings argued:

Justice draws to our attention the unfairness of a situation in which large numbers of children are deprived of the potential material benefits of schooling. Care cautions us to look at individual children before we recommend a remedy and to listen to those whose aspirations, interest, talents, and legitimate values may differ from our own. (Noddings, 1999: 15)

For example, beginning teacher Sarika discussed how uncomfortable she felt with the behaviour management systems in the school, with respect to keeping herself and the students safe:

[So what’s it like being a beginning teacher in your school here?] I actually am not enjoying it much. . . . It’s the disciplinary side basically, the backup . . . support for discipline, because this school is pretty tough to work in.