ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the ethical requirements of teaching as a profession and how ethics are central to being a good teacher. Understanding teaching as an essentially ethical profession, and education as a moral enterprise, the chapter examines the moral dimensions of teaching and the role of the teacher. Teachers are a central means through which the values and commitments of schools, communities and wider society are cultivated within the young, and this places particular expectations on teachers as both moral professionals and moral educators. The chapter surveys literature – theoretical and empirical – that examines the ideas that teaching is a moral endeavour and that it is precisely because of this that teaching should be regarded as a profession. In focusing on the ethical dimensions of the teacher, this chapter and the arguments within it pave the way for the empirical data presented and analysed in subsequent chapters.
