ABSTRACT
In any circumstances where an individual or group of individuals takes responsibility for aspects of the lives of others on the grounds of special knowledge or expertise, whether in a context of public funding or not, ethical issues arise and some form of guidance for action is required. This is most emphatically the case when the recipients are below the age of consent. The UCET Conference of November 1995 set up a Working Group to propose some Ethical Principles of Teaching that might be commended to teacher educators, recognizing that, irrespective of whether there is a formal curriculum of moral education, teachers inevitably and properly convey moral ideas and principles. This chapter examines whether ethical principles are fundamental to the process of teaching itself, and if so what they are.
