ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the role of teacher education in cultivating virtues commonly associated with moral and ethical teaching, such as fairness, diligence, honesty, consistency, integrity, open-mindedness, empathy, patience, courage, kindness, trustworthiness, and care; and it explores two barriers to such cultivation. The first relates to prevailing assumptions about the limited capacity and practicality of teacher education to accommodate an ethics- or virtue-based curriculum. The second results from a prevalent focus on social justice doctrines that shift ethical expectations for teachers from the individual development of professional virtue to the collective acceptance of a more progressive and radical activist agenda.