Ethical bases of moral agency in teaching

Abstract

This article introduces a qualitative study entitled ‘The moral and ethical bases of teachers’ interactions with students'. The main focus of the study is on the teacher's role as moral agent and the orientations within the classroom to issues of right and wrong as identified by teachers and the researchers. The primary intent is to combine empirical investigation and philosophical inquiry in order to explore teachers' ethical knowledge related to both what they hope to teach and model for students and how they hope to govern their own behaviour. This article explores some of the theoretical complexities of the study and presents some of the interview and observation data, focused primarily on the case of one of the teachers.

Notes

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6. Email: [email protected]

I gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its funding of this project.

For a more complete discussion of the concept of ethical knowledge, see my book The Ethical Teacher (Campbell, 2003a).