CHARACTER IN TEACHING

ABSTRACT:

Qualities of personal character would appear to play a significant role in the professional conduct of teachers. It is often said that we remember teachers as much for the kinds of people they were than for anything they may have taught us, and some kinds of professional expertise may best be understood as qualities of character. After (roughly) distinguishing qualities of character from those of personality, the present paper draws on the resources of virtue ethics to try to make sense of the former. In the course of this, it is argued that while the key virtue ethical concept of phronesis or practical wisdom has been widely deployed to account for aspects of professional teacher expertise, it has also been subject to rather un-Aristotelian interpretation as a kind of situation-specific productive reasoning. The present paper seeks to show that it is better employed for understanding character in general and character in teaching in particular. The paper concludes with some observations about the professional education or cultivation of character.

Keywords:

• character
• personality
• professional conduct
• Aristotle

6. Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this essay was presented as an invited keynote to the annual conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) at New College, Oxford in March 2007, and also as an invited address to a philosophy of education Special Interest Group at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Chicago in April 2007. I remain grateful for the comments of various people on both occasions that have assisted me to make improvements to the paper.