Is moral philosophy an educationally worthwhile activity? Toward a liberal democratic theory of teacher education

Abstract

This paper looks at the case of moral philosophy in order to assess the extent to which and ways in which teacher education should respond to the liberal principle of justification. This principle states that moral and political decisions made by citizens with special kinds of influence and other coercive powers should be accountable to other citizens on the basis of good reasons. To what extent should teachers, who are empowered by the state with such special kinds of influence, be held accountable to this principle and what kind of education is needed in order to prepare teachers for such accountability? Moral philosophy stands as an informative test case because it expressly deals in the justification of judgements and actions and so it stands to reason that arguments for moral philosophy in teacher education are likely to appeal to educational values that dovetail with demands of this principle. I first identify some preliminary criteria under which activities are understood to be educationally worthwhile in the context of the broader principle of justification. I then argue that the justificatory obligations incurred by liberal citizens who adopt the role of teacher not only allow for, but also require, moral philosophy as an activity in programmes of teacher education.

Keywords:

• Moral philosophy
• teacher education
• liberal principle of justification
• professional judgement
• ethics of teaching

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the audience at INPE 2017 (Warsaw, Poland) for their many helpful questions and critical feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. By ‘moral philosophy’ I mean that branch of philosophy concerned with the study of right and good action. But, as readers will see, I believe that value judgements in the educational domain – especially those of teachers working in schools – have an important connection to questions of political justice and legitimacy and I’m not interested in strictly demarcating between moral and political values for the purposes of this article. However, because teachers may be required to justify their individual actions to the political public I believe moral philosophy is a worthy area of emphasis.

2. I leave to the side for the moment just how deeply ethical these dimensions are and to what extent these ethical dimensions are different from any other human activity.

3. The similarities to Rawls’ ‘burdens of judgement’ are intended.

4. For a more detailed account see Martin (2013). In that paper, I rested the argument for moral philosophy on the educational value of ethical inquiry and characterized such inquiry as a kind of liberal education. For such an argument to have motivating force one must see a liberal educational approach to professional education as desirable. In this paper, I offer a justification that is more closely aligned to a theory of teacher education, showing that the role of moral philosophy is not merely desirable but necessary on the terms offered by that theory.

5. For a more detailed discussion of moral pluralism in the context of moral education see Martin (2011).

6. This principle falls within a very broad literature in liberal and democratic political theory. For a detailed account see Fuerstein, M. (2013). Epistemic trust and liberal justification. Journal of Political Philosophy, 21(2), 179–199.

7. This stipulation does not entail moral or political conformity or the censure of strong forms of social criticism. For an example of what reasonableness constraints applied to the teaching of social justice should look like see Bialystok (2014).

8. Of course, the interests of individuals and society can come into conflict. But this only underlines my more general point: teachers require an education in moral philosophy if they are to recognize this tension and incorporate this into their reflective judgments.