A social cognitive perspective of educators’ moral agency

ABSTRACT

By and large, teachers approach their work with the utmost care for students’ intellectual, social, and emotional well-being. But even those who hold themselves to high moral standards can sometimes act in ways that harm others when they disengage self-sanctions like guilt or self-criticism. These mechanisms of moral disengagement include (1) portraying harmful acts as beneficial, (2) obscuring one’s own role in harm, (3) minimizing the harmful effects of one’s actions, and (4) viewing victims as less-than-human or deserving of blame. Because moral self-sanctions can be both disengaged and reengaged, we examine how these mechanisms operate in educators’ social systems and point to practices that may promote their moral engagement. We end our piece with a call for interventions that disrupt disengagement and promote moral self-efficacy.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Tim Urdan for his thoughtful feedback and guidance on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional Resources

1. López, F. A. (2018). Asset pedagogies in Latino youth identity and achievement: Nurturing confianza. Routledge.

López details how asset-based pedagogies push against deficit narratives about youth of color and recasts these narratives so that educators view the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of youth as strengths that can be tapped. The book includes concrete examples of how to apply these principles.

2. National Association for the Education of Young Children (2011) Code of ethical conduct and statement of commitment. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/ethical-conduct

Designed for those who work with young students, this website provides specific guidance regarding teachers’ ethical responsibilities to students, families, colleagues, and the wider community. It also includes supplemental materials for teacher educators and administrators.

3. Souto-Manning, M., & Winn, L. “Torry.” (2019). Toward shared commitments for teacher education: Transformative justice as an ethical imperative. Theory Into Practice, 58, 308–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1626619

In this article, Souto-Manning and Winn offer a set of shared commitments that teacher educators can adopt to ensure a more just and equitable program. Themes include emphasizing the need to eliminate harm to students, disrupting Eurocentric content and processes, and centering and learning from historically marginalized communities.