Ethical dilemmas in senior teacher educators’ administrative work

ABSTRACT

The current study presents the professional experiences of senior teacher educators (‘Associate Professors’), with an emphasis placed on ethical dilemmas they face during their administrative work. The main purpose is to characterize the critical incidents underlying these dilemmas, their interpretation, and the ways of balancing the different considerations in their resolution. A qualitative analysis of twelve narrative interviews pointed to four core values which underpinned the approaches taken by teacher educators in their handling of critical situations: perception of integrity, empathy and care, commitment to the institution, and the need to promote initiatives. Findings indicate that the concept of integrity is central to the decision making processes, but that this concept is interpreted differently according to the personality characteristics, experience, and educational vision of the interviewees. It is proposed to conduct further studies that examine the interpretation of ‘integrity’ as a concept among senior teacher educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethical dilemma
• teacher educators
• administration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Mofet Institute [2016185].

Notes on contributors

Mary Gutman

Dr. Mary Gutman is researcher and teacher educator at Efrata College of Education. She currently serves as head of the education department and chair of the research authority. She holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mofet Institute in Tel Aviv. Her main research interest refers to professional development of teacher educators.