Our teachers want to be the best: on the necessity of intra‐professional reflection about moral ideals of teaching

Abstract

Teaching is a significant social good and therefore teachers as well as the state have to take responsibility for guarding the moral quality of the teaching practice. Based on this premise, the article describes and defends the view that these parties have their own particular role by means of literature review and theoretical and practical arguments.

The role of the state is necessarily limited to defining minimal moral rules and obligations, because in liberal Western democracies morality is codified in law to a minimal degree. The state also has practical reasons for such a confined position, among which are the complexities of professional practice and its implied tacit knowledge.

Teachers have to take responsibility for constructing the full width of professional morality, but particularly for defining its optimal or aspirational dimension. This dimension comprises the virtues deemed important for teachers as well as their professional ideals. Whereas the literature on professional ethics of teachers is relatively silent about professional ideals, several arguments are provided for the importance of ideals for teachers.

The final part of the article defends the claim that teachers have to articulate their professional ideals through intra‐professional dialogue. Again, theoretical and practical arguments are provided, for instance that such a debate provokes teachers to think about the best aims and means of their profession and that it contributes to the sense and meaning of their work. The article ends with some practical implications of the theoretical exposé.

Keywords:

• professional morality
• minimal moral standards
• moral aspirations
• professional ideas
• intra‐professional dialogue

Acknowledgement

The research for this paper was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO, as part of the research project The Good Professional.

Notes

1. Interestingly, Hargreaves (1994) suggests that the whirlwind of educational reforms instigated by the government in England and Wales at the end of the 1980s of the last century actually lead to a culture of collaboration among teachers, which may be taken as an example that increase of governmental involvement can also have unintended positive side effects on the teacher corps.

2. This is also an important reason for claiming that professional ethical codes are insufficient. While such a code can keep a teacher on track, just like the standards of the state, codes consist of rules, duties and rights instead of virtues and ideals. The aspirations in the preamble tend to receive less attention than the articles with prescriptions.

3. These are the ideals that educators pursue themselves as well as those that educators, most likely teachers, believe (or should believe!) important to offer as alternative views on excellent values (see Brighouse, 2005).

4. See Martin (2000, pp. 206–210) for a balanced reply to this criticism, suggesting that ‘burnout is often due to the absence, not the presence, of ideals of caring’ (p. 209).

5. See also Campbell’s review of Teachers in Professional Communities: Improving Teaching and Learning in which she argues that the book is unjustifiably silent on the ethical dimensions of the teaching profession. Professional communities should not only discuss ‘problems of practice pertaining to failed lessons, ineffectual pedagogy, stagnant curriculum, and inadequate subject knowledge’ (2009), but also moral and ethical dilemmas, tensions and conflicts they experience (2009).