Ethics in Teaching

Abstract: 

We witness various changes in our educational system in this world of globalization, where competition is tough. Also, change is inevitable, and the objective and aim of education are changing per the learner’s needs, requirements, interests, and society. Therefore, the concept of teachers and their teaching is also changing with this flow. In this contemporary time, a teacher has many things to do, several duties, and responsibilities. Besides having good professional and academic qualities, the teacher must possess the quality and knowledge of Professional ethics and manners. Professional ethics is a guide or a source that helps the teacher inculcate good values and provide quality education to the students and the learners. Professional ethics also makes them realize that they have a substantial role in bringing desirable change in the students’ attitudes by understanding their profession being teachers. They have a meaningful role in nature and not just become authoritarian and supreme in front of their colleagues and students. Teachers with a sense of professional ethics treat their students with care, love, commitment, and affection. Moreover, they make sure to make a specific contribution from their end. However, this paper will highlight the importance of professional ethics in teachers. 

 

Introduction:

Teachers help students learn their coursework and valuable life lessons by showing them specific examples. The teachers should follow a particular code of ethics as role models to ensure that they get an honest, uncompromising, and fair education. Professional ethics rules and regulations identify their students’ significant responsibilities by clearly identifying their role in their students’ lives. Besides, the teachers should be like mentors, demonstrating impartiality, integrity, and ethical behavior in the classroom, with coworkers, and with students’ parents. 

Value of the students. 

A teacher is bound to demonstrate strong character traits like honesty, perseverance, lawfulness, respect, fairness, patience, unity, and responsibility. Teachers must treat their students equally, kindly, respect and eliminate prejudice, favoritism, or partiality. They should maintain confidentiality unless a situation demands involvement from school administration, parents, or even the law. Also, not to use the students for relationships and their gains. 

Commitment to the job:

Once they enter this field, they should wholly solely commit to this profession and their job. Their classroom promotes security, safety, and acceptance by eliminating hostility, bullying, negligence, dishonesty, and offensive conduct. Therefore, they should adequately explain their credentials, licenses, and qualifications to the principals and school boards who intend to hire them. Besides, they should fulfill all the policies and contracts and account for resources and funds at their disposal. Making lesson plans to create a well-rounded education plan and meet the state standards to appeal to many students is one of their significant responsibilities. 

Keep learning

Professional conduct asks for attentiveness to continue career development and educational requirements. They should find new teaching methods, consult their colleagues for professional advice, maintain their certificates, stay up to date on technical advancements, and participate in curriculum improvements for the classroom. They must ensure that the teaching method they opt for is relevant, fresh, and comprehensive. Henceforth, they should engage in educational research to enhance and improve everything-related strategies.

Healthy relationships should be on the top of the list.

The teachers should have a strong relationship with the parents of the children/students, guidance counselors, school staff, administrators, and colleagues in the community to foster a healthy relationship with their students. Their utmost priority should be secretiveness and avoid gossiping, mean-spirited comments, and false statements about their workers. Therefore, this demands cooperation with fellow workers, administration, and parents to create an atmosphere conducive to learning. 

Ethics of teaching:

Think for a while and figure out your favorite teacher who was a mentor for you because everyone has had one of those teachers who was ideal and profoundly affected the students’ lives. When we think about the teachers who influenced our lives, the first thing that comes to mind is their code of ethics, way of dealing, and moral principles. 

Ethics is a critical element in this field and has a vital role in personal and professional life. Their ethical stance governs how a teacher assesses and instructs the students. Also, it plays a crucial role in how they interact with their colleagues, community, and administrators. However, we see the derivatives of a teacher’s stance, whereas it might not be the first consideration to identify the favorite teacher. 

Beginner teachers need to identify the responsibility of implementing ethics in their profession. However, you must start reflecting on your ideologies to determine if ethical responsibilities align with those ideologies and values. 

Moral development

There is sure a way to analyze the ethics philosophy. For instance, Lawrence Kohlberg suggested six levels of moral development. According to him, people can develop moral values till they live.

People base their ethical decisions on regulations and rules and the act to eliminate punishments. They can probably reach a stage as an individual developing moral values, where their actions are justified as per universal principles of respect and justice for human life. Per Kohlberg’s essay (1981), there is a scenario where a woman was near death due to a rare kind of cancer. A drug in the form of radium was available the cure her. The medication ought to be expensive; however, the druggist charged ten times the price. On checking the price, that lady’s husband asked to reduce the cost. The refusal made the husband break into the laboratory to steal the medicine. Now the question arises: Should the husband have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug? Why or why not? 

Per the theory, the person in stage 1 might see the husband’s action as unethical because he broke the law and is liable to punishment despite that action’s motivation. However, a person at stage number 6 might consider his act morally and ethically right because he was trying to save a human’s life.

However, different people have different definitions of morals and ethics where universal justice considerations do not guide the actions; taking care has an impact. 

– People might base their ethical decisions on how those decisions will result for them. 

– Some people base their ethical decisions on how those decisions will result for others. 

Then comes a group of people who base their ethical decisions on how those decisions will result for themselves, including the people around them. 

Their actions urge them to make a balance and not solely be motivated by how others might see them. Their priority includes themselves and the people around them. 

Moral teachers: 

How do different theories inform the role and action of a teacher within their institute? These theories serve as a multidimensional map of the teachers’ ethical terrain (Starratt, 2004), whereas this moral and ethical development might look like the contrast with one another. Despite their different lenses on moral principles and development, these two perspectives confide in each other when implemented in the teaching field. The teacher must be guided by the rule of caring and motivated by universal respect for the people around them. Teachers have the fiduciary duty to act in a way that portrays the interest of their students. Teachers are in a fiduciary position in link with their students, which is an imbalance of power where they blindly trust their needs. Henceforth, this overarching duty of the teachers serves as an ethical standard of a professional act. Educators must abide by this by having powerful legal and practical implications for their professional and personal lives. 

Professional expectations do not identify the teachers’ on or off-duty performance. They should act in their personal lives accordingly by not undermining their efficacy in the classroom, ruining their reputation as a moral element in the community, or demeaning their employing school entity. Many teachers might feel challenging to manage things initially and sound like changing behaviors that might be acceptable in university or college but not professionally. Teachers must have higher moral standards and behave consistently and persistently with the professional and community standards codified in the list’s particular code of conduct.