Codes of Professional Conduct & Ethics Education for Future Teachers — Detailed Study Notes

Introduction

• Central argument: ethics education for pre-service teachers is not aligned with the broader project of professionalizing teaching.
  • Future teachers often graduate without clear knowledge of society’s, peers’, and the profession’s ethical expectations.
  • This mismatch threatens public trust, professional quality, and fairness to students.
• Conditional approach: IF one endorses the professionalization of teaching and models it on legally recognized professions (law, medicine, etc.), THEN rigorous, explicit instruction in the local Code of Professional Conduct is the minimum ethical preparation.

Why Professions Have Codes of Ethics

• Dual purposes of a professional code:
  • Reinforce public trust by publicly declaring standards professionals pledge to uphold.
  • Guide and regulate member behaviour, upstream (education) and downstream (discipline).
• Social contract logic:
  • In return for professional autonomy (minimal external interference), professionals promise to serve the public’s best interests ethically.
  • Trustee institutions (orders, unions, licensing bodies) must educate members and discipline breaches.
• Legal backdrop: many jurisdictions require professional bodies to maintain a code, educate members on it, and create discipline mechanisms.

Codes of Ethics in Teaching

• 50+ countries now have teacher codes (UNESCO, 2010).
• All Canadian provinces/territories except Québec possess a provincial/territorial code (Québec relies mainly on Education Act articles 19\text{–}22 and some board-level codes).
• Scholarly consensus: introducing pre-service teachers to the profession’s collective norms is a core role of ethics education.
  • Codes provide the basic vocabulary (e.g., due process, privacy, integrity) and concrete obligations.
  • Knowing/applying collective norms is intrinsic to “acting professionally.”
• Ethical duty to students: novices will be held accountable to code-based standards; basic familiarity is therefore a matter of fairness.

Common Objections to Codes & Author’s Rebuttal

1. "Reductionist list of dos/don’ts":
   • Not all codes are purely prescriptive.
   • Two styles (Banks, 2003):
     • Regulatory – behavioural prescriptions + explicit discipline clause (dominant style in teacher codes).
     • Aspirational – broad values to inspire (e.g., Ontario’s code: care, respect, trust, integrity).
   • Regulatory codes must be simple and behaviour-focused to serve guidance and disciplinary functions.
2. "Imposition by elites" & 3. "Stifles ethical thinking": acknowledged but considered over-generalizations.

• Complementary approaches encouraged: care ethics, hospitality, self-cultivation. Codes = minimum, not entirety, of ethics education.

Historical Context & Emerging “Ethics Gap”

• 19th–early 20th c.: teacher ed emphasised moral modelling but waned with university integration.
• 1980s convergence:
  • Moral-craft discourse (Tom, 1984) – teaching inherently moral.
  • Professionalization reforms (Holmes Group, Carnegie) – emulate medicine; predicted rise of ethics courses.
• 1990s–2000s literature increasingly reports neglect of ethics instruction; explanations include:
  • Belief that being a “nice person” suffices.
  • Fewer dramatic scandals vs. medicine/business.
  • Fear of curricular overload and faculty disagreement.
  • Assumption that ethics already covered in foundations courses.

Empirical Evidence: Survey & Prior Studies

Earlier Work

• Freeman & Brown (1996): early-childhood faculty cite ethics objectives but devote minimal time.
• Campbell (2008, 2011) & Boon (2011): interviews/surveys (~160 participants, Canada/Australia)
  • Students desire more ethics, recognise elevated moral expectations.
  • Dedicated ethics courses rare; integrated treatment patchy.
• Glanzer & Ream (2007): among 156 Christian U.S. colleges, only 6\% of teacher-ed programs mandated an ethics course (vs. 33\text{–}50\% in many other professional majors). Limitations: religious sample, broad "ethics" definition.

Five-Country Survey (Maxwell et al., 2016)

• Countries: Australia, Canada, England, Netherlands, USA.
• Participants: 217 (≈ 48\% unit heads, 52\% ethics instructors).
• Two data sources: (1) participant self-report, (2) manual calendar search.

Frequency of REQUIRED Stand-Alone Ethics Course

• Calendar search by program block (Australia/Canada/U.S., n=401):
  • Primary 30\%; Secondary 26\%; Special Ed 31\%; Master’s-in-Teaching 8\%.

Comparisons with Other Professions (North America)

• Medicine doctorates ≈50\% require ethics.
• Dentistry doctorates ≈80\%.
• Business undergrad/masters ≈33\%.
• Engineering undergrad ≈17\%.
• Teaching ≈24\% (program level) – above engineering, below medicine.

Perceptions & Objectives

• >90\% of respondents: ethics is important in ITE.
• \approx75\% support increasing ethics content; \approx66\% favour mandatory introductory course.
• Key reported obstacle: scheduling competition, not lack of interest.
• Top-ranked course objectives (Likert mean <1.5):
  • Develop ethical sensitivity.
  • Raise professionalism awareness.
  • Promote teaching’s professional values.
• Low-ranked objectives: acquaint with legal/regulatory context (12ᵗʰ/15), normative theory, academic literature.
• Only \approx10\% of collected course descriptions mention "code of ethics" explicitly.
• Vast majority of survey participants mistakenly claimed no code applied in their jurisdiction, despite codes existing almost everywhere in North America.

Good-News / Bad-News Summary

• Good: ethics courses more common than earlier estimates; strong will among faculty to expand; integrated coverage widespread (claimed 76\%).
• Bad: Large knowledge gaps about local codes; ethics courses seldom use code as core text; objectives skew toward values/awareness rather than regulatory literacy; master’s-level programs especially thin on ethics.

Three Recommendations to Align Ethics Education with Professionalization

1. Consciousness-Raising about Disciplinary Use of Codes
   • Cases like Lynden Dorval (Alberta, 2012) show real-world stakes.
   • No teacher should first learn the code when facing misconduct allegations.
2. Reframe Ethics as Core Professional Formation, Not a Frill
   • Survey shows scheduling politics limits ethics; recognize code literacy as non-negotiable competency (akin to assessment literacy or child-development knowledge).
   • Guard against ethics being squeezed out in practice-centric master’s programs.
3. Foster a More Cohesive, Less Divisive Scholarly Discourse
   • Three dominant camps:
     • Social-justice agenda (equity, critical consciousness).
     • Moral-character/virtues agenda (values, self-cultivation).
     • Professional-ethics agenda (codes, obligations, judgement).
   • Need integrative perspective focused on actual standards by which teachers will be judged, while still exploring richer ethical ideals.

Key Terms & Concepts

• Professional Autonomy: right to self-direct expert practice with minimal external control.
• Regulatory vs. Aspirational Codes: behaviour-focused enforceable rules vs. value-oriented inspirational statements.
• Ethical Sensitivity: capacity to notice ethical dimensions in concrete situations.
• Ethical Judgement: ability to apply abstract norms to specific contexts prudently.

Numerical Highlights (expressed with LaTeX)

• Codes present in >50 countries.
• Participant-reported mandatory ethics courses in all programs: 30\%; calendar data: 22\%.
• Calendar search: ethics required in 24\% of 401 North-American programs.
• Master’s-in-Teaching programs with required ethics: 8\%.
• Christian-college study (Glanzer & Ream, 2007): ethics in teacher ed 6\% vs. \tfrac13\text{–}\tfrac12 in other majors.

Practical Implications for Teacher-Education Programs

• Conduct an internal audit: Does every candidate explicitly study the local/provincial code? If not, redesign.
• Embed code analysis in practicum seminars—case studies tied to actual misconduct rulings.
• Provide at least a short, focused module (e.g., 10–15 hours) on regulatory frameworks, complemented by broader moral/philosophical inquiry.
• Update faculty and supervisors through professional-development workshops on code content and disciplinary processes.