Professional ethics in teacher education: students’ expectations and experiences
Prosjektet er avsluttet
Manus til tidsskriftsartikkel er under utarbeiding.
Ansvarlig: Christer Brusling
Prosjektperiode: 2004 - 2005
Prosjektet ble finansiert av Høgskolen i Oslo
Sammendrag:
This research uses a small excerpt of data from the StudData longitudinal panel in analysing expectations and experiences of students in teacher education and early childhood teacher education, with particular reference to professional ethics.
Results show that ethics, despite being one of five main areas in the national curriculum for both forms of teacher education, is an educational area associated with relatively modest expectations on behalf of the students in both programmes. The same holds true for assessment of outcomes.
The analyses of structures of expectancies and assessment of outcomes highlight three dimensions relevant to ethics: the individual/collegial dimension, the cognitive/emotional dimension, and the student/profession oriented dimension. In the expectancy structure of early childhood education students ethical deliberation seems to be not only a cognitive matter but also a private one, as it is connected to critical reflection and evaluation of own work. The emotional dimension is added in the assessment of outcomes structure, as ethical deliberation becomes connected to empathy and tolerance. Further, early childhood education teachers whom early on expect to learn more within the ethics area by graduation end up in a cluster characterised by high assessment of outcomes within PLANNING, LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY, indicating a professional orientation towards the individual responsibility of an educational leader of a team of care givers in the typical early childhood education context. In contrast, the ethical position of teacher education students starts out as encompassing both cognitive and emotional dimensions as well as communicative, maybe collegial discursive, ones. However, as reflected in the assessment of outcomes structure, the latter is lost at graduation. Teacher education students initially high on expectations within the ethics area tend to end up with high assessment of outcomes within the very same area.
Education in the professions is commonly thought of as teaching theory later to be applied in professional action. Surprisingly the four items on different kinds of knowledge in the beginning of studies is conceptualised as one distinct factor, isolated from the other items reflecting diverse curriculum components. In the end of studies aspects of knowledge are distributed across several other components. Not so ethics, with the possible exception of knowledge about rules and regulations in the early childhood education teachers sample.
The analyses performed do identify ethics as one of five distinct components both in the beginning of studies and at the end for the early childhood education student sample, and at least at the end for the teacher education sample. At the end of studies it is in both samples comprised of ethical deliberation, tolerance and valuing different points of view. Accepting responsibility and making decisions comes in addition for teacher education students.