Ethics and Professionalism
in Teaching

Aidan Seery

Issue 386, vol.97, Summer 2008

The teaching function is neither fully theoretical nor practical : Thought and action are grounded in evidence – in a teacher’s careful empirical knowledge of the circumstances of the individual learner, both in the broader educational relationship and in a given encounter. Next, evaluation is called upon to determine the best course of future action [e.g., small group or one-on-one ? what sort of home assignment ? is there a disciplinary consideration ?] And the whole interaction is affective as well as rational, involving the full human being – heart as well as head : what the learner experiences is a caring coming-to-know about self and the world.

Since the total effort is undertaken in the cause of the learner’s ‘good’, it is essentially ethical. In other professions, the ethical component can be an add-on (code of practice), or at most will surface as a motivating factor in a practitioner’s self-understanding (for instance, in the health-care field). But, in the case of the teaching profession, the actual practice in which it is engaged is the practice of ethics.

Since, then, the teacher’s engagement with the pupil consists in making learning-judgments and critical evaluations, specific vocational preparation is called for (above and beyond the teacher-to-be’s innate or general attributes of character or virtue, originating in culture or socialisation). A liberal-humanist education is required. And the arena for this is the university. Here the teacher-to-be will be brought into engagement with the historical, philosophical and sociological foundations to ethical and professional thought. Here, too, she or he will be exposed to open debate and critical thought in public spaces populated by real, physical human beings .

All this has far wider dimensions than the training or apprenticeship required by a technician. (In Britain, we have witnessed teacher-preparation being withdrawn from the university and lumped in with skills-‘training’). There is more at stake here than the delivery to a client of a product which was implemented by a technicist of competence operating according to empirical standardised measurements (the whole procedure being ethically neutral). For education, nothing less than an all-encompassing philosophy is called for : Education is about the formation of a certain type of person – a person capable of critical and moral reflection.

Aidan Seery lectures in the philosophy of education at Trinity College Dublin.