<Special 1: Understanding the Evolving Concept of Educational Profession>A study of a code of professional ethics through comparison of three revised editions of the National Education Association in the United States of America

The importance of a code of ethics as one of the elements as professions has been emphasized in the literatures both in Japan and Western countries, but number of analytical thesis regarding the code of ethics , especially in education, have been very limited. I hereby establish three issues ; 1) to clarify what ethics, moral, and code of ethics mean, 2) to make a historical review of three NEA codes of ethics, and 3) to compare code of ethics of NEA with the one of Japan Teachers’ Union. Among them, the main examination is on the three editions of the code of ethics of the National Education Association, namely in the years of 1952, 1968, and 1975 and to find out characters and significance of the each code of ethics. By such work, we found that three important concepts have been grown up during 23 years from 1952 to 1975. They are ; 1) the education profession consists of one education workforce, 2) the educator, believing in the worth and dignity of each human beings, recognizes the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of the democratic principle, 3) the educator recognize the magnitude of the responsibility inherent in the teaching process