The nature of two teachers' professional morality: Their interpretations and behaviors.

The current inquiry was undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of professional morality in the context of teachers' lived experiences. Insights gleaned from this detailed study of two teachers are intended to inform the practice of teacher educators as they work to find new ways of sensitizing student teachers to the moral dimensions of their practice. This study was conducted at a time when there is renewed national acknowledgment that the primary responsibility of teachers should be to develop the intellectual and moral capacities and dispositions that are critical to the well-being of our nation's youth and to the survival of our liberal democracy. To learn more about the nature of professional morality as it unfolds in the classroom, case studies were developed of two National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certified Early Adolescence/Generalist teachers--a male seventh-grade American history and seventh- and eighth-grade writing teacher in a private all boys school, and a female eighth grade mathematics teacher in a coed public middle school over the course of a full semester. The evidence suggests that the professional morality of the two teacher's is shaped by how they define themselves. These definitions are rooted in the educational aims they prescribe and the ways in which they orient themselves toward their students. Their moral orientations also seem to be influenced in part by different personal and contextual factors. As a result of these findings a composite of the traits of the moral agent is proposed and teacher educators are asked to rethink how they sensitize student teachers to the moral aspects embedded in their practice and their experiences.PhDEducationEducational administrationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130927/2/9825191.pd