The Moral and Ethical Potential of a Future Teacher’s Personality – The Foundation for the Productivity of Their Professional Training

The article examines the resource capacity of future teachers’ moral and ethical potential as a guarantee of the productivity of their training for creative professional activity. The article aims to substantiate the moral and ethical potential of an individual’s personality as a personal resource to ensure the productivity of future teachers’ professional training for pedagogical activities and the ways of its formation in the conditions of university education. The study operated methods of analysis, generalisation, and specification of theoretical positions and the results of empirical research on forming the moral and ethical potential of future teachers in university education conditions. The essence, content, structure, and main characteristics of this complex phenomenon have been clarified and specified. The moral and ethical potential of a personality is defined as an integrated personal creation that organically combines professional moral and ethical views, the professional orientation of mental processes towards interaction and communication, pedagogical optimism and democracy, moral efforts, and actions aimed at improving the moral and ethical sphere of the future teacher and ensuring positive results in the professional branch. It has been established that these indicators of the moral and ethical potential of a personality positively affect the productivity of future teachers’ professional training if they achieve their goals in the process of developing moral and ethical qualities and professional improvement. This potential has a complex structure, encompassing interconnected components, including motivational one – a positive attitude towards people and moral norms regulating their behaviour in life and activity; moral-orientational one – knowledge of moral norms and ethics of behaviour concerning the rules accepted in society, requirements for the personality of a professional, and their actions and deeds; ethical-operational one – mastering moral and ethical experience in the professional and pedagogical sphere of activity; volitional one – self- control, management of one’s behaviour concerning adherence to moral and ethical norms in the course of pedagogical activity; control-evaluative component – self-assessment of one’s actions in transmitting moral and ethical norms, behaviour, and during the resolution of pedagogical problems. The practical course “Secrets of Pedagogical Ethics” has been developed and tested, aimed at forming these components of the future teachers’ moral and ethical potential. The effectiveness of active forms and methods of forming the professional-moral orientation of future teachers has been confirmed, including discussions, ethical conversations, debates, and presentations, as well as technologies of personality- oriented learning, cooperation technologies, and creativity development (SCAMPER). Based on the research results, it is concluded that moral and ethical potential serves as an effective means of performing professional functions, demonstrating moral and ethical positions, humanity, ethical actions and deeds, pedagogical tact, and professional pedagogical ethics of a teacher. Its formation should be considered as a core task of professional pedagogical training. Prospects for further research are seen directly in the development of the following aspects of the problem: updating the techniques for using the moral and ethical potential of students in ensuring the success of their professional training; theoretical substantiation of various types of technologies in the development of the moral and ethical potential of future teachers, forms, and systems for assessing and controlling the formation of this complex personal creation as an important resource for the positive dynamics of their professionalism level.