What we need to prepare teachers for the moral nature of their work

Abstract There is a strong consensus in the educational literature that teaching is an inherently moral endeavour, and that the moral work of teachers is of central importance to education. However, programmes of teacher education in the USA typically do not reflect these beliefs in their curricula. One reason for this inconsistency is that researchers have yet to understand fully, and articulate clearly, the moral nature of teaching and classrooms in a way that can serve as a basis for building substantive programmes of close and scholarly study of the moral work of teaching. The paper argues that what is needed is a more descriptive, explicit, and systematic approach to inquiring into this domain. Keywords: moral developmentmoral discoursemoral educationteacher educationtheorizing teaching practice Acknowledgements Drafts of this paper benefited from the generous comments of Traci Bliss, Gary Fenstermacher, and Richard Osguthorpe, together with the editors and anonymous reviewers for this journal. Notes 1. See Fenstermacher (1990 Fenstermacher, G. D. 1990. "Some moral considerations on teaching as a profession". In The Moral Dimensions of Teaching, Edited by: Goodlad, J. I., Soder, R. and Sirotnik, K. A. 130–151. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass. Google Scholar), Hansen (2001 Hansen, D. T. 2001. "Teaching as a moral activity". In Handbook of Research on Teaching, , 4th edn, Edited by: Richardson, V. 826–857. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Google Scholar), Pring (2001 Pring, R. 2001. Education as a moral practice. Journal of Moral Education, 30(2): 101–112. Taylor & Francis Online, Web of Science ® , Google Scholar), Sockett (1992 Sockett, H. T. 1992. "The moral aspects of the curriculum". In Handbook of Research on Curriculum, Edited by: Jackson, P. W. 543–569. New York: Macmillan. Google Scholar), Tom (1984 Tom, A. R. 1984. Teaching as a Moral Craft, New York: Longman. Google Scholar), and Valli (1990 Valli, L. 1990. "Moral approaches to reflective practice". In Encouraging Reflective Practice in Education, Edited by: Clift, R. T., Houston, W. R. and Pugach, M. C. 39–56. New York: Teachers College Press. Google Scholar). 2. In this paper I employ a broad meaning of the terms 'moral' and 'morality', as is the norm in the moral education literature, setting aside the distinction between morality and ethics commonly found in moral philosophy. In addition, 'moral' is used descriptively here, to refer to that which is a part of the moral domain—a domain of human life that involves the guidance of our actions, deliberations, judgements, character, ways of living, and our responses to and relationships with others. Thus, 'moral' is not used as a short‐hand for 'morally good'. 3. See Hansen (1998 Hansen, D. T. 1998. The moral is in the practice: the meaning of pedagogical thoughtfulness. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(6): 643–655. Crossref, Web of Science ® , Google Scholar) for a further elaboration of this idea. 4. The Moral Life of Schools (Jackson et al. 1993 Jackson, P. W., Boostrom, R. E. and Hansen, D. T. 1993. The Moral Life of Schools, San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass. Google Scholar) demonstrates a version of this approach in the authors' categories of ways in which value‐laden messages might be communicated to students. 5. Recognition of this point has led Fenstermacher and his colleagues to work to expand the meaning and the basis for the concept of teacher manner (Sanger and Fenstermacher 2000 Sanger, M. N. and Fenstermacher, G. D. . Aristotle is great—but is he enough? Expanding the theoretical grounds for inquiries into the moral dimensions of teaching. Paper presented at. the American Educational Research Association. New Orleans, LA Available online at: http://www‐personal.umich.edu/∼gfenster/aristotv3.pdf, accessed 23 July 2007 Google Scholar). 6. This distinction between normative and descriptive inquiry is based upon the general aims, functioning, and products of each, and is not intended as marking off exclusive domains or entities. Inevitably, there are descriptive aspects to normative claims and questions (i.e. describing something as good), and normative aspects to their descriptive counterparts (i.e. considering what we should take as part of the moral domain). 7. Some notable exceptions include works by Haydon (1999 Haydon, G. 1999. Values, Virtues and Violence: Education and the Public Understanding of Morality, Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar), Sprod (2001 Sprod, T. 2001. Philosophical Discussion in Moral Education: The Community of Ethical Inquiry, London: Routledge. Crossref , Google Scholar), and Wilson et al. (1967 Wilson, J., Williams, N. and Sugarman, B. 1967. Introduction to Moral Education, Baltimore, MD: Penguin. Google Scholar), all of which are informed by what is described below as a meta‐ethical understanding of morality. However, these authors do not develop systematic and comprehensive descriptions of morality for use in elaborating the moral nature of teaching, as I am advocating here. 8. 'Meta‐ethics' is used very broadly here, to represent all second‐order inquiries, elaborating the nature of morality. Thus, it should not be taken to be associated with the views of morality of such positivists as Ayer (1952 Ayer, A. J. 1952. Language, Truth, and Logic, New York: Dover. Google Scholar), or their attempts to limit moral theorizing to the analysis of the meaning of moral terms (grounded in a positivistic view of meaning). 9. See Darwall et al. (1997b Darwall, S., Gibbard, A. and Railton, P., eds. 1997b. Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar), Kagan (1998 Kagan, S. 1998. Normative Ethics, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Google Scholar), and Scanlon (1995 Scanlon, T. M. 1995. Moral theory: understanding and disagreement. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55(2): 343–356. Crossref , Google Scholar). 10. It is interesting to note that those who are considered the most pointed and articulate critics of meta‐ethical theorizing (e.g. MacIntyre 1984 MacIntyre, A. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, , 2nd edn, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Google Scholar, Williams 1985 Williams, B. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar) are also gifted practitioners of that which they are often seen as criticizing. Thus, their works are most appropriately viewed as efforts to reform meta‐ethical theorizing, rather than wholly indicting or debunking it. See Darwall et al. (1997a Darwall, S., Gibbard, A. and Railton, P. 1997a. "Toward fin de siecle ethics: some trends". In Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, Edited by: Darwall, S., Gibbard, A. and Railton, P. 3–47. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar), Scanlon (1998 Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe To Each Other, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar), and Solomon (2003 Solomon, D. 2003. "MacIntyre and contemporary moral philosophy". In Alasdair MacIntyre, Edited by: Murphy, M. C. 114–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crossref , Google Scholar). 11. E.g. Mackie (1977 Mackie, J. L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, New York: Penguin. Google Scholar). 12. 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