Approaches to the Mentoring Activity From the Perspective of Educational Ethics

Knowledge of professional responsibilities from a moral-pedagogical perspective is a goal of educational ethics codes. As a professional educator, a mentor teacher must have the ability to carry out reflections, critical-constructive analyses and representations of fundamental pedagogical concepts and, at the same time, to offer moral perspectives in various professional and life situations. Establishing educational objectives at different levels, selecting and configuring educational content, establishing evaluation forms, methods, and criteria, managing and regulating relationships with learners, colleagues, decisionmakers, and parents are all professional responsibilities that require pedagogical but also ethical competencies for educational professionals. The inclusion in codes of professional ethics in education of issues related to the deontology of educational purposes, the deontology of educational content, the deontology of evaluation, the deontology of pedagogical relations can stimulate the reflection and action of teachers who carry out mentoring activities but, at the same time, also that of the mentored persons. The purpose of the investigation was to highlight the importance of including in the codes of educational ethics some principles that regulate the exercise of mentor roles, especially from the perspective of the deontology of evaluation and the deontology of pedagogical relations between teacher and student but also between teachers. Starting from the premise that ethical and deontological regulations in any professional field have the role of protecting the quality of professional services offered by specialists in that field, the need to consider ethical principles of behaviour of the mentor teacher is imperative in the educational field and that of initial professional training due to the mechanism that underpins the mentoring process: the mentor's professional service includes behaviours and attitudes, and it has a formative, directing, and guiding role more than in other fields.