Professionalism and Ethics in Teaching

David Carr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134668045
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Professionalism and Ethics in Teaching presents a thought-provoking and stimulating study of the moral dimensions of the teaching professions.
After discussing the moral implications of professionalism, Carr explores the relationship of education theory to teaching practice and the impact of this relationship on professional expertise. He then identifies and examines some central ethical and moral issues in education and teaching. Finally David Carr gives a detailed analysis of a range of issues concerning the role of the teacher and the managements of educational issues.
Professionalism and Ethics in Teaching presents a thought-provoking and stimulating study of the moral dimensions of the teaching professions.

Part I

EDUCATION, TEACHING AND PROFESSIONALISM

1

TEACHING AND EDUCATION

Fundamental assumptions and basic questions

Any work on ethics and teaching written for a series on professional ethics would appear committed to certain key claims or assumptions. Basically, these are: (i) that teaching is a professional activity; (ii) that any professional enterprise is deeply implicated in ethical concerns and considerations; and (iii) (therefore) that teaching is also an enterprise which is deeply and significantly implicated in ethical concerns and considerations. I believe that all these assumptions are true and it is the aim of this volume to substantiate them. But at the same time, in the spirit of philosophical enquiry, these are assumptions which should not be allowed to go unquestioned, and we shall need to be ever alert in this work to the sceptical objections to which all these claims have been periodically subject. However, I think that there can be no better place to start with our assessments of these claims and counterclaims than with some basic analysis of the concepts of teaching and education. In Part I, then, we shall devote primary attention (via appropriate conceptions of profession and professionalism) to the following questions: (i) is teaching a professional activity?; and (ii) is education a profession?

Indeed, to begin with, it is worth asking whether the question of the professional status of teaching is identical to or different from the question of the professional standing of education. Certainly, teaching and education are not obviously one and the same enterprise. It seems excessive to suppose that education always requires teaching, it is arguable that not all teaching is educational in any robust sense, and I do believe that questions of the professionality of teaching and the professional status of education are significantly different. To that extent, as we shall see, I am inclined to respond (roughly) ‘yes’ to the question whether education should be considered a profession, allowing for an appropriately ‘prescriptive’ rather than ‘descriptive’ construal of profession, but ‘not always’ to the question of whether teaching is a professional activity. But even if education and teaching are not the same thing, they are clearly related in conceptually and practically significant ways, and it will therefore be a crucial task of this section not just to head off dangerous confusion of education with teaching (and such other closely related notions as schooling), but also to explore significant internal relationships between them. Moreover, it is pivotal to my argument that the more teaching can be shown to be implicated in the broader concerns of education, the stronger any case for regarding it as a professional activity is likely to be.

Teaching and skill

Taking one step at a time, however, let us begin with the question of the nature and occupational status of teaching. What, roughly, is teaching? At the most general level of logical grammar, it seems reasonable enough to regard teaching as a kind of activity in which human beings engage. From this point of view, indeed, it is arguably important to distinguish both teaching and the larger project of education from various processes we merely undergo (such as socialisation and schooling); we are hard put to engage in teaching or benefit from education in the absence of witting or intentional participation or engagement. However, we should also note some ways in which talk of teaching contrasts grammatically with that of education; for example, whereas we might say ‘please don’t interrupt me while I’m teaching’, it seems odd to say: ‘not now while I’m educating’. Moreover, as already noted, education appears to be a rather larger and broader enterprise to which teaching may or may not contribute. But if teaching is an intentional activity, with what purpose do we engage in it? The answer, none the worse for obviousness, is that the purpose of teaching is to bring about learning; it is a significant consequence of this, of course, that it is not possible to define teaching other than by reference to learning: we need some understanding of what constitutes effective learning in order to see what it could be for teaching to constitute the sound or viable promotion of it.¹

Moreover, any appearance of triviality notwithstanding, this point is a matter of some importance, since the surface grammar of familiar talk about teaching is misleading and has been the source of some educational confusion. One source of trouble is that we talk of X teaching Y, where Y can be ambiguous between persons and subjects; hence, we speak naturally enough either of Mr Smith teaching mathematics or of Miss Jones teaching Sarah or 4B. It is important to see, all the same, that such ways of speaking are really contractions and that in fact the term ‘teach’ expresses what logicians would refer to as a ‘three-place predicate’. To the extent that X teaches Y conceals a relation between not two but three terms, the true logical form of judgements about teaching is better captured by X teaches Y to Z, where Y represents some subject or activity, and Z stands for some particular pupil or group of learners. To see this, however, is to make nonsense of such familiar slogans as ‘one teaches children not subjects’ (or vice versa) – for there could hardly be any coherent notion of teaching which did not implicate both learners and something to be learned. In this respect, it is arguable that at least some of the vaunted differences between so-called traditional or ‘subject-centred’ and progressive or ‘child-centred’ educationalists have their source in simple grammatical error. Again, however, since it has always seemed to me to be a further mistake to regard traditionalists as at odds with progressives on exclusively pedagogical grounds, this would not take care of all such differences.

At all events, assuming it is basically correct to regard teaching as essentially a matter of the promotion of learning, what could we say about the general character of learning which might assist us to a clearer view of the nature of teaching as an activity? There has of course been considerable modern empirical scientific interest in learning, which some experimental psychologists have broadly characterised as a change in behaviour. Now whilst no such broad definition could be accurate, for there are clearly changes in animal and human behaviour which are not due to any kind of learning, it is nevertheless a persisting temptation to conceive of learning as a matter of the acquisition of knowledge, understanding and skills behaviourally construed. It is then but a short step to thinking of teaching as the mastery of further skills which are somehow causally effective in the production of learning so construed. Indeed, I would go so far as to argue that a conception of effective teaching as basically a matter of the acquisition of behavioural skills is the dominant political and professional educational paradigm of the present day.² But then, someone might well ask what other way of conceptualising teaching there could possibly be: if teaching is to be a learnable occupation, how might it be learned except as a set of specifiable practical skills? However, it is this question – that of whether teaching as a professional activity is adequately characterisable in terms of the acquisition of skills – which takes us straight to the heart of the issues which will most deeply concern us in the rest of this work. A few general observations on this issue, therefore, may be appropriate at this point.

First, one should not generally assume that all qualities or capacities needed for the pursuit of a given occupation are acquirable as learned skills. It hardly needs saying that many activities and occupations require natural endowments, certain kinds of mental or physical potential, for their effective exercise and execution: without the right physique or mental capacity, for example, one’s ambitions to become a proficient hurdler, dancer or theoretical physicist may be entirely in vain. In this respect, it is still something of a live question whether teachers are made or born. Indeed, few teacher trainers will be unfamiliar with situations in which a student’s performance is deficient in certain crucial qualities of personality, expression or imagination which, though certainly apt for development if potentially there, can hardly be developed if they are not there even potentially. Second, however, certain key qualities would appear to be needed for professional or other occupational purposes, qualities acquirable by anyone of average physical and mental endowment, which are none the less not obviously or appropriately characterisable as skills. Precisely the problem with so much currently fashionable educational talk of ‘caring skills’ or ‘listening skills’ is not that there aren’t acquirable qualities and capacities of caring and attention which we want people – pupils or student teachers – to acquire; rather, it is that it seems misleading to regard such abilities and capacities as learnable in the manner of skills. Once again, we should not generally say to a pupil, for example, ‘You are not listening or showing enough care here, go away and practise your listening and caring skills’; indeed, it’s not so much that we want teachers and pupils to acquire listening and caring skills, but that we want them to pay attention and to care.³

In short, to the extent that teaching seems to be an immensely complex and multifaceted activity, involving a wide variety of human qualities and attributes, certain well-nigh exclusive contemporary analyses of pedagogy in terms of skill and technique would appear to be dangerously and damagingly procrustean. However, although it seems far-fetched to maintain that teaching is entirely reducible to skills in the manner of a science-based technology, it would seem equally implausible to suppose that important questions of skill, technique and causal effectiveness never arise in connection with teaching, or that empirical scientific analyses of aspects of pedagogy are always inappropriate. Hence, it is perhaps worth devoting some space to a brief sketch of what the education profession urgently seems to lack – and what so far no one has gone very far towards providing – an adequate philosophical psychology of teaching.

Towards a philosophical psychology of teaching

We may well begin by asking precisely what might be said for and against conceptualising teaching as a body of technical skills apt for identification or specification on the basis of objective scientific research into classroom practice. I certainly do not think we need doubt that there is some genuine mileage in this idea, or that there are aspects of lesson presentation, classroom organisation and pupil management which may be suitable to this sort of formulation. It seems possible to be more or less systematic about pedagogy, and some aspects of teaching do seem susceptible of rational improvement in the light of something approaching objective scientific research. On the other hand, however, there can be no doubt that this card has been considerably overplayed by modern pedagogical experts of a scientific bent. All else apart, teaching does not seem to be the sort of technical notion which requires sophisticated scientific enquiry to understand (like ‘quark’ or ‘photon’). Indeed, it is not just that such terms as ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ are learned at our mother’s knees, but that there is a real enough sense in which anyone, even quite small children, both can and do teach.⁴ The degree to which any kind of research-based know-how is actually necessary for effective teaching, then, is at least questionable, although there is no doubt something to be said for systematic attempts to improve our pre-theoretical pedagogical knowledge. Generally, however, it is arguable that hunch and intuition play as great a part in good teaching as technical rule following, and that good or inspired teaching may not be the most technically informed or systematic. Indeed, on extreme versions of this view, it could be suggested that a too technical approach to pedagogy leads only to mechanical, uninspired or lifeless teaching.

From this point of view, it is not uncommon for teaching to be regarded as an art more than a skill or a craft – at least in any technical or applied science senses of these terms – and there can be no doubt that there are significant thespian or dramatic dimensions to teaching which give it more the character of a performance art than a technical skill. In this respect, good teachers need, like artists, to bring qualities of expression, creativity and imaginative flair to their teaching – qualities which are not adequately captured by any idea of grasping causal generalities and observing invariable rules. There is no need, of course, to deny that such creativity and imagination can be taught or learned, and it may not be inappropriate to regard what is here taught and learned as skills – just so long as it is appreciated that one does not teach or learn imaginative teaching as one teaches or learns an organisational strategy of one kind or another. Hence, it again seems bizarre to advise a student to go away and practise teaching imaginatively, as we might advise him or her to practise her classroom organisation – precisely, I suppose, because there is a real sense in which what is imaginative is not readily susceptible of rehearsal in quite this way. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that imaginative teaching is something which is developed more than instructed – and, to the extent that its development depends on qualities and resources already in embryo in the personality of the teacher, this accounts for the difficulty teacher trainers often have in assisting dull and lifeless individuals to be more expressive and imaginative teachers, as it were ‘from scratch’.

Indeed, there would seem to be two rather different respects in which qualities of pedagogical expression and imagination depend on personality and personal characteristics. First, although expression and imagination can be developed – it is possible to help realise expressive potential or to assist someone who is already imaginative to become more so – such development seems to presuppose an already given basis of sensibility, perception and insight: better jokes are largely impotent to enhance the comedial abilities of someone who lacks a sense of humour (or a sense of comedic pace and timing). But, second, such sensibility, perception and insight seem to be grounded in detailed situation-specific appreciation, which is probably as much a matter of sense and affect as cognition. Thus, just as a gifted comedian is one who can precisely adjust delivery and subject matter to the mood of the audience, so a good teacher is one who is able to perceive what is pedagogically or interpersonally salient in a specific educational circumstance. This aspect of the teacher’s art brings us to a topic we shall need to revisit: that of the particularity of the craft skills of the teacher and the difficulty of generalising or codifying the skills of a teacher in a way that would render them applicable across the wide diversity of circumstances in which teachers may find themselves. Indeed, some recent educational philosophers⁵ have finely honed this ‘particularist’ case precisely for the purpose of resisting educational technicism – the view that teaching is a kind of science-based technology which would enable anyone to practise it, irrespective of personal characteristics or particular circumstances.

But if teaching is not a science-based technology, it does not seem exactly right to regard it instead, or in addition, as some form of performance art. There are, for example, serious limits to the possibilities of originality and creativity in teaching – and a teacher, unlike an artist, is hardly free to do whatever might commend itself to him or her in a spirit of imagination or self-expression. Moreover, just as one can envisage technically effective ways of teaching which would be educationally suspect, so one can foresee creative and expressive ways of teaching which might also be pedagogically unacceptable. Indeed, charismatically attractive styles of teaching which leave audiences spellbound have clear corruptive potential, and educationalists will often come across students and teachers whose seductive personal style or character is an impediment rather than an aid to effective and purposeful teaching. Thus, on the most basic construal of teaching, it is arguable that there are normative or evaluative constraints on teaching, which are less technical and aesthetic, more moral or ethical. Good teaching is not just teaching which is causally effective or personally attractive, it is teaching which seeks at best to promote the moral, psychological and physical well-being of learners, and at least to avoid their psychological, physical and moral damage. That said, I think that there are weaker and stronger versions of this notion of the moral implicatedness of teaching. For although we would certainly be right to regard music or athletics coaches, for example, as professionally derelict for sexually abusing or otherwise corrupting their pupils, we should not normally – in so far as we take the be and end all of their role to be the teaching of certain prescribed knowledge and set skills – hold them accountable for having failed to improve the general characters of their pupils. On the other hand, it is common for parents, employers and politicians to hold teachers in schools to account for the moral development of pupils.⁶ There is thus a broad and crude distinction to be drawn here between teaching in the more limited contexts of training, and teaching in the broader context of education – and, traditionally, the former has been deemed subject to weaker moral constraints than the latter.

Since it is with professional teaching in the stronger educational sense that we are mainly concerned in this book, considerable attention will be devoted in due course to the rather different levels at which education may be fairly said to be implicated in moral and ethical considerations. For the moment, however, we are concerned only to show that although what we have so far said about the inherent moral or ethical character of good teaching goes some way towards showing how all teaching must be bound by professional ties of accountability and responsibility to employers, parents, pupils, and so on, any deeper association of teaching with education must serve to complicate our view of the ethics of pedagogy yet further – precisely in so far as there seems to be widespread disagreement about what exactly education is. Moreover, it may be useful here to pursue an interesting and relatively uncharted insight into the extraordinary extent of this disagreement via the brief examination of different comparisons which appear to have been made, both explicitly and implicitly, between teachers and other occupational groups.

Concepts of education: profession and vocation

Vocational conceptions

We may begin by recognising a broad distinction between ideas of vocation and profession, since it is arguable that modern ideas of teaching reflect a certain vacillation between professional and vocational conceptions. These ideas are not, to be sure, entirely distinct, and it is not unusual for an occupation to be referred to in much the same breath as vocation and profession. But although both concepts are proteanly resistant to precise formulation, there are nevertheless significant and illuminating tensions, as well as interesting differences of emphases, between them. First, then, one consequence of regarding a given occupation as a vocation rather than as a profession turns on the idea of significant continuity between occupational role and private values and concerns. Thus, it is common for the incumbents of so-called vocations (the ministry, nursing and teaching) to regard themselves, rightly or wrongly, as people whose lives are totally given over to the service of others (parishioners, patients, pupils) in a way that leaves relatively little room for the personal or private – and has, indeed, in the case of more than one vocation precluded any possibility of marriage and family. In this respect, moreover, even if it should turn out that the time-honoured professions are able enough to match any traditional vocational devotion to service, the idea of profession does seem...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editor's Preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Education, Teaching and Professionalism
• 1 Teaching and Education
• 2 Professions, Professionalism and Professional Ethics
• 3 Teaching and Professionalism
• Part 2 Educational Theory and Professional Practice
• 4 Educational Theory Misapplied?
• 5 Different Faces of Educational Theory
• 6 Teaching and Competence
• Part 3 Professional Values and Ethical Objectivity
• 7 Professional Values and the Objectivity of Value
• 8 Rival Conceptions of Education
• Part 4 Ethics and Education, Morality and the Teacher
• 9 Educational Rights and Professional Wrongs
• 10 Aims of Education, Schooling and Teaching
• 11 The Moral Role of the Teacher
• Part 5 Particular Issues
• 12 Ethical Issues Concerning the Role of the Teacher
• 13 Ethical Issues Concerning Education and Schooling
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index