A Study On Teachers’ Professional Ethical Decision Making

Education is a kind of moral practice, because education is an enterprise which is committed to improvement; and teaching is essentially a kind of moral activity and moral endeavor. As the moral agents, almost every students-related thing teachers do carries moral weight. Therefore, teachers will inevitably encounter many ethical problems, conflict, or dilemmas in the professional practice, and need to make ethical decisions. Then, in the background of Chinese social culture, how do teachers make professional ethical decisions? and how should we understand and explain teachers’ professional ethical decision making? This dissertation attempts to investigate and discuss teachers’ professional ethical decision making in the concrete practice situation.Ethical dilemmas and ethical decision making are interrelated, the research on teachers’professional ethical decision making depends on the discussion of ethical dilemmas which teachers experience in the professional practice; and the analysis on teachers’professional ethical decision making should pay attention to teachers’ rational ethical thinking and judgment as well as to various influential factors. Taking all the above into consideration, this dissertation, through in-depth interviews on eleven teachers from two schools of S city, adopts case study method of qualitative research in order to describe and reveal the process of ethical decision making when teachers encounter with real ethical dilemmas in the professional practice.This dissertation is based on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s deontology and utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and interprets and explains teachers’professional ethical decision making from the ethical perspectives of the ethic of purpose, the ethic of principle and the ethic of probability. From the perspective of the ethic of purpose, teachers make ethical decision based on personal moral characters and professional virtues; from the perspective of the ethic of principle, teachers make ethical decision based on the code of teacher professional morality, the general ethical principles and the convention rules; from the perspective of the ethic of probability, teachers make ethical decision based on the three-dimensional balance of consequences the action produces among affected parties, long-term or short-term consequences, and individual or group benefits. For investigating the influential factors of teachers’ professional ethical decision making, the study discusses them from three aspects which are personal internal factors, school institutional and cultural factors, social traditions and values factors.The main research findings are as follows. First, teachers mainly encounter eight kinds of ethical dilemmas in the professional practice:fairness issues, students’ behavior management issues, the conflict between curriculum reform and the examination, the conflict on the school administration, the conflict between teachers’ beliefs and parents’attitude, the conflict between the investment and the return, the conflict on collegial relationship, the conflict between different principles. Second, teachers tend to make ethical decision based on a single ethical perspective. Although sometimes teachers can think about ethical dilemmas that they encounter from different ethical perspectives, they usually make ethical decision from a single ethical perspective——based on either virtues, rules or consequences. Accordingly, teachers show three basic approaches to ethical decision making, namely, the approach of virtue, rule or consequence. Third, teachers’professional ethical decision making is an interactive process between rational ethical thinking and various influential factors. Facing the ethical dilemmas in the real situation, teachers make ethical decision by considering both rational ethical thinking and various influential factors. Rational ethical thinking determines the possible ethical action choices, and various influential factors affect the final specific course of ethical action.Lastly, this dissertation puts forward an integrated approach to teachers’ professional ethical decision making, and tries to construct an integrated mode of teachers’professional ethical decision making. This dissertation also provides some suggestions on how to improve teachers’ awareness of ethics issue and the ability of professional ethical decision making.