Silver bells and cockle shells: A study of the conceptions of teachers about humane and ethical behavior between colleagues

This study was a qualitative inquiry into the conceptions that teachers have about humane and ethical behavior between colleagues. The research incidentally includes conceptions that teachers have about inhumane and unethical behavior, but that was not the purpose of the study. Previous to this study no research was available about what teachers thought about such behavior, and some grounding of a theory needed to occur.;Twenty-two teachers told personal stories about humane or ethical behavior and were interviewed to determine what they thought were the meanings of "humane" and "ethical" as they related to collegial behavior. The researcher was interested to know if there was consistency between their beliefs and the behavior contained within their stories. There were over fifty incidents of collegial behavior contained within the stories and interviews, and most of them were analyzed.;The research data were categorized with thirteen different coding systems which were based on a modified discourse analysis format. The researcher found behaviors to naturally fall into affective, conative, or cognitive domains when humane and ethical; and by adding combative and competitive categories to the first grouping, describe inhumane and unethical. These domains appear to drive the behavior to some extent, and the image differs from that which teachers have of themselves as humane and ethical beings.;Slightly more than one half of the behaviors that were described and analyzed in this study were conceived as humane and ethical, but teachers definitely wanted to talk about negative more than positive behaviors. The researcher found that teachers either have no clear understanding of what constitutes humane and ethical behavior or feel driven to compete and keep score with their colleagues. Nevertheless, teachers have a strong sense about helping their colleagues; it is the prevalent understanding of what constitutes humane behavior. The data indicate that teachers want to protect their personal integrity; therefore helping is the safest collegial activity in which to become engaged.;The appendix includes flow charts which break down the conceptions that teachers have about behaviors as well as a copy of a story and interview from one of the teachers.