Teachers Of Virtue Ethics And Its Construction

Teacher's moral ethics has long been an important concern of educators in both theory and practice. However, people often confuse teacher's moral ethics with educational ethics and work ethics, thus expanding or narrowing its scope. This has posed problems to the establishment of the theory of teacher's both ethics and its practice. Teacher's moral ethics is different from educational ethics and teacher's work ethics in that it is an organic system consisting of teacher's institutional ethics and teacher's moral ethics. Teacher's moral ethics is an important of part of educational ethics.Educational ethics refers to the regulatory system that guides communication between the subject and object of education, and distinguishes the right from the wrong, including the subject's internalized ideas and spirits of good and evil in education. Teacher's work ethics refers to those basic moral rules or regulations that regulate the relations between teachers and students, colleagues, society, and school, as well as moral ideas, behaviors and qualities that have become internalized, during their professional life. By contrast, teacher's institutional ethics refer to those principles of educational ethics, moral pursuits, and values that are internal to the institution of teachers itself, as well as all laws, rules, and regulations that specify moral requirements and values for teachers. Teacher's moral ethics refers to mental qualities and moral standards that have been created following a teacher's acceptance of and identification with significance of the teaching profession, mental attachment, approaches to education, and spirit of educational ethics.Teacher's institutional ethics and moral ethics constitute what teacher's ethics is all about, so it is of great significance to clarify the relationship between these two aspects. Some people oppose teacher's institutional ethics to moral ethics, arguing that the latter has become old-fashioned, of little value for our present concern. We disagree with this view. Actually, teacher's institutional ethics and moral ethics are not in opposition to each other, but interact with each other and may change in either direction. In terms of effectiveness, teacher's moral ethics is of greater strength. Today we can see many problems with educational ethics confront teachers in China, and moral standards in education are declining. However, these problems are not solely attributable to flaws or failings of the institution of teachers itself. To a large extent, many of the current problems can be ascribed to the fact that teachers have not grasped the significance and values of the ethics of this institution and have not developed the mental qualities required by the institution. Therefore, we cannot expect to improve the ethics of teachers if we simply depend on compulsory requirements of teacher's institutional ethics in theory but do not attach enough importance to teacher's moral ethics, a source of soft power in terms of self-discipline. Too much emphasis on teacher's institutional ethics in practice will lead us to consider teachers as merely objects of management, thus ignoring their own initiative. However, it is precisely their initiative that largely motivates innovation in the institution of teachers.Teacher's moral ethics is on a higher level than teacher's institutional ethics. We believe we should take steps in the following three directions in the development of teacher's moral ethics. Firstly, we must develop standards of teacher's moral ethics,and explore the proper approach to the mechanism of the operation of teacher's moral ethics. We must do some research on the proper behavior of teachers in the educational environment of China. Borrowing ideas from research abroad should serve the practice of making standards of teacher's moral ethics in our own country. We should seek solutions to problems that are identified in the course of studying teacher's moral ethics so that these solutions are more reasonable and practical. With a proper consideration of the current status of teacher's moral ethics in China and expectations of teachers from the society, we must have a full understanding of requirements of teacher's moral ethics from our present situation and the ongoing educational reform. By specifying these expectations and requirements we are able to establish a proper regulatory system of teacher's moral ethics in China. This mechanism consists of an external one and an internal one, i.e. law and morals. The external mechanism plays a decisive role in the operation of the mechanism of teacher's moral ethics, while the moral mechanism serves as a direct motivation of its progress. The legal mechanism makes provisions for teacher's moral ethics, i.e. displaying the strength of morals in the form of law. By contrast, the moral mechanism of constraint is a full manifestation of the autonomy of teachers, and it is more direct and effective than the external mechanism of constraint, since legal requirements have become internalized by teachers. Secondly, we must establish the spirit of teacher's moral ethics, we must strengthen education in teacher's professional ethics. Teacher's ethics is an organic whole made up of various elements that constitute the professional ethics of teachers, and it is a world of meaning and significance created in the course of pursuing the values of ethics. Its logic and validity pertains to the rationality of teacher's ethics itself and the rationality of the ecological relationship between culture, economy, society, students, and teachers. The spirit of teacher's ethics mainly includes that of teaching and instructing students, devotion and dedication to one's job, innovation, and commitment. We should expand education in teacher's moral values, set some good examples for teachers to follow, and encourage them to devote themselves to the cause of education. Besides, we must have stronger internal management of schools. We should establish and perfect various rules and regulations so that teachers can voluntarily regulate their own behaviors. We must also require those in leadership positions to be strict with their own activities and set good examples for others. Thirdly, we must perfect the mechanism of supervision and incentive from the society. We should regulate the moral behavior of teachers by monitoring their activities and due punishment and reward. Fifthly, we must let the institution of teachers play an effective role, i.e. in regulation, evaluation, motivation, and constraint. The function of regulation pertains to how teachers, guided by laws, rules, social morals, and their internal character, direct and constraint their behavior in order to follow principles of ethics and basic rules of education, and fulfill their moral obligations of education in order to ensure the order and efficiency of educational activities. The function of evaluation refers to the assessment of the institution of teachers, the ethics relationship of teachers, and their work performance in terms of quality and quantity, based on particular goals and standards and scientific attitudes and methods. The function of motivation refers to the mechanism of stimulating the initiative of teachers so that they are more actively contributing their efforts to educational activities so that they can fully display their innovativeness and potentials in those activities. The ultimate goal is to increase the performance of education and push the development of education. The function of constraint pertains to those compulsory provisions in educational laws, rules, and regulations, and their moral requirements of teacher's activities. This function is of great importance for the cultivation and development of their autonomous constraint of educational activities in accordance with morals.