Chapter: I . Introduction
What are the professional and ethical
obligations of educators? What, if anything, governs their professional
conduct? Must educators continually attempt to improve upon what they
do? Do they have any obligations to conduct research, even
experimentation, into the
effectiveness of their teaching? Are there any ethical rules governing
pedagogic research? Do these obligations and rules exist at all levels of
education? How are teachers/educators to be expected to know about and
fulfill their obligations particularly for conducting research and
performing experiments? What are the responsibilities of educational
institutions? What if institutions do not fulfill their obligations to
their faculty? Are there collective responsibilities that faculty are
obliged to exercise? These are some questions that are addressed in this
work.
Teachers within educational institutions of all
sorts have expressed a range of concerns and gripes and described problems
so often as to have created a traditional litany of complaints and often without a
receptive
audience. Concerns over class size, lack of preparedness of
the students, class time, lack of adequate support for the instructional
staff and on and on fall on deaf ears, if on any ears at all beyond
those reciting the "canon" of concerns. Why is it that those
concerns have become "perennial" matters? Why is it that they
persist seemingly without solution when they are related to the very heart
of what educators do? In this work there is presented a way to
understand the recurring nature of these problems as well as a path to
their solution. That path lies through an awakening, in some cases,
of the identity of teachers with being professional educators. That
path leads through an acceptance of what appears to be an off putting and
daunting set of responsibilities as professionals towards students, colleagues and society.
But it is through that path that educators will arrive at the awareness and
acceptance of the collective responsibilities as professional educators that
serve as the base for a far more effective way to understand and
adequately address and successfully remedy the problems in the standard
litany. So we have a situation in which educators by realizing that
they have responsibilities additional to what they previously conceived
will be able to serve their own self interests as educators where those
interests are the solutions for problems included in the canon of concerns. Faculty are
responsible to teach and teach well and teach even better but they are not
and can not be expected to achieve that progression within an institutional
setting acting alone as individuals. It is only as a member of a collective of
professionals that measures can be effectuated to address and remedy
concerns of professional educators. This should be regarded as "good
news" that there is a possible way to bring about solutions to heretofore
seemingly intractable problems. The realization of the collective
and its authority and power is but one of the benefits of the acceptance
of the identity of a professional educator with its incumbent sets of
responsibilities.
There is perhaps no more important concern for
educators, particularly in higher education, than that of academic
freedom. In examining both the nature of that freedom and its
threats as well as a the most effective mechanisms for its defense it is
not possible to proceed without noting the importance of the action of the
collective of educators in the assertion of all those components and
consequences of academic freedom along with their defense and maintenance.
It is for members of the profession of education to realize their identity
as professional educators as a necessary condition for their taking
collective action as educators to make the case, and unfortunately to make
it repeatedly, that academic freedom is a necessity for education and for
the academy and that it is a value for society as it is through the
exercise of that freedom that knowledge and truth is pursued and benefits
for society are produced. This work will not focus on matters of
academic freedom but will note its relatedness to several of the issues of
concern herein.
In this work we are philosophers and teachers looking at teaching
a bit philosophically. We are premising this work on an
examination and presentation of education as a profession and what that
entails both in fact and of necessity. This work presents a conceptual framework within which
and perspective with which teaching faculty are enabled to ground
important decisions as to what a professional educator ought to do in a
wide variety of situations. Most of the current discourse
concerning teaching and responsibilities for conducting pedagogic
research is ungrounded in any language that could support claims of
obligations. The narrative concerning what teaching is and what
the profession involves is lacking in some fundamental manner that is
demonstrated in so many educators being seemingly unaware of their
professional responsibilities. In this work the notions of individual, collective
and institutional responsibility and their interrelationship are
introduced and fleshed out and it is they that provide
the basis for determining obligations and duties towards learners or students and
for determining how those responsibilities might be fulfilled. The
approach adopted herein with its conceptual framework, perspective and
basic notions affords a reasonable manner for decision making by
individual educators and collectives of educators, teaching faculties.
Recent Literature in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
There has been a recent surge of literature relating to contemporary
educational practice and pedagogical research, and there has been much
discussion on the importance of pedagogical best practices. This is a
good thing. But where there has been a virtual explosion of literature
relating to pedagogy, there has been (with a few significant exceptions)
very little discussion of education as a profession, and the
responsibilities and obligations of professional educators. There has
been relatively little discussion on the ethics of pedagogic research
and experimentation, and even less about the ethical issues related to
the practice of the profession.
Throughout human history, education
has been recognized and duly reflected upon as an essential component of
human society and culture. As a major social institution, education is
seen as a necessary condition for human development, and its impact on
both individuals and societies has been widely studied. Since at least
Plato, whose Republic emphasized the relationship between
schooling, society, and politics, education has been recognized as a
major component of political institutions and movements. In the midst
of all of this change, the social role of the educator has evolved as
well. Recognizing the fundamental importance of education, the teacher
is seen as a member of a profession, one which carries significant
obligations and expectations. And fairly or not, society expects “more”
from teachers than they do many other professions, holding them to
standards and expectations not shared by other professionals.
Further, there has been much
thought and discussion concerning the content and process of teaching
and learning, and a good deal of contemporary pedagogical dialogue has
involved the both formal and informal pedagogic research and
experimentation. Yet against this background there has been precious
little expressed about the professional responsibility of educators to
conduct such research, and even less about the ethical concerns related
to pedagogic experimentation. In that relatively small emerging
discourse on ethical concerns in education, there has been precious
little contribution from individuals with extensive formal training and
experience in ethics and ethical decision-making. And because of this,
much of the current literature tends to describe the types of ethical
issues faced by educators and researchers, but there is very little
discussion about how to address these issues, and so most of the
contemporary literature is absent normative discourse. Indeed, some
theorists even express disdain for or opposition to normative language.
Yet in ignoring the normative implications of pedagogical ethics,
educators are often left in the dark with regards to addressing the very
real and significant ethical issues they face on a daily basis. This
work attempts to address and remedy that situation.
The method adopted here is to
proceed philosophically, establishing the conceptual foundations upon
which and the schema within which normative discourse in pedagogy is not only possible, but
also both appropriate and needed. We begin this task by first arguing
that, as a member of a profession, educators have professional
responsibilities and in particular they bear a professional
responsibility to conduct pedagogical research and experimentation in
the continuing effort to improve their teaching. Next, the discussion
focuses on the structure of the relationship between educators and
students, and highlights the obligations and responsibilities generated
within the context of these relationships. After setting out some
of the givens in the way in which educators view their relationship with
students we outline the
basis upon which ethical principles applicable to educators rest and the
relationship of educator to student that is most cognizant of ethical
obligations. The additional obligations placed on educators by society
are also noted as well as the
responsibilities incurred by educators as members of a profession.
The behavioral norms for professional educators are presented as reflecting and
both generated by and supported by the norms of society itself.
The ethical issues that arise
within the basic relationship of educator to student are given
attention. In particular the basic issue of the right and the
obligation of professional educators to address and to change the
beliefs of students and their methods for establishing their beliefs,
their habits of mind.
Highlighted by this work are the ethical concerns related to research
and experimentation with human subjects in the institution of
education, and the ethical responsibilities of educators in the context
of pedagogic experimentation, responsibilities that result from their
position as professionals, voluntarily assumed, and their duties as
human beings, universally acknowledged. At bottom, this work is an
attempt to argue that education is a profession, and as such, educators
have a set of professional responsibilities, and that those
responsibilities include doing pedagogic research in order to improve
the efficacy of instruction. In conducting such research there are
ethical considerations that must be exercised.
There are a number of questions
that receive too little attention in the recent literature concerning
education and more significantly what is termed the “Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning” or SOTL. Among them are: What are the
responsibilities of an educator as an educator and in particular what
are those responsibilities at the level of post secondary education?
What are the bases for those responsibilities and in particular the
responsibility to conduct pedagogic research with human subjects? What
are the ethical issues involved with the conduct of such research? How
are the moral dilemmas and ethical issues in these situations to be
approached, analyzed, and effectively resolved? These are at the same
time interesting and difficult questions to address and to answer. Hence
the need for a systematic, philosophical approach in the attempt to
address these vitally important issues, and in offering effective
analyses of the context in which the issues and dilemmas arise.
It is not expected that this work
will cause a moral epiphany in educators who read it. Nor is it
expected that a single work would or could cause changes in the behavior
of individual instructors, particularly those not interested or
concerned with the issue addressed in this work or with their identities
as professional educators. What then is the expectation?
It is hoped that those educators who are concerned about the ethical
issues raised in this work will have a framework within which they can
better address the concerns that they do have and that they will have
increased their intellectual resources with which to effectively resolve
dilemmas and deal with situations. Their intellectual resources
would now include concepts of professionalism and moral responsibilities
consequent thereto along with concepts of individual, collective and
institutional responsibilities.
It is the aim of this work not so
much to change teachers as to change a bit about what teaching is
thought to involve. It is thinking about teaching itself or the
consideration of education as a profession which is
the object of change herein: bringing about a greater acceptance of
education as a profession and along with that its incumbent
responsibilities for individuals, faculties and institutions.
What should emerge as the arguments
are presented herein is that a solution to how to effectively address
the canon of concerns of educators in institutional settings can be
obtained through the widespread acceptance of educators of their
identities as professional and the responsibilities incumbent thereto
and the emergence there from of the collective exercise of
responsibilities that should bring a response from those institutions
adequate to remedy the problems oft times besetting educators. The under
preparedness of learners, class size, support for faculty and students
are better addressed through the acceptance of the identity of
professional educator and operating from the conceptual framework that will be
developed herein than through the often tried and proven ineffective
methods currently extant.
This presentation should not and
will not proceed without making clear the most basic notions that are operative
within. Here at the outset will be a brief indication of the view of
education that is held by the authors of this work.
What is Education?
John Dewey defined education
in many ways or one way but with many variations as to how best to
describe it. Perhaps his most succinct definition of education was
“growth.”
If at whatever period we choose to take a person, he is still
in the process of growth, then education is not, save as a by product, a
preparation for something coming later. Getting from the present the
degree and kind of growth there is in it is education.
--John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1952,p. 184-185.
For Dewey, as for most
educators, education is
“...the formation of mind by setting up certain associations
or connections of content by means of a subject matter presented from
without.”—John Dewey (
Democracy and Education,
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1916, p.75)
…[T]he
educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end. --John
Dewey
Democracy and Education (1916)
When compared with
education, all other human endeavor shrinks into insignificance.
Without education, human beings could not exist. John Dewey famously
argued that
…[w]hat nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life,
education is to social life.” (Dewey, 1916; p. 12)
As far as the importance
of education for human existence there is possibly no other social
institution or form of human interaction that is as important as
education. It is through education that humans acquire those
characteristics that most uniquely set off the species from others.
Intellect enables humanness but education actualizes those
potentialities that typically mark the human as human. Social groups
enable formal education but it is education that actualizes the
attainments of any society. Education is a necessary condition of
civilization, culture, science, finance, art, business, and any other
worthwhile activity. Without education, medicine is impossible, and so
are baseball, cooking, parenting, and almost every other significant
human activity. Without
education there is no language passed from one to another and without
language where are humans? How dependent are humans on language for
thought?
This being the case it
is unavoidable that humans educate other humans. They do so formally
and informally. They do so for better or for worse in so far as passing
from one to another abilities and skills for the entire range of human
actions and the motivations and desires for any number of human
experiences and possessions.
Education is a
fundamental obligation of humans if there is any sort of fundamental
moral obligation for humans to avoid harming other humans without
sufficient cause as would be generally found accepted in practice and
codified in law and an obligation to benefit others as is in either the
individual or common interest. And so Education is a fundamental moral
obligation of each and every member of the human community to the degree
to which any human is possessed of that which can be communicated and
transferred to others that serves the development of individual growth
and the progress of society. Humans are harmed when denied education
because they cannot realize their humaneness without it and humans are
not benefited if they are denied education because they cannot grow
as well intellectually without education and thus cannot continue to expand on that of which
humanness will most uniquely consist.
All human activity qua
human depends on social interaction. Even the hermit and recluse have
been educated in self-maintenance. The lone survivalist with the cache
of weapons and food depends upon others to fabricate their weapons. The
self-reliant exemplar of “rugged individualism” is, and always will be,
a myth. Humans are zoon politikon and can not and do
not exist as human out of some social context that produces its
humanizing effect on the member of homo sapiens sapiens.
All humans interact with and educate others through that interaction.
The heart
of the sociality of man is in education. --John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy,
1920, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1952,p. 185.
All social interaction
depends upon education. Every person must learn and refine their
behaviors so as to exist, grow and prosper in the warp and woof of
social life. These behaviors are of every type and order. Humans must
learn how to obtain the basics needed for physical survival while
existing amidst other humans. Humans must learn how to communicate with
and survive amidst other humans. Humans thus must learn craft or
profession, as well as life in general.
Humans keep growing and
keep expanding upon the very notion of what it is that makes any human
human. There are no fixed essences that define and confine the concept
and experience of the human. As the humaneness of the human is given in
and through the social context, then the social context is as well
growing and permitting and nurturing and spurring and enticing the ever
so slowly evolving forms of human expression and human self definition.
No human can be human in the fullness of that humanness in isolation
from other humans. There is no human thought without human language and
no human language in individuals alone. A human who lives amongst others
long enough to acquire those basic characteristics of the species and
its humanness who goes off as recluse or hermit and lives in isolation
from other humans cannot continue to manifest the basic feature of human
life that urges it forward into the transforming experiences that
produce new expressions of humanness. The recluse fails to exhibit one
of the most significant characteristics of the human: the growth that
comes from and through and for the enrichment of interaction with
others. The recluse who remains such also fails to exhibit another
characteristic of the human and that is as educator of other humans.
Humans educate others even if only through the learner's witnessing the
behavior of the other, the "teacher".
The next chapter will
present a case that those who deliver education in formal settings and
institutions constitute a profession.
@copyright 2004 by S. Kincaid and P. Pecorino