Seeking the elusive ethical base of teacher professionalism in Canadian codes of ethics

Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 468e480

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Seeking the elusive ethical base of teacher professionalism in Canadian codes of ethics Bruce Maxwell a, *, Marina Schwimmer b a b

University of Quebec at Trois-Rivi eres, Canada McGill University, Room 244, Education Building, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2, Canada

h i g h l i g h t s
Analysis did not reveal an overlapping consensus on teachers' ethical obligations.
Six core professional values of teaching were dominant in the codes of ethics.
Codes of ethics provide an incomplete depiction of teacher deontology.
Extensive corporatist content in the codes is negative and confusing.
For teacher education, codes of ethics have important limitations.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 15 March 2016 Received in revised form 9 June 2016 Accepted 13 July 2016

Two studies were conducted to explore codes of ethics as a source of insight into the ethical base of teacher professionalism. Using the 13 codes of ethics overseeing teachers' work in Canada as a sample, Study 1 applied content analysis to assess whether an overlapping consensus on teachers' professional obligations could be observed. Study 2 deployed interpretive analysis techniques to determine whether a set of dominant core values of teacher professionalism would emerge. The results point to specific limitations in using codes of ethics as a pedagogical resource in ethics education for future teachers. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Codes of ethics Content analysis Qualitative research Professionalism Teacher education knowledge base Values

A perennial and generally uncontroversial view in the scholarly writings on professional ethics in teaching is that the role of ethics education, whether it takes the form of integrated curriculum or a dedicated course, is to ensure that teachers know and understand the collective norms of the teaching profession. This view draws on the idea that teaching, like other professions, has its own unique set of ethical concepts and professional values which define and frame ethically responsible conductdfairness, due process, respect for privacy and dignity, intellectual honesty, integrity, personal

* Corresponding author. Department of Educational Sciences, University of res, R-2036, 3351 Des Forges, Trois-Rivie res, Quebec G9A 5H7, Quebec at Trois-Rivie Canada. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B. Maxwell), [email protected] (M. Schwimmer). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.07.015 0742-051X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

achievement, caring, etc.dand that these notions are often expressed through a range of widely accepted norms of professional conduct. Initial teacher education should, then, include the explicit teaching of ethics content because knowledge of the profession's ethical norms is a basic requirement of teacher professionalism and, therefore, quality teaching (for statements of this view see Boon, 2011; Campbell, 2008a; Strike, 1989; Terhart, 1998). This simple but compelling picture of the objectives and rationale of professional ethics education in teaching, however, glosses over the fact that there is apparently little agreement on the ethical base of teacher professionalism (Martin, 2013). One of the key conclusions of Campbell’s (2008b) major review of the literature on the ethics of teaching since 1991, for example, was that, despite extensive research on the ethical dimensions of teaching, scholars in the field do not appear to be any closer to agreement on “the

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moral essence of teacher professionalism” (p. 358). Expressing similar reservations, Wilkinson (2007) argues that the teaching profession has failed “to unite around any agreed set of transcendental values which it might serve” (p. 382) and calls on teacher educators to work towards a clearer articulation of the ethical values that sustain teachers' professional identity. The ideal of an ethical base of professionalism that Wilkinson has in mind here is explicitly inspired by the example of medical ethics and its “four basic principles.” Since their initial elaboration in the Belmont Report (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979), and subsequent refinement in Beauchamp and Childress's classic course book Principles of biomedical ethics (2001), the principles of medical ethics (i.e., respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-malfeasance and justice) have, on an international scale, been instrumental in structuring the content of teaching and learning about ethics for future medical practitioners (Pellegrino, 1993). Survey work and qualitative research on ethics curriculum in initial teacher education provide confirming evidence for Campbell's (2008b) and Wilkinson’s (2007) observations about the limitations of the conceptual infrastructure surrounding ethics education for teachers. An international survey has found that the variability in the content of mandatory ethics-related courses for future teachers is enormous and that this holds as much within as between the five OECD countries examined (Maxwell et al., 2016). Indeed, the variety of themes and topics treated in courses focussing on ethics, morality and values in teaching was so extensive, the survey's authors advanced, that it may be difficult for teacher educators to know where the content parameters around an ethics course for future teachers liedand hence whether their very own teacher education programs provide opportunities to learn about ethical issues in teaching through a dedicated course (Maxwell et al, 2016). In the same vein, parallel but independent qualitative studies on students' perceptions of ethics content in preservice teacher education found that students felt a need for clear and explicit guidelines on the professional conduct expected of them as teachers but that this need that was not being met by their programs and that when ethics was being taught as integrated curriculum, its delivery was patchy and unequal across programs (Boon, 2011; Campbell, 2008a). This lack of common ground on the ethical base of teacher professionalism is a problem for teacher education and the teaching profession more broadly. At best, it is an obstacle to identifying the knowledge, skills and personal dispositions that should be prioritized in teaching and learning about of professional ethics for future teachers. At worst, it is an embarrassment. How can teacher educators engage effectively in the essential task of socializing future teachers into the ethical norms of the teaching profession (cf. Biesta, 2015) if they only have an intuitive or highly personal sense of what the norms of teacher professionalism are? In the face of this problem, the aim of the present study was to explore codes of professional ethics as an alternative source of insights into what teachers, teacher educators and other stakeholders in the teaching profession consider as the core values and ethical obligations of teaching. In light of the limitations of the scholarly literature in this regard, the hypothesis we wished to investigate was whether codes of teacher ethic were a promising place to look for the seemingly elusive ethical base of teacher professionalism. The reason why we singled out codes of ethics for analysis is because a code of ethics can be seen, to use Van Nuland's (2009) compelling formulation, as the “collective conscience of a profession” (p. 32). That is, a code of ethics is the fruit of a collaborative process aimed at articulating the ethical base of professional practice, as conceived by the trustee institution mandated to produce the code. Taking the 13 codes of ethics overseeing teachers'

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work at the provincial and territorial levels in Canada as a sample, the purpose of this research was twofold. First, we applied techniques of content analysis to the codes to assess whether an overlapping consensus on teachers' professional obligations could be observed. Second, we conducted an interpretive analysis of the codes to see whether a set of dominant “core values of teacher professionalism” would emerge.

1. Connections to previous research Codes of teacher ethics have occasionally been the subject of interpretive and content analysis in previous research. One strand of the past research is decidedly critical. Terhart’s (1998) analysis of a selection of codes of teacher ethics from the U.S.A., Germany and Switzerland focusses on the implicit messages contained in codes of ethics about conceptions of teaching, the meaning of teacher professionalism, and the social status and purpose of teachers' work. In light of his analysis, Terhart (1998) expresses reservations about the formalism of codes of ethics, arguing that this renders them unavoidably superficial, static and thus easy for teachers to ignore. Adopting a similarly critical approach, Shortt, Hallett, Spendlove, Hardy, and Barton (2012) conducted a structural analysis that aimed to reveal the “professional mythology” embedded in the code of conduct governing teachers' work in England. Their investigation revealed that the code requires teachers to assume two mutually incompatible social roles. In their work with young people, teachers were expected to be avid promoters of individual autonomy and critical reflection. Yet as public service professionals, they were expected to be passive subjects who unquestioningly obey the rules imposed by the state. Other studies view codes of ethics for teachers in a more positive light. Taking an international perspective, van Nuland's work (Van Nuland, 2009; Van Nuland & Khandelwal, 2006), for example, positions the code of ethics as a tool for countering corruption in educational systems and advancing teacher professionalism, especially in developing countries. Van Nuland’s (2009) content analyses of some 20 codes of teacher ethics, and a series of comparative case studies on the process of designing, implementing and enforcing formalized ethical standards in several countries around the world, offer detailed recommendations on how to promote the ownership of a code of ethics by a community of educators. For her part, Forster (2012) has undertaken an analysis of eight Australian codes of ethics for teachers. Backgrounded by the trend towards the federalization of the education system in that country, Forster's study found that the codes generally adopted an “inspirational” tone (as opposed to a disciplinary or punitive one) and were broadly structured around two core values: respect and integrity. Like Forster's (2012) study, this research employs qualitative, interpretive and some basic quantitative analysis to draw supported inferences about the professional values and ethical norms of the teaching profession as they are conveyed in a set of codes of ethics specific to one country. The main difference between the present research and Forster's relates to the conceptualization of the research problem and our approach to the analysis. First, and unlike Forster (2012), our aim is to assess the level of convergence (and divergence) that can be found in our data set on the specific ethical obligations that are taken to define teacher professionalism in the set of codes analyzed. Also, whereas Forster's (2012) search for the professional values of teaching focused on explicit values statements occurring in her sample, this project takes a more open view and assumes that statements of professional principles, obligations, and rules provide evidence of particular values commitments as well.

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2. Data sources To assemble the data, an online search was conducted with the aim of identifying the codes of ethics for teachers (or cognate documents) created and implemented by the principal trustee institution representing public sector teachers in each of Canada's 13 administrative jurisdictions. A code of ethics at the provincial or territorial level was found to be in place in all of Canada's provinces and territories except Quebec. In the absence of a code of ethics produced by a non-governmental trustee institution in Quebec, we opted to take Articles 19 to 22 of Quebec’ Education Actdwhich, like a code of ethics, outline the basic rights and duties of teachers in the course of their workdas the functional equivalent of a code of ethics for Quebec.1 Data storage, the recording and management of descriptive data statistics, coding, and data analysis were assisted by the online qualitative analysis platform Dedoose.

2.1. Descriptive information on the data sources The codes emanated from different kinds of trustee institutions, the most common ones being the provincial or territorial teachers' association (6/13 or 46%) and teachers' federations or societies (4/ 13 or 31%). The remaining codes of ethics are overseen by the teachers union, the professional order of teachers, and the ministry of education. Three organizational styles were distinguishable in the codes of ethics: by stakeholder, a simple list, and by values. The most common approach to organizing the content of ethics codes was to categorize the ethical responsibilities of practitioners in relation to stakeholder. By “stakeholder,” we mean the particular group to whom a specific ethical obligation of professionalism is owed or, in other words, the primary beneficiaries of an ethical obligationdi.e., pupils or students, parents, colleagues, school authorities, the profession itself. The majority of the codes (8/13 or 62%) contained explicitly labelled sections which presented the specific duties or expected behavior in relation to stakeholders while a smaller number of codes (4/13 or 31%) presented the ethical obligations comprising the code in the form of a simple list. One code, Ontario's, stood out for organizing content in relation to professional values (i.e., care, respect, trust, and integrity). Ontario's code of ethics was also unique in couching standards of ethical professionalism in terms of very broadly stated behavioral expectations entailed by each of the values identified in the code as being central to teacher professionalism. In connection with the value of integrity, for example, the code states that “honesty, reliability and moral action are embodied in the ethical standard of Integrity” (Ontario College of Teachers, 2001). Although such general phrasing was not absent from the other codes, the overwhelming majority of the codes in the data set favored directly worded statements about how teachers are expected to behave, such as: “The teacher does not engage in activities which adversely affect the quality of the teacher's professional service” (Section 19, Alberta Teachers' Association, 2004). Codes that grouped obligation statements according to stakeholder were without exception much more detailed (and hence considerably longer) than those comprising a simple list. On average, the list-based ethics codes were 340 words

1 Codes of ethics may exist at the school board level in Quebec, but the absence of a provincial code of ethics seems to be primarily attributable to the way in which teachers unions are grouped together in that province. In Quebec, there are several teachers unions which are in turn represented by at least four distinct teachers' federations. As far as we were able to discern none of these federations has a code of ethics that is binding on its members in their capacity as teachers.

in length versus 883 words for the codes organized by stakeholder. Regarding their primary purpose, the distinction between educational, regulatory and aspirational functions of a codeda distinction generally recognized in cross-disciplinary work on codes of professional ethics (Banks, 2003; Farrell & Cobbin, 2002)d was apparent in the set of codes of teacher ethics we analyzed. Briefly, and drawing primarily on Banks' (2003) account, educational codes are intended to provide practical guidance to members of a professional community by promulgating a set of shared ethical standards. Regulatory codes resemble educational codes except that they additionally make it explicit that members can face disciplinary action if the standards are breached. For their part, aspirational codes primarily aim to inspire professionals to work towards achieving an ideal of professional practice which, in codes of this type, is normally expressed through broad references to the principles and values of the profession and the role of the profession in society. By applying the criterion of whether the code makes an explicit reference to its disciplinary role, five of the 13 codes (38%) fell into the category of “regulatory” codes and six fell into the category of “educational” codes (46%). Here again, Ontario's code was unique as it was the only code to meet the description of an “aspirational” code owing to its values-based organizing principle and the high level of abstraction of the language employed. Variations were observed in the documents' titles. The titles of more than half the codes (8/13 or 62%) included the term “code of ethics” (or “professional ethics”). Others were referred to as codes of professional “conduct” (2/13 or 15%), “practice” (1/13 or 8%), or “standards” (1/13 or 8%). All the codes were published or updated in the last 15 years, with the earliest being Ontario's (2001) and Nunavut's having been most recently updated. 3. Study 1: the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism 3.1. Methods As indicated above, the study aimed to explore the hypothesis that a content analysis of codes of teacher ethics would reveal an overlapping consensus on the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism. We selected qualitative content analysis as the methodology for this study because of its strengths as a tool for gathering evidence in support of claims about the content of those textual sources that cannot be observed directly (Krippendorf, 1989). The systematicity characteristic of content analysis minimizes bias and hence ensures the validity and replicability of the inferences drawn from the data (Krippendorf, 1989; Stemler, 2001).2 We designed the coding scheme for Study 1 to provide a framework for classifying, comparing and counting the prescriptive statements about professional conduct found in the 13 codes of ethics analyzed. Based on an analysis of codes of ethics in a range of professional fields, Banks (2003) has identified five categories of

2 Specifically, the method of content analysis is designed to reduce the effect of two tendencies of natural reading that are conductive to bias: selectivity and perspective shifting. Ordinary readers tend to remember content that supports their prior expectations about the text and ignore content that goes against it (selectivity). Also, readers' interpretive framesdthat is to say, their attitudes, hypotheses, beliefs, interests etc. about the topicdoften change as they read through a volume of material on a particular subject (perspective shifting). To counter selectivity, content analysis accords equal attention to all units of analysis. Perspective shifting is minimized by establishing specific boundaries around the analysis prior to the analysis (Krippendorf, 1989). This is done primarily through a fixed research question which fixes, defines, and leads to the identification of the particular aspects of the text (i.e., the units of analysis) that are of interest to the researchers conducing the analysis.

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content typically found in codes of ethics: ethical principles, ethical rules, principles of professional practice, rules of professional practice, and statements about the character or personal attributes of the professional. Although instances of all these categories were found in the set of codes we analyzed, our aim was to track the recurrence of the “ethical rules” outlined in the documents. In Banks' (2003) sense, ethical rules state general professional “dos and don'ts” such as “exercise discretion in the exchange of personal information”. They differ from rules of professional practice, according to Banks (2003), in regard to their level of specificity. Rules of professional practice prescribe particular, often contextualized conduct such as the following standard statement from the Alberta Teachers' Association's Code of Professional Conduct: The teacher, when making a report on the professional performance of another teacher, does so in good faith and, prior to submitting the report, provides the teacher with a copy of the report, subject only to section 24 of the Teaching Profession Act. For the sake of simplifying the coding scheme and increasing the comparability of the documents, rules of professional practice, which were common in the codes of ethics we analyzed, were reduced to or classified in terms of a corresponding ethical rule. So, to illustrate, we would have coded the rule of professional practice cited above as the more general ethical obligation articulated as “manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels.” We opted to take ethical rules as the basic unit of analysis because the level of generality of ethical rules facilitated the study's comparative aims. Due to the specific and contextualized content of rules of professional practice, focusing on rules of professional practice, instead of ethical rules, would have generated an unwieldy list of many tens or even hundreds of discrete obligations with little or no overlapping content between the codes in the data set. The more abstract nature of ethical rules, as Banks (2003) defines them, made them useful as a concept for capturing the shared sense of the many rules of professional practice found in the codes thus allowing us to make meaningful comparisons between the content of the codes we analyzed. The categories of ethics rulesdor “ethical obligations of teacher professionalism” as we labelled themdwere established through emergent coding (Stemler, 2001). In this case, what that meant was that, on the basis of a preliminary examination of the data, both members of the research team independently drafted provisional complete lists of the ethical obligations that seemed to recur in the codes. Then, adopting the results of this exercise as an initial coding scheme, one of the researchers, through repeated attempts to apply the scheme to the data, refined, consolidated and worked it into a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. In the final step, the researcher who led the analysis handed the results to the second researcher for validation and confirmation. We resolved disagreements over the interpretation and application of the coding scheme through discussion and on the basis of consensus. The organization of the specific ethical obligations under broader categories of obligations added a further layer of meaning to the coding scheme. As mentioned earlier, the majority of the codes of ethics we analyzed were organized in terms of the stakeholders to whom particular ethical obligations were directed. Although the exact labelling and classification of ethical rules according to stakeholder was not consistent across the documents we studied, following this basic approach, we found that it was possible to interpret all the codeable ethical rules as falling under one of four mutually exclusive headings: pupils/students, the profession, colleagues, and the employer. Finally, because the aim of this study was to establish the degree

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to which a consensus exists on the ethical obligations comprising teacher professionalism in the codes of ethics analyzed, we established a simple quantitative scale of recurrence. Any ethical obligation found in 75% or more of the codes of ethics (i.e., 10e13/13) was classed as primary obligations. Ethical obligations appearing in 45%e70% of the codes of ethics (i.e., 6e9/13) were classed as secondary obligations. A third category of tertiary obligations was defined as those present in 25%e40% of codes (i.e., 3e5/13). Ethical rules with only one or two instances were classed as non-recurrent for the purposes of this analysis. 3.2. Results The results of the analysis disconfirmed our hypothesis that a robust overlapping consensus on the ethical obligations comprising teacher professionalism could be found across the 13 codes of ethics studied. Instead, what we found was that, on the whole, the codes present a fragmentary portrait of the deontology of teaching. In proportion to the mean number of articles contained in the codes analyzeddthat is, 21 (see Table 1)da very small number of ethical obligations met our criterion of primary obligations in the sense of recurring in 75% or more of the codes. As detailed in Table 2, 10 of the 23 obligations that met the basic criterion for inclusion on the recurrence scale fell into the category of tertiary obligations, nine were classed as secondary, but only four as primary. They were:





Treat pupils fairly, respectfully and avoid discrimination Exercise discretion in the exchange of personal information Observe respect for authority and workplace hierarchy Manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels

At the opposite end of the recurrence spectrum, some ethical rules only appear once or twice in the documents and in several cases, the lack of recurrence or a low rating on the recurrence scale was quite unexpected. For example, the duty to promote skills knowledge and dispositions associated with democratic citizenship, long identified in the scholarly literature as central to education in liberal democracies (see Dewey, 1916/1997; Grutmann, 1993), appeared in only 30% (4/13) of codes. Also, the requirements to assume responsibility for pupils' safety and to follow legal protocol in reporting abuse and neglect both came out in the results as secondary or tertiary obligations. In our view, the most likely explanation for some of these more obvious lacunae is that is that the codes' authors opted to exclude certain obligations out of a concern for redundancy. Respecting state curriculum, reporting child abuse, and ensuring student safety, for example, are frequently covered by collective agreements, work contracts, child protection legislation, or other sources of educational law (LaMorte, 2011; MacKay, Sutherland, & Pochini, 2013). In light of the surprising results on the weakly recurrent obligations towards pupils and students just discussed, the emphasis found in the set of codes on the need for teachers to respect institutional rules and the system of authority imposed by the employer is all the more noteworthy. Two of the four or fully half of the ethical rules that emerged as primary obligations in the analysisdnamely, “observe respect for authority and workplace hierarchy” and “manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels”dcan be seen as relating to this concern. In addition, one of the obligations that fell just below the threshold for primary obligations, namely “respect individual and collective agreements”, coincides with the issue of teacher integrity or reliability and teachers knowing their place in the education system. Furthermore, and as can be seen in Table 2, the sum of all the

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B. Maxwell, M. Schwimmer / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 468e480

Table 1 Descriptive information on data sources. Administrative jurisdiction (province or territory)

Document title

Overseeing trustee institution

Document length (in words)

No. of articles

Organizational style

Functiona

Year of publication (or last update)

1

Alberta

Code of professional conduct

730

22

By stakeholder

R

2004

2

British Columbia

Code of ethics

346

10

Simple list

E

2006

3

Manitoba

Code of professional practice

245

10

Simple list

R

2012

4

New Brunswick

Code of professional conduct (with embedded Code of ethics)

912

34

By stakeholder

R

2011

5

Newfoundland and Labrador

Code of ethics

853

24

By stakeholder

E

2011

6

Northwest Territories

Code of ethics (plain language version)

859

25

By stakeholder

E

2012

7

Nova Scotia

Code of ethics

672

23

By stakeholder

E

2011

8

Nunavut

Code of ethics

1153

39

By stakeholder

E

2013

9

Ontario

669

9c

By values

A

2001

10

Prince Edward Island

Ethical standards for the teaching profession Code of ethicsb

977

35

By stakeholder

R

n.a.

11

Quebec

299

9

Simple list

n.a.

2005

12

Saskatchewan

Articles 19e22 of the Education Act Code of professional ethics

252

7

Simple list

R

2006

13

Yukon

Code of ethics

Alberta Teachers' Association British Columbia Teachers' Federation Manitoba Teachers' Society New Brunswick Teachers' Association Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association Northwest Territories Teachers' Association Nova Scotia Teachers Union Nunavut Teachers' Association Ontario College of Teachers Prince Edward Island Teachers' Federation Quebec Ministry of Education Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation Yukon Teachers' Association

389

16

By stakeholder

E

2010

644

21

Mean a b c

E ¼ educational; R ¼ regulatory; A ¼ aspirational. Available via the UNESCO-sponsored web resource, “Toolkit on teacher codes of conduct” Excluded from the calculation of the mean number of articles since the articles in this code contained multiple obligation statements.

references to these three rules alone represents an overwhelmingly high proportion of the total number of references to ethical rules in the whole data set. Nearly one third (67/211 or 32%) of all individual references to ethical rules coded were categorized as falling under one of these three rules. One of the four stakeholder categories that framed the coding system, duties to the profession, was found to contain no primary obligations. That said, the duty to professional development fell just below the threshold and the general admonition to “refrain from actions that would bring dishonor to the profession” was relatively strongly recurrent, being cited in just over half (7/13 or 54%) the codes. Finally, there was considerable variability in the degree of “completeness” of the codes. The codes that came closest to being complete in the sense of containing the highest percentage of individual ethical obligations that were referenced more than twice in the set of codes were, in descending order, those produced by the teachers' organizations in the Northwest Territories (83% or 19/23), Prince Edward Island (70% or 16/23), and Newfoundland and Labrador (65% or 15/23). The length of these codes, both in terms of word count and number of articles, is one factor that can explain this outcome but not the only factor. Two longer codes, those from Nunavut and New Brunswick, contained a smaller percentage of recurrent obligations. Whereas all the codes we analyzed contained some obligations to pupils or students, three of the codes could be characterized as being particularly “gappy” in virtue of containing

no obligations at all in at least one of the four stakeholder-based categories. The code of the British Columbia. Teachers' Federation (2006) mentions no duties to the profession and no obligations that we coded as belonging to the categories of duties to the employer or to colleagues were noted in the codes from Quebec and Ontario. Here again, document length alone cannot account for this finding. 4. Study 2: professional values in teaching 4.1. Methods The second study's aim was to examine whether a set of core values of teacher professionalism would emerge when we applied interpretive analytic techniques to the codes of ethics. From previous analyses of codes of ethics in teaching (Forster, 2012; Shortt et al., 2012; Terhart, 1998; Van Nuland & Khandelwal, 2006) and other fields (Banks, 2003; Farrell & Cobbin, 2002; Singh, 2006), we know that codes of ethics only sometimes feature explicit statements of professional values. In cases where they do not, qualitative analysis can be employed to uncover the basic values that gave rise to the particular professional obligations outlined in a code. Just like the duties of citizens put forward in constitutional documents, and the rights they are derived from, the duties appearing in a code of professional ethics do not exist in an axiological vacuum. The very purpose of those duties, as Barak (2015) observes in his work

Table 2 Study 1 results: The ethical obligations of teacher professionalism. Western

1

Pupils/ students

2

3

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

The profession

Maritime

Territoires

No of references (total ¼ 211)

Codes citing

Recurrence rating

3

17

12

Primary

1

1

11

11

Primary

1

1

1

14

9

Secondary

1

0

1

1

7

7

Secondary

0

1

0

1

0

6

6

Secondary

0

2

1

2

0

0

6

6

Secondary

2

0

1

0

0

1

0

7

6

Secondary

0

1

0

0

1

1

1

0

5

5

Tertiary

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

2

6

5

Tertiary

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

1

1

2

6

4

Tertiary

1

0

1

1

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

4

4

Tertiary

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

2

2

11

9

Secondary

AB

SK

MB

ON

QC

NB

NS

PE

NL

YT

NT

NU

1

2

1

1

1

1

2

1

2

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

1

1

0

5

1

0

2

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

1

0

1

1

1

0

0

1

0

1

1

0

0

1

1

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

473

(continued on next page)

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4

Treat pupils fairly, respectfully and avoid discrimination Exercise discretion in the exchange of personal information Do not abuse one's position of trust and authority Never accept additional remuneration for tutoring one's own pupils Contribute to pupils' comprehensive (intellectual, personal, social) development Perform duties as effectively and competently as possible Assume responsibility for pupils' safety Follow legal protocol in reporting suspected abuse or neglect Strive to communicate effectively with parents about matters of educational importance Handle sensitive and controversial issues with tact and impartiality Promote skills, knowledge and dispositions associated with democratic citizenship Maintain high standards of professional

Central

BC

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Table 2 (continued ) Western

Maritime

Territoires

No of references (total ¼ 211)

Codes citing

Recurrence rating

BC

AB

SK

MB

ON

QC

NB

NS

PE

NL

YT

NT

NU

0

1

1

0

1

0

0

1

1

1

0

1

0

7

7

Secondary

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

1

1

6

6

Secondary

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

1

0

1

0

5

5

Tertiary

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

3

1

0

1

0

7

5

Tertiary

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

3

3

Tertiary

1

1

0

2

0

0

2

2

3

4

1

3

2

21

10

Primary

3

2

0

1

0

0

1

2

3

3

2

2

0

19

9

Secondary

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

1

0

6

3

Tertiary

1

2

2

1

0

0

5

3

3

3

3

4

0

27

10

Primary

1

0

0

0

0

0

2

1

0

2

0

1

0

7

5

Tertiary

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

3

3

Tertiary

39% (9/23)

57% (13/23)

35% (8/23)

48% (11/23)

35% (8/23)

17% (4/23)

48% (11/23)

57% (13/23)

70% (16/23)

65% (15/23)

57% (13/23)

83% (19/23)

39% (9/23)

B. Maxwell, M. Schwimmer / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 468e480

competence (duty to professional development) 13 Refrain from actions that would bring dishonor to the profession 14 Refrain from activities which adversely affect one's ability to perform professional duties 15 Participate actively in the professional association, society or federation 16 Work towards improving the education system 17 Portray the teaching profession as a challenging and attractive career choice 18 Emp. Observe respect for authority and workplace hierarchy 19 Respect individual and collective agreements 20 Protest conditions that are seriously detrimental to pupils, the school system, etc. 21 Coll. Manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels 22 Do not seek or accept a position that is occupied or under dispute 23 Assist the professional development of colleagues by sharing ideas and information % of recurring ethical obligations contained in the code

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475

Table 3 Study 2 results: Professional values in teaching. Value type

Core values

Values definitions

Obligations

Dominant (D) or secondary (S) value

No of references/ obligation (total ¼ 211)

No of references/ value (total ¼ 211)

No of references/ value type (total ¼ 211)

Relational values

Care

General welfare

Treat pupils fairly, respectfully and avoid discrimination Exercise discretion in the exchange of personal information Contribute to pupils' comprehensive (intellectual, personal, social) development Assume responsibility for pupils' safety Follow legal protocol in reporting suspected abuse or neglect Manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels Respect individual and collective agreements Do not seek or accept a position that is occupied or under dispute Refrain from actions that would bring dishonor to the profession Work towards improving the education system Participate actively in the professional association, society or federation Portray the teaching profession as a challenging and attractive career choice Assist the professional development of colleagues by sharing ideas and information Refrain from activities which adversely affect one's ability to perform professional duties Contribute to pupils' comprehensive (intellectual, personal, social) development Perform duties as effectively and competently as possible Strive to communicate effectively with parents about matters of educational importance Promote skills, knowledge and dispositions associated with democratic citizenship Work towards improving the education system Portray the teaching profession as a challenging and attractive career choice Maintain high standards of professional competence Assist the professional development of colleagues by sharing ideas and information Promote skills, knowledge and dispositions associated with democratic citizenship Treat pupils fairly, respectfully and avoid discrimination Exercise discretion in the exchange of personal information

S

17

46 (22%)

124 (59%)

S

11

S

6

D

7

D

5

D

27

S

19

D

7

S

7

S

7

D

5

S

3

D

3

D

7

D

6

D

6

D

6

S

4

D

7

D

3

D

11

S

3

D

4

D

17

D

11

S

7

Safety

Solidarity

Healthy work environment

Commitment to the profession

Mutual assistance Quality values

Pedagogical Excellence

Quality of learning experiences

Quality of the system

Professional development

Political values

Liberal democracy

Citizenship education Fairness and neutrality

78 (37%)

53 (25%)

53 (25%)

47 (22%)

47 (22%)

(continued on next page)

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Table 3 (continued ) Value type

Core values

Values definitions

Equality Trustworthiness values

Integrity

Moral uprightness

Honor the profession

Reliability

Respect duties, rules, agreements and protocols.

Respect hierarchy

Obligations

Never accept additional remuneration for tutoring one's own pupils Handle sensitive and controversial issues with tact and impartiality Broaden educational opportunities Do not abuse one's position of trust and authority Never accept additional remuneration for tutoring one's own pupils Handle sensitive and controversial issues with tact and impartiality Protest conditions that are seriously detrimental to pupils, the school system, etc. Maintain high standards of professional competence (duty to professional development) Refrain from actions that would bring dishonor to the profession Refrain from activities which adversely affect one's ability to perform professional duties Manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels Respect individual and collective agreements Do not seek or accept a position that is occupied or under dispute Perform duties as effectively and competently as possible Follow legal protocol in reporting suspected abuse or neglect Participate actively in the professional association, society or federation Observe respect for authority and workplace hierarchy

on the value of dignity in constitutional law, is the realization of more fundamental collective values. The coding scheme for this study was established using the list of obligations stated in the codes of ethics as indicators of professional values. In order to identify the values that were represented in each obligation, we developed a coding scheme that combined a priori and emergent coding.3 We entertained alternative frameworks for elaborating the coding scheme by examining accounts of values in teaching developed by Hansen (2001), Van Nuland (2009), Carr (2011) and Hare (1993), but these accounts were either insufficiently concise or too speculative for our purposes. The somewhat idealistic character of the values commonly put forward

3 In qualitative research, it was once thought that a priori coding schemes were to be avoided, since they impose a predefined theoretical framework on empirical data (Miles & Huberman, 1994). To be maximally faithful to the data, a coding scheme should emerge inductively from it. This logic of separation between induction and deduction has been challenged of late and it is now generally acknowledged that a strong conceptual framework can and should inform the analysis strategy and need not be unduly constraining.

Dominant (D) or secondary (S) value

No of references/ obligation (total ¼ 211)

D

6

D

2

D

14

D

7

S

6

D

6

S

11

D

7

S

6

S

27

D

19

S

7

S

6

S

5

S

5

D

21

No of references/ value (total ¼ 211)

No of references/ value type (total ¼ 211)

57 (27%)

147 (70%)

90 (43%)

in these frameworks (i.e. empathy, open-mindedness, humility, persistence, benevolence, etc.) did not correspond well with the content of the ethical codes we analyzed. After going back and forth between the literature and the data until both members of the research team agreed to settle on a framework, we decided to use the Statement of Public Service Values (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2015) as a starting point. The reason why this framework was a good fit with this study's aims was because the list of values it comprises was originally developed for a purpose similar to that of a code of ethics: to provide guidance to public sector employees on how to deliver public services in a way that respects high ethical standards. As we will discuss in detail in the Results section below, this values scheme was used to identify six core values of teacher professionalism in the codes of ethics analyzed. This final scheme was elaborated by one of the researcher, through a process of application and adaptation of the Statement of Public Service Values framework to the data, and was then validated by the second researcher. Finally, because an objective of this study was to assess to what extent each of these values could be considered a “core” value, a

B. Maxwell, M. Schwimmer / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 468e480

simple quantitative analysis was performed in order to assess whether they appeared as central or peripheral in the codes of ethics. Each time a value could be applied to an obligation according to the definitions we established in the interpretive analysis (see the Results section for details), we counted it as as one instance of the value. This approach allowed us to determine how well each value was represented in the codes of ethics taken as a set. In cases where more than one value could be applied to an obligation, a distinction was made between dominant values (D) and secondary value (S) in order to facilitate the interpretation of the results. For example, the obligation to “manage criticisms and complaints respectfully and through proper channels” was considered to represent primarily a concern for teachers' respect for colleagues but also, perhaps more indirectly, a concern for their respect of the rules and protocols. In this context, solidarity was thus considered the dominant value and reliability, a secondary value. To ensure the validity of this interpretative exercise, both members of the research team independently applied the agreed upon coding scheme to the set of ethical obligations identified in Study 1. When disagreements in coding were found, which was relatively rare, we resolved them by discussing the different possible interpretations of the obligation and choosing, on the basis of consensus, the most plausible one. 4.2. Results The interpretive analysis of the 13 codes of ethics in our data set revealed six core professional values of teaching. The identification of these values was the result of a deliberative analytic process that progressively adapted the five general values listed in the Canadian Statement of Public Service Valuesdnamely, respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship, and excellencedso that they came to represent accurately the specifically educational categories of obligations we found in the codes of ethics. As detailed in Table 3 below, the educational values that we found to be most representative of the values embedded in the obligations stated in the codes were arrived at by aggregating the 23 subcategories of ethical obligations of teacher professionalism identified in the first study (see Table 2 for the complete list). What we found, in general terms, was that the values of care and liberal democratic education were the most weakly represented values in the codes whereas the values related to reliability were the most dominant. The values of care for students and solidarity emerged as two distinct categories linked to the value of “respect for people” put forward in the Statement of Public Service Values. It was important to distinguish the values directed towards students from those directed towards other school actors since the pedagogical relationship teachers have with pupils adds a layer of ethical responsibility. Kohl has defined care as a legal obligation to look after the students' safety and protection (1984). But this notion has been widely extended since, especially under the influence of Noddings' (1984) work on the ethics of care, which underlines the importance of caring for the social and emotional well-being of students in addition to safety and protection. The value of care was implicitly referred to in only 22% of the obligations and, interestingly, in many of the obligations that made reference to it, care emerged as a secondary value according to our analysis. For example, we considered “treating pupils fairly and respectfully” as a “democratic” value in the first instance, then in a secondary way as value that can be associated with care. Indeed, if we had not included secondary values in our analysis, we would have found only very few occurrences of care. These related mainly to safety and protocols. By contrast, we interpreted solidarity, the other value category

477

derived from the broader notion of “respect for people”, as referring to a concern for colleagues' well-being as well as the professional group's well-being in general. More specifically, we included under the heading of solidarity the promotion of a respectful, functional and cooperative work environment, the importance of mutual assistance between professionals and, on a more abstract level, a commitment to enhancing the status of the teaching profession. Solidarity was strongly represented in the codes of conducts analyzed since it applied to 37% of all obligations, according to our coding results. The fairly strong recurrence of solidarity may be attributable to the fact that teachers are in contact and must work cooperatively not only with other teachers but with multiple stakeholders in the education system: support staff, employers, school directors, parents, and the professional community more broadly. The value of pedagogical excellence translates the value of “excellence” from the Statement of Public Service Values and refers to the obligations that promote “teaching effectiveness” (Canadian Education Association, 2009). Teacher effectiveness is generally framed around the ability to design learning experiences that achieve educational goals efficiently and meaningfully, to foster positive learning environments, and to engage in ongoing professional development. These notions capture very well the obligations of teaching competence, commitment and effectiveness found in the codes of ethics. The value of pedagogical excellence also emerged as important: 25% of the obligations analyzed made reference to it. Except in three occurrences, pedagogical excellence appeared as the dominant value in ethical obligations associated with it in our analysis. This result indicates that, generally speaking, pedagogical excellence was one of the values that was the most clearly expressed and advanced in the set of codes of ethics. The value of liberal democratic education translates the value of “respect for democracy” required by public servants. Standard accounts of democratic education tend to emphasize the importance of democracy both as an educational aimdi.e., creating democratic citizensdand as an educational meansdi.e., negotiating power in the education of children (Callan, 2004; Dewey, 1916/1997; Gutmann, 1993, 1999). As mentioned earlier, only four occurrences of obligations pertaining to democratic education as an aim (through civic education) were found in all the codes of ethics we analyzed. However, obligations that made reference to democracy as a means (through values of fairness, respect and impartiality) occurred often enough for liberal democratic education to be considered a core value of the profession. It was instantiated in 22% of the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism. Finally, the values of integrity and reliability, whose counterparts were “integrity” and “stewardship” in the Statement of Public Service Values, refer to ethical obligations linked to upholding public trust. Two subcategories were distinguished in order to emphasize a key difference between ethical obligations that call for teachers to behave in ways that are worthy of public confidence and cast teachers and the teaching profession in a positive light and those obligations that insist more straightforwardly on the importance of respecting official duties such as work rules, laws, protocols, educational programs, and bureaucratic authority in general. Respectively, these were the value categories of integrity and reliability. The value of integrity could be applied to 27% of all obligations whereas reliability could be applied to as many as 43%. Considered together as two ends of one normative continuum representing the meta-value of upholding public trust, integrity and reliability could then be found in 70% of the ethical obligations making up the codes of ethics analyzed. This unexpected emphasis on duties which valorize obedience to workplace superiors and subordination to the will of a group as a professional qualitydor what could be labelled “corporatist” obligationsdseems to suggest

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that the codes of ethics have been assigned a complementary the role of ensuring that teachers meet their obligations as employees, civil servants and as members of a workers' association in addition to the more traditional role of assuring the public that professionals are trustworthy and committed to providing the highest quality of service. 5. Discussion The aim of the research presented in this paper was to explore codes of ethics as a potential source of common curricular ground for teaching and learning about professional ethics in preservice teacher education and, more broadly, in the professional socialization of future teachers. Viewing the task from a deontological perspective, Study 1 applied content analysis to the 13 Canadian codes of teacher ethics comprising the data set in order to determine the extent to which an overlapping consensus on the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism could be perceived. The findings from Study 1 disconfirmed our working hypothesis that a robust overlapping consensus would be found. Only about 15% of the 23 discrete ethical obligations observed in the codes of ethics recurred in 75% of the codes or more. Adopting an axiological standpoint on the research problem, Study 2 employed interpretive analysis in an attempt to unveil the core values embedded in the codes of ethics we studied. This exercise allowed us to pinpoint six core values of teacher professionalism expressed in the codesdcare, solidarity, pedagogical excellence, liberal democracy, integrity, and reliabilitydbut revealed two key anomalies. The first was that care, which has been consistently singled out in theoretical literature as one of the personal qualities that good teachers possess (Arthur, Kristjansson, Cooke, Brown & Carr, 2015; Hansen, 2001; Hare, 1993; Katz, Noddings, & Strike, 1999), was the least prominent value in the codes. Second, the codes placed a surprisingly strong emphasis on the value of reliability. As suggested above, this feature of the codes seems to run together somewhat problematically teachers' obligations to act in the public interest with obligations to act in the interest of workers' associations. This concluding section briefly discusses what we take these findings to mean in terms of the prospect for using codes of ethics as a device for teaching and learning about professional ethics in teaching. We will argue that, while our results dovetail with the claims made in the scholarly writings about the pedagogical interest of codes of ethics in ethics education for teachers, they also call for nuance and qualification owing to certain limitations of codes of ethics as a pedagogical resource uncovered by this research. 5.1. Codes provide an incomplete depiction of teacher deontology Codes of ethics are meant to articulate a set of clear and comprehensive standards of behavior and principles of action which, taken together, define ethical practice (Abbott, 1988; Campbell, 2000; Van Nuland, 2009). Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that a number of authors consider the code of ethics to be an essential point of reference in ethics education for future teachers (see for example Campbell, 2013; Rich, 1984; Soltis, 1986; Ungaretti, Dorsey, Freeman, & Bologna, 1997). Generalizing from our sample of the 13 Canadian codes, we believe that our findings call for caution in this regard. Although further research would be required to determine whether these generalizations hold outside the Canadian context, when considered as a whole set, the codes of ethics do seem to be more or less comprehensive. However, when taken in isolation, almost all the codes of ethics we studied provided at best a fragmentary portrait of the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism. For us, this suggests that it would be ill advised indeed to rely too heavily on the local code of ethics as a source of content in

the teaching, learning and evaluation of professional ethics for future teachers. This holds particularly true in jurisdictions where the code of ethics overseeing teachers' work is relatively minimalist. Of course, this is not to say that the local code of ethics can or should be jettisoned as a key pedagogical resource. Anywhere that teachers are held accountable to standards of professional conduct articulated in a code of ethics and can face disciplinary action for behavior that is judged to be in violation of the code, it is only fair to novice teachers that they are informed about those ethical standards and that steps be taken to ensure that they understand them. One place where this can and should occur, as it does in many professions, is in initial professional preparationdideally, well before the student has direct contact with the public as a practitioner (Abbott, 1988). What the results of Study 2 do suggest is that, because of the incomplete nature of individual codes of ethics observed, instruction based too faithfully on the local code of ethics risks presenting future teachers with a highly partial depiction of teacher deontology. 5.2. Negative and confusing messages in corporatist obligations The strong presence of what we labelled “corporatist” obligations in the codes seems to send negative messages about teachers' capacity to assume professional responsibilities and they create confusion around the meaning of “ethical conduct” in a professional context. This tendency to present admonitions to respect specific institutional rules and contractual commitments as ethical obligations of teacher professionalism lend some credence to a common critique according to which codes of professional ethics operate to encourage passive conformity to the rules and discourage dissent (see for example Ladd, 1998; Shortt et al., 2012). As we saw, some of the most strongly recurrent ethical obligations in the codes we analyzed state, in one way or another, that teachers are required to respect and obey decisions made by workplace superiors or imposed by the government or other institutions involved in the regulation of teachers' work. One of the codes, for example, reminds teachers that they must “fulfill contractual obligations to the employer until released by mutual consent or according to law.” Others call on teachers to respect decisions made by the union in regard to the management of labor disputes and forbid teachers from publicly representing the teachers without first obtaining express consent from the professional association. This feature of codes of ethics is does not seem to be specific to the Canadian educational context. Shortt et al., 2012 analysis of the English codes of ethics for teachers noted the presence of corporatist obligations in that code and they were prominent in two of the eight Australian codes examined by Forster's (2012). Bearing in mind that codes of ethics ostensibly exist to guide professional conduct in the interest of advancing public trust in the profession (see Abbott, 1988; Banks, 2003; Sockett, 1990), we question whether obligations such as these, which seem instead intended to provide assurances to employers, colleagues, unions or associations, have a legitimate place in a code of ethics. Additionally, and even more worrisome from an educational standpoint, indiscriminately running teachers' contractual and associative obligations into the category of ethical obligations of teacher professionalism implies that the failure to respect contractual and associative obligations is necessarily and in all cases a form of professional misconduct. One hardly needs to be reminded that occasions may arise when professionals' ethical obligations require them not to respect such contractual agreementsdas for instance when working conditions seriously impede their ability to provide quality professional services.

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Indeed, apparently in recognition of this, approximately one quarter of the codes of ethics we analyzed included what could be called a “duty to reasonable dissent”. In contrast to corporatist obligations, which require more or less blind deference to institutional authorities, the duty to reasonable dissent states explicitly that teachers have the responsibility to protest conditions considered, in their best critical judgement, seriously detrimental to pupils' educational interests. Furthermore, in virtue of a code of ethics' regulatory function, the inclusion of corporatist obligations in a code of ethics opens the door to situations where teachers could find themselves accused of professional misconduct for disobeying the directives of the union or teachers' association in a labour dispute. Our intent in saying this is neither to minimize the importance of contractual or associative duties nor to beg the question of whether the obligations of ethical professionalism should always take precedence. The point, rather, is that because codes of ethics aim to protect and advance public interest, whereas corporatist obligations are ostensibly there to promote the private or collective interests of teachers as workers and employees, they seem out of place in a code of ethics. Incidentally, the use of a code of professional ethics as a tool for enforcing teachers' corporatist obligations has been challenged in the Canadian judicial system. As MacKay et al. (2013) report, in 1992, a Saskatchewan court ruled against disciplinary actions undertaken by a local teachers' association under the code of ethics and against teachers who refused to participate in strike actions. According to the judges in this case, teaching during a strike could not legitimately be considered professional misconduct since there was an essential distinction to be made between a teacher as education professional and a teacher as union member (MacKay et al., 2013). We are not aware of similar jurisprudence in other countries, but the fact that this ruling was not challenged in hearings in higher courts suggests that the legal basis of corporatist obligations in codes of ethics, at any rate, is weak. 5.3. Beyond a deontological conception of ethical professionalism Considering that caring is virtually universally recognized in the conceptual literature on professional ethics in teaching as a central professional quality of teachers, ethical obligations associated with this professional value in the codes of ethics we examined were, as noted above, conspicuously absent. One could speculate on the reasons for this but, for the purposes of this discussion, suffice it to say that this feature draws attention to another way in which codes of teacher ethics represent a limited conception of ethical professionalism in teaching. Some authors refer to regulatory codesdwhich, as the reader will recall, made up the overwhelming majority of the codes in our data setdas codes of professional deontology in order to differentiate them clearly from “aspirational” codes (for example, Banks, 2003; Carr, 2006). Deontological codes characteristically present explicit rules about what the professional must and must not do whereas aspirational codes are meant to positively inspire professionals to try to achieve an ideal of professional conduct that goes beyond merely following the minimal collective norms of ethical professionalism. By elevating, in this way, a deontological perspective on professional ethics, regulatory codes can draw attention away from other, possibly richer ways of conceptualizing how professionals can and should negotiate the ethical demands and complexity of professional life. Three examples of such alternative conceptions of ethical professionalism are care ethics (Noddings, 1984; Katz et al., 1999), the ethics of hospitality (Ruitenberg, 2015), and Higgins' (2011) image of the teacher as the self-cultivated individual. All three ideals go well beyond deontology to explore the complex ways of seeing,

479

feeling, and responding to others that give life to teacher professionalism and inform the serious work of developing a professional ethics of teaching. 6. Conclusion Although this project failed to turn up the overlapping consensus on the ethical obligations of teacher professionalism we expected, it did yield grassroots insights into the professional values of teaching as articulated in a set of existing codes of professional ethics. One of this paper's starting points was that familiarizing future educators with the codes of ethics to which they will be held accountable and helping them master the ethical concepts embedded in the codes is an imperative of professional ethics education for teachers, as it is in professional ethics education in other fields. As this analysis has shown, however, basing the content of ethics education for teachers narrowly on the content of a code of ethics runs the risk of conveying an incomplete picture of the deontology of teaching, muddying the distinction between ethical obligations and associative obligations, and excluding in advance richer aspirational conceptions of teacher professionalism. Acknowledgements Preliminary results of this research were presented at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values of the University of Birmingham, the annual conference of the Association francophone pour le savoir, the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University, and the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Foundations of Education. The authors wish to thank audience members for the valuable feedback and encouragement offered on those occasions. This project was funded by a grant from the Fonds de recherche du Qu ebec e Soci et e et culture (#2014-NP-173847). References Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Alberta Teachers’ Association. (2004). The Alberta teachers' association code of professional conduct. Retrieved from: http://www.teachers.ab.ca/ SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Teachers-as-Professionals/IM-4E% 20Code%20of%20Professional%20Conduct.pdf. Arthur, J., Kristjansson, K., Cook, S., Brown, E., & Carr, D. (2015). The good teacher: Understanding virtues in practice (research report). Birmingham: Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. Banks, S. (2003). From oaths to rulebooks: A critical examination of codes of ethics for the social professions. European Journal of Social Work, 6(2), 133e144. Barak, A. (2015). Human dignity: The constitutional value and the constitutional right. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Beauchamp, T., & Childress, J. F. (2001). Principles of biomedical ethics (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Biesta, G. (2015). How does a competent teacher become a good teacher? on judgement, wisdom and virtuosity in teaching and teacher education. In R. Heilbronn, & L. Foreman-Peck (Eds.), Philosophical perspectives on teacher education (pp. 3e22). Oxford: Wiley. Boon, H. (2011). Raising the bar: Ethics education for new teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36, 76e93. British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. (2006). Code of ethics. Retrieved from: http:// bctf.ca/ProfessionalResponsibility.aspx?id¼4292. Callan, E. (2004). Creating citizens: Political education and liberal democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, E. (2000). Professional ethics in teaching: Towards the development of a code of practice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 30(2), 203e221. Campbell, E. (2008a). Preparing ethical professionals as a challenge for teacher education. In K. Tirri (Ed.), Educating moral sensibilities in urban schools (pp. 3e18). Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Campbell, E. (2008b). Review of the literature: The ethics of teaching as a moral profession. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(4), 357e385. Campbell, E. (2013). Cultivating moral and ethical professional practice. In M. Sanger, & R. Osguthorpe (Eds.), The moral work of teaching and teacher education. Preparing and supporting practitioners (pp. 29e44). New York: Teachers College Press. Canadian Education Association. (2009). Teaching effectiveness framework. Retrieved from: http://www.cea-ace.ca/sites/cea-ace.ca/files/cea-2009-wdydist-teaching.

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