The Ethical Teacher

Reflection is a necessary component of everyday life, as well as the growth an individual makes within their profession. This concept remains true for teachers who, due to the particular changes they must make in order to meet the fluctuating needs of both their students and society, are perpetually connected to reflection. Beginning with John Dewey, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous scholars have articulated their viewpoints concerning the positive and negatives impacts of this reflective teaching, in addition to its influence on the moral dilemmas faced by educators. One of these people, Elizabeth Campbell, asserts her perspectives throughout her text, The Ethical Teacher, wherein she describes the relationship between ethical knowledge and moral agency, the link between moral dilemmas and ethical knowledge, and the methods of lessening moral tensions in education.

Within her book, Campbell (2003) maintains that “ethical knowledge relies on teachers’ understanding and acceptance of moral agency as professional expectations implicit in all aspects of their day-to-day practice” (p. 3). These demands of moral agency are important for students’ learning and development. Consequently, it is essential to understand moral agency. Campbell (2003) declares that moral agency “relates to the exacting ethical standards the teacher as a moral person and a moral professional hold himself or herself to” and “concerns the teacher as a moral educator, model, and exemplar” for students (p. 2). Throughout the text, Campbell explains that teachers must be aware of, understand and accept those demands of moral agency. Furthermore, Campbell (2003) opposes the notion that educators’ ethics “remain embedded in...

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...outlining the ways to ease moral tensions and expand ethical knowledge. Moreover, Campbell’s book is consistent with her framework of this ethical knowledge “that supports core ethical principles and remains critical of moral relativism,” while it distinguishes “the complexities of moral interpretations of virtue, the significance of contextual realities, and the potential legitimacy of differing ethical beliefs” (p. 2). Through being capable of recognizing the advantageousness of ethics within education, Campbell and others, epitomize the influence of educational reflection. Furthermore, this unmistakably illustrates how reflective teachers are better apt to understand the demands of their students, parents, community members, colleagues, administrators and other superiors, which helps them to improve student learning and develop students as ethical individuals.