Professional Themes of Codes of Ethics

One may consider the CEC Special Education Professional Practice Standards (CEC-SEPPS), the Georgia Code of Ethics for Educators (GCE), and the Professional and Behavior Dispositions Rubric (PBDR) of the State University of West Georgia, as three distinctively separate instruments, but inescapable connections lie between them. These connections lie primarily in the CEC Special Education Professional Practice Standards - 1.0 Teaching and Assessment, 3.0 Professional Development, and 4.0 Professional Colleagues standards along with the GCE standard 4-Honesty. These standards are echoed in the PBDR in the concerns of collaboration, professionalism and the belief that all can learn. Exemplifying compliance with these standards and concerns demonstrates the character of an educator and indicates his/her readiness to enter the teaching profession as a truly qualified educator.
An educator that is concerned with collaboration, according to the PBDR, is one who “always participates as expected,” and “seeks to build collaboration with other professionals” (PBDR). The CEC Special Education Professional Practice Standards echoes this concern in standards 3.0 Professional Development and 4.0 Professional Colleagues. Both deal with a special educator’s willingness to collaborate with either “professional colleagues from other disciplines” (CEC-SEPPS 4.1), “colleagues from other agencies (CEC-SEPS 4.3),” or with “general and special education professional colleagues” (CEC-SEPPS 4.4). The CEC-SEPPS extends collaboration activities to participation “in systematic supervised field experiences for candidates in preparation programs” (CEC-SEPPS 3.5) and “as mentors to other special educators” (CEC- SEPPS 3.6) as well. The inherent message be...

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...concerns, and many others, delineated in the CEC Special Education Professional Practice Standards and the Georgia Code of Ethics for Educators, are echoed in the Professional Dispositions and Behaviors Rubric of the State University of West Georgia for Advanced Programs in Special education. These three instruments provide a framework to which candidates in preparation programs, teachers, and administrators can return for problem resolution, and professional growth and development. Not only does this framework house the concerns of collaboration, professionalism and the belief that all can learn, it also safeguards the integrity of the field of education, and ensures students will be able to receive an education in an environment that makes every effort to “respect the culture, dignity, and basic human rights of individuals with exceptionalities” (CEC-SEPPS 1.7).