Abstract
Research has shown that pre-service teachers experience, as well as cause, ethical dilemmas during their teaching practice. Pre-service teachers inhabit a unique space at schools during their teaching practice, as they are acting as teachers, but are not yet qualified or employed as teachers by the Department of Basic Education or school governing bodies. While it is to be expected that they could experience similar ethical dilemmas to those faced by in-service teachers, their unique role as pre-service teachers often leads to additional ethical dilemmas. Therefore, the lack of guiding codes of ethics and codes of conduct that are written specifically for teaching practice is of concern. The absence of guiding codes of ethics and conduct leads to uncertainty about how to address ethical quandaries that arise during teaching practice. The various role players in teaching practice such as principals, in-service teachers, pre-service teachers, the Department of Education and South African Council for Educators (SACE) are unaware of the procedures and protocols that they are expected to follow, as well as who is responsible for resolving these dilemmas. In order to determine what should form part of a code of ethics and code of conduct for teaching practice, it is of the utmost importance to determine what types of ethical dilemmas pre-service teachers experience during their teaching practice. This notion is supported by the underlying theory of applied ethics that was used in this study, which suggests that practice should inform theory, while theory again informs practice. Within the context of this study, it meant that the ethical dilemmas experienced and caused by pre-service teachers during teaching practice were used to inform the categories that are to be included in a code of ethics and code of conduct. This code of ethics and code of conduct should then be used to guide pre-service teachers’ behaviour during their teaching practice.
A sequential explanatory mixed method design was developed and employed in order to gain greater insight into the ethical dilemmas experienced by pre-service teachers, so that possible criteria could be identified for inclusion in the code of ethics and code of conduct for teaching practice at a specific South African university. We applied for ethical clearance at the specific university, and clearance was granted to conduct voluntary surveys and interviews with Foundation Phase pre-service teachers at this university. In the first phase, quantitative participant selection surveys were sent to 237 third and fourth (final) year pre-service teachers at a specific South African university. The main aim of this survey was to identify pre-service teachers who had previously experienced ethical dilemmas during their teaching practice. The survey did however gather additional information regarding the ethics training and preparation for ethics in teaching practice at the specific university. The reasons why only third and fourth year Foundation Phase pre-service teachers were included were firstly because they had had more experience of teaching practice and the probability was higher that they would have experienced ethical dilemmas in their past teaching practice periods. Secondly these pre-service teachers had completed a larger part of their total Bachelor of Education degree’s course work and could therefore give a more accurate description of what the ethical training in their course should and did entail.
Despite the fact that the pre-service teachers received the link to the Google Forms survey on multiple electronic platforms (WhatsApp groups, Google Classroom and student email) and received two additional reminders, only 55 pre-service teachers completed the voluntary survey. The first page of the survey was an informed consent form where the pre-service teachers had to agree to participate in the study, before they could continue with the survey. The survey aimed to identify participants for the interview phase of this study and not to collect data that could be generalised. From this survey nine pre-service teachers were identified for the qualitative follow-up interviews, as they indicated that they had previously experienced ethical dilemmas. Section A of the survey gathered biographical information of the participants in order to describe the sample. Section B consisted of closed-ended questions that aimed to determine how pre-service teachers were prepared for ethics in teaching practice, and identify those who had previously experienced ethical dilemmas during their teaching practice. Section C consisted of three open-ended questions that aimed to gain greater insight into pre-service teachers’ opinions of the ethics preparation that they had received in their teacher training programme at the university. The data from the survey were analysed by downloading it as an Excel document and then uploading it to the SPSS computer software to analyse the closed-ended questions from section A and section B. The data from the open-ended questions in section C were then analysed thematically by using structural coding, where the answers to each question were analysed separately. Colour coding was used to mark similar themes at each question.
All nine pre-service teachers who were identified from the surveys agreed to participate in the second phase of semi-structured follow-up interviews. These interviews aimed to gain a deeper insight into the ethical dilemmas that the pre-service teachers experienced during their teaching practice, and also find out if and how these ethical dilemmas were addressed. The fixed questions on the interview schedule were asked in each interview; however, the follow-up questions varied according to the responses. All participants gave permission for the voice recordings of these interviews to be used to aid the transcription. The transcriptions were then analysed through thematic analysis using two cycles of coding. In the first cycle of coding the transcriptions, data were themed individually and then compared to look for similar and contrasting themes. Theme mapping was then employed to categorise the themes. After categorising the themes, they were further grouped and re-categorised in order to condense the large data set. Finally, the second cycle of coding employed focused coding, where the categories were grouped into four overarching themes, namely ethics policies and protocols, pre-service teachers’ ethical dilemmas, reporting ethical dilemmas, and ethics training for teaching practice.
The results revealed that pre-service teachers from this university experienced a variety of ethical dilemmas that can be grouped into seven main categories. These categories include the observation of unethical relationships between various role players in teaching practice, such as pre-service teachers witnessing unethical relationships between in-service teachers and learners; learners acting unethically toward pre-service teachers; in-service teachers acting unethically towards pre-service teachers; pre-service teachers experiencing the university policies and assessment criteria as unethical; pre-service teachers acting unethically during teaching practice; contextual factors such as teaching across cultures that are unknown to the pre-service teacher; and power relationships that are abused by principals and mentor teachers. Unethical relationships between the in-service teachers and pre-service teachers seem to be common and often there appears to be a lack of supervision and mentoring during teaching practice. Another finding from this study was that pre-service teachers are not aware of the codes of ethics, codes of conduct or formal reporting procedures which are provided by the university, for when ethical dilemmas are encountered during teaching practice. This means that pre-service teachers are sometimes unaware of what is expected of them in terms of ethical behaviour during their teaching practice. Furthermore, they are unaware of what they should do when they experience ethical dilemmas during their teaching practice. Pre-service teachers claimed that this lack of awareness was a contributing factor to some of the ethical dilemmas they experienced. Some pre-service teachers even claimed that they thought that they were not allowed to report ethical dilemmas they experienced, as they did not know of protocols they were supposed to follow. Although this research aimed to determine what should form part of the code of ethics and code of conduct to address the ethical dilemmas that pre-service teachers currently face in teaching practice, it also highlighted the importance of raising awareness of these codes and procedures in order to ensure that they are in fact administered efficiently. Consequently, ethics training for teaching practice should include training regarding the ethics policies and protocols of the university. Another finding was that pre-service teachers seem to have a need for the Department of Education and South African Council for Educators to become more involved in their ethics training, as well as in addressing the ethical dilemmas that they as pre-service teachers experience during their teaching practice.
Keywords: code of conduct; code of ethics; ethics; ethical dilemmas; teaching practice
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans
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