Didethics

A didactic model including professional ethics

Abstract

Ethics in teaching can be understood in different ways. In this article, ethics in teaching is interpreted as values that are expressed by the teacher through words or actions in interaction with students. Previous research has indicated that ethics in teaching with this meaning is difficult to recognize and verbalize. Professional ethics also seems to be randomized and built mostly on personal feelings. In an empirical study of professional ethics, data was analyzed in order to find the essence of the phenomenon professional ethics. The study indicated a lack of professional ethics in preparing and in following up teacher students for school-based training, in didactic plans and in dialogues with teacher educators in the field. This inspired the development of a didactic model, Didethics, in an attempt to make visible and to raise awareness of the importance of professional ethics in teaching. In this model, the essence of professional ethics according to the result of the empirical study becomes a part of didactics. Therefore, the implementation of the study and the result formulated as the essence of professional ethics is presented first, followed by the didactic model and descriptions of how it can be useful to future teachers.