Naciye Aksoy, University of Cincinnati

There is no single code of ethics in pluralistic societies (Solomon, 1984) and the specter of ethical subjectivism appears to haunt every corner of our modern world. However, ethical subjectivism cannot have any place in professional ethics (Soltis, 1986). Soltis also adds that "there would be no point in the teaching profession if we believed that educators as individuals should be free to accept or reject our professional standards. It would make no sense to teach principles of professional conduct as if they were arbitrary or subjective" (p.3)

Teaching is regarded as a profession in Turkey (MEB, 1990; MEB, 1997). There are general objectives and standards of the teaching profession that guide teachers’ decision making. General standards of the teaching profession include:

a. Teaching is a profession.

b. Teaching profession requires a special professional efficiency.

c. Individuals who have gone through teacher training programs are responsible for performing educational tasks and for administrative functions when requested.

d. Teachers have to perform their duties in accordance with the objectives and basic principles of the Turkish National Education (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1989).

However, neither such general principles nor other basic education laws specify ethical standards for the activity of teaching. There is a lack of clear, pre-established ethical guidelines and standards even though many educators suggest that teachers should be moral exemplars with their behaviors and attitudes. Therefore, teachers are in an awkward position when they face ethical issues and they make ethical decisions without much guidance.

The purpose of the study is to understand elementary school teachers' beliefs about ethical dilemmas in the teaching profession. Based on this purpose the investigation was designed to answer the following research questions:

According to Webster’s Universal Dictionary (Random House, 1997, p.274) ethics is defined as a "system or set of moral principles"; also, "the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or governing a particular group or culture"; and is considered as "the branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of actions and the goodness and badness of motives and ends". Solomon (1984) defines ethics as "participation in, and an understanding of ‘an ethos’ the effort to understand the social rules which govern and limit our behavior, especially those fundamental rules such as the prohibition on killing and stealing and the commandments that one should ‘honor thy parents’ and respect the rights of others, which we call morality" (p.5). Solomon also makes a distinction between ethics and morality that is the central issue in ethics and needs a culture in which to be cultivated.

As it is viewed in these definitions, ethics deals with perfection and ideal social rules for living well. Solomon (1984) makes it clear and states that since we are taught goals, acquire ideals and conform to patterns of acceptable social behaviors, our condemnation of others should not be based on our instinct or impulse. Therefore, the issues of ethics are the issues of life in human society.

We face many ethical issues in our daily lives. However, our understanding of ethical issues is complicated. The following explanations of Strike and Soltis (1992) and Strike (1988) help us to understand the nature of ethical issues.

• First, ethical issues concern questions of right and wrong, our duties, obligations, rights, and responsibilities. Ethical discourse is characterized by a unique vocabulary that commonly includes such words as ought and should, fair and unfair.
• Second, ethical questions may not be settled by an appeal to facts alone. In other words, ethical claims cannot be true or false in the same way that facts are. We do not decide whether ethical claims are true or false.

• Third, ethical claims should be distinguished from values, especially appraisals or preferences. Values concern what we like or what we believe to be good and since values are a matter of our free choice there is nothing right, wrong or obligatory about them.

Numerous investigators and educators have recognized the teaching profession as a moral endeavor and teachers as moral agents (Churchill, 1982; Howe, 1986, Goodlad, Soder, and Sirotnic, 1990; Fenstermacher, 1990; Ryan, 1993; Joseph and Efron, 1993; Socket, 1993; Barcena, Gil, and Jorer, 1993; Campbell, 1997; Buteau, 1998). There is an agreement among these investigators and educators that teaching consists of human interactions and therefore should be guided by normative principles. According to Fenstermacher, 1990; Goodlad, Soder, & Sirotnik, 1993; Soder, 1996 (cited in Yost, 1997, p.281) these normative principles include: "a) providing students with equal access to educational opportunity, b) ensuring that students acquire the knowledge and skill to be productive citizens, c) exposing students to the critical thinking and problem solving skills necessary to maintain and improve the notion’s aims." Likewise, Keith-Spiegel, Witting, Perkins, Balogh, and Whitley Jr. (1993) mention the following ethical principles for the teaching profession:

• Respect for the autonomy of others.
• Doing no harm (physical or emotional resulting from acts of commission or omission).
• Benefit to others.
• Fairness and equity.
• Fidelity and honesty.
• Dignity.
• Caring.
• Doing one’s best.

Although there are normative principles that guide the teaching profession, "teaching is full of ethical issues" (Strike, 1988) and:

A variety of ethical theories and approaches represent different ways to think about ethical dilemmas. One of the major ethical theories is consequentialist theory that holds that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by regarding its consequences. This theory is not interested in producing any results that are instrically good but in maximizing the good. A utilitarian approach, which is the most important variety of consequentialism, emphases that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined in terms of what produces the most good for the greatest number (Strike and Soltis, 1992). When the utilitarian approach is applied to the classroom context and teachers’ practices, questions are framed to consider if the advantages of particular actions outweigh the disadvantages (Tippins, Tobin and Hook, 1993).

On the other hand, nonconsequentialist ethical theories are interested in the knowledge of what is good for a human being and how an action affects the welfare of others. These theoretical perspectives focus on the principle of equal respect for all persons. The principle of equal respect involves three subideas: to treat people as ends rather than means; to regard all people as free, rational, and responsible moral agents; and that as moral agents people are of equal value (Strike & Soltis, 1992).

Tippins, et al. (1993) argue the third ethical approach to ethical dilemmas, which is the contractarian approach. This approach centers on the development of abstract principles of moral reasoning leading to informal ethical principles. One of the basic premises of the contractarian perspective is the preservation of the rights of individuals, consistent with an implied or explicit socially negotiated contact.

Nash (1991) addresses three other approaches for teachers’ moral decisions. The rule/principles approach is a procedurally rich ethics, well suited for rational, defensible ethical decision making in the secular pluralistic society and supports a diversity of ideologies and values. The character/structure approach’s emphasis is that concrete moral communities such as church, school, and family form individuals’ ethical decision-making. The background/ideas approach is interested in the private world of individual consciousness where each individual chooses his/her moral ideals and attempts to make sense of his/her deepest beliefs.

When teachers face ethical issues in practice and ask what is required to cope with those issues, the following characteristics suggested by Howe (1986) should be exhibited:

• Appreciation for Moral Deliberation: teachers should recognize that there are individuals whose interests might conflict, that each of these individual’s interest carries the same initial weight, and that careful deliberation is required to arrive at some justified course of action.
• Empathy: teachers should assume an objective viewpoint and imagine the feelings of others.
• Interpersonal Skills: teachers should interact with others sensitively and humanely regarding ethical problems.
• Knowledge: teachers should possess knowledge that allows them to formulate reasonable strategies and anticipate their consequences.
• Reasoning: teachers should be able to draw conclusions on the basis of proceeding characteristics in order to derive some rule of conduct and should not deceive persons unless there are compelling reasons for doing so.
• Courage: teachers should have the courage to follow through on the conclusion of their deliberations. Courage is required to convert conclusions to actions where difficult circumstances are involved.

Each of these approaches and perspectives suggest different ways of thinking about ethical issues in teaching. And each of them is based on unique premises and languages. They may attempt to address similar solutions to ethical matters but "they will differ in significance depending on the context of the cultures to which they are applied" (Tippins et al, 1993, p.).

This study was designed as a descriptive investigation of public elementary school teachers’ beliefs about ethical dilemmas in the activity of teaching. A survey questionnaire was administered to 150 teachers in six public elementary schools from different parts of the city of Kayseri. Questionnaires were distributed and collected via personal contacts.

The participants in this study are not considered to be representative of all public elementary school teachers in the city but are considered to be appropriate for gathering initial data about ethical beliefs of teachers. The questionnaire was developed by the researcher based on a review of literature and examples were taken from the instrument used in the study entitled Beliefs and Behaviors of Psychologists as Educators by Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope (1991). The survey instrument was constructed in Turkish. Prior to data collection the instrument was submitted to one faculty member and three graduate students for comments and recommendations.

The survey instrument consisted of two parts. The first part of the survey included specific background information including teachers' sex and teaching experience. The second part of the survey consisted of 24 Likert-Style questions. Teachers were asked to respond to each behavior listed by checking: "not ethical", "don’t know/not sure", "ethical", and "not relevant". Teachers also had the opportunity to add additional items and comments.

The data were analyzed and described with frequency distributions and percentages. Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) was used to describe the relationship between sex and teachers’ beliefs about each behavior and between teaching experience and beliefs about each behavior.

A total of 129 teachers (86%) responded to the survey instrument. Table 1 shows the sex and teaching experience of the sample. As shown, 68.2% were men and 31.8% were women, and 14.7% had been teaching for 1-5 years, 7.8% for 6-10 years, 8.5% for 11-16 years, and 69% for 17 or more years.

The second part of the questionnaire asked the teachers to indicate their belief whether each of 24 behaviors is "not ethical", "don’t know/not sure", "ethical", and "not relevant". Table 2 shows the frequency and percentage distributions of teachers’ beliefs for each of the 24 behaviors.

As shown in the table, 23 of the 24 behaviors were considered "not ethical" by most of the teachers. The behaviors "making discrimination among students regarding their ethnic background and religion", "making negative comments in the classroom about other teachers", "telling a student’s private information and problems to his/her classmates", "insulting/ridiculing a student in the presence of classmates", "making discrimination among students regarding their economic status", "insulting/ridiculing a student in his/her absence", "cutting class hours short by being late or leaving early", and "doing private work during class time" wer considered "not ethical" by at least 90% of teachers.

Of these teachers 82% (106) responded the item " accepting students’ expensive gifts" to be "not ethical", 5% "don’t know/not sure", 1% "ethical" and 12% "not relevant". However, 34% of them responded the behavior " accepting students’ inexpensive gifts" as "not ethical", 14% "don’t know", 22% "ethical" and 30% "not relevant". This results reflected that teachers seem to be agreed on what constitute small (inexpensive) and expensive gift. Keith-Spiegel et al. (1993) suggest that refusing small gifts could be devastating to the givers and cause many problems.

Among the "not relevant" responses only the behavior "teaching the class without adequate preparation of subject matter" was indicated "not relevant" by more than 30% (32%, 41) of teachers while others were indicated by less than 30% of teachers.

Analysis of the data revealed statistically significant relationships between sex and teachers’ beliefs for 2 of the 24 behaviors. The correlation between sex and beliefs for the behavior "doing private work during class time" was r =.-18 (p.<.05). Although 5% of the male teachers considered this behavior to be "not relevant", 15% of the female teachers did so. The results also revealed a correlation of r = -.20 (p<.05).for the relationship between sex and teachers’ beliefs for the behavior "cutting class hours short by being late or leaving early". This behavior was considered to be " not relevant" by 6% of male teachers and by 17% of female teachers.

The analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship between teaching experience and beliefs about the behavior "making discrimination among students regarding their ethnic background and religion" (r=-.18, p<.05). This behavior was considered to be "not relevant" by 11% of teachers who had 1-5 years teaching experience but by only 1% of teachers who had 17 and more years teaching experience.

The study examined the beliefs of a group of elementary teachers about ethical dilemmas in teaching. The results provide evidence that there is some agreement among teachers with respect to ethical issues which occur in their profession, but not others. Examining the ethical beliefs of teachers is a useful preliminary contribution, but is only one approach to consideration of the ethics of teaching. It would be of great interest for researchers to explore ethical beliefs of teachers serving in different parts of Turkey. It would also seem important to determine the extent to which teachers actually engage in the behaviors in their work. This might be usefully studied by using multiple research methods to better understand teaching ethics. However, empirical data about the ethical beliefs and behaviors of teachers should inform rather than determine teachers’ ethical deliberations (Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, and Pope, 1991), since complex social, religious and economic factors influence ethical decision making in the profession.

Table 2

Ethical Beliefs of Teachers about Behaviors