Ethical competence in German teacher training for inclusive schools

Abstract

ABSTRACT Teaching in inclusive schools comes with a variety of ethical challenges, for which student teachers of general and special needs education should acquire ethical competence as part of their inclusion-oriented teacher training. Due to the lack of empirical studies on this area of teacher training in Germany to date, students in Masters degree programmes (N = 585; age: M = 25.35; SD = 3.28; 71.6% female) were asked to assess the need and relevance of acquiring ethical skills in an online survey. The prospective teachers considered ethical competencies to be necessary for everyday tasks in inclusive schools; nevertheless, only 18.9% stated that they had acquired the relevant skills in their previous studies. Accordingly, they wished for a higher priority of imparting ethical competencies in future teacher training. Here they preferred application-related competence goals, such as being able to reflect critically on ethical decisions or to justify ethical decisions in communication with others. In addition to poorly developed ethical skills, students reported a lack of acquisition of further competencies that are proven to be success factors for the implementation of inclusive education. Student teachers for special needs education held a more positive attitude towards school inclusion and placed a greater value on imparting ethical competence in future teacher training than student teachers for general education