The Moral Dimensions of Teaching and Preservice Teachers: Can Moral Dispositions be Influenced?

Abstract

Goodlad (1990b, 1994) maintains that all teaching involves values and therefore should be guided by normative principles arising from the school's responsibilities to its students. These normative principles include providing students with equal access to educational opportunity, ensuring that students acquire the knowledge and skill to be productive citizens, and exposing students to the critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to maintain and improve the nation's aims (Fenstermacher, 1990; Goodlad, 1993, 1994; Soder, 1996). Teacher educators must prepare novice teachers to competently handle the moral judgments and decisions inherent in teaching. However, many teacher education programs are not producing teachers equipped with the attitudes, skills, and abilities to provide a quality education for all students (Goodlad, 1994; Howey & Zimpher, 1989; Sirotnik, 1990). Goodlad (1990a), in his study of teacher education programs, found that preservice teachers were largely unaware of issues of school reform and unable to recall basic information from their lecture classes. They tended not to incorporate new knowledge to inform their teaching actions and focused on technical aspects of teaching. Goodlad (1990c) provides a vivid description of this phenomenon: Prospective teachers oriented to filling a large handbag with discrete bits and pieces of know-how may be destined to become pedagogical bag ladies and bag men, forever seeking more and more attractively packaged items to stash away. This image is far removed from that of the reflective practitioner, forever inquiring into relevant theories and principles and their implications for practice (p. 225). Goodlad (1990a) found that many schools of education operate without a central mission and overlook the moral aspects of teaching: The mission is not just to prepare teachers for the mechanics of their occupation ... but to develop in them the intellectual habits of reflection on their calling and daily work that are the mark of a professional continuously engaged in self-improvement (p. 38). The moral mission Goodlad and others (Goodlad, 1990b; Goodlad, Soder, & Sirotnik, 1990) define is not derived from empirical research on teaching. These moral dimensions emerged from discussions about what is good for teaching. The mission is philosophically tied to the aims of education as Dewey (1944) defined them: It would be impossible to find a deeper sense of the function of education [than] in discovering and developing personal capacities, and training them so that they would connect with the activities of others.... This conclusion is bound up with the very idea of education as freeing of individual capacity in progressive growth toward social aims (pp. 89, 98). Teachers must be provided with the knowledge base and belief systems enabling them to fulfill this mission. Teacher education programs must help preservice teachers learn to reflect critically on student, school, and community issues and make ethical decisions. However, Goodlad's study raises serious questions about the efficacy of teacher education programs to prepare future teachers for their roles as moral educators who possess the necessary knowledge, thinking skills, and insight to provide a quality education for all students. In this article, I highlight the results of a qualitative study on the beliefs and views of graduates of a restructured teacher education program reflecting the philosophy of the National Network for Educational Renewal (Goodlad, 1994) and the Holmes Group (1986). Through an integrated set of experiences, the program emphasized analysis and reflection of student, classroom, and community issues to develop moral decision making and critical reflection among preservice teachers. The four research questions guiding the project correspond to one of the four moral dimensions of teaching described by Goodlad (1990b, 1993, 1994). …