Previous studies have pointed to ethical language and ethical knowledge as a weak point in teacher professionalism (see for example Tirri & Husu 2002, Ohnstad 2008, Bullough jr. 2011 Shapira-Lishchinsky 2011, Mosvold & Ohnstad 2016, Davies & Heyward 2019, Lindqvist, Thornberg & Colnerud 2020), where a main finding is that moral justifications seldom go beyond an intuition of “the best interest of the child” (Ohnstad 2008). However, teachers also experience their profession as being fraught with ethical issues, woven into relational work, questions of aims and means, and adherence to policy priorities. This may indicate that teacher education does not succeed in preparing teachers for the ethical challenges they encounter in schools.

The overall aim of the paper is to explore how case studies in teacher education can promote intellectual virtues, especially practical wisdom (phronesis), necessary for the formation of sound professional judgements aimed at good practice (eupraxia). Following an Aristotelian perspective, virtues are character traits that predispose a person to do the right thing. Moral virtues, such as courage and honesty, are developed through habituation, while intellectual virtues are mainly cultivated through formal education. This paper concentrates on the cultivation of intellectual virtues and presents findings from a qualitative study of student teachers’ discussions of ethically themed case stories.

The research question for the paper is:

How is professional judgement formed in student teachers’ discussions of ethically themed case stories?

Following the antinomic nature of pedagogical practice (Oettingen 2012), our theoretical point of departure is a pluralistic view of the good in teaching. Because of the complexities and uncertainties of the institutionalized pedagogical domain, teachers face a manifold of normative responsibilities. Examples include upholding the integrity of the profession, expressing loyaltyto democratic decisions, engaging in critical inquiryinto teaching’s knowledge base and values, promoting justice in distribution of educational goods and recognition, and showing care for students’ well-being and interests. These and similar responsibilities are what we can call prima facie (Ross 2002), meaning they all at first sight seem equally right and valuable. Consequently, they may come into conflict and produce ethical dilemmas. Moreover, it may be unclear exactly what a specific responsibility entails, and how one should live up to it in a concrete situation, for example delimiting care in a professionally apt way. Nevertheless, relying on a virtuous purposive disposition, teachers can sense, deliberate, and form a professional judgement that wisely navigates the dilemma and the actions that follows from them. In this manner, virtues aid professional judgement in clarifying a teacher’s actual responsibility in a particular situation. 

However, this requires studentteachers to be provided opportunities to cultivate appropriate intellectual virtues for the teaching profession, such as practical wisdom. This involves working systematically with (1) moral perception, an awareness of the prima facie responsibilities as well as other ethically salient features present in situations, and (2) moral justification, the ability to give normative reasons for decisions and actions. Both moral perception and moral justification are necessary constituents for sound professional judgement. Furthermore, the process involves exercising (beginning) intellectual virtues. One possible way of facilitating this in teacher education is by using the artifact case story and the form group discussion. Written case stories can mediate some of the real-world complexity of ethical dilemmas, while group discussions benefit from multiple perspectives in sensitizing perception towards normative features and negotiating shared grounding for justifications. Together they may create a zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978, Eun 2019) for students.  

Accordingly, we have focused our analysis on student teachers’ discussions of ethically themed case stories to explore how professional judgement, through moral perception and justification, is formed.             

The study is grounded in a qualitative research design, encompassing audio recording of students’ discussions, observation from course teachers, and inductive, conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon 2005). The empirical material consists of transcripts of student discussions and field notes from course teachers. The student teachers who participated in the recorded discussions, represent a sample from two cohorts in the university’s teacher education program. One consists of groups of first-year students and the other of fourth-year students. The two samples were analyzed separately and then discussed comparatively in light of the research question. The choice of students from their first and fourth year as our sample was based on an interest in having students at the beginning and the end of their teacher education. The procedure for data collection was the following: Students attended a lecture on ethics, relevant to their overall pedagogical coursework, followed by a seminar where case stories were to be discussed in groups. Before the seminar students had received information about the research project and what participation in it entailed. Students who consented to participation were organized in their own groups in separate classrooms from the rest of the seminar. The student groups were given two case stories and their discussion was audio recorded. Course teachers also took field notes during the discussion and afterwards in a brief evaluation session with the students. From the first-year cohort there were nine groups with five students in each and in the fourth-year cohort we expect approximately five groups with four-five students in each (this round of data collection is set for early February). Following our theoretical perspective, the main categories used in the analysis of the student discussions were a) perceptions, encompassing identification of value, ethical relevance, and responsibilities in the dilemma-situations depicted in the case stories and b) justifications, encompassing negotiation over action-guiding reasons. Reasons that were analyzed as part of a moral justification were respectively consequences (e.g., this is the greatest good for the greatest number), rules (e.g., this is possible to will as a universal law or this is treating people as ends, not merely as means), and character (e.g., this is what a just teacher would do). Reasons that were part of a non-moral justification were respectively epistemic-scientistic (e.g., this is what research says is right), pragmatic-technical (e.g., this is what works), and legal-political (e.g., this is what the authorities want).

First, we expect our results to provide insight into the process of judgement formation among student teachers and examine how practical wisdom is activated and possibly enhanced in the zone of proximal development created by the case story and group discussion. Secondly, a central hypothesis of this study is that systematic teaching of ethics in lectures and seminars, combined with case stories and group work, may improve student teachers’ professional judgment. We expect to find that student teachers’ group-conversations on ethical cases will develop their ethical knowledge, as well as their ethical language. A preliminary finding that supports this expectation, is that the relationship between moral and non-moral justification changes throughout the teacher education program. When we compare first year students group conversations with the conversations of those students that are in their last semester, we see that newcomers primarily employ non-moral (especially pragmatic-technical and legal-political) justifications, while last semester students employ a combination of moral and non-moral justifications. This indicates that student teachers develop a more complex ethical vocabulary throughout their studies. Finally, case-stories as didactic artefacts (Vygotsky 1978), due to their narrativity, may have the potential for student engagement with ethics in a way that can contribute to the constitution of “the world of teaching” as primarily normative in a thick sense. It thus seeks to counteract an instrumental picture from becoming the naturalized point of departure for students.

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