A professional ethical code is a written document listing principles of ethical conduct, norms, moral values, and professional standards that clarify what is expected from members of an organization or profession (Ahulwalia et al., 2016). It also protects the recipients of a service and safeguards the reputation of the profession (Banks, 2003; Bowie, 2003).

Israel, unlike more than 50 countries around the world (Schwimmer & Maxwell, 2017), does not provide teachers with a written and agreed-upon ethical code (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2017). From 1979 to 1998, there were four official committees whose task was to set up an ethical code for teaching. The proposals suggested by these committees failed because they reflected the competing interests of different educational stakeholders (Talanker, 2018). Knowing that Israeli teachers are not sufficiently prepared to deal with ethical issues that relate to their teaching, the lack of an ethical code for this profession in Israel has become problematic (Agbaria, 2013; Shachar, 2019). In fact, ethical preparation is minimal in the curriculum of teacher-education programs in Israel.

The situation in the Arab educational system in Israel is no different. Teachers have no ethical code to guide their teaching or to help them solve the moral dilemmas that they face in their everyday practice. Moreover, most studies in Israel have focused mainly on clarifying the nature of the ethical dilemmas that teachers face and how to deal with them (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011; Shapira-Lishchinsky & Orland-Barak, 2009). I believe that a professional ethical code in teaching must be sensitive to the teachers' needs, aspirations, and work conditions. In the end, teachers are the major players, being responsible for implementing or advancing the code in their schools, and they are held accountable for the quality of their ethical decisions by the ministry of education and the public (Schjetne et al., 2016; Tirri & Kuusisto, 2022; Van-Nuland, 2009). Therefore, it is important to explore teachers' professional knowledge of, motivation for, and understanding of a future ethical code for Arab teachers, leading us to the research question:

How do Arab teachers from Israel view the significance and purposes of a professional ethical code for teachers?

This multiple-case study relies on an interpretivist paradigm (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008) to explore how a phenomenon is perceived and constructed by the research participants. Yin (2009) explains the logic of using a multiple-case study: Each individual case study consists of a ‘whole’ study, in which convergent evidence is sought regarding the facts and conclusions for the case; each case’s conclusions are then considered to be the information needing replication by other individual cases. Both the individual cases and the multiple-case results can…be the focus of the summary report (p. 56). The research sample was comprised of 14 teachers (12 experienced teachers and 2 new teachers—with less than 5 years of experience), 8 females and 6 males, teaching different subjects in different schools, who volunteered to take part in this inquiry. The interviewees in this study were approached and selected from the author's network of graduated student teachers using snowball sampling. The 14 teachers selected for the interviews constituted the unit of analysis, assuming that they share important patterns that cut across cases and represent the phenomenon under inquiry The research method consisted of semi-structured interviews with open-ended follow-up questions. The follow-up questions enabled delving into the participants’ thoughts, feelings, and perspectives and receiving trustworthy data. Each interview lasted one to one-and-a-half hours; they were conducted using the Zoom platform and they were audiotaped and transcribed for further analysis The main analytical method in this study was directed content analysis. Namely, we began by “identifying key concepts or variables as initial coding categories” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1281), then used existing conceptual frameworks or terms from the literature to determine the relationships between the categories and to come up with the themes that summarize the dataset and answer the research questions.

The first theme revealed in this study gives three explanatory variables for teachers' low quality in Arab schools: the personal variable, where teachers’ lack of appropriate virtues and moral motivation makes them bad role models for the students; the academic variable, referring to the admission of academically poor students to teacher-education colleges, due to the dominant neoliberal agenda in teacher education, the growing competition among these colleges in Israel, and lack of ethics education in teachers' preparation; the political variable, relating to ignoring the teaching candidates' ethical qualities upon hiring them, undesirable interventions by local and political forces in the employment of new teachers, and the state’s lack of interest in developing and applying a professional code of ethics in teaching. In the second theme, the participating teachers reported that an ethical code for teachers could potentially prevent their misconduct (physical or verbal abuse of students) and prohibit them from discriminating against students based on their race, family background, or school achievements. The interviewed teachers believe that an ethical code must regulate the relationships among the teachers themselves, including inappropriate competitiveness and underestimation. Furthermore, an ethical code could prevent unfair evaluations of new teachers, and force administrators to address their professional needs, and their capacities for self-improvement. In the third theme, the interviewed teachers suggest some strategies for applying a professional ethical code to improve the quality of novice and experienced teachers in Arab schools. They emphasize the admission of student teachers who have the moral character and suitable virtues for teaching in terms of professional responsibility, appearance, and communication with students. The interviewees agree that student teachers should be prepared to become ethical teachers through simulations and relevant courses. Moreover, the interviewed teachers suggest using a professional ethical code in the evaluation and hiring of new teachers and principals.

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