The importance of teacher training has been a constant in different historical periods up to the present and has received the attention of various governments and international institutions, as evidenced by Unesco, McKinsey or Pisa reports, and Euridyce, which explicitly recognises that countries that prioritise teacher education are laying the foundations for high-quality teaching.

     For access to teaching careers, some countries have a tradition of assessing academic performance alone, whereas others include personal values and aptitude for teaching. In Finland, Hannikainen (2015) noted that student teachers are measured on “their academic level and the human qualities needed to work with children and young people. A candidate who has a high academic level but lacks empathy is not suitable for teaching” (p. 147). In terms of the requirements to become a teacher in Singapore, people need to have been good students in primary school and to have been in the top third in their university career. Vaillant and Marcelo (2015) report the experience of California, where student teachers are measured twice: their academic knowledge through standardised tests and their attitudes toward the task of teaching through an interview.

     In Spain, we do not even consider a specific academic requirement. Students enter the minimum grade on the university entrance test. Therefore, we do not even select the best students on the basis of their average score. We do not even know if they are the most suitable. Buxarrais's study (2021) shows that student teachers do not receive any training in the implications of professional responsibility and attitudinal commitment throughout their four years at the university. However, ethical competence is a matter of concern. Our working hypothesis is that the exercise of ethical leadership, i.e., the ability to practice one's future profession from an attitude of service to others and professional integrity, would be an element that would contribute to the selection of the 'right' teacher, not at the beginning, when entering the career, but at the end, when obtaining the degree, after the students have gone through a training programme focused on teaching ethics. Forster-Heinzer (2021) emphasises that professional responsibility is the main basis of the teaching ethos. An ethical teacher (Heinrichs et al., 2021), with moral authority and leadership, can build his/her ethos and participate in the ethos of the school. 

     This line of study is an innovative proposal in the context of Spanish universities. It is necessary to include parameters of responsibility that guarantee commitment to training and to society, as required by international bodies. However, the focus of initial training should also be on the trainers of student teachers (Imbernón, 2021). Are university teachers committed to training student teachers? What is the ethical leadership of the university teacher in the training of the student teacher's ethos?

     This project has been funded by the University of Granada and the Autonomous City of Ceuta in Spain (Reference CE-02-UGR24) and Grant PID2021-129018NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and, by “ERDF/EU”. Our general objective is to determine the state of the art in teacher education at the Faculty of Education, Economy, and Technology of Ceuta of the University of Granada (Spain) and to assess whether ethical leadership competence can be an element in the selection of future teachers. To this end, we have established the following specific objectives:

1. To identify the ethical teaching leadership profile of final-year student teachers and their attitudes towards teaching.
2. To analyse the ethical teaching leadership profile of the academic internship tutors and their attitudes towards teaching.
3. To assess the ethical teacher leadership competence as a viable characteristic to be considered in the selection of future teachers.

The research project will use a mixed methodological approach. Some objectives have different methodological requirements. We present the specific aspects of each. Objective 1 Design We approach quantitative logic through the descriptive survey-type method (McMillan & Schumacher, 2005), which relies on a questionnaire. As it is an already standardised instrument, it meets the reliability and validity parameters required by these tests. Participants All final-year students enrolled in the Practicum II course with degrees in Early Childhood Education (a total of 19) and Primary Education (a total of 28) taught at the University Campus of Ceuta will participate. Instruments We will use Torquemada and Loredo's (2021) Teacher Professional Ethics Questionnaire. Analysis Descriptive analysis will be applied first; analysis of variance will be used to check the differences between the two Education Degrees in the ethical dimension; and K-means cluster analysis will be used to check whether there are different profiles of student teachers depending on their degree and gender by means of IBM SPSS Statistics software. Objective 2 For this objective, we will follow the same design and apply the same instrument as for the students. Participants The sample will be made up of all university teachers teaching Practicum II (in both degrees). We have 8 academic tutors in Early Childhood Education and 11 in Primary Education. The type of sampling will be non-probabilistic, that we could call incidental, taking advantage of the easy access. Analysis The same analyses will be applied as for the student body, and we will consider years of teaching experience, area of knowledge and gender. Objective 3 Design The case study method (Albert, 2006), which responds to the qualitative research tradition, is the method used for this objective. Participants We will include teachers from schools who participate as professional tutors in Practicum II, university teachers, student teachers, academic coordinators and political authorities. We select the ‘typical sample’ according to Albert's classification (2006). Instruments Focus groups and interviews will be conducted. Analysis The narrative data produced by the interviews and focus groups will be processed with MAXQDA software. On the basis of Strauss and Corbin's grounded theory (2002), vertical and horizontal analyses of the data will be carried out (Bolívar & Domingo, 2019), as well as thematic analysis, so that comparisons between the discourses of the informants and their views on professional ethics as a discriminating element in initial teacher training can be explored in greater depth.

This is a recently awarded project that will run from February 2025 to September. By the time of ECER, we will have scientific evidence to present to the academic and research community. Currently we highlight that hardly any academic work in Spain has studied professional teacher ethics and initial teacher education. We previously reported this phenomenon (Tnibar & Latorre, 2024). The results of this study will contribute to the academic debate. In addition, it provides scientific evidence on the profile of student teachers pursuing degrees at the University of Granada in Ceuta (Spain), their level of attitudinal commitment and their professional responsibility. The project may underline the need to design methodological strategies that contribute to the training of ethical teacher leadership, which can be implemented by the university teachers, for example, during the Practicum, to strengthen the adequate ethical performance of student teachers. Regarding the social impact, we understand that the academic agents of universities and nonacademic agents, political agents and social agents can lead and dynamise a national debate. However, this reflection must be based on empirical data from teachers who are responsible for training, with the knowledge that "not training" in the teaching ethos would have unpredictable and, at the very least, alarming consequences for the student teachers, their future pupils and society in general. The economic impact of the project's results can be felt on several fronts in the long term, including the fact that the student bodies of committed and ethical teachers tend to produce better academic results (Day, 2018).

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