RAHMAAN ALI

ST # S-2_0254
PROGRAM: MPHIL EDUCATION
PRESENTED TO

DR NAZAR HUSAIN NAZAR

Assignment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS:
The progress of a country depends upon the quality of its teachers and for this reason
teaching is the noblest amongst all professions. Teachers are members of what be called the
peoples profession. They come from and work for the people. In our society, teacher is
traditionally given a very high status, is accorded high status. Hence an extremely high
conduct and behavior pattern is expected from him. According to Confucian theory, only a
person who is always a source of love, morally upright and whose behavior not only in
personal but also in institutional love is impeccable, is worthy of being a teacher.
The irony of fate, however is that teaching is deemed to be the most unattractive profession
and the teacher no longer occupies an honorable position in the society. The teaching
profession has degenerated over a period of time from its high ideals and ethical values to
the level of merely a service oriented vocation. It has become a vocation like any other

vocation. Violence, frustration, immorality, self-centeredness are increasing in the present

social set up. Teachers should be prepared to meet the challenges of local, national and
global demands because society depends on teachers and the quality of education depends
to a great extent on the quality of teacher. Teachers develop both the learner and the
society. In order to face the challenges of the dynamic world, destructing of teacher
preparation process is highly essential for professionalism and empowerment of the
teachers. Resurgence of a country could not come through the channels of science and
technology alone but also through the flood gates of value-oriented education. If values are
imbibed with a purpose, they will go a long way in molding citizens of tomorrow and
realizing the dream of an egalitarian society as envisaged in our constitution. Teaching can
regain its earlier noble status in case the quality of teacher education is improved.
Is teaching a profession? A profession may be defined as an occupation which requires
specialized knowledge or advanced learning. The functionalist theory of profession holds
that the professions are those occupations whose members bring a high degree of
knowledge and skills to these social functions which are most central to the well-being of
the society. A professional is one who is able to acquire a fund of knowledge, range of
skills and their application in the service of humanity. The dictionary meaning of
professional are: belonging to a profession; showing the skill of a trained person; doing
specified work etc. for payment and not as a pastime. The criteria for an occupation to be
recognized as a profession includes, among others, the following considerations.
A profession is an occupation, performing a crucial social function.
It requires considerable degree of skill
It involves a concept of social service, though the person earns his living by virtue of
ones profession.

A profession has a clearly defined membership of a professional group.

Every profession has its own code of ethics. This emerges through the thinking and
consideration of service by the professionals themselves. This code is self imposed.
A professional group has its own organization that exerts influence on its members to
observe the code of ethics in their work and also safeguards the interest of the
professional itself.
Role of Ethics in the Professions: The adoption, general observance, and enforcement,
where required, of a professional code of ethics are basic characteristics of all professions.
The formulation and enforcement of a code of ethics has twofold purpose:
1. To derive a set of rules under which its members will be enabled to provide better
service to society and under which the profession can provide better protection for its
members
2. To assume responsibility for assuring the competence of its members and to prohibit
the type of conduct which will bring the profession into disrepute.
Professional Responsibility: The profession carries additional moral responsibilities to
those held by the population in general. The concept of Professional Ethics is partly
comprised of what a professional should or should not do in the work place. It also
encompasses a much greater part of the professionals life.
Professional development refers to skills and knowledge attained for both personal
development and career advancement. Professional development encompasses all types of
facilitated learning opportunities, ranging from college degrees to formal coursework,
conferences and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described
as intensive and collaborative, ideally incorporating an evaluative stage. There are a variety

of approaches to professional development, including consultation, coaching, communities

of practice, lesson study, mentoring, reflective supervision and technical assistance.
The teacher is considered a professional because he is trained to teach and has acquired the
teaching skills. As a professional, the teacher is required to observe certain code of conduct
or norms of behavior. It means that his behavior pattern must be governed by ethical
considerations, popularly known as professional ethics. Ethical conduct of profession
implies the right utilization of ones professional skills towards the fulfillment of
comprehensive human goals and thus meaningfully participating in the larger order
including society and nature.
Professional Ethics makes explicit the teachers role and defines his rights and duties
alongwith the knowledge of what is involved in his virtuous conduct. The Code of
Professional Ethics for teachers provides a framework of principles to guide them in
discharging their obligations towards students, parents, colleagues and community.
Increasedawareness of the ethical principles governing the teaching profession is essential
to ensure professionalism among teachers.
The teacher is the most important factor for the success of an educational program. The
school may have excellent building, well designed curricula, good teaching aids but if the
teachers are not efficient, educational program can never be successful. If a nation wants
quality education as well as a value-oriented society, it must have quality teachers. Thus
there is much of a need of educating the teacher in teachers professional ethics. A
teachers profession demand that he should his duties intelligently, diligently, honestly,
sincerely and uncomplaining to raise his status and prestige in the society. As a
professional the teacher is required to observe certain code of conduct or norms of
behavior because he is supposed to be the role model for a particular society.

Ethics of Teaching: Ethics, as we know, is a science of morality. It is concerned with the

evaluation of human conduct with reference to the supreme ideal of human life. Teaching
is known as a highly noble profession. It requires from its members expert knowledge and
specialized skills so that they are able to perform their functions in society better than the
average person. They are also expected to do their duties with a service motive. They do
their work for earning a livelihood, for making their lives happy and comfortable, but the
ideal of profession for them is public service rather than monetary gain. The extent to
which a particular comes up to these requirements and expectations, will determine the
dignity or standing of that profession in the society. Rightly it has been observed that no
profession can rise above the level of its members. The teaching profession is going to be
as noble as the teachers themselves are. To be noble a teacher, a teacher has to be ethical
and professional in all what he does. While performing his duties, he has to deal with
students, their parents and the community at large. He has also to interact with his
colleagues, the head of the institution, with the Board, or University authorities, his
employers and with the government.
Everywhere, he has to make a choice between right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and
unethical course of action. The teaching profession has enormous opportunities where a
teacher has to be face toface with serious problems of conduct and behavior and in this
context ethics plays a dominant role in this profession. Ethics of teaching is very much
interrelated with Ethics of teacher as a person. It is a positive concept by virtue of which a
teacher shall treat all students with love and affection and be just and impartial to all
irrespective of caste, creed, sex, status, religion, language, place of birth etc. A teacher
believing in the ethics of teaching shall always help the students in their all-round
development, intrinsic values and character. In fact he will do his best to draw out the best

in every student entrusted to him. In teaching he will recognize the differences among
students and seek to meet their individual needs. He will always be particular to encourage
students to formulate and work for high individual goals in the development of their
physical, intellectual, creative and spiritual endowments. An ethical teacher will all the
time realize that the primary obligation of the teaching profession is to guide the learners in
the pursuit of knowledge and skills, to prepare them in the truest way of democracy and to
help them to become happy, useful, socially responsible, and morally strong citizens of the
nation and the world at the large. Such a teacher will make his/her teaching an exciting
affair. The students through such teaching will not only acquire new knowledge, but also
develop a desire to learn and will become a better human being.
Ethics of teaching is a no-limit concept. Ethics of teaching demands that teachers work and
teach for such a positive concept whole heartedly and with utmost sincerity. Ethics of
teaching is based on the rich, ethical inner self of the teacher. It never operates in a
vacuum, however proper functioning and implementation, presupposes an ethical
environment.
The entire system of education revolves around the teacher and the taught. If the teacher
is personally committed to the values and practices them in his own life, it is almost certain
that the students will imbibe the values for which their teacher stands.
As values cannot be taught, the teachers have to ensure that these values are upheld by
the children in the process of schooling. It therefore becomes imperative for the teachers to
function as role models. So the challenge of teacher education is to prepare such teachers
as can take care of holistic education of children. Teacher educators must have a planned,
purposive and conscious approach for inculcation of values among teachers. This would

require value oriented education for teachers so that the teachers we prepare are ethical,
who know professional ethics for their own development as well as for guiding the
youngsters and making the future of nation.
To make teaching Peoples Profession, and to prepare teachers who really can be the ideals
for the society, we need to inculcate Value Education and Professional Ethics
Programs in the Teacher Education Courses. In present Teacher Education Programs there
is not even a discussion about the roles and responsibilities of teachers in making a society.
Code of conduct for teachers exists in our country too, but we need a program to make the
teachers get aware of them during their training courses.