Teacher's ethos and moral and professional identity

Abstract

In an ideal world, teachers fulfil their role seamlessly, as a vocation (to care for vulnerable others and help them reach their full human potential) and also as a profession (requiring a wide range of knowledges, skills, and virtues, in addition to continuous updating). But in everyday life teachers are not superheroes and things are far more complicated. How clear are contemporary teachers about their identity? What kind of teachers are they, and what kind of teachers do they desire to be? How do they conceive the purpose of their lives, as professional educators? This chapter delves on these questions, at first theoretically, and then based on 20 semi structured interviews with expert educators (aged 30 to 65 years) from public and private Catalonian schools, identified by their peers as "good teachers". The results are analysed according to four categories: personal characteristics, capacities, ethical values and competences. Thus, we find a teacher's profile fundamentally characterized by the desire to care for, motivate, help and inspire pupils. Finally, all the above is discussed in the light of different approaches to character education, emphasizing its implications for the role of teachers as moral leaders.