MOTAL Artifact - CODE OF ETHICS OF THETEACHING PROFESSION

So relevant today for all professions!

In an era when we are all thinking of ethical behavior, this is just a reminder that teachers are expected to uphold standards of high moral behavior.

This document in our collection was adopted by the California Commission for Teacher Preparation and Licensing in 1977. It was handed out with the teaching credentials as a reminder for teachers to guide their day-to-day interactions with other people by its principles.

Many professionals serve the public and are expected to behave in ways that uphold certain ethical values—protecting their clients (students, patients) from harm (dishonesty, abuse, prejudice, incompetence) and guiding behaviors with the public and with colleagues. These are not methods for how to execute the job but rather emphasize how to act toward others while doing the job.

The above photo shows our document, but because the print is so small and dense, the key points are summarized below.

The Preamble
stresses that the educator believes in the worth and dignity of human beings, recognizing the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, devotion to excellence, and the nurture of democratic citizenship and protecting freedom to learn and teach and the guarantee of equal educational opportunity for all.

PRINCIPLE I
emphasizes seven ways the educator encourages and protects the student.

PRINCIPLE II
describes the educator’s commitment to the public, including dedication to the principles of democratic citizenship, emphasizing support for the profession and the institution and making sure that institutional privileges “shall not be used for private gain.”

PRINCIPLE III
explains commitment to the profession emphasizing honesty and responsibility.

Finally, UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
would result in suspension or revocation of certification. It would involve jeopardy to student welfare, evident malice, serious incompetency or bad judgment, and/or show a consistent pattern of misconduct. 

Not all ethical behaviors are mandated by laws, and transgressions do not always bring about consequences.

A Brief History:
Guidelines and rules for teachers from the mid- to late 19th and early 20th centuries are plentiful. They were drawn up by school districts, towns, individual schools, local and state boards of education, and writers/editors of administrator’s and teacher’s journals. The journals note some related job advertisements and articles such as the benefits of only hiring single men or only hiring married women. The “behavior and ethics” were published in teacher contracts as guidelines or as rules that were used in hiring and firing teachers. Normal Schools, institutions for educating prospective teachers on the "norms" of pedagogy and curriculum, in the Smithsonian collection have samples that would have been included in teacher training. There are several documents in the National Museum of American History Archives Center as well. An early set of “regulations” from Martha Flint’s Charity School Rules, Allesley (Coventry, England) may be only a behavior code for students. The earliest known American rules are dated 1799 from Braintree, Massachusetts, and discuss promoting virtue, piety, justice, humanity, and good order. 

Source: Debbie Shaefer-Jacobs, Associate Curator, NMAH, Smithsonian, email message to MOTAL president and CEO, July 26, 2018

Learn More!
If you would like to learn more, we recommend these resources:
California Teachers Association Code of Ethics
Ethics Unwrapped—McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin (free ethics educational videos)
EdDirect: Ethics in Education
"Beyond the Classroom: The Importance of Ethics in Education" by Laurie Futterman (Miami Herald, March 31, 2015)
EthicsIndia: A Teacher's Code of Conduct

From MOTAL's Collection
This Code of Ethics document was donated by a retired teacher who received it in the 1970s along with her credential. Perhaps some teachers kept the document in a prominent place, but many undoubtedly filed it away with their credentials. Although the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing no longer sends out a Code of Ethics, the California Teachers Association does have a model code of ethics available online.