Talking ethics with normative case studies in teacher education

The pressure to quantify and evaluate tangible outcomes of teaching has contributed to an individualised, competency-based understanding of what it means to be a ‘good’ teacher. However, the ethical complexity of teachers’ work and their ability to respond to the multiple, sometimes competing, professional, ethical and contextual obligations that are required of them in their role as ‘teacher’ cannot be fully captured by such measures.

This paper discusses findings of the ‘Talking Ethics’ project, which uses normative case studies to teach professional ethics in teacher education, through dialogic pedagogies and contextualised ethical dilemmas. The study focuses on students in a final year initial teacher education course as they engage in small group discussions to solve ethically complex problems from the case study, ‘High School at the Coal Face: The Cost of Getting What We’re Owed’, which raises challenging ethical questions and competing perspectives of fictional staff, students and community stakeholders regarding the sponsorship of an underfunded public school in a coal mining town by a fossil fuel company.

Drawing on data collected over the first two years of the study, this paper discusses how the use of normative case studies and dialogic pedagogies can support the critical thinking and ethical decision-making skills of teacher education students, and how engaging in this dialogue can support teacher education students to critically reflect on their ethical and professional roles and identities as teachers. We argue that the use of normative case studies and dialogic pedagogies form a creative approach to the teaching of professional ethics in teacher education that may counter narrow, proceduralist alternatives. The findings of this paper have implications for educators designing creative pedagogical approaches that foster critical reflection, dialogue and ethical decision-making in teacher education.