The relationship between prospective teachers’ perceptions of ethics and the factors embodying the construction of ethical values

Abstract

Professional ethics refers to desired behaviors for a certain occupation. For teachers, professional ethics reflect pedagogical practices, from curricular content to relations with stakeholders. This study aims to reveal the relationship between the factors playing role in the construction of prospective teachers' ethical values regarding the teaching profession and their perceptions of ethics. This study was designed as a convergent-parallel design which is one of the mixed methods. Prospective teachers in the education faculty at a public university in Turkey participated in this study and were determined according to stratified sampling. Professional Ethics Scale for Pre-Service Teachers developed by Gelmez-Burakgazi and Can (2018) and a questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions developed by the researchers was used as the data collection tools. Quantitative data were analyzed with Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H tests, the qualitative part was analyzed with content analysis and the relationship was explored with simple correspondence analysis. According to findings the reasons to be a teacher, things they hear about professional ethics first, the pre-university process, undergraduate courses, and academicians' role are the things that help to build professional ethics. This reminds us the education process for all teaching levels is important for gaining ethical values.