The moral and ethical dimensions of language teaching

Abstract

Much has been written about teacher thinking and knowledge that underpin teacher behaviour in the classroom. Until the 1990s considerably fewer writers considered the moral and ethical dimension of teaching. This article reports on a study that analysed six Languages Other Than English (LOTE) teachers' reports about their teaching. Under the broad category of caring as a moral dimension of teaching, three major moral/ethical concerns were identified: (1)the concern that everyone has a worth, (2) the concern that students should not hurt each other's feelings, and (3) the concern that students should learn to tolerate differences. These concerns enveloped the teachers' stated goals of LOTE teaching and framed their behaviours in the classroom. While the results can only be related to these six LOTE teachers, this study, nevertheless, raises an interesting question of whether teachers of other subjects manifest the moral dimension of their teaching in ways different from those reported here.