Comparing Teachers' Codes of Ethics in China, the US, and Australia and Recommendations on Them
Abstract
Teaching is a moral activity and professional practice with ethical implications. There are many ethical issues in this process, and professional ethics is to help educators seek answers to various professional and ethical issues. Teachers' professional ethics is the concrete embodiment of general social or professional ethics in teachers' professional life. It is the sum of behavior norms and morality formed in teachers' educational practice to deal with various relations in education. Teachers' code of ethics is the external form of teachers' professional ethics and the evidence of teachers' professional behavior constraints. Through qualitative content analysis, this article reviews and compares the documents and Chinese and English literature on teachers' codes of ethics in China, the US, and Australia, determines the main differences of teachers' codes of ethics in China, the US, and Australia in five aspects: beginning time, the scope of application, content, establishing institution and process, effectiveness and operability, and provides five recommendations for future policymakers on teachers' code of ethics in China aiming to improve Chinese teachers' professional ethics. This article is more comprehensive at the comparative level than previous studies, providing a broader basis for follow-up researchers. Besides, it directly selected some English literature for analysis. Previous scholars focused on summarizing domestic literature.
Keywords: China, code of ethics, comparison, foreign countries, teaching profession.
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