Character in teaching

British Journal of Educational Studies 55 (4):369-389 (2007)
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Abstract

Qualities of personal character would appear to play a significant role in the professional conduct of teachers. It is often said that we remember teachers as much for the kinds of people they were than for anything they may have taught us, and some kinds of professional expertise may best be understood as qualities of character After (roughly) distinguishing qualities of character from those of personality, the present paper draws on the resources of virtue ethics to try to make sense of the former. In the course of this, it is argued that while the key virtue ethical concept of phronesis orpractical wisdom has been widely deployed to account for aspects of professional teacher expertise, it has also been subject to rather un-Aristotelian interpretation as a kind of situation specific productive reasoning. The present paper seeks to show that it is better employed for understanding character in general and character in teaching in particular. The paper concludes with some observations about the professional education or cultivation of character.

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David Carr
Emory University

Citations of this work

A Genealogical Analysis of the Concept of ‘Good’ Teaching: A Polemic.Steven A. Stolz - 2018 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 52 (1):144-162.
Virtue and Character in Higher Education.David Carr - 2016 - British Journal of Educational Studies 65 (1):109-124.
Virtue, Practical Wisdom and Character in Teaching.Sandra Cooke & David Carr - 2014 - British Journal of Educational Studies 62 (2):91-110.
Revisiting the liberal and vocational dimensions of university education.David Carr - 2009 - British Journal of Educational Studies 57 (1):1-17.

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References found in this work

After Virtue.A. MacIntyre - 1981 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 46 (1):169-171.
Ethics and education.Richard Stanley Peters - 1966 - London,: Allen & Unwin.
Varieties of moral personality: ethics and psychological realism.Owen Flanagan - 1991 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View.Christine Swanton - 2003 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press.

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