The acquisition of ethical skills in teacher training from the perspective of students

Abstract

The changes to the German school landscape toward a more inclusive educational system is accompanied by a variety of ethical challenges that teachers face when dealing with heterogeneous learning groups, in pursuit of supporting individual students and in helping them realize their educational opportunities and achieve social participation. In inclusion-oriented teacher training, however, the acquisition of ethical skills has so far been neglected. For the first time, student teachers (N=517) were asked to assess the need and relevance of ethical training in an online survey. Ethical skills were considered necessary by the students for a wide range of school tasks; nevertheless, only 16.7% stated that they had acquired the relevant skills in their previous studies. The imparting of additional teacher skills for work in inclusive schools was also experienced as poorly developed. The students wished for an increase in competence and spoke out in favor of the teaching of ethical competences taking on a higher priority in future teacher training courses. They stated that the primary learning and competency goals were to be able to critically reflect on ethical decisions and justify them with arguments in communication with others. Application-related training was clearly preferred to the acquisition of basic ethical knowledge. Overall, the results demonstrate that student teachers do not feel adequately prepared for the ethical dimension of their pedagogical actions in inclusive schools. Their desire for a professional ethics qualification in the initial university education should be taken into account in future course developments.