Moral education and the challenge of pre-service professional formation for teachers

Abstract

As teaching, irrespective of its geographical location involves personal relationships, all teachers are in some sense moral educators through the ‘hidden curriculum’, or learning which takes place through the process of being educated. However, teacher education (TE) in many parts of the world is increasingly preoccupied with content and academic attainment for its own sake, rendering it insufficiently attentive to those fundamentally human concerns that characterize teaching and through which teachers educate their students. This paper attends to those elements that professional formation must include to support teachers as moral educators effectively, whether or not they identify as curriculum specialists in this area. I conclude by outlining three specific examples of initiatives which address current deficiencies in practical terms through reclaiming ‘leaky’ spaces within conventional pre-service programmes: ‘Philosophy for Teachers’ (P4T), ‘Shared Space’ and ‘Going Global’.