The Demeter School

Ethics and the Early Childhood Teacher Educator
A Proposed Addendum to the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct
By: Nancy Freeman, Stephanie Feeney,
and Eva Moravcik

The NAEYC Code of Ethics were first used as a link between The National Association For Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE) and the American Associate Degree Early Childhood Educators (ACCESS) to stregthen the goal of providing professional support to teacher educators. More recently though, teacher educators were facing some ethical issues that the Code did not offer guidance for the dilemmas they were facing. It was decided that guidelines must be changed and adapted for the type of situations the teacher educators were facing. By working together with NAECTE and ACCESS and also offering teacher educator input, a proposed addendum was created.

The NAEYC Code of Conduct begins with explaining who should use this Code, how and why. It also has Core Values that teacher educators should commit their selves to. It then goes on to explain how to use the Code, the conceptual framework, and the outlined Ideals and Principles.

Beginning with the Ethical Responsibilities to Children and Families, the Code’s Ideals are to “support the development of competent, caring professionals to work with young children and their families.” It also allows to “provide a diverse workforce that reflects the cultural/ethic backgrounds of the children served in early childhood programs and the communities where they work.” The Code further explains the Principles for children and families. The principles require that teacher educators base teaching on his/her best understanding of practices, that a student may not continue a program if there is evidence of children’s well-being in danger, if the student is not demonstrating capacity to work with children that we make efforts to counsel student out of the field, and we not allow students to continue at a placement if there is no ability to thrive.

Next, the Code outlines the Ethical Responsibilities to Adult Students. Its ideals portray a high standard for all students, but also requires that teacher educators provide positive and rich learning environments. Some of the principles include giving every student a fair chance to succeed, allow additional support where we see it is needed, and honor confidentiality from student to student, remaining professional at all times.

Following the Ethical Responsibilities to Adult Students comes Ethical Responsibilities to Sites Providing Practicum Experiences. Again, the Code offers the ideals, which includes “to foster collegial and collaborative working relationships with educators in practicum settings.” It also stresses the “importance and contributions of field based staff as educators of developing professionals. The principles ask that teacher educators clearly state the “roles and responsibilities and prepare students for practicum experiences.” Finally, it requires that there is a professional obligation to uphold and shall make every effort to uphold.

The Code does continue to outline Ethical Responsibilities and Obligations to Training Agencies and Institutions of Higher Learning, Ethical Responsibilities to Colleagues, and to the Field of Early Childhood Education. The most important though, as teacher educators, are the ones that directly reflect their student’s work with children. These Ethical Codes should be followed when faced with difficult situations or ethical dilemmas.

This article certainly pertains to us students in the field of early childhood education. Though we are not the teacher educators, I feel that we should have this professional support system from our teachers while we are learning to become teachers ourselves. These sets of Ideals and Principles are guidelines that we all should follow, but that we would also expect from our teachers.

When reading some of the Ethical responsibilities, one, which reflects what we are going through right now, is the Sites Providing Practicum Experiences. I feel it is very important not just for our teacher educators, but also for us as well to follow some of these ideals and principles. For example, there should be a professional repor between our mentor teachers, University teachers, and ourselves. This extends to the rest of our Practicum schools. It is very important to uphold that relationship throughout our semesters, treating it as a job interview everyday.

Another principle underneath this Ethical Responsibility is “we shall clearly state roles and responsibilities and prepare students for practicum experiences.” I cannot imagine walking in on my first day of interning and not having a clue of what I was supposed to be doing there. Also, if I was not given a duty throughout the day, I would feel inadequate and unneeded to my mentor teacher. Again, creating that professional report and being able to discuss roles of the job allows us to learn more about the field we will soon be entering. I want my teacher to treat me with as much respect as I treat her and her classroom while she is teaching. This is an important principle for both student and teacher to uphold.

This article was very resourceful when relating it to our work in the field of teaching. I thought about how I would want to be treated by my teachers and also how my teachers would want me to treat them and handle situations. This is just another concept that as teachers, we will be faced with through much experience day to day.

Filed under: General, Primary Years on March 20th, 2007