'Victorian Teaching Profession Code of Conduct' and Noddings’ ideas about the caring relation in teaching.
Teaching Profession Code of Conduct describes a set of principles related to the professional conduct, personal conduct and professional competence expected of a teacher by their colleagues and the community. In the first section of professional conduct, regarding the relationship with learners, one of the principles is that teachers provide opportunities for all learners to learn. Through the lens of Nodding (2012), the attempts to provide opportunities for all learners by listening to the voiced and unvoiced needs of the students and create caring relationship. The failure to listen can cause suffer for students. Therefore, caring and personal relationship is important to avoid the assumed needs and respond the expressed needs of students. Caring is not about affection and empathy; it also involves the cognitive dimension that can help students find what they love in life as key happiness besides expecting a high score in a standardised test. Then, Victorian teachers are encouraged to communicate well and appropriately with their learners. This attempt aligns with Nodding’s perspective, in a caring relationship that after teachers listening and reflecting their students, teachers should respond positively. If teachers cannot communicate their response positively, she/he must still respond in a way that maintains the caring relationship with students.
In the second section, regarding personal conduct, it has an impact on teacher’s professionality. Victorian teachers are expected to be positive role models in education settings and in the community. This principle related to Noddings’ (2012) idea that teachers as moral educators, so opening discussion about moral problems among students in the class and offer some ways to manage those issues is an excellent way to share moral values for students. Nodding (2012) believed that this effort would help to create a climate for caring (P.8). After creating a climate for caring, the teacher expects that moral climate will extend to the wider community. Nodding (2012) argued that the powerful tool to make it happen is the receptive learning that makes someone able to listen, respect other’s perspective from the different social and cultural background and increase their understanding about their belief.
In section three, professional competence, Victorian teachers are knowledgeable in their areas of expertise, committed to pursuing their professional learning, and complete their duties in a responsible, thorough and timely. However, Nodding (2012) argued that teachers should have unusually broad intellectual competence (P.8) to address the variety and legitimacy of the needs expressed by students. In other words, teachers should make connection longitudinally within a discipline and laterally across the discipline as part of their professional competence.
Reading and analysing these two papers, I found that even though the value that underpins the code of conduct are code of ethics-integrity, respect and responsibility and emphasise on the professional relationship between teachers and students, many principles in this document align with the personal relationship and the code of ethics care which is proposed by Nel Nodding. For example, some points show that teachers act the best interest of learners, maintain a professional relationship with learners, parents/carers, and community, behave in ways that respect and advance the profession, act with care and compassion, treat learners fairly and impartially.
Reference:
Nel Noddings (2012) The caring relation in teaching, Oxford Review of Education, 38:6, 771- 781, DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2012.745047
Victoria Institute of Teaching. (2016).The Victorian Teaching Profession Code of Conduct. Retrieved from www.vit.vic.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/35604/Code-of-Conduct-2016.pdf
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