Physical Education Cooperating Teachers’ perspectives on professional ethics

Abstract

The teaching profession, being a profession that above all requires human interaction, is inseparable from ethics (Castilho, 2018). Initial teacher training is recognised by its impact in professional development of pre-service teachers, and cooperating teachers are fundamental in this stage. The ethical-professional attitude is transversal to all knowledge related to initial education. Therefore, it is important to study the perspective of cooperating teachers regarding professional ethics. This article presents case studies concerning Portuguese physical education cooperating teachers’ perspective of pre-service teachers’ professional ethics. We followed a qualitative methodology and data was collected from a semi-structured interview with 5 questions. It was interviewed 5 cooperating teachers of the master’s degree in Teaching Physical Education in the University of Coimbra. Data was analysed through thematic content analysis (Bardin, 2011) and revealed that cooperating teachers focus mainly on the personal conduct shown by pre-service teachers. These results reveal a reductionist perception of the notion of professional ethics and the association of professional ethics to personal ethics.