This research project explores how the term "teacher ethos" can be conceptualised and what teachers at different types of schools understand by it.
Teacher ethos
The research project on the ethos of teachers in the context of a dissertation aims to propose content that could be implemented in teacher education in order to initiate a profession-specific ethos in future teachers. To this end, it essentially seeks to answer the following research questions:
- How is the ethos of teachers conceptualised in academic approaches between 1987 and 2019, in which perspectives is it illuminated and on the basis of which models are the different approaches systematised?
- Does it make sense to define the content of an ethos for teachers with recourse to etymological and philosophical considerations of the word ethos?
- How do Saxon and North Rhine-Westphalian grammar school and secondary school teachers describe their profession-specific ethos?
While the search for answers to the first and second questions uses a hermeneutic approach from a methodological point of view, the third question was dealt with according to qualitative social science principles.
In the synopsis of the results to these three questions, content will finally be proposed that promises to be able to initiate an ethos among future teachers in teacher education.
Research background
In terms of content, it should be specified that in the first part of the project, genuine educational science and moral psychological approaches from the above-mentioned time periods are taken into account; Terhart (1997), Brezinka (1990) or even Döring (1990), Hentig (1992), Bauer (2007), Harder (2014) or Kleemann (2018) but also Oser (1998), Forster-Heinzer (2015) may be mentioned here. The research contexts that stem from these approaches do not only vary. Oser's (1998) approach to the ethos of teachers, which locates it in the horizon of the discourse-orientation of teachers, is to be understood as central here. Especially the different terms that the respective approaches choose for the ethos of teachers provoke the question of its actual meaning.
In order to answer the second question, this project would like to shed light on the common procedure of determining the ethos of teachers on the basis of etymological and philosophical definitions of the word ethos. Using selected linguistic perspectives on the word ethos, the project also asks whether such an approach makes sense. The reflections on Saussure's (1907/1911) dyadic sign system, Richards & Ogden's (1974) semiotic triangle and also on feature semantics (Schumacher & Seidel, 2002) in this part finally lead to the proposal to apply the prototype theory sensu Rosch (1973, 1975, 1987) operationally to teachers' ethos.
Thirdly, this research project asks how teachers describe their profession-specific ethos. The survey instrument, applied in N=53 problem-centred interviews according to Witzel (1985) with teachers from Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, was designed along the guiding principles of prototype theory and focused on capturing elements that represent teachers' ethos and their relationship to each other. A content-analytical evaluation according to Kuckartz (2018) shed light on central as well as less central representatives of the category ethos of teachers.