From the Back Cover
This volume is the first handbook that brings together cutting-edge international research on teacher ethos from a broad array of disciplines. The main focus will be on research that illustrates current conceptualizations of ethos and its importance for acting effectively and responsibly in and out of the classroom. Research will encompass updated empirical and philosophical work that points to the difference in learning when teaching is practised as a moral activity instead of a merely functional one. Authors are among the world's foremost researchers whose work crosses over from moral education into psychology, neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, pedagogy, and curriculum, drawing on these various fields of research.
Today, more than ever, we understand that teachers, like other professionals, need more than subject-matter expertise for acting responsibly and doing their best in their daily duties. Doing so requires possessing a guiding system of professional ethics, moral positioning, goals, norms, and values - in other words: a professional ethos. While the handbook concentrates on Western domains in the current era, the work will extend to other cultures and times as well. With this comprehensive range of perspectives, the book will be attractive and useful for researchers on teachers and teaching as well as for teacher educators, curriculum designers, educational officials, and, last-but-not-least, anyone who is interested in what makes a good teacher.
This volume is also a tribute to Fritz Oser, a leading scholar in research on ethos, who sadly passed-away during the compilation of this handbook.
Karin Heinrichs holds a professorship in vocational education at the University of Teacher Education in Upper Austria. Since her dissertation she has been working in the field vocational and teacher education focussing on issues of moral judging and acting. After publishing a handbook on moral motivation together with Fritz Oser and Terry Lovat, the researcher focused on motives and values guiding teachers as professionals. One highlight was a small conference on teacher ethos 2016 in Bamberg, that shows the inspiring power of the concept of teacher ethos and motivates to edit this international handbook. In their own research on teacher ethos, Karin Heinrichs and her coauthors focus on a social facet of teacher ethos and on forming appreciative teacher-student-relationships in the classroom as shown in a previous article (Heinrichs & Ziegler, 2018), their contribution in this international handbook as well as in Ziegler´s dissertation that is going to be published in 2021.
Johannes Bauer is full professor of educational research and methodology at the University of Erfurt, Germany. One of his primary research interests is in understanding teacher professionalism, its dimensions, and development across the stages of teachers' professional education and career. Johannes Bauer has published numerous research articles and special issues on these topics in leading scholarly journals, among them Science. The present volume on teacher ethos extends his work on goals, values, attitudes, and beliefs as key aspects of teacher professionalism.
Terence Lovat is Emeritus Professor and former Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Newcastle Australia, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Oxford UK, Honorary Professor, University of Glasgow UK and Adjunct Professor, Royal Roads University Canada. He is a philosopher of education whose main work has centred on curriculum theory and values education and ethics in education. He has a particularinterest in religion and specialises in the theology and history of Islam and Islamic Education. Professor Lovat has many publications on values education and Islam with Springer Nature and edited a handbook on moral motivation with Fritz Oser and Karin Heinrichs with Sense Publishing.
