Introduction

The complexity of teachers’ work is primarily due to the varying social interactions that teachers encounter and are constantly challenged to reflect on as part of their professional practice. They relate to others and regularly deal with highly complex and emotional situations that expose them to both emotionally draining and ethically ambiguous experiences. This is one reason why teachers are vulnerable to burn-out. Teachers’ professional ethics may be understood in social terms, moral justification arising from the question as to whether teachers’ actions are beneficial or harmful to social interaction, the community and, eventually, the democratic society (Mead, 1962; Dewey, 1964). Teachers’ ethical decision making in a socially complex school environment is based on professional values and experiences, manifested eventually in professional judgement in situ. Therefore, a teacher's moral judgement is embedded in social action and interaction, and moral theory implied may not be explicit and distinctive for the observer or for teachers themselves (Miner and Petocz, 2003). In that sense, the authors’ view on teachers’ professional ethics represents a pragmatist view, emphasising situational problem solving and aiming for moral growth at both individual and community level (Dewey, 1964; Alhanen, 2013). The approach of this chapter is congruent with the idea of a synthesis of moral philosophical positions and ethical approaches, and aims at the development of new models and theories (see Chapter One).

The teaching profession differs, for example, from the medical profession in that, in order to be a good professional, a teacher cannot keep a social distance nor maintain a knowledge gap between the students and themselves. On the contrary, the teaching profession is based on the reciprocal effort of the teacher and the students (Colnerud, 2006), and a school is always a community aiming at moral growth. Moreover, problem solving in complex and ambiguous social situations is the core of both effective pedagogy and moral character building (Dewey, 1897). Accordingly, it has been argued that resolving stressful social situations at teachers’ work, for example problems with students, also requires shared professional judgement constituting ethically sensitive and sustainable pedagogy (Hanhimäki and Tirri, 2009). In this chapter, the relationship between teachers’ professional ethics and occupational well-being is explored by looking at the strategies teachers use during burdening episodes that simultaneously challenge their ethical standards and compromise their well-being.