Personal and interpersonal relationships in education and teaching: A virtue ethical perspective

This paper sets out to explore apparent contradictions between claims or assumptions to the effect that: (i) teaching is a profession; (ii) good teaching involves the cultivation of positive personal relationships with pupils; (iii) professional relationships should be of an essentially formal or impersonal nature. It is argued that the very real contradictions to which teaching as a professional occupation is prone are a function of fundamental tension between the essentially deontic character of professional principle and regulation, and the inherently 'virtue ethical' nature of teaching as a form of pre-theoretical and non-technical moral association. The paper concludes by identifying and offering some comment on three such areas of tension.