The ESL Teacher as Moral Agent.

This paper reports on a study of the moral dimension of ESL teaching to adults. Morality is conceptualized as the negotiation of judgments about what is good and bad, right and wrong, when these judgments are made in social settings. We argue that ESL teaching, like other forms of teaching, is inherently moral in nature, but that moral values play out somewhat differently in the teaching of non-American adults. Using a theoretical framework based on the work of Jackson, Boostrom, and Hansen (1993), we analyze examples of classroom interaction to reveal the moral substrate of the teacher's words and actions in three specific spheres: rules and regulations, the moral substructure, and expressive morality. The analysis reveals that various features of classroom routines and impromptu exchanges can be seen to have profound moral significance. Furthermore, this significance is shown to be both complex and ambiguous; the moral meanings present in classroom discourse cannot be reduced to simple judgments of right versus wrong.