Measuring the Ethical Levels of Special Education Teachers

Dialogue discussing the moral role of the teacher appears in the educational literature with greater and greater frequency each year. Fenstermachers (1) states, "The teacher's conduct, at all times and in all ways, is a moral matter. For that reason alone, teaching is a profoundly moral activity (p. 133)". This statement reflects the strong sentiments being ex- pressed in the education literature. This is the first study to examine the moral reasoning ability of special education teachers (2). The primary finding of this research is that special education teachers have a significantly lower level of moral reasoning than the norms established for all other reported professions. The results were consistent with previous findings reporting that teachers in general have lower levels of moral reasoning ability as measured by the DIT P-Score of the Defining Issues Test than other professionals.