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6.2: Ethical Responsibilities Specific to Adult Educators in Professional Preparation Programs

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    A simple black silhouette of a butterfly with wings spread.

    Let’s Take a Deeper Look

    Adult educators working in professional preparation and training programs maintain a primary responsibility to the development of knowledge, skill, and dispositions in adult learners. This will further one’s ultimate commitment to the well-being, learning, and development of young children. This ECE work includes related and intertwined obligations to support and nurture adult learners and to provide caring and competent professionals to work with young children and their families.

    As to the obligation to help develop caring and competent professionals, those facilitating educator preparation and professional development must look to the Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators, which presents the essential body of knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices required of all early childhood educators working with children from birth through age 8, across all early learning settings. Likewise, the Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement lays out eight key recommendations focused on preparing current and prospective early childhood educators to provide equitable learning opportunities for all children (NAEYC, 2024, p. 12).

    With these supports, and as they fulfill their day-to-day responsibilities focused primarily on the professional preparation and development of adult learners, teacher educators and professional development specialists encounter some unique ethical challenges in the context of a complex network of relationships, including those with sites providing practicum experiences, employing institutions of higher education, and agencies that provide professional development. These entities, agencies, and institutions also have ethical obligations to early childhood education students, teachers, and faculty members, but again, those obligations are beyond the scope of this Code of Ethics.

    Therefore, this section is designed specifically to set forth a conception of early childhood teacher educators’ professional, ethical responsibilities in the context of three relationships with:

    a. adult learners;

    b. sites providing practicum experiences, and

    c. institutions of higher learning, and agencies that provide professional learning opportunities.

    Although this section is rooted in the ethical responsibilities and recurring ethical dilemmas that early childhood teacher educators face in associate and baccalaureate and graduate degree-granting institutions, many of its provisions are equally applicable to early childhood educators who provide access to credentials, nondegree professional learning opportunities, and mentoring to adults in early childhood education and care settings.

    A diverse group of four adults attentively listening in a classroom setting, with one woman taking notes in the foreground.

    PREP 1: ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO ADULT LEARNERS IN TRAINING CLASSES AND HIGHER EDUCATION COURSES

    We shall:

    Code Prep 1.1- Provide learning experiences that are consistent with the best practices for adult learners and that are responsive to the strengths, needs, learning styles, cultures, languages, practice settings, and stages of development of adult learners at all points in their educational journey.

    This page titled 6.2: Ethical Responsibilities Specific to Adult Educators in Professional Preparation Programs is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Laura Daly.