Ethical implications of music education as a helping profession

Abstract

As professionals, music teachers are faced with a range of ethical responsibilities that are tied to the particular benefits that the music education profession, by its very existence, promises to contribute to graduates’ musical abilities and future musical options. However, the ethical dimensions of music education are too often overlooked, both in the preparation of new teachers and in evaluating the practices of in-service teachers. This study provides a philosophical review of key aspects of normative ethics that merit being acknowledged and addressed if music education is to be most fully ethical and music teachers most productively professional. To clarify this ethical responsibility, duty, consequentialist, and virtue ethics are briefly surveyed and common grounds between them are noted in order to recommend a range of criteria for an applied professional ethics of music education. Certain teaching practices from school music and individual lessons are offered as evidence that ethical failings are often involved in many common music teaching practices and that an applied ethics can help music teachers to be most fully professional and effective. Keywords: professional teaching ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, music education.