Empirical Verfication of an Elementary Teachers’ Ethical Decision Making Model Author:李宜玫 Yi-Mei Lee, 林世華 Sieh-Hwa Lin
Research Article
The purposes of this study were to integrate three perspectives of moral psychology toward the delineation of an Elementary Teachers’ Ethical Decision Making Process Model and empirical verification of the model using structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the effects of sensitivity toward environment cues, characteristics of teachers’ responsible behaviors, and ethical judgment on behavioral intent. Participants were 541 teachers (159 male and 382 female) who watched a video depicting two ethical decision scenarios in educational settings. Ethical sensitivity was assessed in relation to teachers’ deliberation of the risk of the situations and reactions of people in the scenarios. They also indicated their choice in relation to ethical judgment and behavioral intent, as well as completed a self-report questionnaire that assessed motivation, personality characteristics, self-reflection and responsible behavior. Results of the study indicated that:: (a) sensitivity toward environmental information and cues has the largest effect on ethical decision making, which is consistent with cognitive schema model. (b) Characteristics of teachers’ responsible behaviors exerted the next largest effect, which supported the character integrity perspective. (c) However, the hypothesized mediated effects of three types of ethical judgments was not supported, although a partial but direct effect on behavioral intent was found.