Ethics and Preprofessional Practices in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This article results from the experience obtained in the preprofessional practices: labor practices and community service in the Early Childhood Education Career. This article is a theoretical essay on the need to incorporate ethics in the educational processes of future teachers and the importance of ethical learning in university classrooms. The objectives are: to identify the importance of ethics in education and to propose strategies for the ethical learning of Early Childhood Education students. For the development of this essay, a bibliographic review of articles published in impact journals, such as Redalyc, SciELO, Ibero-American Education, and Codes and Regulations on early childhood care, was carried out. Early childhood is the essential stage of the human life cycle; in this phase, psychomotor, cognition, language and communication, and socioemotional skills development occurs. Ethical values must be present in every educational process. Therefore, training competent teachers with solid knowledge in early education and ethical and moral values that contribute to the children’s development and well-being is necessary. Students must master the contents of the profession and must have an ethical formation to act coherently in their personal and professional life.

1. Introduction

The twenty-first-century society enjoys significant benefits from advances in science, research, and communication technologies, which have improved lifestyles. Humanity has an instantaneous transmission network of information, ideas, and value judgments in all areas. These changes should facilitate mutual understanding and collaboration among all people; cultural barriers should no longer exist, much less geographical ones. However, the gap of misunderstanding, injustice, and the desire to expand power is present in all their cruelty. On the other hand, education has been commercialized; human beings are not trained with ethical and moral values, and knowledge acquisition is promoted for profit. This is reflected in the choice of university careers since the youngest people choose courses that allow them to have economic gains and social status in the very near future. In contrast, humanistic careers such as education are undervalued, with minimal demand.

This reality leads to a critical reflection on the role of education in the society of the twenty-first century. It is impossible to stop violence, the destruction of man by man, if we continue with the same perspective, we have had up to now. In this sense, Álvarez [1] states that it is necessary to carry out an ethical screening that addresses the values that today, more than ever, are in crisis; a process that must involve reflection and diagnosis of the situation necessary to steer a new course.

The ethical and moral values crisis in today’s society is evident. It is a problem that should concern everyone, especially education professionals, who transmit skills, knowledge, and values required for coexistence and social cohesion in academic practice and the classroom context. In this same sense, Ovelar [2] says that ethics unfolds in the way of life that is felt in the family, community, school, and society of which one is a part. Ethical and moral values are related to the belief system and the forms of organization of the community or social group. Hence each society has its values and norms system that guide people in their civic and personal lives.

From an ethical point of view, educators can only ask themselves about the purpose of their actions when putting them in front of the student. It is a matter of considering the child as the subject, not the object of education. Ronda [3] maintains that in teaching practice, there is a direct and constant relationship between educators and students; so that this relationship does not violate human dignity and the participants’ rights, codes of conduct, principles, and values that favor the development of teaching and learning processes oriented to the integral formation of students and the harmonious exercise of the profession are needed.

This article emphasizes the ethical performance that early childhood education career’s students must to have in the development of the pre-professional internships, as a prerequisite for obtaining a bachelor’s degree. In this context, the questions guiding this research are: Should the behavior and attitude of students be permeated by ethical values? Should moral and ethical issues be taught in teacher training?

Considering that university students are adults or are finishing the stage of adolescence, the ethical issue is relevant, being necessary to include in the professionals’ training some ethical and moral postulates. This work aims to identify the importance of ethics in developing preprofessional practices in the Early Education career and propose strategies to promote the ethical learning of university students. It is necessary to guarantee a space for ethical learning based on each person’s individuality through the analysis of principles and counter-values and that they assume and elaborate their own matrix of values. In this context, it is necessary to reflect on the lack or deficit of ethical principles in the educational field, specifically in developing preprofessional practices.

This paper is a reflective essay focusing on the author’s ideas and reflections on the importance of formal education for children from 0 to 6 years old and the need for ethics and moral values in the preprofessional practice’s development. It is necessary to clarify that these ideas and reflections are based on UNICEF research, the Political Constitution of Ecuador, the Organic Law of Education, and the Code of Childhood and Adolescence, among other contributions of significant research on this topic. For this reason, a bibliographic review was conducted in scientific databases such as Redalyc, SciELO, Google Scholar, Scopus, ResearchGate, and the Catholic University of Cuenca library, in which scientific articles, and others, were located. Considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the former included relevance, scientific novelty, pertinence, and time of publication. Information that did not help answer the scientific question, research questions, exhaustive analysis of the variables under study, and fulfillment of the objectives were excluded.

2. Relevant concepts

In the body or core of the essay, the deductive method was applied to follow a common thread in the writing of this essay. Starting with the approach to ethics and education as a general topic, then describing the importance of initial education, the legal foundations and public policies of preschool education, and the meaning and importance of the preprofessional practices of the early education career.

2.1 Ethics and education

From an ethical perspective, the teacher’s work is very responsible in any culture. According to [4] Hernández, education generally refers to the transmission and learning of cultural techniques, their use, production, and behavior, through which individuals live in society and can give reason to others and themselves. In this study, education is considered a process of human formation in the intellectual, motor, socio-affective, and linguistic areas, which is reflected in the configuration of the individuals as a free entity capable of making their own decisions and developing competencies that allow them to influence and contribute to the collective social development of a people, of a country.

The relationship between ethics and education is direct; hence values are present in every educational process. Ovelar [2] affirms that ethics is present educational praxis and imbues it with meanings, values, actions, and even contradictions, questions, and uncertainties that beset this educational practice and move it according to the historical moment. Considering that values influence every educational process, teachers must receive ethical training, not as a subject in the curriculum but as a transversal axis that permeates all profession-related behaviors; there should be a teacher’s code of ethics. The teachers’ role is complex and of enormous responsibility because their professional performance positively or negatively influences the children’s and adolescents’ education. The teachers are in direct and permanent contact with their students at school; in that space, they have to be a reference for their appropriation of values. Values are not taught through speeches, slogans, or sanctions; they are acquired through life experience by modeling people in their environment: parents, teachers, peers, friends, and authorities.

Today’s society is violent, corrupt, oppressive, and dehumanized; most individuals have lost the value of life and the sense of transcendence. In this scenario, discourse and the generation of punitive laws will not solve the problem. Education permeated by ethics and morality can recover the sense of the human being and contribute to the cessation of the barbaric actions of men and women who, from an early age, are already involved in hired killings, drug trafficking, delinquency, and other vices that degrade the dignity of the human being.

2.2 Early childhood education

The Incheon Declaration [5] states that it must be ensured that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood care, development services, and preschool education so that they are prepared for primary education. UNICEF [6] Quality preschool education is one of the best investments available to promote future success and those who will follow in their footsteps. Early education is essential because it benefits children, their families, and society. Children develop skills and acquire competencies to function in their environment at this educational level. Likewise, quality early education ensures the development of critical thinking, creativity, and resilience—skills demanded by today’s job market.

UNICEF [7] maintains that all girls and boys must receive opportunities to exercise their rights and develop to their full potential. Investing in early childhood is vital to reducing inequality, breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty, and promoting more significant gender equity. The Information System on Education Trends in Latin America [8] states that early education has a clear pedagogical intentionality. It provides holistic or comprehensive training, covering social, affective-emotional, cognitive, motor, and expressive aspects. Complementarily and intertwined, it includes a purpose linked to constructing the necessary bases for the continuity of learning and school trajectories in basic or primary education.

2.3 Legal foundations for early education

The Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador 2008. Art. 46. Section 1. Care for children under 6 years of age that guarantees their nutrition, health, education, and daily care in a framework of integral protection of their rights. Code of Childhood and [9] Adolescence. Children and adolescents have the right to quality education. This right includes adequate access to early education from 0 to 5 years of age. Therefore, flexible and open programs and projects will be developed appropriately for learners’ cultural needs.

2.4 Preprofessional internships

The preprofessional practice objective in the curricular organization departments of the Early Childhood Education Career is to apply theoretical knowledge to practice as a methodological axis that will make it possible to know the socio-educational reality of their family and community environment to intervene in it, whose learning will influence the knowledge of future early childhood education professionals. Its applicability will be achieved through direct approaches to the community to diagnose the problems and difficulties to be addressed. For this purpose, formative research will be developed as an active strategy, supported by elaborating educational solution projects.

In the preprofessional internship environment, students can face real situations that demand responsible, critical, reflective, and creative actions that contribute to problem-solving and the well-being of the people with whom they work. Acosta and Hernández [10] state that preprofessional practice contributes to the consolidation of the quality and integrity of the future professional by establishing reflexivity processes that direct the career’s intrinsic processes. In this same line of thought, Terranova [11] considers the preprofessional internship to be a formative process of knowledge, skills, and values of permanent transformation. This is based on the subjects’ reflection as a way to guide their practical action. To do this, the students face a set of complex situations, which present them with new challenges to assess the importance of their future profession.

Students in the early childhood education program carry out their preprofessional internships in any public, private, or mixed educational entity. Considering the areas of intervention at the different levels, students must comply with the curricular planning and development of activities based on: the national curriculum guidelines, current Organic Law of Intercultural Education (LOEI for its Spanish acronym) norms, LOEI regulations, and the preprofessional practice programs of the career. In conclusion, preprofessional internships help students develop interpersonal skills not taught in a classroom.

2.5 Preprofessional practice and ethics in the early childhood education career

After emphasizing the definition and nature of preprofessional internships carried out by students in the various degree programs of higher education institutions, we will focus on the ethical and moral values that should be present in the exercise of these internships. In an education degree, as in all other careers, preprofessional practices must be carried out following the profession’s ethical principles. It is not enough for students to comply with the number of hours of practice included in the curricular plan of their course; they must make of them a situation to develop cognitive, linguistic, technical, and instrumental competencies, and social skills, among others.

In training education professionals, the internalization of values and ethics should be promoted so that the teaching practice respects the students’ dignity and rights, tending to the welfare and development of skills and competencies that enable personal improvement and contribution to the social group. Hence, in preprofessional practices in the Early Childhood Education Career, ethics should be a transversal axis that permeates all the activities developed in the teaching-learning processes.

The three ethical principles that are connatural to a career in early childhood education are respecting the dignity and rights of all people. Respect for dignity implies recognizing that everyone has the same right not to be discriminated against because of race, social status, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. In this sense, the children’s learning style and pace of learning must be respected in participating in programmed activities and tasks. Integrity relates to honesty, truthfulness, accuracy, and objectivity in communications, as the confidentiality of each child’s personal information. Scientific and academic responsibility to society is the principle of ethics that contributes to understanding people’s value of themselves and others. This knowledge should be used to promote the individual’s and society’s self-improvement. The values associated with this principle are the responsibility to increase scientific and professional knowledge, which contribute to didactic and pedagogical performance and society’s general welfare. However, adequate deliberation is required to make decisions oriented to the child’s integral development and well-being in applying ethical principles to concrete situations.

2.6 Ethical learning in university classrooms

It is common knowledge that in all areas, most people seek their well-being at the expense of harming and trampling on others’ dignity and rights. There is also a generalized clamor that society must change because there is no longer enough corruption, violence, femicide, crime, exploitation, discrimination, and other evils that, if one wanted to list them all, it would be too long and tedious.

Identifying the importance of ethics and morality in the actions of human beings and the need to live in a society where people can live with dignity and security, supporting each other to achieve individual and collective well-being, is a first step toward change. What and how can we do so that children and adolescents do not become victims of all this horror and do not repeat the evil deeds of their parents, neighbors, friends, and authorities?

Since its beginnings, the university has trained professionals and specialists in all areas of knowledge. Today, in the twenty-first century, the university is also responsible for training competent professionals who contribute to solving society’s problems. This training must be related to the significant problems of twenty-first-century society. On the one hand, the communication and information society demands professionals who know their discipline, learn autonomously, build their knowledge with the capacity for discernment, apprehend some contents, and unlearn others that no longer contribute value in this new scenario. Furthermore, the integral formation of the professional is also a university task.

Indeed, to integrate the ethical dimension into university education, there must be an effective articulation between the student’s and teacher’s deontological education and the student’s ethical education. According to Martínez et al. [12], the deontological training of the student deals with regulating responsibilities expressed through precepts, rules of behavior, and moral norms. The teacher’s deontology refers to the set of duties within the profession and the student’s ethical training. Deontological training for all professionals is necessary but not sufficient. Many professionals have explicit knowledge of their assignments; they know what they must do in certain situations and circumstances, yet they do not do it or do the opposite of the rules or obligations.

In higher education, all professional careers have a subject of ethics in their curricula that provides students with knowledge of professional values and the appropriation of ethical principles inherent to the profession. It is good that there is a subject that addresses everything concerning values, morals, and ethics. However, it is necessary to move from knowledge transmission to the necessary skills and abilities development to serve as tools to meet the demands of a difficult and diverse society where it is necessary to make decisions with responsibility, autonomy, and freedom for the complex problem-solving that may arise in the exercise of the profession. In this line, Martínez et al. [12] state that it is a matter of attending to the two sides of the same coin: professionals training who build their knowledge autonomously and strategically, and citizens training who act in a responsible, accessible, and committed manner.

Ethical education is not only about accumulating scientific and humanistic knowledge but also about learning experiences, developing personal plans, and participating in shared projects, where students can accept and welcome others. Therefore, the university context must be formative, and the learning environment must be favorable for ethical learning to occur. The elements that promote this learning are the interaction between teacher and student, also an open and honest dialog. The contents must have a high degree of significance for the students and promote the analysis, reflection, and evaluation of cases, facts, and problems related to the contents of the profession.

According to Martínez et al. [13], ethical and moral learning at the university should include welcoming learning, learning responsibility, professional learning, and knowing how to be a university student. Welcoming learning refers to the interpersonal relationships between students, teachers, authorities, and administrative and service personnel. It is a welcoming relationship based on truth and knowledge; this relationship takes place within the framework of respect. Learning responsibility is a formative intention incorporated into the academic curriculum corpus and academy culture [14]. University students must know their role in constructing a fairer and more equitable society and know that someone needs them. Professional learning is related to taking a position from the knowledge that gives meaning to a professional field and from the culture. The students should ask themselves: What kind of teacher do I want to become? If there is no empowerment with the profession one intends to develop, it is unethical to obtain a professional degree. Finally, learning to know oneself as a university student refers to the fact that the university student, in his/her behavior, must be a reference of an educated person, a source of good judgment for his/her community, an example of good manners to behave, to be respectful, and supportive of others, and more.

In order to achieve ethical learning in university classrooms, it is necessary to establish the aims and objectives of ethics in the construction of the professional’s personality. That is, spaces and conditions must be created that guarantee personal training in both its individual and social dimensions so that the person acquires a higher level of satisfaction and equity in exercising his or her profession. It is proposed to create different subject conditions in the classes so that students can appreciate a set of values, recognize and reject anti-values or counter-values, and develop their own values, allowing them to act coherently in their personal and professional lives.

Learning scenarios are not about implementing life models or ethical and moral values that must be learned or imitated. Instead, they are about proposing accurate models or case simulations related to the subject learning in a way that allows them to reflect, reason, and draw their own conclusions. Likewise, the student’s involvement in collective projects that demand self-control and self-regulation leads to developing collective values, enriches and reaffirms personal principles, and contributes to professional commitment.

Consequently, in addition to what was said above, the university must incorporate citizenship training to achieve ethical preparation since this focuses on renewing strategies that give citizens opportunities to assume their roles in society responsibly. This approach to the subject must be creative, dynamic, and based on life experience. To this end, active methodologies, such as problem-based learning, should be used. This is important because the professionals of the twenty-first century operate in a changing, insecure, and challenging scenario that demands decision-making that affects their own individual and the whole collective.

3. Conclusions

Ethics in the preprofessional practices of the Early Childhood Education Career is an indispensable component of the student’s integral formation. Teachers are responsible for educating children from 0 to 6 years old—the essential human life cycle stage. It is a moral duty to favor motor, cognitive, socio-affective, language, communication, and autonomy development.

The preprofessional internship must be carried out with responsibility, respecting dignity and safeguarding each child’s rights. In practicing, students must act honestly, truthfully, and objectively in communications, keeping the information concerning children, their families, and the educational institutions where the practice is performed confidentiality. Likewise, they should be concerned with increasing and updating their knowledge and training in using strategies and techniques for teaching and learning. Therefore, they can offer a quality service and achieve a pedagogical and didactic performance that gives them well-being, self-esteem, and a contribution to the community.

It is advisable for ethical learning to propose accurate models or case simulations related to the subjects’ learning to allow them to reflect, reason, and draw their own conclusions and also to involve students in collective projects that demand self-control and self-regulation that entail collective principles development, enrich and reaffirm personal values, and contribute to professional commitment.