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Early Education is a strategic area for individual and social development. Kindergartens are spaces for ethical practice, where teachers make decisions for the children they are responsible for. The major aim of this theoretical study is to propose approaches to ethical decision-making in working with young children, with the role of improving self-reflection for teachers and future teachers. The secondary aims of the study are: 1. To identify the values and ethical guidelines for ethical-decision in Early Education; 2. To establish core concepts for approaching ethical issues, including the use of ethical codes; 3. To propose case studies in order to stimulate teachers' ethical reflection. A set of basic ideas of professional ethics in Early Education is presented below: (a) The Early Education profession is primarily an emotional, relational and ethical practice. Teachers bring to school their personal values, from the places where they live. (b) In order to make ethical decisions teachers need to understand the difference between the professional ethics area and the personal area. (c) Teachers should not confuse personal dilemmas with professional ethics dilemmas. Our study can provide guidelines for developing a professional learning protocol to support teachers' ethical reasoning. Reflection on issues of ethical practice exposes teachers and future teachers to various perspectives, expanding their knowledge of children and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of training teachers is an issue of great interest in many countries throughout the world. In this study there is highlighted the growing importance of initial teacher training for future language teachers, which implies the need for identifying the areas of change. The aim of the research consists in exploring the perceptions of preservice teachers regarding the areas of changes at the level of the initial training programmes. A total of ninety-five stratified selected pre-service language teachers participated in this study. We have explored the following research questions: A. What are the areas of change in the field of pedagogical competences development at the level of initial training programmes in the perception of future language teachers?; B. Are there any significant differences between the perceptions of pre-service language teachers regarding the areas of change in the field of pedagogical competences development at the level of initial training programmes according to their year of study, specialization, and age? A qualitative methodology employing semi-structured interviews was used to allow flexibility in the exploration of the conceptions of pre-service teachers on the areas of change at the level of initial training programmes. The study is relevant and valuable by offering first-hand signalling of the “areas of changes” proposed as a result of their own representations, with the purpose of developing innovative initial training programmes, with positive long-term effects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore three different themes within university teacher plagiarism via the use of a systematic literature review: definition of concepts, the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies and university teacher plagiarism and the attitudes and perceptions regarding university teacher plagiarism. The motivation of the research is related to the fact that there is a very comprehensive literature on plagiarism in general, but rather limited literature on university teacher plagiarism. Teachers are role-models; hence, their actions and attitudes are often assumed by students. The data composing the present literature review were extracted from one of the databases very frequently used in Romania: Springer Link. A literature search in this database was performed using the following keywords: "teacher plagiarism" and "researcher plagiarism ". We found that the concept of university teacher plagiarism does not exist as such, and authors support a unique delimitation, irrespective of context. The least represented domain is that related to ICT and university teacher plagiarism, which urges for an immediate approach to this topic by means of empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intellectual and academic legitimacy of Comparative Education has been a critical issue in the international debate for a long time now. The fragility of the field is well known and understood. Despite frictions and misunderstandings, there are academic and professional structures robust enough to sustain the identity of the field in numerous countries on all continents. In Romania, there are no systematic concerns related to Comparative Education as an epistemologically autonomous field. Moreover, we cannot even argue for the existence of enough academic infrastructures to support Comparative Education as a research direction. But as countries in the world cannot afford to ignore global trends in terms of economy, technology, culture, Romania cannot disregard developments of educational policies and practices in Europe and throughout the world. Globalization and interconnections between contemporary societies raise common challenges for education systems in the world, and these are eventually reflected in national academic discourses. The major objectives of the present chapter are the following: (1) proposing an inventory of causes that led to the delay in establishing Comparative Education as an autonomous research field in Romania and (2) identifying progresses and accumulations that could lead to establishing Comparative Education as an explicit rather than tangential research field in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we have established a series of theoretical and empirical objectives. Theoretically, the research intentions were the following: a. defining ethical dilemma in education; b. identifying the distinct elements of an authentic educational ethical dilemma; c. distinguishing between ethical dilemmas and other types of dilemmas. In the empirical part, the major objective was to identify the ethical dilemmas and strategies involved in the Romanian teachers' process of making ethical decisions. Empirically, our major objectives consisted in investigating teachers' ethical dilemmas and in the context of ethical decisionmaking. The participants were 41 subjects, Romanian teachers, and the research methods used were the focus group and the written report. The study undertaken enabled the formulation of three major conclusions: 1. the teachers identified five professional themes where they believe that values are violated or where ethical dilemmas occur: the relationship with parents, leadership, the relationship with students and social justice issues; 2. most of the dilemmas identified by the teachers are not authentic ethical dilemmas, but pseudo-dilemmas, professional dilemmas or challenges for professional courage; 3. as decision strategy, teachers indicate, first and foremost, single-handed orientation and only after that the delegation to other fora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching is an occupation with little visible rewards. Rarely are teachers appropriately repaid for their work, exceptional results and creativity. The debate on teachers' wages is striking by the variety of recommendations and strong claims about the consequences of action or inaction. The objectives of this theoretical study are three: 1. Analysis of the international context regarding merit pay for teachers; 2. Investigation of the pros and cons of granting merit pay; 3. Outlining recommendations on giving financial incentives for teachers. The research findings are: 1. Empirical research on teacher pay and its impact on children's performance is relatively limited and contradictory; 2. The arguments in favour of giving performance-related teacher compensations focus more on the importance of rewarding individual educators whereas the arguments against it focus on the occurrence of opportunistic behaviours and destruction of collegiality. 3. The success of a merit pay scheme depends on careful and cooperative planning, involving all the parties affected, so that the plan may be affordable, acceptable by teachers and adaptable to school needs. In an era marked by the widespread belief that improving schools depends on the performance of teachers, financial incentives remain an essential political challenge for school reformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge-based society means well educated citizens who are able to know what to do with the knowledge they've got, make quick and good decisions, solve problems, face challenges and unexpected events in their lives, master their emotions, continuously adapt themselves and know how to learn, citizens who are tolerant, autonomous, creative, flexible, responsible, collaborative and environmentally friendly. The Romanian pupils' results at PISA 2012 survey show that Romanian school still needs a lot of improvement in order to prepare students for the modern world. That is why we believe that the Theory of Multiple Intelligences would be a well-suited approach for helping teachers in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caring is fundamental for all human activities, including professional ones. The concept that describes most accurately the care offered in the public domain is ethical care. Despite the differences between the practices of the two domains, medicine and teaching, there are also similarities from the perspective of the act of caring. Both are cognitive, technical and ethical, relational activities. In formal education, the principle of care can be related to the following aspects of the didactic process: teacher-child relationship, the management of school groups, the choice of teaching strategies, construction of the curriculum. In medicine, the value of care is most often analyzed from three perspectives: its introduction in the curriculum, the conduct of research from the perspective of all the parts involved in the medical act (medical staff and patients) and building an attitudinal and behavioural portrait of the care bearer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is that of delineating and analyzing the framework for the training of Romanian mother-tongue teachers starting from the distinction between various levels of performing their training. The contemporary educational, cultural, economic, and political context (national as well as international) has imposed a new view upon the issue of teaching Romanian as mother tongue. Thus, we build the theoretical body of the paper on the following premises: a) the definition of the concepts of mother tongue and training of mother-tongue teachers; b) the analysis of the context of achieving their training in the communist and post-communist period in Romania; c) the reforming changes from theory to practice. The approach to this issue will be continued through exploratory studies focused on the identification of the change areas of the initial training programmes for forming mother-tongue teachers. The scope of these areas ranges from the innovation of curricular areas, to curricular policies and training specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global aim of the present research is to investigate those types of serious, visible norm deviations of Romanian teachers from all the levels of education, which have made the subject of discussion during meetings of the Teachers' Councils as a form of peer evaluation and collegial control. The specific purposes of the research are: analysis of the didactic status of teachers who commit deviations; identification of the agents reporting the deviation; classification of frequent norm deviations of teachers according to their nature and source; analysis of the administrative sanctions frequently applied following the deviations. The research method was the questionnaire, elaborated precisely for the purpose of achieving the research objectives. A total of 91 Romanian teachers participated in the study. Overall, the results indicate eight categories of deviations, the most frequent and relevant are violence against students, absenteeism and classroom management problems. The persons denouncing the deviations have included students, teachers and principals, and the penalties of deviations have mainly been pedagogical recommendations and salary cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher evaluation is a topic of major interest in the world, the main reasons being to know and improve the teachers' performances and, implicitly, those of the educational systems. A first objective of this paper is to draw a synthetic portrait of the trends in teacher evaluation at a global level, highlighting their main perspectives. Thus, there are three clear directions in the educational policy of teacher evaluation: the elaboration of reference standards, the introduction of collaborative structures and the evaluation of teachers according to the students' performances. The second objective is to perform a radiography of the Romanian teacher evaluation system and compare it to the orientations identified at the global level. To this effect, we shall analyse the practiced evaluative forms and procedures, as well as some legislative renewals in the Romanian teacher evaluation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the planned learning experiences, named curriculum, are examined showing an essential dimension - the ethical dimension. Man is endowed with the capacity to make moral judgments, to aspire to the value of Good. It is natural to ask what teachers can do so that the values proposed by the curriculum be ethically relevant. We will examine the relationship between ethics and each component of the curriculum - objectives, contents, instructional relations, evaluation - focusing more on the teacher's activities, on the practical, concrete results of his labour. In conclusion, we say that moral values need to be reflected in teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]