University faculty and professional ethics in teaching

In an atmosphere of growing apprehension in the European Union about the quality of education, and specifically the quality of higher education, it seems imperative to analyse the attitudes of unversity faculty regarding their ethical capacities. This article centres its interest, in the first place, on analysing the current situation of scholarship on professional ethics among university faculty. The most pressing challenge, present and future, for the university mission consists in fully accepting education in values as the main guiding light for educational activities. Universities, as firm supporters of ethically valuable attitudes, must be cherished by the citizenry and be central to their experience. Secondly, a field investigation is presented whose objective was to find out what university faculty believe to be their ethical function: what they understand by professional ethics in teaching, what importance they give to professional ethics in teaching, and if they feel the need for an ethical code that regulates the teaching profession.