보육 시설장·교사 윤리강령 개발 연구

Abstract

Child care facilities are authorized institutions serving the public common good. They also bear ethical responsibilities towards children, parents, families, society, and the nation as a whole. These facilities can be described as public organizations, as they receive significant amounts of financial support from the government and are subject to certain responsibilities. An increasing number of child care professionals have voiced the need to improve the ethics of child care professionals. Accordingly, the Korea Edu-Care Association has established a committee to enact a code of ethics for directors and teachers of child care facilities. Against this backdrop, this study focuses on examining the level of work ethics of directors and teachers of child care facilities, and establishing a framework of a code of ethics for child care professionals. Appropriate measures to reinforce such ethics are also presented. The study 1) illustrates the current level of ethics of child care professionals; 2) researches awareness on ethics codes; 3) develops a code of ethics for directors and teachers of child care facilities; and 4) offers recommendations to strengthen child care professionals’ ethics. To this end, relevant documents and written materials were analyzed; surveys were conducted to 286 directors and 481 teachers; and consultative meetings were held.

The following regards the contents of the developed code of ethics. The Preface defines the significance and scope of the code, as well as the attitudes a child care professional should have in abiding by the code. Chapter Ⅰ defines the fundamental rights of young children including the right to life, the right to be protected, the right to development, and the right to participate, and describes the ethical codes that child care professionals should bear in mind in caring for young children. Chapter Ⅱ describes the awareness and attitudes a child care professional should have in order to maintain young children’s communicative relationships with their families. Chapter Ⅲ deals with the ethics codes as they pertain to one’s colleagues. This chapter describes how a director of a facility should treat teachers and how a teacher should treat one’s director and fellow childcare professionals. Chapter Ⅳ presents an outline of ethics as they pertain to society at large. This chapter underlines the fact that the most important responsibility of child caring is to provide high quality service. It also points out that child care facilities should manage their financial affairs in a transparent way and never allow private interests to interfere with the goal of nurturing children, especially since they are being provided with public funds.

The study developed an oath of ethics, which consists of six short sentences that are easy to recite, as part of the code of ethics for child care professionals, and presents it in the last chapter.

The study suggests that the code of ethics should be included in the regular academic curriculum, in all re-training sessions, and workshops for child care professionals, and recommends that child care professionals keep the code close to hand in everyday life as a point of moral and professional reference.