摘要：This study is planned for recognition of the gap in ethical codes that will compose a reference for teachers and school principals in our country when performing their profession. At the study, the answer was sought for the question of how teachers and school principals “define the professional ethics” as detailed below. Two different focus groups consisting of teachers and school principals were asked how they define the professional ethics and the received written responses were examined by content analysis and the findings were interpreted accordingly. The responses of teachers and school principals related to ethical concepts were gathered under 11 main topics for each focus group. These are “Sense of Duty, Human Sensitivity, Social Responsibility, Honesty, Virtuousness, Equality, Tolerance, Objectivity, Justice, Believing in Supremacy of Law and Non-code”. Later, the expressions gathered under these topics were compared with the ethical concepts in the philosophy literature. According to the findings, it was observed that teachers and school principals do not regard the professional ethics concepts in the same meaning with the ethical concepts in the philosophy literature and that they do not perceive most of the concepts in the literature within the borders of professional ethics and as defined in the literature. Teachers and school principals associated ethics with irrelevant concepts instead of ethics-related concepts due to their lack of ethical knowledge that may prevent their compliance with the "ethical values" when performing their profession. These study findings give rise to thought that teachers and school principles lack some cognitive codes in abstract intellectual discussion and reference issues that would form a base when they face ethical dilemmas.
关键词：Ethics; profession ethics; ethical codes of teachers; ethical codes of school principals.
