Ethical awareness: A transversal element of intercultural competences among early childhood education and care educators
Marco Iori
This article explores one of the core categories that emerged from the Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) study Promoting Ethical Awareness: A Socio-Ethical Education Curriculum in Preschool, namely ethical awareness. Specifically, it examines the relationship between ethical awareness and the intercultural competences of educators working with children in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings. After outlining the research design, the article analyses the intercultural competences required of early childhood educators, highlighting their distinctive features within educational practice. It then discusses ethical awareness as a cross-cutting dimension underpinning these competences and argues that it can foster more reflective, respectful and critically informed educational relationships. Finally, the article suggests that ethical awareness, viewed from an intercultural perspective, should be explicitly incorporated into the educational objectives of Bachelor’s Degree programmes in Educational Sciences and the Integrated Master’s Degree in Primary Teacher Education, thereby contributing to the further development of their academic curricula.
Keywords
Ethical awareness, intercultural skills, Early Childhood Education and Care, ethics in education, CGT.