Higher education researchers John Braxton and Alan Bayer address issues of impropriety and misconduct in the teaching role at the post-secondary level. Braxton and Bayer define and examine norms of teaching behaviour: what they are, how they come to exist, and how transgressions are detected and addressed. Do faculty members across various collegiate settings, for example, share views about appropriate and inappropriate teaching behaviours, as they share expectations regarding actions related to research? And what mechanisms are utilized to correct inappropriate behaviour on the part of college and university teachers? The authors' work is based on survey results obtained from faculty members at research universities, liberal arts colleges, and two-year community, junior, and technical colleges. Braxton and Bayer's focus is on undergraduate teaching in four disciplines: biology, history, mathematics and psychology. In their analyses, the authors examine how individual, disciplinary and institutional differences influence professorial behaviour.
In contrast to the more explicitly understood and enforced rules of conduct in research, the authors find that teaching norms are informally defined and observed. They argue that a formal code of ethics for undergraduate teaching would serve the dual purpose of improving undergraduate education and elevating the status of college teaching.