Exploring the Concept of Prophetic Leadership in Teacher Education: Cultivating Ethical Educators

This article scrutinises the phenomenon of prophetic leadership as a transformative pedagogical concept, aiming to generate ethically engaged and socially responsible teachers. Prophetic leadership, characterised by moral imagination, telling the truth, and accountability to justice, offers a counter-discourse to the prevailing technocratic and performative modes of leadership in education. This research focuses on the key ideas of ethical education, moral integrity, critical reflection, and social justice. The article employs a qualitative conceptual analysis methodology based on interdisciplinary scholarship in educational ethics, leadership theory, theology, and critical pedagogy. Instead of fieldwork, the article integrates current theoretical constructs and philosophical arguments to build a consistent concept of prophetic leadership for teacher preparation settings, distinguishing it from generic ethical leadership. Significant characteristics include moral courage, truthfulness, justice, compassion, and spiritual accountability, distinguishing prophetic leadership from ethical leadership through its divine orientation.The article advises that teacher educators, as prophetic leaders, must promote ethical integrity, challenge systemic injustices, and educate preservice teachers in reflective and justice-based practice. Embedding prophetic leadership in teacher education programmes invites a pedagogy that is critically engaged and morally grounded. The findings indicate clearly that prophetic leadership can reorient teacher education to strengthen ethical agency, justice-based professional identity, and moral courage in addressing the challenges of education in our time. Implications require redesigning the curriculum, faculty, and institutional culture to develop educators as transformational, ethical leaders.