The teachers' pedagogical fiduciary duty to their students

In education, the teacher's fiduciary duty to their students has been usually considered within the context of legal or ethical studies. In this article, I consider the notion of the teacher's fiduciary duty from a pedagogical point of view as the obligatory relationship that shapes guidance, advisement, and organization of the educational processes. I discuss what the fiduciary duty in general and the pedagogical fiduciary duty in specific is. I examine the three major arguments against the teachers' pedagogical fiduciary duty to their students coming from educational paternalism, institutionalism, and self-directed education. Similar to the legal and medical field studies of the fiduciary duty, I bring and analyze several problematic cases of the teachers' pedagogical fiduciary duty to their students, involving a teacher's unsolicited guidance, non-fiduciary fiduciary, autopaternalist fiduciary, and legitimatizing the student's voice. Based on these cases, I abstract five types of self-education. Finally, I contemplate how much the teacher-student pedagogical fiduciary relationship is dialogic and democratic.