Week 29: Personal and Professional Ethics

Identifying your personal ethics and Understand your professional ethics 

For me both my personal ethics and professional ethics are very much intertwined. As a teacher I interact with students, my school colleagues and a number of community groups on a daily basis. My life is very much on display and the parents of students I teach make judgements about my actions or inactions whether their interactions with me are during a school based activity or because I am engaging with them through my own children at the park on the weekend. 

Image retrieved from: http://www.rsrevision.com/Alevel/ethics/contents/

I enjoyed this cartoon by Bill Watterson. When I started I was only a few years older than the 17 year old students in my senior physics class. I still remember their shocked faces as I bumped into them one night at a Tool concert! I find that over time my priorities, beliefs and sense of responsibility have shifted as I have gained more teaching experience, held positions of greater responsibility and a family of my own. Navigating the ethics involved can at times be quite challenging as parents often hold different viewpoints from each other, the school and their own daughter/sons. I am increasingly aware that a decision that maybe ‘right’ for one party involved can negatively impact another. The use of social media can also add layers of complication, escalate small incidences into large ones or add a level of permanency to situations that might otherwise be quickly resolved.

So what is the code of ethics for teachers?

• Autonomy to treat people with rights that are to be honoured and defended
• Justice to share power and prevent the abuse of power
• Responsible care to do good and minimise harm to others
• Truth to be honest with others and self.

Are the four principles outlined in the Code of Ethics for Certified Teachers (Education Council, (n.d)). These may seem simple rules to live by but there are many circumstances in which they are tested primarily because as a teacher I have responsibilities to more than group of people which can create tensions. For example parents asking for information about their child, sometimes this is in regards to session with the school councillor or increasingly with the number of split families that parents’ access to information about their child is contested though legal channels which often the school is unaware of until the child’s teacher has been put in a difficult position of have already shared the information. In resolving tensions to me the most important thing is to have the student/learner’s best interest as the primary concern, take time to reflect, discuss and consider all points of view. Social Media.

Social media

I believe ethics involved in social media a one of the biggest challenges that schools currently face. Even this blog is causing ‘ethical tensions’ for me. I am proud of the school I teach at its’ students I would love to include relevant photos/videos of my students and their activities but as it is my own site feel I would need to get permission from of the students portrayed. Is this truly a good forum to be openly honest and reflection about my teaching when it is a publicly accessible site? My school is addressing social media through the net safe programme. We have ICT use agreements and consent forms for using students’ photos on websites etc. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have problems. This year we revisited our ICT agreement. The concern was that students simply signed it without any real understanding of the expectations of having to fulfill their obligations. This year we have given the same statements but discussed with the students what that means for them. They have to fill in, in their own words what each statement means for them.

This agreement alone is not enough to protect our students.

Our school believes in prevention through regular reinforcement of our responsible use agreement and education but we also have systems for students to access if they feel they need help, support or uncomfortable with how ICT is being used. We have instigated Cyber Angels to increase students confidence in ICT but also give students a peer to talk to and provide support if they face issues that are more serious. As staff we have policies to follow based on the Ministry of Educations guidelines (2015)

Ethical dilemma

So many situations to choose from. I find that the environment, nature of the situation, your own personal experience, time factors and sense of responsibility reflects how you response to different situations. For example I was once on a tramping trip offering support to a PE teacher and being new to tramping was hoping to learn from the experience. One of the students tripped pouring freshly boiled hot water over the teacher. Suddenly in a remote location there was the immediate first aid decisions that needed to be done but also the secondary decisions about who to send for help, myself, a student/s? What course of action should be taken next?




Hall’s (2001) first question “Which stakeholder should be given priority? Why?” was answered easily in terms of the need for immediate first aid to be given. Recognising the restrictions (remote location and the need to access water to treat the burns, lack of cellphone coverage etc) but also the expertise and skill set of the group allowed a course of action to be decided. These were senior students doing an outdoor education course who could be relied on to take responsibility when needed.  A small group of students were sent a little further down the track for communication, while another group packed up camp and another organised water for first aid. We never did finish the tramp but after a hospital visit and a long trip home everyone ended up safe and sound.




Situations involving the school environment can be just as challenging. In one school I worked at a student in my form class sent a highly explicit, inappropriate image of herself to several of the boys in the class via facebook. A parent contacted me concerned. This situation had several stakeholders (the girl who had sent the image, the boys it had been sent to, various parents and the school). The priority was given to the girl who sent the image, her parents contacted and asked to remove it. Each of the boy’s parents were contacted and thankfully none of them had re-shared the image. Having removed the image what action needed to be taken? This incident occurred over a weekend but impacted the school and myself because of the students involved. The parents of the boys discussed the issue with the school and decided to take the responsibility of talking to their boys about the image and responsible use of social media themselves. The school reinforced this by implementing Netsafe and having an outside expert come and speak to the students. Because of the explicit nature of the image the boys’ parents still had genuine concerns about the students being in the same class which was addressed through the pastoral care and deans system.




This left the female student involved: what action should be taken?, how much responsibility did the school have? should the police be involved? This was a difficult situation, the incident occurred outside of the school but involved it and the nature of the image was cause for a lot of concern. At the time I was unaware of Hall’s (2010) approach to ethical problems but prioritising the student’s needs helped decide a course of action.  The student was referred to counselling and child services in an effort to ensure that she had a safe environment in which to live and that any mental health issues were addressed. We worked together to monitor her social behaviour both online and at school and met with her parents to discuss steps they could take to ensure that she engaged in safer behaviour online at home. The school’s experience with this situation lead to the staff requesting some PD around cyber safety and a review of the internet use policy.