The gap between official educational policies and practiced policies: Toward developing ethical guidelines
Author(s):
Orly Shapira – Lishchinsky (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
32. Organizational Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

32 SES 06, Transition of Organizations (Ethics, Emotions and Fun)

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-09
15:30-17:00
Room:
3004. [Main]
Chair:
Andreas Schröer

Contribution

This study explores teachers' perceptions of critical ethical incidents experienced by themselves, in order to discover the reasons teachers give for their uncertainty about how to respond to critical  ethical incidents.                                                                                                                                                   

The goals of this study are to:

(a) Investigate the degree to which teachers are aware of official policies in regards to critical ethical incidents, including laws, procedures, or management circulars.

(b) Find out whether the level of awareness of the official educational policy affects the teacher's ethical decision-making.

Theoretical background                                                               

The official policy: ethical guidelines in education

In order to help teachers in their ethical decision-making, different countries (e.g., the US, Canada, New Zealand) have formulated official policies, which include management circulars and procedures regulating sensitive educational situations. However, the numerous instructions found in these documents are mostly unrelated to ethics. Despite the law’s treatment of topics such as 'human dignity,' 'right to freedom' and 'confidentiality,' teachers still find it difficult to relate these general sections to specific critical incidents in practice.        

        Our study of Israeli ethical guidelines for teachers may be influenced by examples of ethical codes from countries all over the world, such as the USA, New Zealand, the Philippines, Germany, and England. In Israel there is a draft of a general code of ethics dating from 1995 (Executive Committee of the Association of Israeli Teachers, 2002). However, most Israeli teachers do not even know it exists, and around the world, we may find ethical codes for teachers that have been written by various educational institutions, usually by functionaries in high-level positions in teachers unions, and a few by education ministries. However, even in places where there are formal ethical codes, most teachers are unaware of their existence. In a few cases, even teachers familiar with their country's code of ethics written by teachers' unions and the ministry of education find that it does not always prescribe or proscribe particular behaviors (O'Neill and Bourke 2010).

       We may explain this phenomenon by the fact that because codes of ethics are usually developed by high level functionaries in teachers' unions or education ministries, without the participation of enough ‘regular’ teachers in the field, they are perceived as irrelevant by teachers and consequently remain unimplemented (Slattery & Rapp 2003).

Method

Method Participants The study included 81 teachers in 81 schools in the center of Israel. Participants belonged to different disciplines, and different school levels, representing a cross-section of religious and non-religious, as well as public and private schools in Israel. Data analysis and Findings A qualitative analysis of the 81 critical ethical incident reports revealed subcategories of ethical dilemmas, which were nested in scenarios categories. A multifaceted model was generated through our findings. The categories of 'applying unreasonable power,' 'interactions with parents' and 'academic process' included a variety of ethical dilemmas such as: 'the obligation to report vs. caring for the students,' Conscientiousness vs. parents' involvement or 'the individual's good vs. the general good.'

Expected Outcomes

Discussion and significance The discrepancies we noted between the actual and required modes of behavior, whether deliberate or inadvertent, reveal that educational leaders should encourage teachers' training programs to prepare participants to deal with critical incidents, while exposing them to the requirements of the educational system and what is expected of them, including how to use their care for students in a way that will not damage the students. It appears that developing an ethical code alone is not sufficient, if our goal is to have teachers actually apply government and school policies in their conduct. For this purpose, it is most important that educators be taught to examine each critical incident they encounter with a critical eye. Developing ethical guidelines for teachers may help them in making future decisions, especially in ethical dilemmas posed by situations in the modern world. Although ethical guidelines cannot be generalized for all ethical dilemmas, it is still possible for a teacher to identify repeated instances of clashing values and to retrieve the procedures required by the ethical guidelines, considering the culture, people and particular context. Since the ethical dilemmas were found to be similar to ethical dilemmas which appeared in studies concerning schools and teachers in other countries, future studies may examine whether we can generalize the findings to other educational systems.

References

Author (2013). Executive Committee of the Association of Israeli Teachers (2002). Code of Ethic for Israeli Teachers – A Draft. Executive Committee of the Association of Israeli Teachers. Jerusalem (In Hebrew). O'Neill, J., & Bourke, R. (2010). Educating teachers about a code of ethical conduct. Ethics and Education, 5(2), 159-172. Slattery, P., & Rapp, D. (2003). Ethics and the foundations of education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Author Information

Orly Shapira – Lishchinsky (presenting / submitting)
Bar-Ilan University, Israel

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