This document discusses several ethical dilemmas that teachers may face. It begins by outlining tensions between issues and dilemmas, with dilemmas arising in situations with competing rights rather than clear wrongs. It then examines dilemmas around assessment, relationships with students and colleagues, and the potential for teachers' morality to become desensitized within systems. Specific dilemmas are explored, such as balancing institutional and student needs in assessment and navigating closeness without crossing boundaries with students. The document emphasizes that teachers regularly face complex ethical situations without straightforward answers.

1. Rachel Buchanan
Adapted from a lecture by Daniella Forster

2. Overview
Issues for teachers as a special profession
Tensions vs dilemmas
Dilemmas in teaching
Systematic immorality
Boundary dilemmas and relationships
Assessment dilemmas

4. Professional and Personal morality
Professional roles carry their own specific requirements,
which, once those roles are properly established, may
have some degree of independence from what broad-
based morality would ordinarily permit or require
people to do in a professional context.
(Oakley & Cocking, 2006, p. 117)

5. 3 Morally salient features
distinguishing the teaching
profession
Mystification of knowledge
Social distance
Reciprocity of effort

6. Issues identified by DET (2010)
Reporting concerns about
employee conduct
Respect for people
Duty of care
Professional relationships
between employees and
students
Appropriate use of electronic
communication and social
networking sites
Use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco
Identifying and managing
conflicts of interest
Recruitment
Record keeping
Declaring gifts, benefits and
bribes
Private and secondary
employment
Protecting confidential
information
Managing your political,
community and personal
activities
Lobbying
Post separation employment
Signatures
Personal references
Using public resources wisely
Copyright and intellectual
property

7. NSW Code of Conduct (DET, 2004)
21. Guide to ethical decision making
21.1 Staff need to recognise the professional and
ethical dimensions of their work and give proper
attention to the values which should guide their
decisions and actions.

8. Guide to ethical decision making
(NSW DET 2004)
21.2 When faced with a difficult question ask :
 Who needs to be consulted in making this decision?
 Is the decision or conduct lawful?
Is the decision or conduct in line with the Department’s
principles as set out in policy, including this Code of
Conduct?
 What will be the outcome for the staff involved, work
colleagues, the Department and its stakeholders?
 Do these outcomes raise a conflict of interest or lead to
private gain at public expense?
 Can the decision or conduct be justified in terms of the
interests of the Department or its clients?
 Would the action or decision withstand public scrutiny?

9. Words in the classroom…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=_jEBh1VtdT0&feature=related
What do you think?
http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/files/video/1407_Vox-Pop-1.2-
B%282%29.wmv

11. “I guess when I think of conflict, I think of an
immediate situation where there’s a head-on
clash. But I think also of the kind of conflict
that I think is a lot more like ones that
classroom teachers face more frequently; which
is conflict spread out over time, that involves
getting to know a student and establishing a
relationship, a working relationship, and a sort
of being in a tenuous situation that by no
means is going to succeed. There is no
guarantee of success and that sort of requires
day-in and day-out input and feedback on your
part and also interaction and feedback [from
the student], so that you can have at least the
slightest hope of getting through the year
successfully”
Chris Smith, English teacher, 2nd
year out
(Lyons, 1990, p.163)

12. Everyday dilemmas
teachers’ dilemmas come out of working
relationships between people… that are fed by the
everyday interactions between them, that happen
over time, and that have no real guarantee of
success even though they require daily response
and action. However resolved, the teacher lives
with conflict.
(Lyons, 1990, p. 165)

13. Teaching is a complex ‘web’
Some situations are ‘issues’
Between right and wrong: eg. Preventing littering on the
school grounds
And more difficult decisions are ‘dilemmas’;
Between right and right: eg. two excellent students, but
only one award
Between wrong and wrong: eg. Reporting a colleague’s
behaviour (behaviour is always open to interpretation)
Sometimes these can be settled by legal obligations
Remember: the Law is not always ethical, and the
ethical thing to do is not always legal

14. Moral Sensitisation and De-
sensitisation
Today’s “teachers are parts of systems and caught
in complicated structures, which may be
morally desensitising” (Colnerud, 2003, p. 560).

15. “Just as some business persons may not exercise
the same sensitivities in their business dealings as
they do in other contexts, educators too may leave
important moral sensitivities at the school door.
Actions they may see as insulting, belittling,
arrogant, patronizing, or unfair in other contexts
may not be perceived as such in the educational
context. Consequently an important aspect of the
task of enhancing the moral sensitivity and
perception of educators is that of engaging them
in a consideration of how the educational context,
with its particular constellation of power,
authority, and responsibility relations, affects the
applicability of their moral concepts.”
(Campbell, 2008, p. 11, citing
Coombs)

16. Colnerud’s (1997) 6 conditions of ethical conflict in
teachers’ work.
(1) Since teachers meet students in large groups (unlike other
professions such as lawyers or doctors), they are in a position where
the needs of many individuals raise questions of fairness and justice.
(2) Since teachers need to differentiate between students by grading and
assessing they are placed in situations where they may doubt the
assessment’s reliability or that their judgement of worth causes harm
to students.
(3) Teachers are faced with the question of appropriate boundaries in
their role as socialiser and are often uncertain about which values to
impart.
(4) Teachers responsibilities to students extend into the future, as they
are preparing young people for future life. The immediate and long
term needs of students often conflict.
(5) Institutional proximity makes it difficult for teachers to identify a
clear mandate about the extent of their responsibility to do good or to
protect students.
(6) The nature of collegial loyalty can raise conflicts about protecting
students and others from colleagues.

17. Ethical dilemmas, values and
uncertainty…
 Truth versus loyalty
 Should I lie (or stay silent) to protect a colleague?
 Short-term results versus long term gain
 Should I prioritise immediate or long term student best interests?
 Justice versus care
 How should I ‘manage’ my students’ behaviour?
 Autonomy versus Adherence to the Norm
 Should I sacrifice my professional judgement to ‘keep the peace’?
 Uncertainty about assessment judgements
 What forms of assessment are in my students’ best interests?
 Uncertainty about socialising boundaries
 To what extent am I responsible for passing on social norms/values?
 For more, see: Colnerud, G. (1997). Ethical conflicts in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education,
13(6), 627-635.

18. Student-Teacher relationships:
walking the ‘line’
Types
1. Curricular Boundaries
2. Emotional Boundaries
3. Relationship Boundaries
4. Power Boundaries
5. Institutional Boundaries
6. Personal Boundaries
Examples
1. Controversial issues
2. Controlling emotions
3. Names, intimacy
4. Abuse of authority
5. Violation of school rules
6. Self-sacrifice/disclosure
(Aultman et al, 2009)

19. Student-Teacher relationships:
walking the ‘line’
Types
1. Temporal Boundaries
2. Cultural Boundaries
3. Expertise Boundaries
4. Financial Boundaries
5. Communication
Examples
1. Equitable student time
2. Awareness of norms
3. Recognising prof. limits
4. Gifts, lending $, services
5. Confidentiality, advice
(Aultman,et al, 2009)

20. Confidentially
between colleagues and parents
http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/files/video/1416_1.8-A
%282%29.wmv

21. Boundaries: being “too friendly”
Age is significant in teaching.
Both veteran and less experienced teachers believe
that there is often a need to be liked or to be friends
with students especially if you are young and in the
first year of teaching.
But there are times when a smaller age gap between
student and teacher can lead to loss of control,
boundary crossing, or even boundary violations.
Teachers feel ‘‘out there on their own’’ in attempting to
negotiate boundaries
(Aultman, et al, 2009. 645)

22. Code of Conduct (2009)
Relationships
9.8 The boundaries of the professional relationship will be breached if
you:
x. have a sexual relationship or develop an intimate relationship with a
student
xi. use sexual innuendo or inappropriate language and/or material with
students
xii. hold conversations of an intimately personal nature, where you
disclose private information about yourself
xiii. have contact with a student via written or electronic means
including email, letters, telephone, text messages or chat lines,
without a valid context
xiv. give students gifts of a personal nature that encourages them to
think they have an individual and special relationship with you.

23. Relationships:
With students
http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/files/video/1410_Vox-Pops-
1.5-B%282%29.wmv

24. Dilemma in assessment
Score pollution is an ethical issue because polluted
scores misrepresent the students’ mastery of the
assessed material.
(Pope et al, 2009).
Eg: ‘teaching for the test’

25. The NAPLAN dilemma (again)
With the proliferation worldwide of national
testing schemes, recent empirical research finds
that in the area of assessment, teachers face
common ethical conflicts regarding
(a) ‘score pollution’; and
(b) teachers’ perceptions of institutional demands
and the needs of students (Pope et al, 2009).

26. Conflicting elements in assessment
dilemmas
Institutional requirements
Student need
Parent need
Teacher need
Basic values

27. Example:
‘‘One situation that I encountered last year that
made me wonder if my assessment techniques
were not fair involved a problemed (sic), but
bright, young man. He would not get his
assignments finished on time, and because of
this he lost points and failed the first quarter.
After the first quarter he completely gave up;
he no longer even tried to do the work he was
assigned.’’ (Pope et al, 2009, p.781)
What would you do?

28. References
Aultman & Williams-Johnson, (2009), Boundary dilemmas in
teacher–student relationships: Struggling with ‘‘the line’’,
Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 636-646
Campbell, 2008, The Ethical Teacher, Open University Press.
Colnerud, G. (1997). Ethical conflicts in teaching. Teaching
and Teacher Education, 13(6), 627-635.
Lyons, N., (1990), Dilemmas of Knowing: Ethical and
Epistemological Dimensions of Teachers’ Work and
Development, Harvard Educational Review, 60:2, pp. 159-
179
Oakley & Cocking, 2006, Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles,
Cambridge University Press
Pope, Green, Johnson and Mitchell (2009) Examining teacher
ethical dilemmas in classroom assessment, Teaching and
Teacher Education, 25, pp. 778-782