Ethical Dilemmas In The Classroom Essay

In an American survey, it was reported by the teachers themselves that they are ill-prepared for dealing with ethical dilemmas in their classroom. The major conflicts experienced in teaching were judged to be ethical in nature by 70% teachers. The majority of the teachers surveyed did not see clear ways to resolve the conflicts they had faced (Lyons, 1990). As it has been said that the teaching profession tends to be subjective by nature where a teacher is confronted with many ethical dilemmas and circumstances where an individual’s own moral code is contested by that of colleague’s, administrator’s, the school community, and the union to name a few. Campbell (1997) provided a series of examples of where teachers had felt that administrators

required them to undertake actions that breached their professional ethics. This feeling contributed to ethical dilemmas for them as their professional ethics were in conflict with the expectation that they follow the orders of their supervisors. Millwater et al. (2004) referred to dilemmas faced by pre-service teachers during their practicum. In his study, pre-service teachers raised issues such as the rights of the group versus the rights of individuals, and the child’s right to confidentiality versus the system’s requirement to report information. Johns et al. (2008) gave examples of complex dilemmas that emerged from special education contexts in which competing interests and limited resources made it difficult to resolve decisions. Noteworthy is Lyons’ (1990) point that ‘many of the dilemmas of teaching are not solvable and must simply be managed rather than resolved’ (p.168). Lyons came to this conclusion based on her research with teachers, which demonstrated that dilemmas were either ongoing or likely to recur. From Helton and Ray’s (2005) research, ethical dilemmas experienced by teachers in schools and universities arised from:

1) Law and policies — the need to go beyond the law such as protecting a student from abuse in the home;
2) Administrative decisions conflicting with personal or professional ethics;
3) Student actions — ethic of care, behavioral issues, plagiarism;
4) Colleagues’ actions such as discriminatory behavior in relation to students and to staff; and,
5) Tensions within professional ethics.
In a study done by Tirri (1999), who interviewed 33 secondary teachers in Finland, there were four main categories of moral dilemmas that emerged for teachers. These related to
1) Teachers’ work; such as how to deal with students, issues of confidentiality, and situations in which colleagues were found to be unprofessional;
2) Student behavior regarding school and work such as conflicts between home and school, and cheating;
3) The rights of minority groups where religion was a key aspect of the dilemma; and
4) Common rules at school where teachers were inconsistent in enforcing rules.
In a related study, Tirri and Husu (2002) interviewed 26 early childhood teachers in Finland regarding their ethical dilemmas.

A key finding of the study was that ‘ethical dilemmas in early childhood education are very relational and deal with competing interpretations of “the best interest of the child”’ (Tirri & Husu, 2002, p. 65). The teachers in the sample identified major challenges as protecting children from both physical and psychological harm. More recent research has pointed to ethical dilemmas emerging for teachers surrounding student assessment (e.g., Pope, Green, Johnson, & Mitchelle, 2009; Richardson & Wheeless, 2009). The attention to this ethical issue is not surprising, given the current climate characterized by increasing accountability, high stakes testing, and pressure to improve student learning scores. In a study involving 103 educators in the United States who were asked to describe a difficult ethical situation relating to assessment of students, Pope et al. (2009) found that 62% of the coded responses related to ethical dilemmas were about ‘pollution’ of grades. Where; pollution of grades referred to ‘misrepresenting the students’ mastery of the assessed material’ (Pope et al., p. 779). Such pollution occurs where teachers modify grades due to student effort or teachers assist students before or during an assessment by providing them with answers and practice

opportunities.