Five minutes to go before the start of the lesson. A student (who is an international student at the school) arrives to class visibly upset. Other students are slowly entering the classroom. The teacher goes over to the student and inquires quietly. The student assures the teacher she is fine and is happy to stay for the lesson. Most students are unaware of the incident and the lesson commences. Ten minutes into the lesson, the upset student suddenly starts to cry. The rest of the class are surprised by the outward emotional burst. The teacher instructs the class to continue with the work and goes over to the student and has a quiet conversation with her outside the classroom and then sends the student with another to see the Homeroom teacher. Unknown to the teacher, another student video records the incident on her mobile phone. During the lesson she tries to show another student the recording and the teacher observes what is happening. She instructs the student to explain what she has done but the student refuses and persists saying she has done nothing. The teacher asks the phone to be put away for the rest of the lesson and the student complies. The lesson ends and the student leaves. One concerned student stays back to explain what occurred. The teacher is concerned the video may be shared on social media to make fun of the effected student. She is aware this is an invasion of her privacy.
What should the teacher out-to-do?
Hall, A. (2001) describes a list of 10 questions that can be used as a guide for ethical decision making. The following questions can be used by teachers to help them consider all things before deciding what should be done when they are faced with an ethical issue.
1. What is the problem? - state it in terms of the principles and values that are the foundation of the code of ethics for teachers in New Zealand.
2. Who are the main stakeholders with interests in the problem, and what are their interests? - identify the most important parties and group them for simplicity.
3. Which stakeholder should be given priority and why? - this would usually be the student or students. But sometimes it may not be so clear if the interests of more than one group of students are involved.
4. What restrictions are there to my actions? - these could arise from laws, regulation, code of ethics, ethical principle and school policy. Some problems may have competing demands being made by several of these.
5. Which courses of action are possible? - list all possibilities but do not make any judgement about them until all options are listed. Check for any that result in the same action as another and eliminate those.
6. Can I identify precedent cases that are similar to this one? - look at similarities and differences in examples of cases that have things in common with the problem. Identify what course of action they suggest.
7. Which courses of action are least acceptable and why? - go through the list of actions noting the restrictions posed by Question 4 and the priority given party in Question 3. Identify possible consequences of each course of action in light of these and eliminate those that are not acceptable.
8. Which course of action will I follow and why? - a preferred course of action should emerge. In order to have a short term and long term focus to the action, two or more could be combined.
9. How should the course of action be implemented? - the actual steps of carrying out the chosen course of action must be rehearsed in advance. The support of other teachers could be requested to role -play the solution if possible.
10. What does this incident teach about ethical decision-making? - at the end it is important to reflect on and review the process. The questions to ask are "what have I learned that helps me make sense of my experience and will help me make better decisions in future?" and "what does this show about me as a teacher?".
The Ministry of Education's 2015 publication on safe and responsible use of digital technology in schools provides some advice for scenarios such as these where digital information has been recorded and stored on a smartphone.
It states that the students in question are subject to the Privacy Act 1993. But the article states that each scenario must be assessed on a case-by-case basis as there is a range of factors to consider such as the applicable privacy principles and any exceptions to the principles or the Act itself. The general advice the document gives is to refer to the Board of Trustees' privacy policy for the school.
