Throughout my inquiry it was important to take into consideration any ethical issues that may arise. As teachers we have professional ethical obligations. Our Code, Our Standards (Education Council, 2017) provides us with guidance professionally when interacting with others in the school community.
As discussed previously in my inquiry, ethical issues that I deemed were important to take into consideration included; maintaining a duty of care to learners by considering their welfare, seeking consent from all communities, keeping individual information confidential and ensuring that no students are held back in their learning. Hall (2001) guided my ethical decision making in the initial stages of my inquiry, I ensured that I considered the code of ethics and school policy when designing the inquiry and I brainstormed any ethical issues that may arise throughout this inquiry.
Although none of these ethical issues arose throughout the inquiry I have decided to reflect on an issue that could have arisen if there were no policies in place. This is the issue of violation of privacy and confidentiality and misuse of student data. As the inquiry was centered around the use of 1:1 digital devices, there are certain risks and dangers that can come with this. The devices that the students were using had a camera and online sharing capabilities, therefore it was paramount that students privacy was maintained and that we keep them safe online.
I believe that the best time to address these ethical issues is before it takes place. Therefore ensuring we are proactive by creating a learning environment that teaches students how to use digital technology safely and responsibility is important. I already knew that the school has policies and actions in place to ensure student privacy and confidentiality is kept safe online i.e. accessibility to certain sites. Additionally students take part in Cyber Smart Lessons, these lessons explicitly teach safe and responsible use of digital technology and teach students how to make positive choices when using digital technology.
In addition to these policies and actions in place I took further measures to ensure student privacy and confidentiality was maintained, these included; using only first names on any saved work, any individual information is kept confidential - for the purpose of the inquiry they were named ‘student A, B etc.’, using iPads that only have access to certain apps and limited search capabilities.
If issues of privacy, confidently and misuse of student data did ever arise in the future the actions I would have taken would have include; looking into the stakeholders involved i.e. the child, their parents and teachers. Depending on the severity of the issue I would also consult with the Senior Leadership Team, after consulting with them I would then determine a course of action to take (Hall, 2001).
Through reading the literature it has come to my attention that there are a lot of ethical considerations to be met and there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I understand that especially when students are working with digital devices there is the potential for violation of privacy, abuse of ICT in school and also intellectual property violation, these can all have a detrimental effect on the learning environment. In the future I will definitely be considering the Our Code, Our Standards when designing my inquiry but I will also consult Digital technology- Safe and responsible use in school, if any further ethical issues surrounding the use of digital technologies were to arise.
References
Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards.Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf
Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. In IIPE Conference, Brisbane.
Ministry of Education. (2015). Digital technology- Safe and responsible use in school. Retrieved from http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/School/Managing-and-supporting-students/DigitalTechnologySafeAndResponsibleUseInSchs.pdf
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