Activity 12: Code of ethics

Code of ethics

Blog post outlines- the code of ethics’ principles that relate to your teaching profession. Think about how these principles govern your practice.

In your opinion are ethical codes of conduct reflective of societal norms or essential principles of humanity?

In the context of my own profession, the key applied area of applied ethics relates an academic paper in moral and ethics at the University of Auckland which students have to study for their teachers degree. During the degree programme, we studied case studies and reflected on the resources regarding our moral and ethical decision making. (teachers council)  moral and ethical problems and had to make links to the current Professional Code of ethics documents by the New Zealand Teachers Council (2004).

Code of ethics for registered teachers. (NZTC, 2004)

The Code of ethics is primarily societal norms in terms of interactions of a service provider and client (students and families). However the explicit links to principles of humanity like the right have information kept in privacy or relationship which a respectful make me believe that the code of ethics is essentially a blueprint for teachers to self govern against. 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a Code of Ethics?

The main advantages of the ethics is accountability within a profession and allow for teachers to justify their practice where needed. Some teachers require extra support to meet the requirements in the provisional registration and so having a code of conduct allows managers and tutor teachers to effectively performance manage where needed. Alternatively a disadvantage is that teachers are not able to get registered by not meeting the code when a subject judgement is made on a moral or ethical decision. An example of this is when a dichotomy exists in teaching in a semi neo-liberal government run education ministry which conflicts with lower socio-economic decile schools. In the previous post, I use the example of schools not being able to support students with special learning needs as the government wouldn't release close to 30 million dollars worth of funding. The teacher is then left to make a moral and ethical decision to request for funding from other areas of the school budget or  the principal and thus the school board. The cycle becomes even more problematic if the funding is sourced from another student which again conflicts with the code to provide essential learning and tailored resources to the needs of the student. 

In your own field to what degree are ethics concerned to protect individual rights and to what degree do they exist to minimize organisational risk?  and How is the balance between the two distributed?

As a member of our school board of trustees,  I am morally obligated to sit with the organisational risk management as required by my post. However as a assistant principal I have my own individual rights to consider. The key similarity to is that they are both concerned with the relationships between the client (students) and Parents, the ministry and staff. Therefore a code of conduct which is unified may be useful to balance them evenly. I have read a few examples of the rights of individuals exceed the rights to minimize the organisational risk, as in the case of teachers who commit criminal acts and may not disclose this to the media. Often the media and the Ministry of education will follow its procedures which are underpinned by the Code of ethics to protect the students privacy by not naming the school or the students name. However it could be argued that schools also do not wish to be tainted with the label of harboring a criminal. The best way to balance this would be to collaborate with other professions when making decisions whilst using their respective code of ethics eg Police, Ministry of education and teachers council.