As teachers we hold a significant role in our community and need to carry ourselves in a manner that is seen as above reproach. Our employment in positions where we ‘unavoidably act as moral educators’ (Howe, 1986) for vulnerable children means that we should rightly be held to a high standard and be accountable for our actions. Increasingly, the ethical scenarios we need to navigate are becoming more complex. Hall (2001) discusses how changes in society over the last 30 years for example - increasingly pluralistic societies, blurred lines between the responsibilities of school and families, and legal changes regarding the rights of children - have drawn teacher’s actions and responsibilities under the microscope. Media coverage and a more vocal, well-educated public are ready to call teachers to account and broadcast instances where questionable ethics have been displayed.
The digital medium has brought a new arena for teachers to navigate themselves and their students through. The dilemma that I am going to discuss is the issue of sharing digital images and video on social media and websites.
In our school, we maintain a register of parental consents for sharing of student’s work, or their image, online. We make not of those who cannot be included in photographs that we will share on our Facebook page for example, and students who cannot have their work uploaded in any way onto an online public forum.
Last year we took some of our students - a choir and kapa haka group - to perform at a City Council event in the city. We noticed after the event that a City Council staff member had live-streamed the performance on Facebook, and it had been ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ by many parents and friends of the community in the hours since. The ethical dilemma for us? We had not shared the performance online ourselves, however we had become aware of the livestream event and felt responsible for remedying the situation because we had facilitated taking our students to perform at the event. We hadn’t asked for further permission that would cover the instance of someone videoing the children and sharing it in an official capacity.
The newly released version of the teacher code of ethics “Our Code Our Standards” describes a commitment to learners by “promoting the wellbeing of learners and protecting them from harm”, and a commitment the families and whanau by “engaging in relationships that are professional and respectful”. As this scenario was a new situation for us to navigate - and we knew that in previously considered scenarios there were some students who would not have had permission to be included in a video of that sort - we had to act in the best interests of those students and families by sorting the situation out. In this instance, we contacted the parents of each of the affected children to make them aware of the situation, and offered to ask the City Council to remove the video if they wished. None of the parents had a problem with it, but we realised that it could have been more serious if issues of child endangerment (custody issues or other matters) had been at play. We have since adjusted our event permission processes to make parents aware of the possibility that 3rd parties may capture their child’s image as part of the group (photo or video) in the course of the performance, and to let us know if they do not give permission for this.
Another variable in this sort of circumstance is the parent community themselves. Many parents and family members watched the performance and took photos of the group which were shared online. A recent NZ Herald article “Principal's warning to parents that post pictures of their children on social media” featured a Principal trying to make the parent community aware of good practices in digital citizenship, and that it wasn’t their place to share images of other people’s children online. This is potentially a more difficult scenario to ‘police’ on behalf of our students, and it is undoubtedly an area that will become more complex in ways we cannot imagine in the future.
**This post was prepared as part of the requirements for CISC8100 Applied Practice in Context, for the fulfillment of requirements of a Post-Graduate Diploma in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) via Mindlab for UNITEC.
References:
Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers
Howe, K.R. (1986). A conceptual basis for ethics in teacher education. Journal of teacher education,37(3), 5-12.
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