Activity 4: Legal and
ethical contexts in my digital practice
Step 1 (What):
Parents transported
students to and from a sporting event involving their children and helped
supervise other children at the event. Teacher (myself) was not attending the
event because of the small number of children involved. While at the event
parents took photographs of children competing and emailed them to myself to
put in the school newsletter. My role was the organiser and teacher responsible
for the children (from my class). I needed parents to transport, supervise and
provide photos to share with school community.
Step 2 (So What):
Parents at school have
signed a digital agreement in which they have allowed their children’s
photographs to be used in our school newsletter, school blogs and in school
assemblies. They have not allowed other parents to post or keep photos on
phones of their children.
The ethical dilemma is
that once the photos are shared with the teacher (and school), they should be
removed from the parent’s phone. They do not have permission to keep
photographs of other children on their phone or use them on their personal
social media. It is my duty to protect the children in my care (and to remain
professional and follow our school’s child protection policy agreement).
Solutions
I had an informal chat
and asked the parent in question to delete the photos from their phone (which
they did) and asked them not post any photos of other children on their social
media accounts (which they had not done). I was slightly aware of potential
negative reactions, but felt it was the professionally correct decision to
make, not an emotional one.
Possible consequences
of this could have been negative reactions from the parent (perhaps a feeling
of being accused of potentially doing something with the photos?) and future
refusal to help at sporting events by transporting and supervising children.
Thankfully this was not the case.
Other solutions could
have been to do nothing (rule of optimism and hope that they would delete them
and not post to any social media) or to arrange a meeting with the principal
and ask her to deal with the matter (more formal). Implications of ignoring the
fact could have been that if photos had been posted on social media, it would
be a failure to inform the parent on my part that led to this happening and
could potentially be damaging to my reputation rather than to the parents
reputation. Arranging a meeting with the principal would have taken the
situation to a level that although keeping procedural and formal, could damage
the relationship and trust between teacher and parent and lead to the parent in
the future being unwilling to help or communicate closely about important
matters.
Step 3 (Now What):
Our Code of professional responsibility sets
out the shared expectations of our profession that we aspire to and have agreed
to uphold. It reminds us of our obligations and responsibilities to others and
the need to demonstrate high standards of professional behaviour in all we do.
In this instance, digital agreements made between parents, teachers and
children needed to be upheld and followed. It is my duty as a profession to
protect the children in our care and follow our child protection policy.
It is hard to see what
else I could do in the future, the community likes to hear and see the news
that children are involved in and often these events take place where a teacher
can not always be present and require parent help and supervision. I think the
next step is to have parents sign an agreement (when they are supervising
children at out of school events) not to use photographs taken on personal
social media accounts and to delete photographs from mobile devices that do not
involve their own children following events within a week. Consequences could
be less parental willingness to take photographs, but unlikely, or parents not
being willing to supervise other children, again unlikely because the events
involve their own children too.
*I have used Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model
above
References
Ehrich,
L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a
model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and
practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794
Education
Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/file...
Ministry
of Education. (2015). DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Safe and responsible use in schools.
Wellington: New Zealand: Author. Retrieved from https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Sch…
Rolfe
et al.’s (2001) Reflective Model. Retrieved
from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf
A tricky problem Bernard! Even when on trips with my parents I often encourage them to share pictures with me so I have a large pool to draw from for Newsletters and other public sharing. I need to consider this and ensure I have the parents delete pictures in the future. I also need to find a better place than my own computer to store these photos. They have a value as the children progress through the school but not something to keep for 8 years. Thanks for your honest sharing.
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