Tuesday 4 July 2017

How Social is too Social? Week 29 - PRACTICE - Influence of Law and Ethics

How Social is too Social?

A few years ago now we had a teacher who made what I considered to be some social media faux pa's, the biggest of which involved Facebook, parents, and student data.
This teacher had 'friended' some of the parent community on Facebook, something that I had always been very wary of...but not something that the school had taken a stance on (this was 2010). Some of her status updates could be seen as a bit disparaging towards the school, and the learners, such as "yay, can't wait to get out of here, sick of it", "do I have to go to work today, can't be bothered" etc. School Leadership would talk about it about it, and some reminders sent to staff. The big one was after some STAR testing, and she posted "So proud of my Year 4's, made huge progress in STAR Reading. Wish I could say the same about my year 3's, sigh, they're the opposite". Clearly this is not appropriate, especially as parents (and staff) in the school could see that (and perhaps identify children).

Ethically she had taken the private, and made it public, sharing to people that didn't have the right to know, and sharing in a way that was negative about learners in her care. Those learners and their whanau have the right to know about how their child is progressing, but that information stops there. Do other people have the right to know, and is it fair that the choice was taken away from them?

The issue I guess is where is the line between personal and professional life? How public can you be about yourself when you hold a professional role in a public organisation? The Teachers Council later came up with a guide to Social Media, which would have been a great help back then.

What was done to address the issue? Not a lot other than a repeat of previous attempts...a conversation, and a reminder to staff about the perils of Facebook. The teacher did promptly 'unfriend' the school leaders...which meant that her posting were no longer visible to us.

What could we have done? Following Hall's process, we get to the point of asking what restrictions are there to our actions...and this is where we fell down then, and still would, as we don't have a clear policy about social media use in the school. While we can talk about maintaining professionalism, we don't have policies or procedures to fall back onto.

The New Code of Conduct/Standards from the Education Council now give us the means, even without policy. It is clear about describing what a teacher has to do to uphold the profession, and to maintain relationships within and without school. She may have failed by:
- disclosing a learner’s personal or confidential information beyond those who have a legitimate need to know
- communicating in a dismissive, disrespectful or inappropriate manner

The Code examples make things clear by having the negative view of the code, describing behaviours that we don't want in the profession.

References

Education Council. (n.d.). Retrieved July 01, 2017, from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/our-code-our-standards

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



6 comments:

  1. Social media in school is always such a hard one. Some people are for it and others are against! Where do we draw the line to ensure these things don't happen to incriminate us or the children? Very interesting read well done.

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  2. Hi Gareth
    A very interesting read. This must have posed some significant discussion and is always a difficult issue to find parameters for. The new code of conduct examples we look at will definitely allow schools and staff alike to have clear guidelines to refer to around the use of social media.

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  3. Some young people (including teachers) record their life events and their work events on the same blogs. Whether we like it or not our digital footprint is visible (as Donald Trump is finding out) The consequences can be severe. As Teachers we should never be afraid to speak to our colleagues. I messgaed/text a teaching colleague and told her her post on Fb was totally innappropriate and told her why. I talked about the code of Ethics and privacy. She removed it.
    She came up and thanked me for it later and said she was just thinking out loud and didn't realize the impact it would have.

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  4. The boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate has been lost and I believe young people take their cues from Television. In the guise of entertainment we are allowing bullying, bad language and putting our private life under a microscope so it is no wonder young people are no longer aware of what is appropriate.

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  5. A very interesting read. A similar situation has occurred at a school I have taught at and it does open the very serious question between personal and professional relationships. Definitely boundaries have been crossed but as everyone has stated it is a difficult discussion to address where the boundaries lie.

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  6. We grownups are all non-natives to FB & other social media, so we don't have a "feel" for it like we do for eg: table manners. It'll come. In the meantime, it seems pretty simple to me... as a guide before posting, ask yourself "would I say/show this in face-to-face parent-teacher conferences?".

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