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