Week 28 / Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

What:

Cyberbullying is an issue I have been involved in at a previous school I worked in and although both students were not in my class I was the first to become aware of the situation. Both students were using a social media platform called musical.ly which allows comments on people's videos. Both students participated in the cyberbullying and this led to parents becoming involved with one posting inappropriate comments about the other child on Facebook while also mentioning the school they attended in the post. I discovered the comments online and informed the classroom teacher and principal straight away. Both parents were called in for a meeting with the principal where the issues were mediated and resolved with the post being removed from Facebook. It was left to the parents to enforce consequences with their children.

So what:

As a result of this dilemma, I felt professionally obliged (professional ethics) to inform the school of the social media post as I knew this would have a huge impact on the students attending the school, their whanau, my fellow colleagues and the school. The parent who chose to post private information about another child was completely inappropriate and demonstrated that our community (society) needed to be more educated about their own digital citizenship. Being posted to a public group in Facebook, put this issue into a global context where the parent had breached the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (Ministry of Education, 2016). This could have resulted in all sorts of legal issues. This situation also highlighted a need within our school context (institutional context) for more education around cyberbullying prevention for our students and how to keep ourselves safe online (Ehrich, Kimber, Millwater & Cranston, 2011).

Now what:

Had I chosen to ignore this situation both the teacher and principal would not have been prepared to deal with the event and parents could have felt the need to take matters further. I would have been ignoring my professional commitment to my learners, their whanau, society and my profession had I said nothing and 'minded my business'. As a practicing teacher under the Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers (Duty of Care value), I have a responsibility to my students, their whanau and my school to do good and minimise harm, which I believe I have done in this case (Education Council, 2017).

As a result of this situation, I have learnt that ethical dilemmas don't always arise in school and in this case social media was a major contributor to this dilemma occurring and being discovered. Cyberbullying is a dilemma I will highly likely have to deal with in the near future as I am about to have a class with one to one Chromebooks next year. The school has an internet agreement which all students sign at the beginning of the year and it clearly states that students will be suspended or banned from using devices at school if they are used inappropriately, however this scenario proves it doesn't have to occur at school to become a school issue.

This dilemma was analysed using Rolfe's Model of Reflection.

References:

Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards.Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

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

Ministry of Education. (2016). Managing Social Media Guidelines. Retrieved from: http://shapingeducation.govt.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MoE-Managing-Social-Media-Guidelines_FA.pdf