Ethics in Teaching: Should We Do More?
Kristina Mullamaa, Estonia
Kristina Mullamaa has been teaching English and Swedish at the at the Language Centre of Tartu University in Estonia since 1996. In 2006 she defended her doctoral thesis on the profession making of liaison interpreters. Her research interests include cross-cultural issues, motivation and ethics. E-mail: kristina.mullamaa@ut.ee
Menu
Why think about ethics?
Rules and regulations for teachers
Ambiguous signs from the reality
Dilemmas?
The dangers of becoming only an “inanimate tool”
Ethics in research and practice
For a “better reality”
References
Sources of illustrative material
When I was asked to suggest a guest speaker an interesting topic to handle at our teacher training seminar, I couldn´t but think of the issue of ethics. She agreed to speak on her views only on condition that I share some of mine. So, confronted with the issue, I sat down and pondered upon what could the main issues in ethics be for me. How are teachers in our country - most probably a rather typical transition country - dealing with ethics in teaching? How do teachers support the youngsters entrusted in their hands in the context where almost everything has undergone a thorough change? Do they, may they (remember the restrictions imposed by our legislation), or should they support the students? Should they do more? And, last, but not least, could some of the issues be similar or common for (language) teachers all over the world? To find answers to these questions we explore the legal framework, some signs from reality, as well as recent theoretical analyses on ethics and some of its practical implications.
In recent years a number of rules and regulations have been adopted to support the teachers in their everyday work in our country (http://eportfoolio.opetaja.ee/competency/opetaja-kutsestandard). The aim of such regulations is to encourage teachers to not only develop the skills and enhance the knowledge of their students. The idea is to also provide support to their students in becoming whole personalities, to respect the students individuality, at the same time socialising them to become responsible members of society.
Similar documents can be found at university level in many developed democracies, like for example the Scandinavian countries, cf. ethical guidelines for university teachers in Sweden www.sulf.se/upload/Dokument/engelska/Ethic%20univ%20teachers%20SULF.pdf. The Swedish document also goes one step further than the Estonian counterpart, clearly stating that:.” These ethical guidelines deal with issues that are not directly regulated by law. /…/ Ethical guidelines do not set aside laws but serve rather to complement them” (ibid. : 5). This means that even if there does not exist a clearly written down rule for a situation, the teachers have a moral duty to solve it.
Despite the beautiful documents that do exist for educationalists teaching at the school level, we often meet colleagues who seem to be distressed because of seemingly unsolvable problems. This seems to be so at all levels of our educational system. This impression is backed up by the news in the media. On the one hand, we hear news about teachers in some schools needing to cooperate with the police to ensure that discipline would be maintained for a teaching environment
(www.lounaleht.ee/index.php?l=244&n=2373&p=1). We can hear about similar developments in other countries of the world, e.g. Britain ( cf.
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725547,00.html).
On the other hand, we are doing very well in international competitions (www.epl.ee/artikkel/409787) and both national and international contests, our graduates and students have won international recognition as scientists (www.koolielu.ee/pages.php/0308,15721?aj=1101) and decision makers.
Behind all these achievements there is definitely some teacher support. We know today that we cannot say that behind the mishaps there is something the teachers didn´t do. However, we probably also agree that there may sometimes be situations where not going behind the issues is legally correct. Yet where teachers as individuals could ( and sometimes should) do more than the professional guidelines, which – at least in our case - are currently mainly restricted to teaching your own subject field, demand.
Some of you may never have had to face any ethical dilemmas, others may.
So before you read on would you please just close your eyes for a moment and think back at the years when you have been teaching.
- Think of an ethical dilemma you:
- faced recently
- may have experienced earlier during your career, but for some reasons remember until now
In both cases,
- did you do more or less than your Code of professional conduct would assume?
- what would have been better for the student?
During our teacher training seminars we asked the participants the same questions. What became conspicuous was that in most cases it was not the methodological quandaries like “how could I better teach grammar” which kept the teachers awake at night. It was rather students´ behaviour, or problems related to students´ homes, parents or individual life that had been trusted to the teachers. Often, it was pointed out that these are problems teachers are formally not expected (nor allowed) to handle. Teachers found that they would like to help but have not been trained to solve especially demanding psychological dilemmas. At the same time, they believed that supporting and helping the students is to be seen as a part of the teacher´s role as an advisor and supporter.
A well-known piece of research by Tate and Turner (1997/2002) criticises the “machine” model where agents only perform their explicitly formulated duties and neglect the human dimension of communication:
[...] machines do what they are told. They’re under instruction: no instruction, no action. Machines don’t generate their own contributions to the job in hand: they simply respond as programmed to external stimuli (levers pulled, buttons pressed, etc.) (Tate and Turner, 1997/2002: 374).
My question is if teachers sometimes fall into a similar trap. Our job is seemingly to “pass on knowledge” & to “develop the skills” of pupils and students. To stick to the schedule and see that the programme would be covered. Often, we may be guided by the belief in absolute neutrality and thus force ourselves to do little else than teach. Yet, in our profession as in so many others empathy and emotional intelligence can help where merely fulfilling one´s duty in the strictest sense doesn´t work out.
Van Deth (1995: 2) points out that populations of advanced industrial countries
“show an increased emphasis on non-material and emancipatory goals; shifting away from tradition, respect for authority, and material well-being towards self-fulfilment, independence, and emancipation [...]. It is this combination of slowly disappearing traditional values and the growing independence and self-reliance of individuals, as well as the need for belonging in modern society which characterizes the broad lines of the processes of changing values”.
Individualisation ( cf. ibid.) and the moral duty of each individual has been growing in importance in the postmaterialist era. It is understood that people have a persistent ethical responsibility as individuals. And this dimension may exceed what is covered by the more narrow professional descriptions.
Such changes have an impact on all spheres of human communication. It is obvious that student-teacher interaction in this new framework has to adapt to the changing environment too. Ethics as a guiding line amidst the myriad of changing values can not be overestimated.
In practice we see its manifestation in the abundance of ethical guidelines for many professions. For example, in Estonia ethical guidelines have recently been worked out also for doctors and nurses, the codes of ethics and professional codes are being worked out for tour guides. Similar trends can be noticed in other spheres of cultural mediation (e.g. translation and interpreting) that are closely related to foreign language teaching.
The practical level goes hand in hand with research into the issue. Jones (2004) points out that one step forward from traditional approaches to ethics is recognising that we may not always be 100% neutral. Jones (ibid.: 10) demonstrates that for a cultural mediator there always exists the self, “significant others” and “ the wider social context within which all the above operate". Only when accepting that we are inevitably influenced by our values, our context and beliefs, can we analyse what these are. Only when knowing what our bias may potentially be, can we review it critically. As the next step we can safeguard against potentially harming someone when not letting us be guided by the value-framework that may not be the absolutely adequate one (consider e.g. the extreme strictness of earlier pedagogy where absolute obedience was expected from students, as opposed to the today´s much more lenient frameworks where students are not only allowed but even encouraged to have a say).
Michael Cronin (2002) introduces the postmaterialist/ postmodernist and postcolonial mentality to intercultural mediation. He illustrates the multilayered range of ethical considerations of a mature personality and a responsible member of society. Basically, he shows that every agent – in his study the interpreter, but in our context we can see as an agent the teacher - can potentially influence not only the communication outcomes of a specific communication situation, but the whole future of a person. And through this indirectly: his country and society.
Cronin (2002) shows how important is the (inter)action between primary parties in different communication situations, where the perception of the nuances at the level of the individual plays the key role. As Cronin (2002: 390) puts it, then "reciprocal contexts" for "cultural interpretations" are borne in mind and real-world performance will be analysed. Then also, the "realities" we live in and perceive, would be "negotiated" as "multi-subjective, power-laden and incongruent" (ibid.). At the same time, Cronin urges us to remember that the notion of culture itself is dynamic and that ""culture" is always relational, an inscription of communicative processes that exist, historically, between subjects in relation to power" ( Clifford and Marcus 1986: 15 in Cronin, 2002: 391).
Cronin (ibid.) also extends the dimension to that of the geo-political level (which, of course, is still closely interlinked with the individual behaviour of interactants). Furthermore, he ventures into a significantly more intriguing and complex, in-depth level than the traditional research has done. He relates personal history and one´s global/ political/ ideological stance to ethics, the mediator´s role and the outcome of the communication situation. We believe that in the case of teaching, the teachers´ values and ethics may form a memory-action web for many students that can extend beyond a concrete situation or lesson, to school years altogether, as well as grown-up life.
That the teachers´ role model matters and the teachers´ words matter is well known for anyone who has been a student (and hopefully also, a teacher). Probably many of us remember some kind words a teacher important for us has said – these may send us throughout our lifetime. In other cases – some unfair remarks may remain etched in memory for ever.
Many sources quoted above have spoken about mediators, and teachers can definitely be seen as mediators as well. But we do not only mediate education in the narrowest sense of skills and knowledge – we also mediate life. Furthermore, as Ulla Berglindh (2007) has said – we should not be satisfied with regenerating the status quo. Instead, teachers could strive to mediate a better reality (Berglindh, ibid.). Setting higher goals and showing higher ideals than the students meet in everyday media (Berglindh, ibid.) teachers could possibly help our students develop into whole personalities who could in their turn, in the future, create an even better world. This may sound too optimistic, but as a Scandinavian grain of wisdom says – you have to aim at the stars in order to be able to reach the tree tops.
According to the Norwegian educationalist Gunnar Handahl (2004, 2007), in education we should always bear in mind the existence of the following dimensions:
* Level 1 - Action: You go and teach.
* Level 2 - Theory and practice: The reasons why you go and teach. Your background, knowledge in pedagogy, your methodological skills, your experience as a teacher. Experience transferred to knowledge.
* Level 3 - Values: The ethical and political justification. Why am I doing what I do? Why am I teaching at all? What does it benefit to the people I teach as
individuals? To the society at large?
Although all these levels have always existed, it has not been until recently that Level 3 has become a legitimate part of teacher training in many countries. Yet, this is definitely the sine qua non of the profession. In our case, the teacher training sessions resorting to ethics and the teacher´s role have been most welcome. Training university teachers to implement new methodologies and the modern approach to teaching encompassing ethics has been another important initiative.
So let us not forget all these layers, and let us try to more often view Level 1 and 2 through the prism of Level 3! Hopefully, this can consolidate ethical decisions as part of our profession and decision making. The support to our students will only benefit through the teachers´ conscious endeavour to see them as whole personalities. And going beyond mere subject teaching can sometimes do good for subject teaching itself.
Berglindh, Ulla (2007) Den svenska litteraturkanon. Presentation at the conference Seminariet för svensklärare i Baltikum. Riga. 12-14.10.2007.
Clifford, James and Marcus, George E. (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cronin, Michael (2002) The Empire Talks Back: Orality, Heteronomy and the Cultural Turn in Interpreting Studies. In F. Pöchhacker, M. Shlesinger (Eds). The Interpreting Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. 393-397.
Jones, Francis (2004). Ethics, Aesthetics and Décision: Literary Translating in the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession. Meta. Volume 49, No 4. Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal.
Handahl, Gunnar (2004/2007) Ethics of Teaching in Higher Education. Teacher trainer course given at the course Teaching in Higher Education. Oslo University-Tartu University. University of Tartu, 2004-2007.
Tate, Granville, Turner, Graham H. (1997/2002) The Code and the Culture: Sign Language Interpreting - in Search of the New Breed’s Ethics. In F. Pöchhacker, M.
Schlesinger (Eds.), The Interpreting Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. 373-383.
Van Deth, Jan. W., Scarbrough, Elinor (1995) The Impact of Values. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Professional standards for teachers in Estonia. Ministry of Education of Estonia. http://eportfoolio.opetaja.ee/competency/opetaja-kutsestandard
Ethical guidelines for university teachers. Swedish Association of Teachers: www.sulf.se/upload/Dokument/engelska/Ethic%20univ%20teachers%20SULF.pdf
Articles on teachers needing the support of the police:
www.lounaleht.ee/index.php?l=244&n=2373&p=1
www.postimees.ee/150207/esileht/siseuudised/242873.php
Articles on the youth in Britain:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725547,00.html
Articles on the achievements of Estonian students:
www.epl.ee/artikkel/409787
www.epl.ee/artikkel/409745
www.koolielu.ee/pages.php/0308,15721?aj=1101
Please check the From Teaching to Training course at Pilgrims website.
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