PREFACE
Some of what is presented herein will be "news" to
educators. For those involved in education from pre-K through high
school there will be little that is totally unknown to them while those
who teach in colleges and universities may find a good deal that is new to
them. In fact those in higher education may receive a good deal of
this a "bad news" and miss seeing that actually there is more "good news"
than bad in terms of having knowledge that should make a resolution of
some common and frequent problems more possible. So, while much of what is offered in this work is for
professional educators at all levels of education and in all manner of
settings the primary focus herein will be on higher education.
The framework that we establish and the basic concepts and principles
are widely applicable. Most of the illustrations offered herein are at
the level of higher education. In doing this we by no means intend
to indicate that the issues and problems and approaches to solutions of
ethical dilemmas are applicable only at that level. Indeed, while
most of the cases or scenarios contained in this work are at the level
of higher education many of them can have their essential elements
located in scenarios at the levels of primary and secondary education. There are several reasons
why we focus more on higher education.
First and
foremost, we are most experienced with higher education. We have taught,
at times, in other settings but we are now and have mostly been situated
within universities and colleges.
Second, of late
there has been a veritable explosion in the literature of teaching and
learning. A
good deal of this literature is aimed at preschool, primary, and
secondary education, but there is also a growing interest in the
pedagogy of post-secondary education as well. In higher
education the literature or Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SOTL)
is growing rapidly. This is the demonstrated result of
governmental regulation and funding for formal research. But it is
also the result of a profession that has begun to seriously examine its
social role, and the efficacy of its fundamental activity in
accomplishing the agreed upon goals of the profession. A good deal of
that research on the efficacy of pedagogy has been and will be based on
experiments being conducted with human learners. There is as yet
little in the literature that offers clear and effective guidance as to
how go about thinking in an ethical manner about that type of pedagogic
experimentation on human beings.
Third, we
believe that there is too little effective reflection on the ethical
aspects of conducting such pedagogic research. We believe that no small
part of these problems seen in higher education has to do with the lack
of awareness of faculty regarding their professional identity as
educators and not just as discipline related scholars. That
professional identity entails a number of responsibilities that once
acknowledged and accepted provides a good deal to work with in
addressing a number of significant problems faced by educators.
While we are most particularly concerned with the ethical issues related
to education and to conducting pedagogic research we realized that such
issues exist within and are in part generated by the context in which they
arise. That context involves the nature of the institutions(
political, social , economic and educational) and it involves the nature
of the preconceptions held by those for whom they are issues and
further the context involves the current status of the discourse
concerning the nature of the professions and their various sets of
responsibilities, duties and obligations. We found we could not
address the issues of our greatest concern until after we had set out the
context at least with regard to the conceptions held by educators, their
perceptions of their roles and their ideas about what responsibilities
they have towards those whom they educate. Hence, this work
took on the form it has at present. We examine what a profession is,
arguing that education is a profession unto itself and that as
with all professions there are incumbent responsibilities.
Professional educators have the basic duty to further their profession and
from this duty there thus arises the need to conduct research and from
that follows the need to involve human subjects. At this point the
issues with regard to the conduct of that research can be better raised
and more effectively addressed.
The description we
offer of the responsibilities of professional educators and how they
might be fulfilled is informed by our observations of many educators and
many members of the professoriate who exemplify this professionalism.
Fortunately such paradigm cases abound throughout all levels of
education and in nearly every institution of education. In one way
of looking at this work, its goal is to have those exemplars
accepted as appropriate paradigms rather than exceptions to the current
rule of practice that has obtained.
We are acutely
aware that there is some resistance on the part of those who teach
within higher education either to realize or to accept their inclusion
within the profession of education. We are aware from our discussions with
colleagues that the reluctance extends most particularly into the realm of
acknowledgment of professional responsibilities of educators and the need
to conduct pedagogic research. Indeed, a significant part of the
failure to accept the fact of their inclusion may be their reluctance, if
not outright refusal, to accept the consequences of the membership in the
profession of education. This is so because their acknowledgement of additional responsibilities, including
pedagogic research, would necessitate changes in how they think of
themselves and how they behave as professionals-professional educators
with the duty to participate in pedagogic research and development.
There is a certain level of comfort at present amongst educators at the
post secondary levels. Most enjoying such naturally would want to
maintain that comfort level for as long as possible. There may be
something of the "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it"
attitude. We maintain that there is much evidence to indicate that
"it" is broken. There are moral dilemmas and ethical issues and
deplorable behavior that are all being given more attention in the
literature of the profession and of critics outside of the academy.
We believe that any effective confrontation with those dilemmas and
issues will lead to the realization that a conceptual foundation is
needed with which to deal with them. This in turn will lead to a
discussion of professionalism and professional responsibilities. We
have no desire to cause revolutionary movements nor major eruptions of
resentment or ever increasing amounts of resistance to the fulfillment of
those professional responsibilities. We thus realized that we had better
set out how most of what might be regarded as news or disturbing
information to our colleagues in the academy concerning their
responsibilities could be accepted and fulfilled without major
disruptions or alterations of teaching and life styles for most, not
all, educators. Therefore, we have included materials that indicate some practical concerns and
in effect "spell out" how they might be better handled and dealt
with practically by professional educators.
While it may at first appear to be a bit too much for faculty in
institutions of higher education to accept that they are simultaneously
members of two professions it is none the less the fact and it is a
"burden" born well by many educators. There are many faculty who
manage to balance the responsibilities of each profession: their
academic discipline and education. In addition there is a
balancing of responsibilities to the profession and to the institution
of which faculty are a part. To their credit many faculty do
manage to develop their careers in the academy in a manner that is
responsive to their dual roles as academicians and pedagogues and that
fulfills their multiple responsibilities to learners, their discipline,
to their academic colleagues, pedagogic colleagues and to their
institution. If any member of a faculty is to long survive as such
there must be demonstrable evidence that they can teach and teach well
enough to remain. It is what occurs beyond the teaching that will
make the distinctions amongst educators that are related to the basic
issues in this work. Faculty will in addition to teaching appear
as being at extremes or near the mean with regard to academic and
pedagogic research and scholarship and to service to the institution.
On the one hand faculty can be observed as paying a good deal of
attention to their teaching and at the same time they conduct research
and publish in their academic discipline. On the other hand or
extreme there are faculty who can be observed paying a good deal
of attention to their teaching and at the same time they become very
involved in the activities of the institution to the neglect, sometime
total, of their academic discipline. Faculty at these extremes
neglecting either academic scholarship or service to the institution are
noted as doing such. Many, if not most, faculty are somewhere near
the center of the a balancing of scholarship and service. There is
no exact mean nor measure of these activities and formula for the proper
balance. Nonetheless, those who are far from the mean are noted
for their being significantly different from the larger numbers of
colleagues who are balancing near the middle.
This work is offering a conceptual approach that presents education as a
profession and as involving a number of responsibilities that include
first teaching and the improvement of teaching. For those who have
neglected research and scholarship in this area there may be provided
herein the basis for their acceptance as a professional obligation of a need to do such.
The authors of this work are trained
in philosophy, and in this work our interest is in the ethical aspects of
the profession of education and most particularly in the ethical issues,
dilemmas and basic principles related to pedagogic research. This
discussion could not take place without joining the description of the
current context with the discussion amongst philosophers and ethicists
concerning the nature of moral or normative discourse. We realized
that much, nearly all, of the literature we reviewed with regard to
ethical aspects of pedagogic research appeared remarkably uninformed as to
ethical principles, concepts and issues and so it was not surprising that
in most cases such discussions of ethical issues left off with little or
no effective resolution of dilemmas or useful guidance as to conducting
moral discourse when confronted with moral dilemmas and ethical problems
related to the profession of education and in particular the
responsibility to conduct research. To address this need and in some
way to contribute to another approach to resolving the moral
quandaries exposed in other works on the ethical aspects of
pedagogic research we have engaged in moral discourse in a manner that we
hope is readily accessible to the non-professional philosopher. We
offer sample case studies at the end of this text as examples of how
moral discourse can proceed in a manner that is normative, philosophically
justified, and capable of producing effective decision making.
Our intention is to offer some useful concepts, distinctions, principles
and examples to serve as assistive mechanisms or tools for those
participating in professional research and development as educators.
If we are helpful in some way our time has not been ill spent. If we
are for too many more provocative than helpful we are regretful. We
will be monitoring the response to our positions and will be subjecting
our stance to careful reexamination informed by the thoughtful responses
from colleagues and fellow professional educators. We thank you for
that which you care to share with us.