Ethical Dilemmas In The Classroom Essay

In an American survey, it was reported by the teachers themselves that they are ill-prepared for dealing with ethical dilemmas in their classroom. The major conflicts experienced in teaching were judged to be ethical in nature by 70% teachers. The majority of the teachers surveyed did not see clear ways to resolve the conflicts they had faced (Lyons, 1990). As it has been said that the teaching profession tends to be subjective by nature where a teacher is confronted with many ethical dilemmas and circumstances where an individual’s own moral code is contested by that of colleague’s, administrator’s, the school community, and the union to name a few. Campbell (1997) provided a series of examples of where teachers had felt that administrators

A key finding of the study was that ‘ethical dilemmas in early childhood education are very relational and deal with competing interpretations of “the best interest of the child”’ (Tirri & Husu, 2002, p. 65). The teachers in the sample identified major challenges as protecting children from both physical and psychological harm. More recent research has pointed to ethical dilemmas emerging for teachers surrounding student assessment (e.g., Pope, Green, Johnson, & Mitchelle, 2009; Richardson & Wheeless, 2009). The attention to this ethical issue is not surprising, given the current climate characterized by increasing accountability, high stakes testing, and pressure to improve student learning scores. In a study involving 103 educators in the United States who were asked to describe a difficult ethical situation relating to assessment of students, Pope et al. (2009) found that 62% of the coded responses related to ethical dilemmas were about ‘pollution’ of grades. Where; pollution of grades referred to ‘misrepresenting the students’ mastery of the assessed material’ (Pope et al., p. 779). Such pollution occurs where teachers modify grades due to student effort or teachers assist students before or during an assessment by providing them with answers and practice