Week 28. Legal and Ethical Contexts in my Digital Practice

Activity 4

I will be reflecting on my ethical dilemma using Rolfe et al.’s (2001) model of reflection.

What?
My ethical dilemma that I will be reflecting on involved a student who posted an inappropriate video of themselves on the their facebook page.  This was done at home and not during school hours.  It was brought to my attention when a group of concerned students approached me to tell me that this video was being shared amongst students and they were concerned about the students wellbeing.

The information that I was given from these students about the details of the video were a major concern to me as it involved nudity.  Our school policy states that police must be informed about this so they can take over the investigation.   I made contact with our community police officer who promptly came into school to talk to the student involved in the video.   Home was also contacted and asked to come into school to discuss this matter.

As a school our first priority was the students health and safety and making sure that there were going to be supports put in place to assist her and her family to remove the video off facebook.
This is why the Police were involved.  They have better systems and networks to deal with this situation, but it also keeps us as teachers  safe, so we would not be exposed to the content of the video.

The police were able to remove the original video off Facebook, but unfortunately copies had been made and people were continuing to upload the video.   The police did a further investigation and came back to school with some concerns.   A couple of students had commented on the post asking the student to post more videos.   Because the student in the video is under the age of 16 this matter had to be taken very seriously and the students could  be charged for this.  The Police needed to interview these students.

As a school we contacted the families of the students and arranged a time for the police to speak to the students with the support of the family member.  This was an extremely big wake up call from these students who hadn’t quite understood the implications of what they had done.

As a school it was also important that we were also looking out for the health and safety of the students who were being questioned by the Police.

The outcome for these students was a stern warning from the police and a big lesson learnt.  This was a terrible situation as it had the potential to be serious convictions for the students who commented and an extremely dangerous situation for the student involved in the video.

So what?

This model highlights that the context, forces, and decision-making processes impact individuals or groups facing ethical dilemmas. There are five main parts to the model (Ehrich et al., 2011).

• The critical incident, which triggers the ethical dilemma.
• A set of competing forces, each of which impacts on decision-making from its own particular bias.
• The individual’s values, beliefs, and ethical orientations in relation to the dilemma.
• The choice, which could be no action or the action taken formally or informally, internally or externally.
• The action (or non-action) can create particular types of implications for the individual, organisation and the community, and from which new incidents or dilemmas can arise.

Reflecting on this model, I am confident that I made the correct decisions when working through this dilemma. This is a great example of knowing your school policies and sticking to them.   The reason why we hand these situations over to the police is that it keeps everyone safe including the staff involved.
This was an extremely sensitive situation for all involved, and communication was the key to satisfy all stakeholders involved including students, staff, whānau, police and the principal.

Now what?
After this experience we review our cell phone policies for Yr 7 and 8 students.  We made changes to this policy which restrict the use of cell phones from 8:30 - 3:00pm.
This has been extremely successful and fully supported by our community. 

So far this year I have dealt with 1 phone related issue in Yr 7 & 8, compared to the 5-6 issues a week I was dealing with last year.   We have also addressed having a positive digital footprint in our Cyber smarts programme.

Reference

Ehrich L.C., Kimber M., Millwater J. & Cranston N. (2011) Ethical Dilemmas: A Model to Understand Teacher Practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice: Vol 17(2); pp 173-185 DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794