“Is it ethical to evaluate teachers based on student behavior?”
The education field represents the one of the largest industries in the United States. Due to the enormous capacity of professionals, many supervisors and managers intend to set clear standards for every educator. Therefore, teachers embody the strict guidelines to accept the recognition of an exceptional educator. Teaching symbolizes effort, care, and knowledge, characteristics that exemplify a small portion of every educator. Along with great accomplishments, responsibility and ethics impact an educator’s action. As a result, ethics and moral standards influence future generations at a higher level every time.
Although ethical and moral standards change over time, the
…show more content…
The presence of confusion in a situation, causes differences and disputes leading to ethical dilemmas. In a perfect, ideal society nothing could possibly encounter arguments, but in a realistic world common ground in disputes, the result from two or more opposing sides compromising to find a solution. In order to avoid and eliminate excessive ethical dilemmas in the education industry, many professionals establish certain ethical standards to prevent work environment issues. Contrary to the set standards, many educators explain the unfairness in which teachers receive evaluations.
So, is it ethical to evaluate teachers based on student behavior? The problem lies in the grading process. The teachers are commonly evaluated everywhere in the world. Sometime the way teachers are evaluated, lacks the complete capacity of the teacher. Although multiple evaluations are taken during the school year, even some of the observations are not as clear as the teachers. Since the evaluations are somewhat unexpected, teachers have no way of controlling the way their class will act. Therefore taking into consideration the student’s behaviors may cause a misinterpretation.
For example would it be okay to finalize the teacher’s grade based on the way the students’ behave? Since the evaluations are at least twice a year, it is very likely that the teacher will not score as high as the demanding rubric of most of the evaluations. But teachers need to be
Some things change, some things stay the same. The National Education Association (NEA) adopted a code of ethics in 1975 (Strike & Soltis 2009, p. viii). While this code still upholds many concerns that educators face today, it is important to make sure that a code of ethics is a breathing document. It must adapt and change with the changing of time. Strike and Soltis (2009) reference the code of ethics quite regularly throughout the entire book. It is first introduced in full at the beginning of the book. Looking over the code, it is important to remember that much has changed since it was first adopted. While all of the code still applies, it is necessary to add to the code to make it acceptable for the twenty-first century.
Every day people make decisions that may have profound effect on their personal and/or professional lives as well as the lives of others. The decision people make have a foundation on their personal, cultural, and perhaps organizational values. When these values are in disagreement, an ethical dilemma occurs.
First of all, continual feedback allows teachers to self-reflect on best practices. For example, a teacher can target his/her areas of weakness in order to grow professionally and gain further insight of best practices. Another benefit, of teacher evaluations is higher student success rates. These, for example, are measurable through district assessments and state standardized assessments. If a teachers success rate has significantly improved through modification of practices, T-TESS has served its intended purpose. Finally, yet another benefit of teacher evaluations is the fact that the educator is an active participant in his/her evaluation process. For example, through goal setting, the educator is allowed the opportunity to decide where he/she want to grow. Through the evaluation cycle and the communication therein, the appraiser and educator both take greater responsibility in understanding and meeting established goals. Finally, at the end of the process, student growth is an indicator of a well-developed and integrated evaluation system. These are but a few of the many benefits reaped from an evaluation systems such as T-TESS (TEA,
A main issue why you cannot judge a teacher based off their students test scores is because some factors are out of their control. In any classroom across the world there are some students who are smarter than others. (Popham 13) Some can be excellent at math, while others can exceed in science. (Popham 13) A teacher can give over a lesson in a clear and succinct way but there will always be students who do not do well. (Popham 13) Recent thinking among leading educators suggest that there are various forms of intelligence, and a child who is born with less classroom skills may possess other abilities that will not be shown by a test. (Popham 13) For a student as such, a teacher is limited in finding a successful approach to help them gain a high test score.
As school leaders, we have to hold the public trust and so ethics are such an important part what we do in our school. I think there are a few simple rules and one of them is always to think about what is the best benefit for our students. Our ultimate goal is to provide a safe learning environment where students are willing to learn and improve. If we keep this in our mind, we can hardly go wrong with an ethical question that we face. Ethical challenges need to be confronted with courage and compassion for those who would be impacted by difficult decisions. School leaders are responsible for setting the examples that others would wish to follow.
confidence. The teacher will begin to understand what they are doing right, and how to implement that properly in future school years. Also, the educator will know what they did wrong so as not to repeat mistakes that previously hindered their grade as a teacher. This evaluation just might even be a good way for students to anonymously share things that they might feel embarrassed to tell someone, such as being sexually harassed, and so teacher evaluations are helpful when it comes to stopping crimes against not only a child’s mind, but their bodies as well.
The Alaska Code of Ethics for teachers contain many points that deal with normative and applied ethics. I drew this conclusion because many of the topics within the code lead to things that explain how things should be done or if situations arise, it explains how they should be handled. These more general ideas provide a framework, which grounds these ethics (Moral Philosophy, 2009). From there the Alaska Code of Ethics spirals down to more specific terms and situations. This is when the code gets into more applied ethics (Moral Philosophy, 2009). The Alaska Code of Ethics seems to speak to the personal values and morals of those for whom they are intended. This can be seen in many of the codes such as, ?The educator may not engage in physical abuse of a student or sexual conduct with a student and shall report to the commission knowledge of such an act by an educator? (Alaska Department of Education & Early Learning, 2000). This is just one example of how Alaska?s code asks educators to abide not only by the professional code of ethics, but to also base their actions and judgments on their personal values and ethics. Teachers, in their responsibility to society, must work in order to not betray that trust (Nelson, Palonsky, & McCarthy, 2010). The knowledge of this responsibility is obvious throughout the Alaska Code of Ethics.
However, the issue of ground rules within the Teaching Codes of Conduct and Practice for Registered Teachers can produce ethical dilemmas such as
As a senior in high school, I would say that the ethical and racial composition of our student body is very diverse. Even though it’s not a huge topic and something that has yet affected our school, I still believe it is something that is very visible. An example could be the students during lunch. I see a racial division between students whether it be white or Mexicans. As I said before it has not yet been something that has affected our school community as a whole. However, individual students may think otherwise. They might believe that our staff, coaches, for example, may only prefer that whites etc. There’s also an ethnic composition; students are allowed to believe in whatever religion they are desired and even allow them to follow its
Across the United States, policymakers determine evaluation systems for public school educators. Used as a tool for increasing teacher effectiveness and accountability, teacher evaluation systems vary from state to state as determined by individual state departments of Education. According to Sergiovanni & Starrat (2002), the role of the evaluation process is important in developing teachers’ instruction, which should contribute to academic achievement of students. Evaluation should provide meaningful feedback to teachers, to improve instructional practices and support learning (Kelley and Maslow, 2012).
. I was on my way to a 10:30 class on route 29 in Gainesville, heading towards route 66 when I looked over I noticed a car was flipped over on its side, and there was not a cop in site. The first thing that came to my mind was to stop, but there were multiple people helping. However, I knew how traffic was going to be on 66 to get to Mason on time. I had to juggle the choices of stopping, be late to class or keep driving and arrive to class on time. If I missed the class I would miss out on important information needed to pass the class to complete my degree. If I did not have a class that day I would have stopped because I care about people’s well-being. The consequence approach to this decision is deciding to keep driving because it is my
It almost feels like this falls under ethical responsibilities to the children. The teacher should ensure they are creating a safe, healthy, nurturing, and responsive setting for each child (Gartell, 2013). By the parent/director allowing the child to act out, the parent/director was not putting the needs of the other children first. I say this because, the director is teaching the other children that it is ok to act that way. In addition, if the parent/director was treating their child differently, such as favoring, the other children could potentially pick up on this as well. The parent/director should facilitate cooperative and individual activities so that each child can experience success (Gartell, 2013). By not addressing the behavior of their child, this sends mixed messages to the class. In addition, this does not allow the children the opportunity to cope with the behavior, hence allowing for a healthy class environment (Morrison, 2014) as the parent/director is utilizing
The confidence interval for proportion of business students of bayview University who cheat is some form is 0.43 to 0.63.
The Code of Ethics is absolutely essential for every education major to have a strong understanding of. This code presents the main rules and regulations that apply to future teachers to ensure the best behavior and actions possible, inside and outside of the classroom. It is a clear guide of unethical activities that teachers may never indulge in without risking suspension, revocation, denial, or reprimand of any teaching certificate. The code is broken down into eleven different standards which are easy for educators to understand and abide by.
“Ethics are defined as a set of principles of right conducts; the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession” ( Dictionary of the Human Language, 2000). Teachers are often put in situations that require more than just knowing the basic school rules. It is within these situations, that the ethical dilemmas occur. There is not always a right way to deal with many daily problems that face educators, but there are ways to handle situations that are better then others.