Sunday 25 February 2018
Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice
Mindlab Activity 4
1 (What): An ethical dilemma that I have faced in the past is very similar to one of the issues discussion in one of the videos from this week's required activities, and relates to students being photographed/videoed and shared on social media.
At my school, we ask permission upon enrollment of students, for their child to be published on our school website, newsletters, school facebook page and pictures displayed around the school. A parent approached me oneday, annoyed, saying that 'their' child was on our school Facebook page and they were not happy about this. Originally they had signed for their child to be published online, but didn't think this meant social media. They further complained that other parents were taking photos at sports days, which included 'their' child, and were posted on social media. This was seen a more of a problem, as it was not only on our School Facebook page, but individual parents Facebook pages, which we had no control over.
Step 2 (So What): According to Ehrich, Kimber, Millwater & Cranston (2011) the following should be considered when being faced with this dilemma: professional ethics, legal issues or policies, organisational culture, the institutional context, the public interest, society and community, the global context, the political framework, economic and financial contexts. In my case, I went straight to find the original document that the parent had signed, to see if in fact ‘they’ had given permission for us to publish photos online - which they had. I further considered our organisational culture, the public interest, our local and wider community(ies), and asked myself whether removing all photos of this particular child was the best plan of attack.
Before moving further with this dilemma, I asked the meet with the parent again. We discussed what ‘they’ thought ‘publish online’ meant, and found it did not match the school’s description. With the parent, I discussed ‘their’ options. These included, a new form being signed saying that the school didn’t have permission to publish photos online. In doing this, ‘they’ would have to agree that he child could also not be in our school newsletters and school magazine, as these are shared with our whanau on our school Facebook page. Further to this, I posted on our school Facebook page that any photos other parents may have of students, would need to have my approval before being posted on our school Facebook page. This did not solve the issue of other parents posting pictures of their own children on Facebook, that may showcase this particular child. This was discussed as a staff at a staff meeting, with only one manageable solution, that this child be excluded from all EOTC activities.
All these solutions would allow this child to not be published online, however wasn’t being fair to the child as they would need to be excluded from many of the activities that would be showcased by the school, which included our “Caught Being Good’ Award. This would not be the best outcome for the child and they would miss out on much of what the other students would have access to.
Step 3 (Now What): The ideas were discussed with the ‘parent’, with the final decision left in ‘their’ hands. The parent decided that they too did not want their child to miss out on a quality education, and that photos in Newsletters and in the school magazine would be acceptable, because they aren’t directly loaded onto Facebook, but would prefer photos not to be loaded onto Facebook directly. As a school, we had to ensure that all parents understood our policy around photos/videos being taken, and reworded the policy to explicitly state the inclusion of Social Media as a media online.
Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794
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Interesting read. I like that you continued to bring that back to the parent to clarify their understandings rather than just acting on the initial request. Living in a social media age, the lines tend to get blurred. I wonder if going forward, parents are reminded to seek permission from the respective parents if they'd like to share photos on their personal facebook pages.
ReplyDeleteThis post also made me think about how our policy is worded at our school.
Thank you!
Ethics around posting children's photos on social media really is a minefield, so often parents take group photos of children at sports/activities days and go ahead and post them on line without any consideration for the other children in the photo. As a parent I prefer my child not to be posted on Facebook, however many times this has happened. As educators we are more likely to be aware of such ethics (and even then we struggle with such dilemmas). It seems to me that there is a growing need for more education around the ethics of digital media not only for educators but for all of society. Perhaps schools need to be offering more workshops/seminars on this and actively encouraging ALL parents to attend. Our school has offered these in the past but as usual it is more often than not the parents who are responsible that show up. The challenge is finding ways to get these messages across to as many parents as possible! Thanks for sharing your blog!
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