EDSR0031: ETHICS AND SOCIAL

RESPONSIBILITY IN EDUCATION

Module I Educational Ethics

Concept of Ethics

• Ethics, which is also known as philosophical ethics, ethical theory, moral theory, and moral
philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematic approach to understanding,
analyzing, and distinguishing matters of right and wrong, good and bad, and admirable and
deplorable as they relate to the well-being of and the relationships among sentient beings.

• Ethical determinations are applied through the use of formal theories, approaches, and code of
conducts, such as codes that are developed for profession and religion.
• Ethics is often used in connection with the activities of organisations and with professional codes
of conduct: for instance, medical and business ethics, which are often formalised in terms of
exhaustive sets of rules or guidelines stating how employees are expected to behave in their
workplaces (such as in respect of a duty of care or confidentiality that health-care workers owe to
their patients; or the medical ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for
autonomy, and justice).
• The term comes from the Greek word ethos, which means "character".

• Ethics is complemented to Aesthetics in the philosophy field of Axiology.

• In Philosophical ethics investigates what is the best way for humans to live, and what kinds of
actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances.

• Paul and Elder define ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what
behavior helps or harms sentient creatures".

• The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is "commonly used
interchangeably with 'morality' ... and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral
principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual."
 •Ethics has three broad areas of study:

 Meta-ethics, which focuses on the meaning of ethical terms themselves (for instance, ‘what is goodness?’),
and on questions of how ethical knowledge is obtained (for instance, ‘how can I distinguish what is good
from what is bad?’), rather than on the more applied question of ‘what should I do in a particular situation?’.
Meta-ethics is therefore concerned with the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes and judgments.
Meta-ethics examines such themes as what moral questions mean, and on what basis people can know what
is ‘true’ or ‘false’.
• Normative ethics, in contrast, is the study of ethical acts. It therefore focuses explicitly on
questions of ‘what is the right thing to do?’ in general. Normative ethics is concerned with
questions of what people ought to do, and on how people can decide what the ‘correct’ moral
actions to take are.
• Applied ethics, which is concerned with how people can achieve moral outcomes in specific
situations. Therefore, it is concerned with the philosophical examination of particular – and often
complex – issues that involve moral judgments. Areas such as bioethics, environmental ethics,
development ethics and business/corporate ethics may be regarded as areas of applied ethics. (The
distinction between normative and applied ethics, however, is becoming increasingly blurred.)
• The area of meta-ethics is more of a ‘pure’, abstract or theoretical, field of study, whereas the areas
of normative and applied ethics tend to focus more sharply on how ethical considerations relate to
human actions in general (in the case of normative ethics) or in particular situations and contexts
(in the case of applied ethics).

•
Concept of Educational Ethics:

• The term educational ethics denotes the sub-field of applied ethics which incorporates debate
about the scope, purposes and theories of professional ethics in teaching and the moral work of
teachers.

• Educational ethics is a field which considers ethical problems and dilemmas specific to the
complexities of education, with a view to assisting educators, educational policy-makers and
school communities to clarify these context-specific problems and making ethical
recommendations for their resolution.
• It includes the history and development of educational policies with a particular focus on its
potential or actual ethical implications for school administration, teachers, school students, school
communities and others; the analysis and articulation of teacher ethical obligations including but
not limited to codes of conduct and ethics in teaching; research relating to ethical conduct, manner
and the moral life of schools, the investigation of models and theories of ethical beliefs and
decision-making in relation to tertiary, school and child care education; and pedagogical
dimensions, interventions or curriculum for teaching and learning professional ethics with pre and
in-service teachers.
• Educational ethics focuses on promoting ethics and values such as, justice, equality and human
rights.

• It is an education, which includes aspects like nurturing a respectful attitude towards others (both
individuals and communities alike), the positive formation of character, building capacities for
reflective and informed moral judgment, putting one’s beliefs and values into practice.

• Education as a process is inherently value-laden, in what is conveyed (content) and how this is
achieved (methods), in the consequences of that process (educational outcomes) and the
relationships that are formed in the educational setting. “Education implies that something
worthwhile has been intentionally transmitted in a morally acceptable manner.”
• Educational ethics takes this internal or implicit ethical dimension, reflects upon it and sets it as an
explicit aim. This is connected with a recognition that ethical or value-laden aspects of the
education can never be excluded from this process.
• Commonly cited goals of Educational Ethics include:

 To promote ethical reflection, attentiveness, autonomy, and responsibility in the educational

community that is established in a given educational setting,

 To enable the examination and understanding of important ethical principles, values, virtues, and
ideals, and to cultivate the intellectual and moral abilities (critical thinking, reflection,
comprehension, appreciation, compassion, valuing, etc.) needed for responsible moral judgment,
decision-making, and action,
• To guide individuals to explore different values and different moral viewpoints

• To commit to the recognised basic values and the fundamental human rights, while at the same
time enhance self-esteem and the feeling of self-worth
 To help individuals to overcome possible prejudices, biases, and other unethical attitudes and
practices, and at the same time help them to create an appropriate, respectful attitude towards
themselves, others around them, society and the environment

 To promote cooperative, collaborative behaviour and to deepen the motivation for creating a
group, class, or school environment which is a genuine ethical community

 To build character (with intellectual and moral virtues) in a way that will enable a person to
achieve a morally acceptable, flourishing and personally satisfying ‘good life’ - the ancient ideal
of eudaimonia

 To reflect on how to situate the individual as an active member of local and global communities
• Education, especially early education, is a fundamental element supporting the development of
autonomous, caring, resilient individuals who will contribute to their communities both locally and
globally.

• Educational Ethics can play an important part in nurturing such an individual. This broad
understanding of Education Ethics follows what John Dewey defined as the general goal of
education, “the formation of a cultivated and effectively operative good judgment or taste with
respect to what is aesthetically admirable, intellectually acceptable and morally approvable”.

• To expand this definition we may add that “[o]ne purpose of moral education is to help make
children virtuous – honest, responsible, and compassionate. Another is to make mature students
informed and reflective about important and controversial moral issues. Both purposes are
embedded in a yet larger project – making sense of life”.
• Educational Ethics leads individuals to establish values relevant to their lives in a concrete social context and
in an experiential and expressive manner.

• This process must go beyond straightforward inculcation of values or passive assent based on authority. This
is the main reason why we are focusing on infusing Educational Ethics with critical thinking, philosophy for
children, collaborative and co-created active learning.

• Such an integrative approach secures the essential balance between the individual and societal aspects of
Ethical Education. “As Socrates would have it, the philosophical examination of life is a collaborative inquiry.
The social nature of the enterprise goes with its spirit of inquiry to form [a] bifocal vision of the examined life.

• These days, insofar as our society teaches us to think about values, it tends to inculcate a private rather than a
public conception of them. This makes reflection a personal and inward journey rather than a social and
collaborative one and a person’s values a matter of parental guidance in childhood and individual decision in
maturity”.
• Developing ethics and values together in an educational setting fosters such a collaborative
perspective and enables an individual to gain several different and comprehensive perspectives on
ethical issues.

• Another reason for such integration is to put the focus on the community, beginning from the
“community of enquiry” as being promulgated by a “philosophy with children” approach. This
complements the ancient focus on the “life well lived” with that of “living together”.

• What ultimately matters for ethics, claims Alasdair MacIntyre, “is the construction of local forms
of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained”.
• Within the plethora of possible approaches to Educational Ethics one trend is the move towards
multidimensional, integrative or holistic approaches.

• These approaches combine both traditional educational methods and goals with recent insights into moral
psychology and other sciences resulting in new methods for fostering moral development. Kirschenbaum,
who initially developed the so-called “values clarification” approach, emphasises four aspects of Educational
Ethics:

• When it comes to content, comprehensive Educational Ethics includes both personal and social
values, and ethical as well as moral issues.

• Secondly, an integrated approach to Educational Ethics should include a range of diverse

methodological approaches and tools.
• Thirdly, an approach to Educational Ethics extends throughout the entire area of school endeavour
and life, including all school subjects as well as accompanying activities.

• Finally, the holistic approach involves not only children and their teachers or educators, but the
whole community and institutions as agents of Education Ethics.

• Educational Ethics is a challenging undertaking, which must incorporate aspects of thinking,

understanding, empathizing, embodying and community in order to be effective.

•The central aim of striving to cultivate an autonomous, responsible, and caring individual is a
worthy task, and, as the saying goes, “it takes the whole village to educate a child”. Together with
parents, teachers are at the centre of such a village.
Need of Ethics in Educational Setting
• The lifestyle of a human being is closely bound with ethical values unlike other organisms living on
this planet. This highlights the importance of embracing ethics on our day today activities. According
to the New Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary ethics is defined as “the moral principles that
control or influence a person’s behaviour.”

• Ethics involves two things. “First ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that
prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society,
fairness or specific virtues.

• Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one’s ethical standards.” As a person
moulding the younger generation, a teacher has to act as a role model to protect the honour, culture
and the discipline of the school while achieving educational goals with success due to sheer
dedicated service to the teaching profession.
• Ethics plays a very important role in Educational setting. Ethics are interpreted as the discipline of
dealing with good and bad with commitment and moral duty. Ethics are well-established levels
that make the measures right and wrong. It is classified as unique values such as integrity and
discipline, Honesty amid others and applies them in daily routines. Ethics impacts the behaviour
and permit an individual to make the right options. To manage life and act responsibly is very hard
without ethics. The significance of ethics cannot be disregard in any level of life it’s important that
they are practised in the area of Education.

• Ethics in Educational setting are need because they assist to run the system smoothly. The Ethics
sets the standards of what’s acceptable and what’s not, therefore, protecting the Interest of both
teachers and students. The school management frequently takes it upon them to acquaint the
teacher with the ethics that apply to their profession.
• Ethics in Education is appraised as the segment of the human right to Education. The motive of
ethics education is not directly learning ethics for its purpose. It’s objective to deploy this body of
knowledge for two motives.

• The first motive is to grow intellectual dimensions that will authorize peoples to recognize ethical
dimensions of issues and address ethical issues in the field as various as medicines, economics and
policy amid others.

• The second purpose of ethics education is needed to develop critical thinking skills, intentional on
one’s purposes, particularly the ability to reflect and the theoretical and practical effect of personal
and collective human actions. To become a better citizen, ethics should be put as a way in the
educational system. Ethics has also become essential in Education, as Education is a fundamental
method of human life.
• There are Four Principles of Ethics involved in Education:

• 1) Honesty

• Honesty is an important trait to have in Educational setting. Honesty means being loyal, truthful,
trustworthy, sincere, and fair. It is admirable in several cultures and religions. In-School, good
student-teacher bond come from mutual trust and respect. In today’s world, only academics is enough
for students. To be successful, one must have the morality that complements our education
knowledge.

• Amid all the attributed, Honesty is one of the vital assets that are essential for all the students.
Honesty does not come naturally but it is an incarnated method of adopting it through a broad
overview. “Honesty is considered the best policy.” When we become an honest person the people
give the best compliment and its’ a dream of every individual to get the good compliment. So, the
education system should make sure to comprise some important practices and routine to put a student
near to morality. Students must be guided correctly from the starting and their childhood to enactment
honesty.
• 2) Confidentiality

• Confidentiality is one of the other ethics that is essential in Education. The Confidentiality refers
to one’s commitment not to disclose or transmit information to the unauthorized people. It extends
to information about either peoples or organizations. When facing any number of stress,
challenges or crises students seek out students’ affairs professionals. Students frequently share
personal information in-depth with the expectation that Confidentiality will be maintained. But
there may be a risk to share the information with others.
• 3) Conflict of Interest

• Ethic in Education is a condition in which a teacher’s main responsibility to a student is negotiated

by engaging priorities. Conflicts of Interest can display in a variety of contexts and for several
various reasons. The conflict of Interest emerges when the best Interest of one person is not in the
best interest of another individual or organization to which that person incurs loyalty. Conflicts of
Interest can extent from mistakenly permitting another priority to affect one’s judgment, to
deliberately infracting a school policy for personal benefit.
• 4) Responsibility

• Along with all the ethics, responsibility is also one of the vital ethics in Education. The student’s
responsibility takes place when students take an energetic part in their studying by acknowledging
they are responsible for their academic success. The student’s responsibility is to communicate
respectfully, and careful manner with the teachers, and other classmates of the School. Student
responsibility is exhibit when students make an option and take steps which guide them to their
educational objectives. Attend and participate in classes, seminars, and labs, along with this
effectively complete all the assigned work by a teacher in a given time.

• Thus, Ethics in Education assist to manage the education system and make sure that these habits
positively take part in human well-being. Between moral and ethical principles, the ethical
knowledge is an intrinsic feature of awareness.
Components of Ethics
• Some professional organizations may define their ethical approach in terms of a number of
discrete components. Typically these include:

• Honesty

• Integrity

• Transparency

• Accountability

• Confidentiality

• Objectivity

• Respectfulness

• Obedience to the Law

1. HONESTY

Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity,
truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.

“Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.” -William Shakespeare

2. INTEGRITY

Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations,

and outcomes. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy, that it regards internal
consistency as a virtue.

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and
dreadful.” - Samuel Johnson
3. TRANSPARENCY

Transparency is a general quality. It is implemented by a set of policies, practices and procedures. It

allow citizens to have accessibility, usability, utility, understandability, in formativeness and
auditability of information and process held by centers of authority (society or organizations).

“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” -Dalai Lama

4. ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability, blameworthiness,

liability. It is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions,
and policies and be answerable for resulting consequences. It cannot exist without proper accounting
practices.

“When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are
pointing at himself.” — Louis Nizer
5. CONFIDENTIALITY

Confidentiality is an ethical principle of discretion associated with the professions, such as medicine,
law, psychotherapy. In business, the confidentiality of information, a mainstream adaptation of the “need
to know” .

 Confidentiality regarding: 1. Whose interests 2. Which interests

 Confidential information of: 1. Worker 2. Employer 3. Colleague 4. Competitor

“In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is
essential.” -Gijs de Vries

6. OBJECTIVITY

Objectivity refers to lack of bias, judgment or prejudice. It is the concept of truth independent from
individual subjectivity.

“The belief in objectivity is a faith in 'facts,' a distrust in 'values,' and a commitment to their segregation.“
-Michael Schudson
7. RESPECTFULNESS

Respect gives a positive feeling of esteem for a person and conduct representative of that esteem.
Respect can be a specific feeling of regard for the actual qualities of the one respected. Rude conduct
is usually considered to indicate a lack of respect, disrespect, whereas actions that honor somebody
or something indicate respect. The opposite of respect is contempt.

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the
university.” -Albert Einstein
8. OBEDIENCE TO LAW

Law is the set of enforced rules under which a society is governed. Law is one of the most basic
social institutions- and one of the most necessary. The law thus establishes the rules that define a
person's rights and obligations. The law also sets penalties for people who violate these rules. In fact,
laws frequently are changed to reflect changes in a society's needs and attitudes. Law is a system of
rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior.

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.” -Mahatma Gandhi
Morals
Concept of Morals

• Morals are specific beliefs, behaviours and way of being derived from ethics.
One’s moral are judged to be good or bad through systematic ethical analysis.

• Morals is more often used in connection with the ways in which individuals
conduct their personal, private lives, often in relation to personal financial probity,
lawful conduct and acceptable standards of interpersonal behaviour (including
truthfulness, honesty, and sexual propriety).
• The reverse of morality is immorality, which means that a person’s behaviour is in
opposition to accepted societal, religious, cultural, or professional ethical
standards and principles; instance of immorality includes, dishonesty, fraud,
murder, sexually abusive acts etc