|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
|
Teachers Council Code of Ethics Summit
Texts of the presentations to the SummitSue Cherrington Ethics in Early ChildhoodE nga iwi, e nga mana, e nga reo, Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's summit, and for the opportunity to share some of the insights gained from my participation as a member of the National Working Group that oversaw the development of the Early Childhood Education Code of Ethics for Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 1990's. I want to begin today with an examination of the development processes of that code, in order to share some of the insights that we gained and the lessons that we learnt as we progressed through the long gestation period, and on into the implementation of the code. Finally, I want to signal more recent shifts in the discourse on early childhood ethics, here and internationally, as I believe they can usefully inform the discussions that the Teachers Council and its members must engage in as part of the development of a new code of ethics for all New Zealand registered teachers. The development of the Early Childhood Education Code of Ethics for Aotearoa/New Zealand:I want to begin my comments with an acknowledgement of the support that the National Working Group received to develop the code. Although the process was led through by the National Working Group, the code would never have been developed without the support of grants from the Ministry of Education, the then-Teacher Registration Board, Victoria University of Wellington, and from donations from various early childhood education organisations. In March 1993, a small group of early childhood professionals, under the umbrella of the Federation of Early Childhood Organisations (FECEO) and OMEP-Aotearoa/New Zealand[5], met to begin a process that, 2 and a half years later, would result in a code of ethics for early childhood education for Aotearoa/New Zealand (Dalli & Mitchell, 1995). Our interest in ethics had grown from our experiences as teachers, professional development providers, unionists, lecturers and government officials in the field of early childhood education. This project was not the first time that attention had been paid to ethics in ECE: the NZ Free Kindergarten Teachers Association had developed a code in the 1950's, whilst the NZ Childcare Association had had a Statement of Principles for many years. In the mid-1980's Val Burns, then Director of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Education, had returned from a Fulbright fellowship which included a focus on the initiative by an American organisation, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, to develop their code of ethics. Val organised a Lopdell Centre residential course in 1989 that resulted in a number of recommendations to the new Ministry of Education concerning the development of a code of ethics for early childhood education in this country. Unfortunately, the metamorphosis of the old Department into the new Ministry saw these recommendations shelved (Dalli & Mitchell, 1995). As the National Working Group began the process of developing the code, we took account of the work undertaken in Australia (e.g., AECA, 1990; Rodd & Clyde, 1991) and in the United States (e.g., Feeney & Kipnis, 1989; Feeney & Sysko, 1986) on code development and agreed upon a collaborative and consultative approach to working together and to involving the wider early childhood education community. We committed ourselves "to devising a code that would reflect the New Zealand context and be owned by early childhood practitioners and not imposed on them" (Dalli & Mitchell, 1995, p. 2), and adopted a number of strategies to help us achieve our aim. These included the deliberate inclusion of both tangata whenua and practitioner members within the Working Group, and the establishment of a large Advisory Committee drawn from early childhood and related organisations that met with the Working Group three times a year. We undertook an extensive literature search, and made contact with early childhood professionals, here and internationally, whose experiences we believed we could usefully draw upon. Our desire to situate the code firmly within the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, and to involve practitioners at the grassroots level at every point throughout the process, was supported by discussions held early in the project with our Australian colleagues, Drs Anne Stonehouse, Jillian Rodd, and Margaret Clyde. We were convinced that this approach would strengthen practitioner ownership of the final code, as well as provide professional development opportunities for educators to discuss and debate ethical issues situated within early childhood education. Our beliefs were reflected in the four objectives for the project:
I believe that these four objectives have as much relevance for the work of the Teachers Council in developing a teachers' code now (with some slight editing to make them inclusive of the wider teaching profession) as they did for the National Working Group a decade ago. The first consultative process undertaken by the Working Group was the development of an education kit for which funding was given by the Teachers Council's predecessor, the Teacher Registration Board. We were extremely grateful for this funding as it enabled practitioners throughout the country to access information about the project and to contribute to the development of their code. The kit, comprising a video, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", and supporting material asked practitioners to workshop how they would deal with a series of dilemmas within the early childhood education context and to send their feedback to the Working Group. From this feedback, an initial set of values were deduced. These, together with the values that emerged from the research survey also undertaken (and discussed in the next section of this paper), were collated and sent out as part of a second education kit to all individuals and organisations that had received the first kit. The survey of ethical concerns: The data that emerged from this survey supported the project in a number of ways. High levels of support and commitment to the notion of having a code of ethics for early childhood education were reported, along with significant recognition and reporting of ethical situations that had been encountered by respondents. Within the survey, respondents had been asked to describe situations where they felt that an ethical issue was involved, and these were coded according to the content of the situation and the relationship dimension (e.g., staff-staff, staff-parent, staff-management) within which the situation had occurred. More than 1700 examples provided by respondents collectively illustrated the complexities of teaching in early childhood education. Five content areas clearly emerged as key sites for ethical situations for respondents: the content of the centre's programme (288 situations), the management of children (230 situations), issues of confidentiality (178 situations), dealings with management (125 situations) and colleagues not meeting their professional responsibilities (111 situations) (Dalli & Cherrington, 1994). The situations described by respondents included those where a clear choice of action was apparent in order for the respondent to meet what Feeney and Freeman (1999) describe as ethical responsibilities. Newman (1998) describes these as difficult situations – whilst the situation may be hard to deal with, it involves no decision about the choice of action. Other situations described were examples of ethical dilemmas which, as Kenneth Kipnis (1987, p. 28) notes, "characteristically involve conflict between two or more core values. They involve hard choices that force us to give up something important". It was these core values of the early childhood profession that the Working Group was particularly keen to uncover. Thus, respondents' descriptions of how they dealt with their ethical situations were analysed to elicit the values they had upheld in their decision-making. These values, together with those that emerged through the feedback from the first and second education kits (described earlier), formed the basis of the draft code. The range and frequency of situations reported in the survey "opened a window" (Cortazzi, 1993) into the complexities of teaching in early childhood educational settings. These stories illustrated why being an early childhood educator is complex, difficult and demanding work, and provided insights into the skills, knowledge, attitudes and dispositions required to be effective early childhood teachers. Whilst these stories were initially gathered to inform the development of the code, they have offered many useful insights into the challenges of teaching in early childhood education, and to the beliefs about professional behaviour held by early childhood practitioners. As the Teachers Council begins the process of developing a code of ethics that applies to, and therefore should reflect the common core values of all registered teachers, I would recommend that serious consideration be given to undertaking similar research with the intention of eliciting the common core values across the sector along with those "most frequent and most severe ethical conflicts" (Katz, 1980, p. 150) faced by teachers in the early childhood, primary and secondary sectors. Such a process would support the development of a code that is inclusive of all registered teachers, regardless of the sector that they teach in, and would contribute to the wider goals of the Teachers Council to provide professional leadership in education and to enhance the professional status of teachers. Furthermore, it may produce a unifying effect, helping teachers across the sectors to recognise and appreciate the challenges and complexities of teaching in their own and other sectors of the teaching profession. The final draft: The end result of our consultation was the code of ethics presented to the 6th early Childhood Convention in September 1995, and still in place today. One particular feature of the code that the Working Group was very proud about, is that all of the values came from the early childhood education community. Whilst we shaped and wordsmithed these values, they are the values of the profession and not the results of a backroom process. I would urge the Teachers Council to commit to a similar model, in order to take your members with you on this journey. I believe the resulting commitment to the code will far outweigh any disadvantages that may result from taking longer to achieve a finalised code of ethics. Implementation of the early childhood code of ethics:
Whilst the first two recommendations were accepted, participants at the Convention wanted time to discuss the status of the code with their organisations and not to bind organisations not represented at the Convention to adopting the code. In the event the Teaching Council of Aotearoa did not eventuate, although today's Teachers Council is the closest entity to what was being proposed in the mid-1990's. The status of the code was a decision that the Working Group felt best left to the sector: our task had been to oversee the development, not to decide whether the code was to be aspirational or enforceable. A similar decision needs to be made by the Teachers Council and its members as part of the development process. Beyond ensuring that the resultant code was embedded within the local ECE context and "owned" by practitioners, the prolonged and in-depth consultation processes utilised by the National Working Group gave opportunities for practitioners to explore ethical issues and deepen their understandings of ethics within the context of their teaching. As the project drew to a close, we were mindful of the need to develop resources to support the implementation of the code by practitioners so that the potential of the code for enhancing professional teaching practices was realised. Research emerging from Australia (Pollnitz, 1994) had highlighted that two years after the development of the Australian early childhood code of ethics less than half those surveyed (total n = 225) were aware of the existence of the code, a result we hoped would not be replicated in this country (Dalli & Mitchell, 1995). To support practitioners, a booklet was developed which outlined a process for using the code to guide ethical thinking and decision-making, and which presented a number of suggestions for how centres and practitioners could use the code to inform their practices. The extent to which practitioners use the code is hard to judge, given that no systematic evaluation has been undertaken. Through a recent research grant made to Dr Carmen Dalli, we are hoping to get more systematic data on current knowledge about and usage of the code. Anecdotally, however, there is evidence of an on-going interest in the code: sales of the education kits and booklets have continued to be steady over the eight years that the code has been in existence. Many teacher education providers incorporate sessions about ethics and using the code into pre-service courses (e.g., the early childhood programmes offered by Wellington College of Education and Victoria University of Wellington; Auckland College of Education reportedly provides the code to their primary as well as early childhood student teachers). Professional development providers have also offered opportunities for practising teachers to explore ethical issues. Following the development of the Teachers Council code, it would be reasonable to expect that all teacher education providers incorporated it into their professional practice courses, and that supervising teachers supported provisionally registered teachers to explore and utilise the code in their professional practice. What will be more challenging for the Council is how to keep the code alive for fully registered teachers. An ethic of care: In recent years discussions about ethics in early childhood education have widened to consider the notion of an ethic of care based on the work of Nel Noddings (1984) and Carol Gilligan (1982). Writers such as Christine Woodrow (2001) and Lisa Goldstein (1998) have posited that this approach to ethics sits well with the nature of teaching and learning in early childhood education contexts. In this country further analysis of the data gathered in the code of ethics survey of ethical concerns revealed that practitioners blended their use of ethical principles with many of the features of an ethic of care to guide their practices (Cherrington, 1999). Given that we have research evidence that New Zealand early childhood practitioners draw upon an ethic of care when faced with ethical situations, I would recommend that the Teachers Council examine how an ethic of care can be laid alongside ethical principles to fuse an approach to ethics that fits our teaching profession. Stephanie Feeney and Nancy Freeman (1999, pp 28-29), writing in a handbook to support American early childhood practitioners to use the NAEYC code of ethics, offer three questions for reflection when making ethical decisions that draw upon each of the three schools of ethical thinking outlined above. The first, "is it justifiable to the community at large?" has its roots in the teleological or consequentialist approach. The second, "is it best for the profession as a whole?" is grounded in a deontological approach, whilst the third, "is it respectful of people and relationships?" reflects an ethic of care approach. These are questions that I think can sit well across the teaching profession, and which may be useful to consider, both in the development process and as we engage in ethical thinking and decision-making. Conclusion: In closing, I want to sum up my key points, through a series of recommendations for how I believe that you should proceed with this most exciting development for the teaching profession: Recommendations:
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to this Summit, and my best wishes for the development of the Teachers Council code of ethics. References:Australian Early Childhood Association. (1990). Code of ethics. Canberra: Australian Early Childhood Association. Callahan, J. (Ed.). (1998). Ethical issues in professional life. New York: Oxford University Press. Cherrington, S. (1999). Beyond the physical: An "ethic of care" in early childhood education. Unpublished Masters thesis. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington. Cortazzi, M. (1993). Narrative analysis. London: Falmer Press. Dalli, C., & Cherrington, S. (1994, December). Survey of ethical concerns faced by early childhood educators in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Preliminary results. Paper presented to New Zealand Association for Research in Education conference, Christchurch. Dalli, C., & Mitchell, L. (1995, September). The early childhood code or ethics: Or how you can prise yourself from between a rock and a hard place. Keynote address to the 6th Early Childhood Convention, Auckland. Feeny, S., & Freeman, N.K. (1999). Ethics and the early childhood educator: Using the NAEYC code. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Feeney, S., & Kipnis, K. (1989). Code of ethical conduct and statement of commitment. Young Children, 45(1), 24-29. Feeney, S., & Sysko, L. (1986). Professional ethics in early childhood education: Survey results. Young Children, 41(1), 15-20. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goldstein, L. (1998). "More than gentle smiles and warm hugs: Applying the ethic of care to early childhood education". Journal of research in childhood education, 12 (2), 244-271. Katz, L. G. (1980). Ethics and the quality of programs for young children. In S. Kilmer (Ed.), Advances in early education and day care (Vol. 1, pp. 137-151). Connecticut: Jai Press. Kipnis, K. (1987). How to discuss professional ethics. Young Children, 42(4), 26-30. Newman, L. (1998, September). Taught or caught? Ethics for professional practice in early childhood teacher education courses. Paper presented at the 8th European Conference on Quality in Early Childhood Education, Spain. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pollnitz, L. (1994). The AECA code of ethics: A good beginning? Proceedings of the 20th National Conference of the Australian Early Childhood Association, Perth. Rodd, J., & Clyde, M. (1991). A code of ethics: Who needs it? Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 16(1), 24–34. Woodrow, C. (2001). Ethics in early childhood: Continuing the conversations. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 26 (4), 26-31. |
|
