Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Week 28 Applied Practice 2 Activity 4

This week we have been asked to ‘Critique and address issues of law, regulations and policy in practice using a reflective model’. I have chosen to talk about an issue I had experience with at my current school where a child was using the ipad to search for porn. My reflection is guided by the NZSTA Privacy Act, Our Code, Our Standards and Rofle's Model of Reflection.

What?
A child's parents came into school to complain that we were letting her use our school ipads to search for porn. This was the first we had heard of it and upon further investigation it was found that she was indeed searching up images using explicit words during class time when she was suppose to be doing some work on the ipads. We inspected the ipads that were available in her class and looking at the history of these ipads it was discovered that one was used to search for these images but as we had software installed to block sites she didn't actually get to see anything that was damaging. 

Once we had examined all the evidence and talked to the teacher concerned we brought the parents in again to have a discussion about the situation. They were not listening to anything we had to say and left feeling we were attacking them and removed their child immediately from our school. Later they laid a complaint with the Education Council and forced us to surrender all the notes about their child's behaviour, data and written discussions we have had about this child over the years claiming their right to this data under the Privacy Act.

So what?

I will attempt to use Ehrich's model for ethical decision making. Knowing that this child was a particularly disruptive child and we had a lot of notes, behaviour data and written discussions about her our dilemma was broken down into many avenues. 
1) Should we give access to all the data we had on file for this child as some of it was sensitive and had teacher voice that we did not want the parents privy to?
2) Do we ignore the request and let the Council deal with it?
3) Do we wait and engage lawyers if this is deemed necessary to ensure our own privacy?
4) Do we censor the notes and redact any parts that have other children's or staff names or  personal comments and notes not relevant to the situation?

Now what?
This situation went a lot further than I will go into in this blog which upon counsel from lawyers, the Education Council, information from the NZSTA Privacy Act and our Code of Conduct it was deemed that we could indeed redact the information given to these parents leaving only factual evidence and notes with no personal voice added. Unfortunately this was known to us at the time and we gave them full access to all the behaviour notes we had. However, when we looked at all the behavioural data there wasn't anything we were embarrassed about or needed to cover up.
It is very difficult to block access to everything on an ipad as each app can lead to going online (link to safari) and to sites that were not available to the children otherwise as safari was locked and removed from the ipad. We have now made sure that there are restrictions on the ipads and that they must have a passcode to access it. The children have access to the passcode to unlock the ipads but not the code to access restrictions for removal or purchasing apps.

We have also amended our ICT policy to ensure that the responsibility lies with the children and, where possible, with the parents to ensure they have agreed to use our digital resources in a positive and educational manner and any breach of this will result in the children losing access to such devices.

 References:
Ministry of Education. (2015). Digital technology - Safe and responsible use in schools. Retrieved from http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/School/Managing-and-supporting-students/DigitalTechnologySafeAndResponsibleUseInSchs.pdf
NZSTA. (October 2009). Privacy Act 1993. Retrieved from http://www.nzsta.org.nz/media/437993/nzsta-guidelines-privacy-act.pdf
Dalziel, K., (2009). Privacy in Schools - A guide to The Privacy Act for principals, teachers and boards of trustees. Retrieved from https://www.privacy.org.nz/assets/Files/Brochures-and-pamphlets-and-pubs/Privacy-in-Schools-September-2009.pdf
Education Council of New Zealand, (2017). Our Code, Our standards. Retreived from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf
Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., & Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection for nursing and the helping professions: A user's guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Retrieved from: https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

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



Comments

  1. UnknownJune 15, 2018 at 10:46 PM

    Kia ora Cat,

    Wow, what a dilemma to have to deal with!?! On-going issues we've had at my current school is, when we've put in social media blocks, students somehow manage to find 'backdoors' to inappropriate sites anyway?! Fortunately, their are strategies in place to nullify and manage these situations. For example, our students now have to return a internet use for learning form signed by parents and then they're issued with ID cards that are scanned before a device is given.

    Your questions asked from 1-4 are very real, especially when your integrity is on the line, when dealing with whanau and maintaining professional responsibility.

    Thanks for sharing Cat!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 16, 2018 at 11:49 PM

    Hi Cat, massive issues here. I have a question specifically about your role:
    We you involved in the incident as a teacher, a leader or someone else? I feel that some ethical issues that we encounter as teachers, need to be managed by a leader who guides us through this process.
    The use of iPads is tricky on its own, as you are not able to 'lock it down' as much as you can with a computer. The network that manages most school N4L, usually have good filters, but as you are probably aware of, students are very good at finding loop holes.

    Looking at the big picture here, I see similar processes to the video, 'Ethical Dilemmas, Daniel's Case Study', especially around part 2, competing forces: professional ethics, legal issues or policies, organisational culture, the institutional context, the public interest, society and community, and the global context. All could have drawn different results.
    Thanks Cat

    ReplyDelete

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