Ethical Issues
Ethical Issues 
Just like any other profession, there are ethical concerns that mainly are meant to control and govern teachers and the whole process of teaching as there profession that occurs in a variety of contexts and can therefore be thought of and analyzed from very many perspectives. To begin with, we will discuss how the law depicts ethical issues, how the ethical issues are depicted in the national educational association (NEA’s) code of ethics, ethically based all-inclusive views of education, the role played by ethics in educational policy and meta-ethical disputes relevant to education. In most of the states across the world and as conscious itself dictates is that teachers are supposed to be persons of good conduct and a high degree of integrity that best explains why most of the states permit the body responsible to dismiss teachers for what can be considered unethical conduct. The states are to some extent involved directly in some misconduct teachers can cause. Some of them include aspects such as child abuse, sexual harassment and drug abuse. What therefore is to be considered, as good conduct can be a matter that can be considered contentious.
In the past teachers in most of the cases have been fired not only for being drunk during working hours, homosexuality, when involved with pregnancies out of wed lock or cohabitation but also for myriad other offences that oppose the moral code of there community. However, dismissal for immoral conduct is most likely when the teacher has committed a felony more so in cases of what can be considered inappropriate sexual advances towards students or in cases of child abuse whereby teachers also have a duty to report cases of child abuse. Bearing in mind that the misconducts we have spoken about are only ethic based teachers like others are also not supposed to commit other offences such as, stealing, committing assault, child abuse engaging in sexual harassment among many others.
Basing arguments on a professor of education at the Boston College Robert Starratt, ethics can be considered more of the study of underlying beliefs, assumptions, principles, and values that support a moral way of life. Ethics can be sub divided into different groups which may include:metha ethics i.e. the ethics that is majorly about theoretical meaning and issues of moral propositions and hoe there truth values may be determined, normative ethics that is the ethics that is all about the practical means of getting to determine a course of action that is more of moral in nature, applied ethics is also another branch of ethics that is majorly concerned about hoe moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations, then there is another branch of ethics, that is moral psychology that is all about how the moral capacity of a moral agency develops and what its nature is and lastly there is descriptive ethics that all about the moral ethics people really abide by.
A teacher can only be considered ethical if he first fully outlines the profession and the relevant applied ethics that are an integral part in the teaching profession. Ethics is more of an aspect derived from the whole process of teaching rather than having the ethical principles applied to the act. This also differs from teacher to teacher depending on his/her own interpretation of what moral and ethics concerns. According to Beckner ethics is essential and that it is something that is to be embedded into every aspect of teaching as a profession she further confirms that teachers need to come to a heightened awareness on ethical considerations that are involved in teaching.
Just like to everybody teachers too face rough and tough ethical dilemmas and situations where maybe they have there own or there colleague’s moral conduct in question by may be the administration the community at large and even the union to name just a few. This becomes even more difficult when misconduct by some teacher is witnessed by another because of the high sense of loyalty that they have that prevents them from reporting the misconduct despite a n expectation from the law to do so. This is also because of the unwritten code of not questioning colleagues and even an extension of keeping to ones own classroom that is a manifestation by teachers .all this later result to another unwanted behavior of staffroom gossip that will not have a positive impact on preventing students from getting further exposure to more intolerable behavior. However, as Starratt asserts it is also very important to note that not all the teacher have the problem of keeping quiet with the whole issue because there case is a study of some who took it upon them and had the issues of misconduct reported to the administrator by the administrator was not interested with the issue at all leaving them with negative thoughts on the action that they had taken.
To prevent all the above from repeating itself the national educational association set out the ethical issues to be involved when students accused teachers of misconduct and the whole outcome gave out a suggestion of having the members of the teaching community who are accused of misconduct undergoing a primary investigation to proof whether they are guilty or not guilty . If guilty the administrator under who the involved member of the teaching force works is to carry on a fine detailed investigation to find out why the client did so because there are some circumstances that are unavoidable that can qualify one an excuse. The administrator can the grant amnesty to the victim under close observation and if he pardons the same mistake it now gives the administrator a ticket of taking the next step of seeking the help of the law through the law enforcement team.
Once the matter is with the law enforcement team the involved is supposed to have his/her case listened to in a court of law within the first one hundred days and it is to be listened to by a special examiner. The new York time magazine that reported the initiative from the research team through their chair person Kenneth Feinberg explained that they had decided on the initiative because the previous opinion of casting the suspect teachers into an interminable limbo while awaiting to stand trial of there cases was embarrassing and expensive to the union and school districts involved. this further become worse when the involved teachers were forced to stay idle for more than the anticipated twelve months to a range of years so as to give room for investigation .after the relevant body has done the necessary the affected institution is then to be informed of the action taken and the reason as to why that action was taken so that they are kept informed.
The ethical issues undertaken when a teacher is accused by students for misconduct are to be legal because if at all the accusation was a false allegation it can destroy ones attitude towards the institution where he works or the profession itself. Having it happen more than once to different individuals with the same perspective as the one I’ve just said can lead to brain drain as the individuals can end up abandoning their jobs.
