During my inquiry I will plan to
be ethical by ensuring my colleges or any pupils I involve know that any
information they give me or any answers given will always be blogged but it
will always remain anonymous. I will never force them to answer anything they
don’t want to. I will make sure that there aren’t any children’s names or faces
mentioned. I will ensure the name of my workplace is never mentioned. When I carry
out the inquiry and when it is being used in my practise I will make sure I never
let it take over the quality of the teaching or the children’s learning time. I
will never presume or make up any facts and make sure I do my research if facts
are involved. The first thing I would do is to inform anyone that would need to
know what my inquiry was all about and what it was for.
Hi Claire,
ReplyDeleteBut why? Why would you anonomise the children’s names? When might you interrupt the children’s learning to undertake research? I ask these questions because you imply ‘I would never do anything to harm the children’s learning or interests’. Well that is very right and proper, but it rather avoids the terrible truth that we affect children’s development pretty relentlessly as parents and teachers. Your position seems to me to assume that there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ way.
Another way to look at say our public school system is that it has the potential to do great good, and indeed great harm. Yes, public education in the UK is doing great good, and great harm.
Example: The Robinson report in 2000 alerted government to the ways in which public education is ‘education children out of creativity’. You may agree or disagree, but just take it as a possibility at this point. If you can accept this in principle, then public education has the power to benefit and harm the creative development of our children and future citizens. The argument for focusing on literacy and numeracy is economic – it is to build better workers. Robinson argued that we need creative workers not replicants and while numeracy and literacy are important, an obsession with standards is driving out creativity – the very ingredient most needed for our future economic success. So here are two ways of looking at it. Now think about the classroom and the curriculum. All of a sudden its not so easy to say ‘this is the right way’ when we are faced with perfectly good, and opposed arguments.
Ethics operates in the same way.
It is not about doing the right thing, its about the choices we make when faced with two but equally coherent choices whether those choices that appear superficially ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
thank you for this Alan.
ReplyDeleteI will take this on board and put it into my inquiry.