Troy Hutchings, Ed.D

Senior Policy Advisor, NASDTEC

The Emerging Playbook: Reexamining Professional Obligations in a Virtual Classroom 

Part II - The Slippery Slope

As districts contend with the daily challenges associated with virtual learning, they must also consider the ethics of increased teacher and student cyber interactions. This raises an interesting question – will the number of reported cases of educator misconduct either rise or decline in this new era of instruction? There is certainly an argument that can be made for either side.

On one hand, it makes sense that limited face-to-face interactions between educators and students may lead to fewer misconduct cases. However, interactions between educators and students that occur outside the traditional boundaries associated with the physical classroom do pose unique risks.

In Part II of our five-part series on emerging ethical issues, author and attorney Frederick Lane[i] discusses specific cautions for educators as they navigate this new educational terrain.

Remote Learning: The Slippery Slope Gets Steeper

Frederick Lane

 

The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly reshaping K-12 education in the United States and around the world. Even in the hopeful event that scientists develop a vaccine in the not-too-distant future, the pandemic will permanently alter how we teach our children. In one form or another, remote learning is here to stay.

Not long after I first met my friend and colleague Troy Hutchings, I heard him use the phrase “the slippery slope” to describe an educator’s potentially rapid descent from the heights of principled professionalism to the depths of unethical teacher-student interaction. One of the things that became clear as I worked in this area as well is that technology steepens the slope and often accelerates an educator’s luge run straight out the teaching profession.

Before texting, for instance, it might take weeks or months for a teacher to cross a career-ending boundary; in many of the cases I’ve researched, however, teachers have glided across multiple professional borders in a single evening. Digital communication is inherently intimate, the speed of the communication intensifies the emotional impact of late-night conversations, and people who wish to talk privately with each other have an almost endless number of options for doing so.

In an ideal world, teachers and students would reduce their use of digital technologies to communicate. The slippery slope is always there, just a button click away. But unfortunately, the exigencies of our public health crisis require much greater use of digital communication technology than ever before.

In theory, the increased use of remote learning should not increase the risk of educator misconduct. Online classes, after all, are group exercises that offer one of the key measures for reducing the risk of misconduct: transparency. Every student logged into the online class, and every parent or sibling who might be hovering nearby can see and hear the teacher, and observe his or her interactions with the class. It is difficult to imagine a teacher trying to engage in inappropriate conversations under those circumstances.

But two specific concerns heighten the risk of misconduct. The first is that online classes have the potential to reveal more of a student’s personal life than he or she might be comfortable sharing. It implicitly changes the nature of the relationship between the teacher and student, which is challenging enough. But in the worst circumstances, what was previously private information (a student’s resources, family dynamics, etc.) may increase the risk for inappropriate interactions between educators and students.

The second risk is that as the use of digital communication between teachers and students becomes more routine, the potential for inappropriate conversations grows steadily greater. If the majority of instruction is taking place virtually, how much easier is it for a teacher to suggest to a student that they talk privately on an unmonitored communication app? The teacher’s initial motivation may be salutary or at the worst, merely benign. But the intrinsic nature of digital communication raises professional and personal risks for both teachers and students when those conversations are unmonitored and insufficiently transparent.

At any point during an online interaction with a student, an educator should reflect on whether he or she would be comfortable if a colleague was a party to the conversation. The unbelievably rapid growth of distance learning is altering the day-to-day practice of teaching but it does not alter the profession’s underlying ethical precepts.

As always, Fred comments are compelling – giving us the opportunity to engender a larger discussion within our specific educational communities. We invite you, the readers of Ethics and Educators, to engage in the conversation by using the comment boxes below to note additional ethical concerns that may be emerging in your jurisdictions. 

We look forward to our next blog – Fred will be discussing student privacy as we continue to reexamine our professional obligations in a virtual classroom.

[i] Frederick S. Lane is an author, educational consultant, and attorney based in New York. He is the author of ten books, including most recently Cybertraps for Expecting Moms & Dads, Raising Cyberethical Kids, and Cybertraps for Educators 2.0. All of his books are available through Amazon.com or his web sites, FrederickLane.com and Cybertraps.com