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Now What? Confronting and Resolving Ethical Questions

A Handbook for Teachers

By: Sarah V. Mackenzie, G. Calvin Mackenzie

Guidance for navigating the ethical dilemmas that teachers face!

Teachers deal with ethical issues on a regular basis, from confidentiality of student information to discipline to communication. Written by an educator and a national authority on ethics, this volume outlines the intricate relationship between ethics and school success. Featuring richly detailed, real-life case studies, this book focuses on:

The role of teachers in developing, sharing, and implementing ethical policies for their schools
Four guiding principles for developing ethical approaches and practices
Relationships between teachers and students, colleagues, supervisors, parents, taxpayers, and other stakeholders

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Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412970846
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2010
Page Count: 176
Publication date: January 27, 2015

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Description

"This is a book that should set off needed conversations in every school and classroom and school board meeting—and the dinner table. Sometimes I wanted to quarrel with the authors, and that's part of its genius. It always managed to provoke me to think and to engage with these dilemmas."
—Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar and Adjunct Professor
New York University

"The Mackenzies show us how to recognize moral dilemmas, employ guidelines for addressing them, and teach us how to resolve them on our own. A gift to educators, the educational profession, and to all who would behave ethically and professionally within it."
—Roland Barth, Educational Consultant

Guidance for navigating the ethical dilemmas that teachers face!

Teachers deal with ethical issues on a regular basis, from confidentiality regarding student information to discipline to communication. As moral exemplars, educators need guidance for handling such challenges. Written by an educator and a national authority on ethics, this professional development resource helps educators confront and resolve ethical questions.

Featuring richly detailed, real-life case studies, this volume outlines the intricate relationship between ethical propriety and school success. Chapters focus on:

The role of teachers in developing, sharing, and implementing ethical policies for their schools
Four guiding principles—the Rule of Publicity, the Rule of Universality, the Rule of Benevolence, and the Golden Rule—for developing ethical approaches and practices
Relationships between teachers and students, colleagues, supervisors, parents, taxpayers, and other stakeholders

Now What? Confronting and Resolving Ethical Questions is a crucial tool for ensuring equality of opportunity and a quality learning environment for all involved in the educational process.

Key features

Focuses on the role of teachers in developing, sharing, and implementing ethical policies for their schools
Provides a set of ethical principles that teachers can use as guidance and assistance in developing ethical approaches and philosophies for their schools
Features a set of powerful, richly-detailed cases for analysis and discussion focusing on teachers' professional relationships with their stakeholders, including students, colleagues, supervisors, and parents
Topics include the protection of materials written by others, confidentiality regarding student information, careful and proper use of e-mail, letters of recommendation for students and colleagues, hiring, discipline, and communications
Offers an appendix with a facilitation guide for teacher leaders as well as a matrix of cases with corresponding ethical principles

Author(s)

Sarah V. Mackenzie

Sarah V. Mackenzie is associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Maine. She has dealt with ethical issues in education for many years, first in her own hands-on experiences as a teacher and teacher leader and now in her role as a professor of educational leadership. Her most recent book, Uncovering Teacher Leadership: Essays and Voices From the Field (Corwin, 2007), is a compilation of writing focused on the inner lives of teacher leaders. She and Richard Ackerman published an article in the May 2006 issue of Educational Leadership titled “Uncovering Teacher Leadership.”

In all of her work—as a teacher and a teacher of teachers and leaders—she has recognized the critical relationship between what teachers believe about their work and how successfully they perform that work.

G. Calvin Mackenzie

G. Calvin Mackenzie is The Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government at Colby College. He has written extensively about ethics in government and has led ethics seminars for public officials across the country. He served as chair of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices and was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. A political scientist by training, Mackenzie has been a government professor and scholar for more than 30 years. He has written or edited 15 books, including a leading introductory American government text and several award-winning empirical studies of the national government. His latest book, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (with Robert Weisbrot) was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Part I. Thinking About Ethics

1. Engaging in Ethics

2. Ethical Behavior: Some General Principles

Part II. Acting Ethically: Teachers and Their Constituents

3. The Essential Learning Relationship: Teachers and Students

4. Important Pieces of the Puzzle: Teachers and Parents

Part III. Acting Ethically: Teachers and Their Colleagues

5. Trust and Respect: Teachers as Colleagues

6. The Sum of the Parts: Teachers on Collaborative Teams

7. Clash of Philosophies: The School Faculty

8. Clashing Codes: Professional Communities of Teachers

Part IV. Acting Ethically: Teachers and Supervisors

9. Power and Authority: Teachers and Their Principals

10. The Teacher, Superintendent and School Board, and the Community

11. Summing Up

Resource A. Workshop Outline: Tools for Teachers and Teacher Leaders

Resource B. Examining Critical Events

References

Index

Reviews

"This is a book that should set off needed conversations in every school and classroom and school board meeting—and the dinner table. Sometimes I wanted to quarrel with the authors, and that's part of its genius. It always managed to provoke me to think and to engage with these dilemmas."

Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar and Adjunct Professor
Steinhardt School of Education, New York University

"Schools are full of situations fraught with ethical implications. The Mackenzies show us how to recognize moral dilemmas, employ guidelines for addressing them, and, by walking us through abundant yeasty cases, teach us how to resolve them on our own. A gift to educators, the educational profession, and to all who would behave ethically and professionally within it."

Roland Barth, Educational Consultant

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