My image of myself as an honest, hard-working, patient, kind, reflective adult is important to me and I hope an image that those around me recognize as me when I paint it in quick, brief strokes this way. I am struck, though, as I begin to read discussions of ethical questions for this course that what I am describing here are personal, moral qualities that I hope I possess and display to the world, but I'm not sure they are really ethics. I have either been taught that these qualities are important or I have known their importance innately via some sort of internal moral compass. I think that my ethical sense is something different though, because it is not so constant in definition as those qualities listed above. I think it is more situational. I do not mean when I say that my ethics are not constant that I think it is fine to steal if I'm sure I won't get caught, or that I think it is OK to be mean to someone just because they've been mean to me first. What I mean is that I am many different people in the world and that the ethical rules for the different situations I find myself in are not always the same. If ethics are the choices I make about interacting with other creatures, then I must recognize that those choices are not always the same. We are discussing issues of privacy in data sharing in our readings and this is a perfect example of what I mean. There are different limits, different decisions, to be made about privacy in different situations in life and each is "right" in its own sphere. The level of personal disclosure I make to fellow students and instructors in an online course is different than the level of personal disclosure I might make to my spouse. Yet each different offering can be correct, and ethical, in its context.
"Für Toleranz" by Hans-Peter - originally posted to Flickr as für toleranz. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%BCr_Toleranz.jpg#/media/File:F%C3%BCr_Toleranz.jpg
Hi Anna - You make a great point that often ethical decisions and what is considered right and wrong in general can be somewhat situational. There are different circumstances and scenarios as well as different boundaries. Your example related to privacy in data sharing helped me to really understand what you meant. There are definitely "right" and "wrong" decisions but there are also those choices and decisions that are a bit more subjective. For me, those are often the toughest to navigate. At work, I am involved with providing data from our learning and HR systems. It requires thought and consideration to understand the request and determine the best way to provide the data, without providing more data than necessary. There are so many other considerations as well in terms of securing the data.
ReplyDeleteThe topic of personal ethics is interesting to me. In many of the eLearning courses I have taken, they tell you in black and white exactly how a situation should be handled. I consider these to be guidelines, foundations, and best practices - from there decisions are made depending on the actual scenario I am faced with.
Thanks!
Cathy
Cathy,
ReplyDeleteI often find myself at work in that same situation of considering how to share information without sharing too much. In fact I'd say that is the ethical situation that find myself in most often. Even though I am a math teacher, my work has a large social/emotional component. People can have some pretty intense feelings about math and about themselves when they are trying to do math. I spend lots of time trying to encourage people to take it easy on themselves and keep moving forward. In the process I often tell them stories about other people to more or less keep them company on the journey. These stories are about other students usually and take the form of, "Here's a trick another student showed me for thinking about this..." or "I know someone who really struggled with this and tried this..." I'm not saying bad things about them or even saying things they probably wouldn't be happy to share if they were there. But, I am talking about them. I of course don't use names, I sometimes even change the person's gender in the story to give some distance from the actual person. It all seems ok to me until I think what it would feel like if a student overheard someone passing on one of these stories and recognized themselves. Would they imagine that I am just sitting in there gossiping about them?