The Origins of Educational Technology's Professional Ethics: Part Two - Establishing Professional Ethics in Education

Professional ethics is a sociological topic

Many factors have influenced and will continue to affect professional ethics for technology. A few are relatively solid and persist, such as traditions, laws, institutional rules and professional licensing. Others are much more transitory, such as economic pressures, government support and the cycle of successful inventions becoming successful products which then fall into obsolescence as new inventions come around. Consider, for instance, the latest shift in video recording equipment from videocassette to DVD ("VCR RIP," 2004).

Religious convictions play a part in professional ethics for technology, as does moral philosophy. In either of the latter two cases, do not expect consistency regarding results (consequentialism) or rights (deontology) because whatever any profession's professional ethics is about, at root, professional ethics is sociological. A code of ethics exists in regard to the propriety of a professional groups behavior when working with members of other social groups and, internally, toward its own members.

Progressive ethics

Over one hundred years have passed since John Deweys Ethical Principles Underlying Education appeared as a small book (1903). Dewey, the pragmatic progressive, tells readers that ethics inside and outside of school are not different because "The moral responsibility of the school, and those who conduct it, is to society" (p. 10).

As one of the most psychologically inclined of all philosophers, Dewey emphasizes learners as individuals. Dewey rejects learning anything without a direct social application as "learning to swim without the water" (1903, p. 25). He also sees a need for building "character" in learners as a form of social intelligence (p. 26).

The political implications of Dewey s (1903) perspective are not particularly optimistic except when read as a challenge to be overcome:

We believe that, so far as the mass of children are concerned, if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of the same sort of assurance on the moral side....We need to translate the moral into the actual conditions and working forces of our community life, and into the impulses and habits which make up the doing of the individual.

All the rest is mint, anise, and cummin. The one thing needful is that...