The
units in this Accountability course have tended to gloss over one topic that has
received increased recent attention—the abuse of information. As you will read,
a number of publications have carried stories documenting how institutions manipulate
their reporting of data in order to make themselves look better in the eyes of others.
These stories raise the issues of ethics and data integrity. The problem of misleading
information has led to policy changes designed to minimize the abuse of statistics
in this unit you will consider such issues.
Unit
learning goals
When
you finish this unit, you will have learned to:
1.
Identify
the key ethical issues associated with an accountability system, and give examples
in various contexts, both in education and beyond.
2.
Compare
and contrast the ethical issues in K-12, higher education, and business and industry
to ascertain similarities/differences in the root causes of information abuse.
Develop strategies about
what various organizations might do to overcome ethical challenges to accountability.
Questions
to answer before class as you complete your reading assignment:
1. Give various illustrations of how
the concept of ethics is defined in your workplace.
2. Have new demands for accountability
led to greater concern for ethical issues—either increases in information abuse
or heightened concern for data integrity?
What are some of the current
ethical challenges facing accountability systems and how can they be overcome or at least minimized?
Dubnick, M. J. (2003). Accountability and
ethics: Reconsidering the relationships. International Journal of Organization
Theory and Behavior, 6(3), 405–441.
Hallak, J., & Poisson, M. (2005). Academic fraud and quality assurance: Facing
the challenge of internationalization of higher education. Paris: International
Institute for Educational Planning.
Murdock, T. B., & Anderman, E. M.(2006). Motivational perspectives on
student cheating: Toward an integrated model of academic dishonesty. Educational Psychologist 4(13), 129-145.
Strike, K. A., Haller, E. J., &
Soltis, J. F. (2005). The ethics of school administration. New
York: Teachers College Press, 93-126.
Velasquez, M., Andre, C., Thomas Shanks, S. J., & Meyer, M. J. (2011).
Thinking ethically: A framework for moral decision making. Available at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/thinking.html
USC Board of Trustees. (2004). Code of ethics of the University of Southern
California. Available at: http://www.usc.edu/about/core_documents/usc_code_of_ethics.html
The National Education Association. (1975).
Code of ethics of the education profession. Available at: http://www.nea.org/home/30442.htm
