EDUC 522 Week 11: Ethics and Accountability
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
