Legal and Ethical Contexts in my Digital Practice

Identifying an ethical dilemma

A recurring ethical dilemma in the last two intermediate schools I have taught in is that of negative online interactions between students or groups of students, usually occurring off-site and out of school hours; significantly impacting students’ emotions, interactions and learning at school. Distressed parents and students often look to the school to try to ‘solve’ the problem, directing their angst at the school (as students involved typically all attend the same intermediate school). The issue is further complicated by the fact that is is usually not a straightforward ‘bullies vs victim’ scenario, as there are often multiple perspectives to the given scenario.  Often the ‘victim’ has played a significant part in negative online interactions; but has found that they are unable to cope emotionally with an escalation of the issue.  Students and families are often distressed, students tend to feel victimised despite their own role in the negative online interactions, and often parents expect our restorative practice school to deal punitively with a situation that has occurred out of school time.  

Addressing the issue in practice

As a teacher, I find this situation frustrating to deal with, as the off-site incidents occurring out of school hours are beyond my control.  Parents have the power to insist their children don’t take their phones to their bedrooms at night, teach them how to behave responsibly online and monitor their online behaviour. Many students involved in the negative online interactions (I am reluctant to label it ‘bullying’ due to the multiple perspectives and ‘wrongdoing’ at some level on the part of most people involved) are legally too young to be using the social media platforms they are involved in, and I consider the monitoring of this to be parental responsibility. However, due to the significant impact these issues have on the mental well-being of the students involved, it often becomes necessary to deal with the problem at school.

One of the values underpinning the New Zealand teacher code of standards is MANAAKITANGA: creating a welcoming, caring and creative learning environment that treats everyone with respect and dignity.

In order to foster manaakitanga in my classroom, it is sometimes necessary to address student online interactions, even when they have occurred out of school hours.  One of Alan Hall's (2001) strategies for responding to problems is to restate the problem in terms of what we owe to our students.  In this case, I owe my students a positive learning environment, and in order to maintain this I need to try to help students and their parents resolve their out-of-school disputes.

While the document ‘Digital Technology - Safe and responsible use in Schools’ (MOE and Netsafe, 2015) provides some guidance in dealing with in-school incidents; whether or not we should address off-site incidents seems unclear.  At present, we address issues on a case-by-case basis, guided by our school leadership team.  While the intended outcome of involving ourselves in students’ online and off-site disputes is to aid students and families in resolving issues to create positive outcomes, the potential to inflame the situation or create strained relationships between home and school does exist.

Our school is currently in the process of building upon SchoolDocs policies around digital technologies; however we still have some way to go in creating robust, consistent and sustainable practices around digital technologies in our school.