Professional Ethics - Task 5b

Professional Ethics – Task 5b

I have gone on to look into what the codes of practice are and consider the regulations in my place of work. I have followed official documentation from both the specific school in which I work as well as the resource pack for ‘Creative Teaching Practice’ supplied during training from the dance company Ludus who I am working towards freelancing for.  

I was pleased to notice most of the considerations I have already blogged were inclusive in the official documentation guidelines for my professional environment. I have however noticed the frameworks given regarding the schools code of practice and regulations that steer the ethical framework go into a lot more detail into various points.

Firstly, both sets of regulations work upon a basis of putting the welfare of all students first, and creating an environment that has a duty of care to safeguard all children. The particular school I practice in seeks to ‘promote a safe, happy, risk – free environment for everyone’ and aims to ‘encourage children to respect themselves and others’.

Regulations regarding any teachers/supervising adults/volunteers are much more detailed than my initial assumptions. Although I had made note of the necessary requirement of completing an accurate attendance record, the documentation mentions very clearly that all children must be supervised until collected by someone authorized by the parents, and that a member of staff ‘must remain on the premises’ until all pupils have left.

Another area to consider more deeply was concerning treatment of a child should they complain of feeling unwell. Under no circumstances must a child be given any medication, not even a plaster unless you have assurance the child is not allergic.

Clarifying basic good practice guidelines next - as teachers we must demonstrate exemplary behavior not only to protect the students, but to protect ourselves from false allegations also. Always avoid being alone with a child, and more obviously I think never do things of a personal nature for students that they can do themselves. Along these lines also, parental consent must be given in writing for any video footage or photographs. These factors are ones which I feel could be potentially difficult for the teacher if teaching very young children, or children with devoted parents who just desperately want picturess of their own children dancing for example!

Finally, there was a very specific protocol for how we as teachers should respond to allegations or suspicious. Once again here, this is something I have been fortunate enough not to experience as yet so was unaware of the procedure. Various names and contacts are given very clearly, there are also notes regarding the best ways to deal with bullying both during and outside of the professional workplace environment. Some of these will again come down to the teachers best judgment - explaining a situation to a child, and perhaps getting the ‘bully’ to understand the consequences of their actions will be a practice that is very individual for each teacher. Should a situation arise where it is necessary to report a concern about an issue, understanding that you need to use your best guidance to make a clear distinction between what is fact, opinions and hearsay is purely down to ones best judgment and relates again to their knowledge of doing ‘social good’.

The only notable difference between the regulations and codes of practise of the school and Ludas were the emphasis on thorough risk Assessment Procedures. As Ludus is a community based dance company, they often work with venerable young adults or students with varying levels of disability. They have a very strict Child Protection Policy, they believe this is paramount regarding how their company practises. Ludus practise upon the bases of fully inclusive written risk assessments; they consider this to be part of planning any lesson or workshop project and should always take into account what may go wrong, their likelihood and impact. We as the practitioners can then identify measures to reduce the risks, for example this may include allocating roles to monitor and manage child protection as well as what to do if things go wrong. For this organisation, I am required to produce full lesson plans upon request to comply with insurance too.

This task has been extremely useful in opening my eyes to clarifying guidelines which I have possibly already made my own assumptions on. I actually feel a safer practitioner from highlighting ethical issues in this way as I know now what is expected of me fully and what I need to ensure I do as a teacher to maintain these regulations and practise safely and ethically.  It has also brought to my attention how much care and caution I need to take if enrolling in new teaching jobs in the future, the school should always provide a clear and concise policy so there would never be any ‘grey areas’ to try to justify in the event of someone querying myself as a teaching practitioner.