Legal and Ethical Contexts in my Digital Practice:Week 28
Legal and Ethical Contexts in my Digital Practice:Week 28
Applied Practice Two, Activity Four
The ethical dilemma I am going to examine and critique the issues around is one about gaming obsession in students and the role schools play in addressing this. I will use Rolfe et.al's (2001) Reflective Model to examine the dilemma and the Hall (2001) ethical decision making framework to guide my own decision making process.
What?
As a B.Y.O.D school, our classroom pedagogy makes use of digital technology to engage and enhance learning. My year level is year seven and eight and I enjoy the digital literacy levels of my students who successfully use their devices in many ways including research, evidencing learning and collaborative learning.
Over the past two months, I have had a student who is obsessed with playing Fortnite every moment he can. At any opportunity, he will be playing Fortnite, searching and watching Youtube clips on Fortnite, listening to Fortnite music and dancing the Fortnite dances. His compulsion to Fortnite has meant he has been caught playing Fortnite instead of doing his class work, many times. His on task behaviour up until two months ago was very good.
So What?
1. What is the problem?
The student is non-compliant in the classroom by accessing Fortnite gaming instead of completing independent tasks related to his learning.
2. Who are the main stakeholders?
The main stakeholders are the student whose interest is maximising his Fortnite playing time, his parents who are interested in their son's learning progress and my (teacher) interest in this student focusing on his learning, managing himself and not being a distraction to his classmates.
3. Which stakeholder should be given priority? Why?
Priority should be given to the student as it is essential this problem is solved to put him back on his learning pathway.
4. What restrictions are there to your actions?
- Incident response - Focus more on the behaviour involved in the incident, and less on the digital technology (MOE/Netsafe, 2015)
- The school digital policy applies to every member of the school community including staff, students....it applies to digital devices privately owned. The school maintains the right to monitor, access, and review digital technology use (Waiuku Primary School Digital Technologies Policy, 2015)
- Commitment to learners:Work in the best interests of learners by...promoting the well being of learners and protecting them from harm (Education Council, 2017).
5. Which courses of action are possible?
- Not allow the student to use a device at school
- Limit the device use to time periods where there is direct teacher supervision
- Review and discuss the school BYOD student agreement - I will only use BYOD technologies as tools to support my learning -to get understanding and agreement/compliance on use.
- Discuss issue with parents
- Ignore the issue
6. Which courses of action are least acceptable? Why?
1. No device - no assisted learning tool - reject
2. Limit device use - self management not developed and learned - reject
5. Ignore the issue - student regresses in their learning - reject
7. Which course of action will you follow? Why?
Short Term: Review and discuss the school BYOD agreement - agreement and compliance.
Longer Term: Discuss issue with parents and set goals around completion of tasks.
8. How should the course of action be implemented?
I can discuss the issue with the student privately at a convenient time using the BYOD agreement he signed, as a prompt. I can make a time for the student's parents to visit with the student to discuss strategies to support the focus of on-task behaviour in class.
9. What does the incident teach me about ethical decision making?
This incident has taught me to focus on the behaviours that are desired and seek out ways to support that. I think this reveals that as a teacher, I believe that all students should have access to technology tools in the classroom and therefore this use should be preserved where possible.
Now what?
I feel now that I have robustly considered all the possible ways in which to respond to this dilemma and am confident to follow through with the short and long term actions discussed above.
References:
Education Council (2017), Our Code, Our Standards, Wellington, Education Council
Hall (2001), What ought I do, all things considered? - An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers, Hamilton, University of Waikato
Ministry of Education, Netsafe (2015) Digital Technology - Safe and Responsible use in schools, Wellington, Ministry of Education
Rolfe G, Freshwater D., Jasper m., (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping profression: a user's guide, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Waiuku Primary School (2015) Student BYOD Digital Technology Agreement, Waiuku Primary School
Hi Kristine,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a problem we will face more and more with our young people. There is a lot of discussion around 'gaming addiction' at the moment but there seems to be a reluctance to specify it as a real problems. Yet the synergies it has with gambling addiction are undeniable. Fortnite and other games are addictive because- guess what- the game designers make them that way. Gamers are always chasing that next challenge and they are specifically built into the game to keep up levels of interest and engagement. But when an addiction causes harm- if they are secretive about it or lie about it or as with your student, their learning is compromised then it is an addiction problem. As educators we teach students how to be healthy through the health curriculum- we use the concept of hauora -" a Māori philosophy of well-being that includes the dimensions taha wairua, taha hinengaro, taha tinana, and taha whānau, each one influencing and supporting the others." (NZC Online, 2018).A healthy individual is someone who achieves balance in all four areas of their life. As part of our health curriculum we need to be having conversations with our students about how hard it is to achieve that balance and we need to specifically reference gaming addiction as a threat to that balance and to our overall health and well-being... and we need to be talking about this at primary school because leaving it to high school is too late. Thanks for sharing - It was certainly food for thought.
It won't surprise very many people to learn that my experience at high school is much the same. Fortnite has really grasped many young people's attention; Jordan is right, these games are designed to be addictive. Advocates will say there are benefits: resilience, problem solving etc but if addictive behaviours are being shown - as in this case - then it is an issue. Perhaps bigger than many people realise. The impact games have on the Key Competency of Managing Self is an intriguing one. Gaming is fine within reason as long as the person is in control of the game and not vice-versa. Unless parents/caregivers and schools can come up with effective ways to manage gaming addiction (now an actual health issue as identified by the WHO) then I fear that society will unfortunately pay a price further down the line as it has with gambling, drug and alcohol addiction. Recognition of it as a problem is the first step along the way though.
ReplyDeleteHi Kristine. This is a real problem that we need to be acknowledging and addressing. I wish I had the solution but I know that many of our students in our BYOD secondary school are addicted to gaming to the point where they are staying up late, into the early hours of the morning and are consequently arriving at school late or falling asleep in class. One of he ethical issues for me is how can we empower/challenge parents "to be parents" in the sense of knowing what their child is doing and having some control of what happens at home. At school, whilst we cannot claim to know what every student is doing on their device all the time while in school we do have policies and expectations and do take action for inappropriate use of digital devices. However, this is not addressing the impact on students Hauora and in particular on their ability to be in class and learning. I believe that we need to be addressing these issues as a community and working closely with parents which is not easy in a large urban secondary school. I totally agree that we need to be talking about it and acknowledging the long term harm and problems that will occur if we don't. It may start with students not achieving mastery of Key Competencies but the social impact on the mental and emotional health and well-being of our young people is an unknown and an absolute priority that I believe we need to acknowledge and address.
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