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As an\u00a0educational ethicist<\/a>, I research teachers\u2019 ethical obligations. These can include their personal ethics such as protecting students from harm, respect for justice and truth, and professional norms like social conformity, collegial loyalty and personal well-being.<\/p>\n Moral tensions in schools can come about when certain categories of norms conflict with each other. For example, sometimes students\u2019 best interests are pitted against available resources. These present difficult decisions for the teacher, the school community and its leaders.<\/p>\n As part of a\u00a0global study<\/a>\u00a0on educational ethics during the pandemic, I conducted focus groups with Australian childcare, preschool, primary and secondary school teachers to find out what ethical issues were most pressing for them.<\/p>\n Below are three ways in which the pandemic highlighted existing tensions between ethical priorities.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Australian Professional Standards for Teachers<\/a>\u00a0emphasise student well-being is important to learning. But they note teachers\u2019 main priority is making sure the student learns at their stage of the\u00a0Australian National Curriculum<\/a>.<\/p>\n During COVID, this flipped and well-being took precedence. A primary school teacher told me: An Aboriginal-identifying teacher who shared their strong cultural background with students said: A secondary school teacher said: Some teachers found it particularly difficult to identify students at heightened risk and to put in place their duty of care requirements.<\/p>\n A public primary school principal in a low socioeconomic area said: Leading teachers and principals found the tension between their personal safety and that of their colleagues were often in conflict with a lag in institutional directives.<\/p>\n1. Student well-being versus learning<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nIt\u2019s the first time in my teaching career where the learning became a low priority, and well-being took over \u2026 if we could keep them chugging along, that was good enough.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u2026 a lot of the Aboriginal students \u2026 didn\u2019t have access to \u2026 resources. And so there was already this disconnect that became even wider by the time they had to learn from home \u2026 Some students were not able to complete the work that I was putting on the online forum because they were caring for little brothers and sisters when they were at home \u2026 or home life was extremely volatile \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThere were certain students that we were made aware of by the well-being coordinators that we weren\u2019t to make contact with. If there were more extenuating circumstances in the life of the child then we weren\u2019t to \u2026 exacerbate that by sending emails home about them not completing work \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe had a couple of instances where we would have had more contact with family, community services and since (then) we have heard stories of what happened when the children weren\u2019t coming to school \u2026 we would have made an instant call to DOCS [Department of Community Services], but because we weren\u2019t having that day to day contact we didn\u2019t know. A lot of those things were hidden, very serious issues.<\/em><\/p>\n2. Government policy versus staff well-being<\/strong><\/h4>\n