Professional Ethics for Social Justice: Codes, Principles and Resources

It is likely to be widely accepted that ethical reflection by professional workers, such as teachers, is of benefit for improving equity and social justice in society. More controversial, however, is whether formalized codes and principles are helpful. In this presentation I begin by analysing critiques of formal frameworks for procedural ethics: both professional codes of ethics and guidelines for research ethics, especially within education and social science research. Specific concerns relate to the restrictiveness of codes, the impact of codes on undermining professional deliberation, and a lack of cultural relevance.  I draw on Nancy Fraser’s framework of social justice to relate these issues to considerations of inequality.

The second part of the presentation reflects on my experience teaching a module on ‘professional ethics’ in a pre-service teacher education course in Australia. Rather than pre-determining codes or principles for students to adopt, I started with a Smörgåsbord approach, offering various ethical theories and materials. These were resources for students in order to construct their own ‘professional ethical toolkit’. I provide examples of these resources and how they were used by students 

Finally, I return to the session question of how professional ethics may contribute to diminishing inequality. I examine principles commonly used in research ethics frameworks internationally (respect for persons / autonomy, beneficence / non-maleficence and justice) as well as ethical resources through Fraser’s lenses of redistribution, recognition and representation. I conclude that in order to use ethics for equity, we need to carefully weigh up the potential impacts of formal, procedural approaches and more informal pedagogical approaches.