Teaching Ethics State-level Employees One interest among state level employees is “Who should be teaching ethics”? It is difficult for many to digest the notion that the person teaching the ethics course has never found themselves embroiled in their own ethical dilemma. For example, in the department of law, there is an ethics committee that reviews complaints against attorneys. The majority of that committee which teaches continuing legal education courses and reviews complaints, have not practiced law or actually litigated.
Most if not all of the ethics committee consists of attorneys that graduated law school, passed the bar and applied for the position. Accordingly, it is not exactly palpable to have a peer who has not practiced in a court room actually pontificate about the conduct expected of attorneys who encounter courtroom clashes. A tremendous interest in regards to research is identifying borderline children in elementary schools. Many children in the public school system are clearly performing below the state standard but do not qualify for special education.
As a result, they persistently fail classes but are moved to the next level. It would be ideal if there existed a program that could be developed to help the borderline children pass. Whether this is something that would result in dividing the class into sections is something that should be researched, because it is a viable alternative which would allow the child to maintain the curriculum with a better chance of success. Funding, however is always an issue and of course, the state is reticent to expend resources on research when children are passing state standards.
There does not appear to be any legislation within the state of California as applied to research. On July 12, 1974, the National Research Act (Pub. L. 93-348) was signed into law, there-by creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. One of the charges to the Commission was to identify the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects and to develop guidelines which should be followed to assure that such research is conducted in accordance with those principles.
In carrying out the above, the Commission was directed to consider: (i) the boundaries between biomedical and behavioral research and the accepted and routine practice of medicine, (ii) the role of assessment of risk-benefit criteria in the determination of the appropriateness of research involving human subjects, (iii) appropriate guidelines for the selection of human subjects for participation in such research and (iv) the nature and definition of informed consent in various research settings.
Sadly, in the area of education, there is not enough research done, and as to the issue of ethics, there are no standards so there is no way of evaluating the integrity of he research.
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