title: Ethical Dilemmas Faced by VET Teachers in Times of Rapid Change
Creators: name: Nakar, Sonal
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Vocational education and training
subject: Teacher responsiveness
subject: Student diversity
subject: Learning assessment

description: Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia in recent decades has been subject to a range of major policy reforms in response to globalized pressures for it to become more effective, efficient, and competitive in its responsiveness to consumer demand. Those policy reforms have been noted to date as raising significant ethical challenges for teachers in the sector. There is, though, a dearth of research-based knowledge of how those challenges are being experienced, interpreted, explained, and responded to by the teachers themselves and how the teachers see the challenges as impacting on them. The research project described in this thesis sought to respond to that situation. It was directed to developing an understanding of how VET teachers in Australia experienced, interpreted, explained, and responded to the ethical challenges raised by changes in the contemporary cultural context of their work and what they saw as being the impact of those challenges on them as teachers in the sector. Correspondingly, the study was phenomenological in nature, drawing primarily on exploratory, discursive, conversational interviews with 18 VET teachers in South-East Queensland, who were selected from those responding to a call for participation in the study. Participants were selected to include a diversity of background and participatory involvement in the field and to ensure the each had some years of experience in VET teaching. Interview questioning was focused on the ethical challenges faced by the participants in their work as teachers in VET and which they attributed to changes in the contemporary cultural context of their work. Data analysis followed the process articulated as interpretative phenomenological analysis. It focused on identifying pertinent dilemmas shared by the participants: how the dilemmas were experienced, interpreted, explained, and responded to, and their impact on the participants. Four common dilemmas were identified: the dilemmas of (a) responding flexibly to heightened student diversity, (b) limiting educational engagement, (c) constraining teacher responsiveness, and (d) manipulating learning assessment. Each was seen as being created by tensions between what participants (intrinsically) understood that they should do in a particular situation and what they felt impelled to do by extrinsic imperatives or pressures from changed circumstances in the contemporary cultural context of VET. The extrinsic imperatives were identified from the ethical challenges attributed by the teachers to changes in that cultural context, each dilemma being defined by a small number of such challenges particular to it, with a total of 13 challenges emerging across the four dilemmas. The identified impacts of the dilemmas on the participants were all seen by them as being negative: disappointment, confusion, anxiety, discomfort, and distress. Three types of response on the part of participants to their experience of the dilemmas were evident: marginalizing the extrinsic imperatives through standing by their intrinsic moral commitments, compromising those commitments to accommodate the extrinsic imperatives, and appealing for ethical training. Three of the four categories of participant explanations for their experience of the dilemmas focused on what they saw as external realities of their teaching: changing immigration rules, changing funding requirements, and the changing culture and philosophy of their employing registered training organization. The fourth identified explanation focused on inadequacies in their teacher preparation. The study pointed to the value of dilemmas as constructs through which to generate knowledge of ethical conflicts arising from contextual changes. It highlighted the significance of those conflicts to VET teachers involved in the study. It also pointed to actions that may be taken to support teachers in better managing the conflicts. The negativity of the identified impacts and the disparate responses to the dilemmas suggested the need for such intervention. The challenges presented by each of the dilemmas and the participants’ explanations of the dilemmas suggested themselves as points for attention in any such intervention. Foremost among the implications of the study for such intervention are the need for effective teacher training in applied ethics and for better teacher support for their understanding and management of the challenges presented by the extrinsic imperatives. While the extrinsic imperatives – and hence the challenges for educational action – identified in this study may be expected to vary across educational and policy contexts, the dilemmas themselves, of which they are a part, may well be more stable. Therein lies an argument for further research to examine the extent to which the findings of this study may be applied to other educational sectors and contexts where policy changes of a similar nature are being implemented.