The social impact of a profession: An analysis of factors influencing ethics and the teaching of social responsibility in educational technology programs.

摘要

Although professional ethics are considered critical to a profession's success, this content is often rarely covered in graduate level programs that train the future leaders. This study examined the specific ethic of social responsibility, looking at the degree to which it is present in programs, in faculty mindsets, and what factors might explain the absence or presence. Social responsibility was operationally defined using Kaufman's (2001) Elements of the Basic Ideal Vision. Other factors that were studied in relationship to social responsibility included demographics, philosophies of technology as defined by Feenberg (1999, 2001) and Barbour (1993), and barriers to integration based on human performance technology research and ethical behavior research (Ford & Richardson, 1994; Stolovich & Keeps, 1999). The results of this study from 169 participants indicated that the construct of social responsibility was a solid construct as measured by Kaufman's Elements of the Basic Ideal Vision, but faculty were not necessarily willing to be committed to it in their professional work. Only the Pessimism subscale of the philosophy instrument had a positive correlation to social responsibility. Furthermore, planning documents from 67 educational technology programs indicated no systematic efforts to integrate social responsibility into programs and vertically align it through program objectives, goals, missions and visions. The results, along with participant comments at the end of the survey, indicate that faculty in educational technology either have not made a paradigm shift to thinking about societal impact in their professional work or do not have a clear cognitive schema for social responsibility that would allow them to teach the content. Possibilities for future research are discussed.