HWcase2 - John-Michael Smith

For this case I will be examining moral injury in educators with the follow article as citation: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teachers-often-experience-moral-injury-on-the-job-study-finds/2019/05 

 

Eight important facts are:

1. Teachers have felt as if they need to put up with "wrong-headed mandates" involving conflicts of interest on how to serve their students. A study by American Education Research Journal finds these may be a major source of moral injury for teachers.
2. In a survey of urban Midwest educators, 4 in 5 educators confirmed that they had experienced moral injury: "They witnessed other staff doing things that were morally wrong, while almost half said they themselves acted in a way that betrayed their values."
3. This survey was conducted by Erin P. Sugrue on more than 200 educators working in urban Midwest school district. The group included more than teachers, including social workers, psychologists, counselors, nurses, and instructional support staff.
4. The framework of moral injury was originally founded in the military by military psychologists and psychiatrists, but has been applied to  high-stakes jobs ever since such as caseworkers in the child protective services system. 
5. The survey was done with a 9-item Moral Injury Events Scale tool.
6. The tool has a number of statements on a six point scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strong agree" in order to gauge if the respondent experienced moral injury. The survey was split into three categories: Transgressions by others, self committed transgressions, and the feeling of betrayal from school leaders, colleagues, education policymakers, etc.
7. 80% of respondents scored above a three on the Transgressions-Other category, almost 70% scored above a three on the Betrayal category. 45% said that they themselves acted immorally on the job.
8. Educators who worked in schools with larger percentages of students of color - notably high-poverty schools according to the article - were more likely to report moral injury. According to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, these schools had high suspension rates and low graduation rates for students of color and teachers hadn't received any training on new justice systems ordered by the Department of Education at the failure of school leadership. Sugrue said that it felt as if teachers were supposed to "just get the numbers up so [they] can report that."

Four questions to ask about the case are:

1. What do you could do or implement had you the power to intervene in moral injury in education? Where would you start?
2. After seeing the criteria of moral injury in education, could you come up with a scenario that would constitute moral injury as an educator?
3. As a student, have you felt like you've experienced moral injury before throughout K-12?
4. How could government abuse of information relate to this case?

Three additional standard questions:

• What does virtue ethics say about this case?
• What does utilitarianism say about this case?
• What does deontology say about this case?