Ethical Dilemma
The Scenario
Joe is not the strongest of students. He is over 50 years old, has 25+ years of work experience in the electrical industry, but has a history of struggling to pass trade school. He is part of the electrical union and enjoys his work, but they are starting to push him to complete his schooling. Joe may lose his job if he doesn’t start working towards his certification.
Joe enters Electrical Level 1 and attends every class in the 10 week period. He participates regularly in class and offers a valuable real-world perspective with anecdotes to the content being taught. Unfortunately, electrical is heavily based in math and Joe struggles with basic math skills. The instructor refers him to the Math Help Centre. Joe gets a math tutor through the union, and takes advantage of the instructor’s office hours. Unfortunately, even after all this work, Joe writes his final exam and fails the course by 1%. Joe meets with the instructor after the final exam and asks if the instructor can review his grading to help Joe pass Level 1. The instructor is torn: Does he pass or fail Joe?
The Dilemma
This situation is a justice VS mercy dilemma. If we are to strictly follow the testing results, then Joe should fail. However, who benefits from Joe failing Level 1? Does Joe? Society? The union? His employer? This situation may call for some mercy to be shown towards Joe. Resolving this dilemma requires either using rules-based thinking or care-based thinking. I think rules-based thinking would be appropriate if Joe did not ultimately meet the outcomes of the course. It would be unethical to pass a student who hasn’t met the learning outcomes. Because he did meet the learning outcomes, I feel a care-based solution is most appropriate.
Resolution
Ultimately the situation was resolved by passing Joe. I made it very clear that he should not even consider registering for Level 2 until he takes a math upgrade course, as well as a course on trigonometry. I rationalized this choice because, especially in Level 1, students can be overwhelmed early on and lose too many marks in early heavily weighted sections to pass the course. I assessed his final exam for meeting the basic outcomes of Level 1, and felt that he did meet them. I felt that if Joe did not take my advice on math upgrading, then he surely would not pass Level 2, and no harm would be done.
Reflection
This incident was the first time I encountered a situation where I had to make a significant judgment call in my practice. I believe I made the right call in the situation because Joe did meet course outcomes. I believe it is a failure in our grading system and unethical to heavily penalize someone for being a late bloomer. At the time I was a new instructor so I reached out to my peers before unilaterally making the decision to pass him. It is unfortunate that as an epilogue to this story, Joe didn’t take my advice and upgrade his math skills. He ended up failing Level 2 in a spectacular fashion.