Situation
Professor Elmo Johnson teaches introductory sociology. His classroom presentations consist of two forms — reading from the assigned textbook and giving lectures drawn from other textbooks not assigned in the class. Professor Johnson does not cite these sources.
Questions
- Are there any ethical issues involved here?
- What responsibility does the Department have in this case?
Discussion
Each of the classroom presentations that Professor Johnson employs in his Introductory class are problematic. However, they are quite different with regard to their ethical status. In the first case, reading from the textbook is clearly bad practice and cannot be considered a useful approach to classroom time. However, it is not unethical. Here, the Department has the obligation to review both student and peer evaluations of Professor Johnson and encourage, persuade and provide incentives (and disincentives) to move his teaching practice to more effective methods. The second method — drawing lectures from one or another textbook — clearly violates the norm to provide attribution of sources. Even giving lectures based on the specific works of others without proper citation is unethical. In this case, the Department has the obligation to inform Professor Johnson to comply with the ethical norms in the Code. However, a Department without routine and rigorous peer evaluation of teaching may not be in a position to discover this since it would rely on student recognition of the cribbed lectures.
