Why is the naeyc code of ethics important
NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct - Part 1 of 7
hello I'm Peter Bissell Ango Senior
Director for professional development at
the National Association for the
education of young children and I'm
joined today with by Stephanie Feeny
Stephanie I'm really happy to be here in
this conversation Peter thank you for
asking me this gives me an opportunity
to talk about my favorite subject which
is professional ethics and early
childhood education
I was the co-author of the first na ey C
code of ethical conduct which was
approved in 1989 I've written two books
for any eyz about professional ethics
and quite a few articles over the years
I've participated in the development of
two supplements for the na ey C code of
ethical conduct one for adult educators
and one for program administrators and I
have been involved in three revisions of
the code that have been conducted since
1989
wonderful wonderful so now you know
Waikato Stephanie is sitting here with
me well the reason that we're doing this
is for two things one this is the 20th
anniversary of the code so in honor of
this anniversary we are having this
dialogue and the other is that that this
dialogue is a supplement to an article
by Stephanie in in young children ethics
in early care and education where do we
come from and where are we going
so first I'd like to talk about what the
code is to na YC and the code is a
position statement of NAU IC and na e YC
develops and disseminates position
statements for several reasons one is to
take informed decisions on significant
issues in the field issues that affect
young children's development to promote
broad-based dialogue on these issues and
to promote this dialogue in a way that
we can all speak with a common language
practitioners researchers policymakers
and and families and certainly the code
does the code of ethical conduct does
give us the opportunity to do that
Stephanie mentioned some of the history
of the code and while this is the 20th
anniversary of the code work
on ethical issues in early childhood
education preceded that in the 1970s we
had the work of Lillian cats and
Evangeline Board and and others
regarding ethical issues in working with
young children so Stephanie can you tell
us about that work and then what work
followed that in which you were involved
well low in and
Evangeline wrote a wonderful and
influential book called ethical behavior
and early childhood education which was
first published in 1978 and it was
revised in 1991 I think it's still
available and Lillian really laid out a
very powerful rationale for why it would
be important for early childhood
educators to to have a code of ethical
conduct I served on the na ey C
governing board from 1980 to 1984 and at
that time people were interested in
Lillian's book so they had started
saying we need a code somebody should
write a code of ethics and I thought
that sounded like a good idea I didn't
know anything about it
I took all the files I went home I went
I don't know what I'm doing here I
didn't like philosophy in college but I
remembered a very interesting talk I had
heard by a philosopher in my institution
the University of Hawaii the
philosophers professor Kenneth Kipnis
he's a specialist in professional ethics
and a very interesting man and I'll call
him and so I called Ken and I said this
National Association of early childhood
educators has asked me to look into
writing a code and he had a child in
preschool and he had an ethical dilemma
with depression also he was kind of
interested he's a boy I know some things
about doing that and I'll work with you
and so we began a collaboration that
still continues when I when I don't know
what to do with a question now I still
cook in the first thing we did after he
kind of signed on and said well I'll
work with your organization we put an
article in young children in nineteen we
have a list of those it was about 80 84
85 and it was a survey and we
said to our readership its ethics an
issue for you should we be pursuing the
development of a code and do you have
any ethical issues we also got a lot of
ethical issues and dilemmas and at one
point Ken was looking through these
things and he looked at me and he said
Stephanie these people are in ethical
pain so we have difficult issues we're
dealing with so we got these issues and
we we read them and we categorized them
and we did a couple things we tried to
figure out what are the categories that
these issues fall into how do they
organize themselves and it was really
clear there were a lot of issues that
had to do with children there were more
issues that had to do with families
we'll talk about one of those there were
issues that had to do with colleagues
and employers but sort of with other
adults you work with and then there were
a whole set of things that were kind of
other agencies responsibility to
community and society so those became
the categories to four sections of the
code then we looked at these issues that
people sent us and we said there's some
that keep coming up and so we took some
of those issues and we wrote cases which
we will we're going to do that today and
then we went to groups all over the
country we got a grant from the Wallace
Alexander Gore bode foundation and we
traveled around mostly Hawaii in
California we said okay here's the
situation
what would the good early childhood
educator do in this situation and we
started to get real consensus about the
things we should do the other thing that
we did that that was very interesting
and very fun to do was to start to look
at our core values because a code of
ethics is based on the core values of a
profession and so we said to people what
do we really believe in what are our
values and that was wonderful because we
had so much consensus we didn't always
agree on the words but we knew what we
believed in and that's my favorite
about this code yeah was identifying
what are the things we care about as a
group of people who weren't with young
children and then through that process
you were able to develop the first draft
of the code we did and take that around
the country that was part of the 5-year
process and in getting buy-in across the
exactly so first we looked at we looked
at core values we looked at cases we
looked at codes from other professional
organizations we talked to philosophers
we had a couple philosophy consultants
who really made sure that what we were
doing was consistent with with the
integrity of the philosophy of ethics
and then we drafted a code and some were
in early in that process in a EYC
created an Ethics Commission that
oversaw this work and that met regularly
and advised those of us who were
actually kind of doing the staff work on
it and it wasn't a staff work we were we
were volunteers and so we had that group
to guide us and then we would write
something up and we'd take it out on the
road we take it to workshops we'd put it
in the journal eventually we put drafts
in the journal we got comments we put
cases in the journal so what we really
loved about this process was that it it
was a participatory process this is our
code right we didn't write it for anyone
we went to our members to the people who
care about kids and we said what would
be the right thing for us to do in these
situation what would the morality of
early childhood education look like of
the ethics so we've written the code
with the field the governing board
approved that first code in 1989 and at
that time the board stated that every
five years the code would be reviewed by
the board and then it would be
determined do we need to update the code
we need to reaffirm the code or do we
need to revise the code so over the
since since 1989 the code has been
reviewed and revised and reaffirmed we
have had new additions of the code
1992-1997 and then the most recent code
revised in 2005 and then at each time we
followed the same process we've gotten
input from the field on what revisions
they feel that we need to put into the
code we develop drafts now that we do
have the internet we can we put a there
easier we get it out to everybody much
more quickly but we still do the
face-to-face and I've been involved more
recently and working with Stephanie and
Nancy Freeman and other leaders in
ethics in our field in getting input
from the field and so that's the process
that we we've continued I'd like to just
make make a comment about because we
were talking about core values right and
when we did the core values they're
right in the front of the code when we
did the core values in 1989 and we did
the first two revisions
there was no changes everybody said
that's right those are the right values
in the third edition we added one core
value so in 2005 we added the value
respect diversity and children families
and colleagues
