Tutorial Week 1

ITECH 3203-7203 Professional Development

Discussion Questions
1. Define the terms ethics and values. Indicate what they mean to you. Ethics are moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior. Values are things of importance and related to our ways of behaving in professional and personal context 2. Why do we need to study ethics? How is ethics important in the different roles we play in life? Ethics teaches us the good values and good ways of living so we should study ethics. We play different roles in our life from morning to evening like as a students, employ, wife, husband, brother, sister, father, mother, and many more and in each role ethics and good behaviour plays a vital role for a smooth sailing in life.

3. Study the following list of values and identify five values that best represent you as an individual. Share your list with others in your group, and the class.
life creativity humor loyalty beauty spirituality respect justice helpfulness (icarevalues.org, 2005) compassion accountability cooperation wealth professionalism success honesty health knowledge freedom work trustworthiness security morality responsibility empathy love wisdom dedication religion advancement recognition patience power integrity faith independence

Classify your values into two lists. Indicate those that would be considered ethical and those that would be considered non ethical. For example health and wealth would be considered non-ethical values and integrity and honesty would be considered ethical values. Ethical values: loyalty and honesty. Unethical values: freedom and empathy. 4. Select the value you feel needs the most work, the one that you could improve upon the most, and indicate why. Repeat for the value you believe is your strongest, the one you feel you possess most of the time. Discuss these with others in your group. I can improve on patience with time. Because I lack patience, and having patience is the key concept to achieve success and it is the quality of a wise behaviours . 5. Select one value from your list that represents your core value. Indicate why this is the most important to you. Share this with your group and the class. Collate all the values from the class these will become part of the ethical code for the course.

Freedom represents my core value. It is important to me because every individual has the right to live their life according to their own way. To achieve dreams and to be happy in life, freedom is important in that. Impositions and restrictions only cause frustrations and leads to unethical behaviour. Every person has the right to live freely so that the they can achieve the heights of the success and can show their talent to the world.

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Tutorial Week 1
ITECH 3203-7203 Professional Development

6. Describe an ethical dilemma you have experienced in your own life and indicate how you dealt with it. When I had to go for my friends wedding, on the same day my younger brother was not well. He had fever and there was no one at the home to look after her except me. This was that day when I felt ethical dilemma that whether I should go and enjoy the party or I should stay back at home and look after my brother who needs me the most at that time. So in the end I decided to stay at home to look after him and did not go to my friends wedding.

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Appendix A
Roundtable Reflection Brandenburg (2008) discussed Roundtable Reflection is an approach to reflecting on practice in a systematic and focused manner. The approach is as follows: 1. Teachers/leaders identify a critical incident, interaction or event and take two minutes to write about this 2. Each teacher/leader shares his/her critical incident, interaction or event with the group (verbal sharing is crucial; no elaboration at this stage) 3. Group then prioritises which incident, interaction or event will be discussed in detail 4. Each member of the group briefly states his/her reaction 5. Nominate one member of the group to take (brief) notes of the discussion and present the groups ideas (this should be a shared responsibility) 6. The Roundtable discussion is based on the following process and the following description constitutes one reflective cycle: a. Elaboration/expansion of the issue the context b. The group focus to explore multiple perspectives related to the issue/action. It is important to provide each member of the group with an opportunity to contribute to the discussion. 7. The process is collaborative and it involves structured and systematic reflection on a critical incident, event or interaction. Feedback from group members is a key element of the practice, as in the establishment of a trusting and supportive environment. It is essential that each member articulates his/her critical issue and that each person in the group has the opportunity to contribute to the discussion. The discussion remains focused on the issue and members of the group offer alternative perspectives and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative. References Brandenburg, R. (2008). Powerful pedagogy: Self-study of a teacher educators practice . Dordrecht: Springer

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