Abstract:

Teaching/learning at school at any educational level is supposed to be based on trust, support and mutual respect of both sides of the process, and to comply with ethics, which is defined as ‘moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of a professional activity’. Only on this condition will you see the results pretty quickly. It is common truth, however, it is not always the case. The pandemic time has allowed educationalists to reveal different manifestations of, as well as deviations from, the above-mentioned basic principles to be highlighted below.

Among the positive manifestations of ethical behavior at the faculty of journalism, where I work, comes to the fore mutual assistance of the teaching staff, which has helped everyone to sail through a difficult time of pandemic, adapt to a new style of teaching under given circumstances. As never before had all professors at the faculty united and formed the entity of at-any-time-ready–to-come-to assist group of like-minded people. It was a great feeling of being part of a significant transformational, if not revolutionary, process of teaching, taking a different shape and rails of development.

Students displayed the same collaborative support. They oftentimes took on their shoulders assistance to senior professors with new technologies, programs and platforms, conferences for holding classes and seminars. Which proves the statement of the mutual dependence of both sides of the teaching/learning process, and the results resting on it.

However, one couldn’t but notice the breach of ethical rules and principles, more often observed among students who did everything to sail through exams. Technologies give them such an opportunity and they seize upon it. Best of all it is revealed at exams, when students find the way to wriggle out by using cheat sheets or dictionaries. Students demonstrate such inventiveness that anyone can envy.

Another side of an unethical behavior is revealed in students’ cheating with online connection. Coming to class late or missing it at all, they find an excuse in a poor Internet connection or the lack of it. Interestingly, the students resorting to this technical excuse are students usually known as truants and poor in their performance.

The unethical behavior at online exams has brought the teaching staff to adapt to new conditions of organizing them by switching into different types of assignments, which help bring students’ knowledge into the open.

The compliance with ethical norms and rules goes hand in hand with their breach, it is truly the two sided process which has always existed and which testifies, on the one hand, to the desire of human beings to survive and adapt new conditions to new circumstances and way of life, on the other hand, ‘Is our life ethical these days?’ The 21-century has turned everything upside down, and the phrase ‘do not judge so that you will not be judged’ is more than relevant today.

Keywords:

Ethics in teaching/learning English, ethic behavior/unethical behavior, mutual assistance, wriggling out at exams, cheating on the Internet connection.