Let's Chat(bot) About Ethics

NASDTEC Releases an Educator Ethics Bot

Even casual readers of this newsletter know that much of my research over the past couple of years has focused on the ethical perils of AI. The new technology raises serious concerns about intellectual honesty, invasion of privacy, sexual harassment, and so on.

But can an AI chatbot actually help educators avoid potentially career-ending missteps? That's the question posed by last week's announcement of the release of the Ethical Decision-Making Support for Educators, a chatbot designed to give teachers some preliminary answers to ethical dilemmas.

The bot is a joint project by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC) and the National Council for the Advancement of Educator Ethics (NCAEE).

The chatbot serves as an initial resource that helps educators explore ethical dilemmas, identify relevant considerations, and examine potential courses of action grounded in professional ethics. Educators, preparation programs, school leaders, and professional development providers can use the tool to facilitate conversations about ethical decision-making and professional responsibility in a variety of educational settings.

The following is a brief introduction to the bot, the materials used to train it, and its role in the ongoing development of the Model Code of Ethics for Educators.

A Not-Uncommon Scenario

So let's take the Educator Ethics chatbot out for a spin. My friend and colleague Dr. Troy Hutchings, now a Senior Policy Advisor on Educator Ethics for NASDTEC, is one of the country's leading experts on teacher ethics. He often includes the following scenario in his lectures:

A high school track coach arrives back at the school at midnight with his athletes after a long all-day invitational. There is one student who doesn’t have a ride home – the parents aren’t available, and it is a 2-mile walk home for the student in a part of town that has a high crime rate. What should he do?

The answers from audience members run the gamut: call a colleague or building leader; call a friend or neighbor of the student; call a taxi or Uber; give the student a ride; or (from the most callous), tell the student to walk. There are a host of factors implicit in this scenario, and tweaking any of them might lead to a different answer. But none of the answers may actually feel "right."

So what does the bot say? I submitted the scenario as written, and here's what it came up with:

Response

In the scenario where a high school track coach is faced with a student who has no ride home late at night from an event, several ethical considerations arise according to the Model Code of Ethics for Educators (MCEE).

Safety of the Student: The primary concern should be the safety and well-being of the student. The MCEE emphasizes the responsibility to ensure students' safety, stating, "The professional educator promotes the emotional, intellectual, physical and sexual safety of all students". Given that the student would need to walk two miles through a high-crime area, the coach must consider the potential risks involved in allowing the student to walk home alone.

Adhering to Policies: The MCEE also highlights the importance of adhering to district policies. Many districts have policies that explicitly prohibit staff from transporting students in personal vehicles. The coach should be cautious about violating such policies, which are in place to protect both students and educators from potential liabilities .

Exploring Alternatives: The coach could consider alternative solutions that do not involve breaking district policy. This could include:

Contacting Other Parents: If possible, the coach could reach out to other students' parents to see if anyone is available to give the student a ride.

School Resources: The coach might contact school administration or security for assistance or to see if there are any school-provided transportation options available for students in such situations.

Waiting with the Student: If feasible, the coach could stay with the student until a safe arrangement is made, potentially involving contacting a family member or another responsible adult.

Collective Responsibility: The MCEE encourages educators to engage in discussions about ethical dilemmas collectively. The coach could reach out to colleagues for advice or to brainstorm solutions, thus fostering a collaborative approach to the issue .

Documentation: Regardless of the decision made, it is important for the coach to document the situation and any actions taken. This can provide a record of due diligence in ensuring the student's safety and adhering to professional standards.

In summary, while the coach's instinct may be to ensure the student's safety by providing a ride, adherence to district policy and consideration of alternative solutions are crucial. Engaging with colleagues and documenting the situation can help navigate this ethical dilemma effectively.

Sources

File(s): MCEE 2nd Edition Nov 2023.pdf

It is difficult to find much to quibble with in this answer. It does a good job of checking all the boxes: highlighting student safety, acknowledging the potential conflict with school policy, and suggesting solutions that emphasize the value of a communal response and good record-keeping. An educator who relied on this response would be unlikely to commit an ethical violation.

Still, it is worth noting that, like virtually all chatbots, the Educator Ethics bot is very confident in its tone and not overly nuanced. It would not take much for this scenario to slide into Kobayashi Maru territory, where there truly may be no good answer. What if no one can be reached by phone, and the teacher is the only available transportation? What if the weather is bad and the only shelter is the teacher's car? Unlike James Tiberius Kirk, neither the teacher nor the bot can reprogram the universe, which is why the Educator Ethics bot is the start of a discussion and not the end.

Where's the Bot Getting Its Answers?

By now, we all know (or we should know) that even the best chatbots can make mistakes or even provide completely made-up information (typically described as "hallucinations"). The consequences for naive reliance on a chatbot answer can range from the merely embarrassing to the professionally catastrophic; just ask the attorneys who have lost their licenses for turning in imaginary case citations generated by AI.

Given the potential risks, it's fair to ask whether seeking ethical advice from an ethics chatbot is itself ethical behavior.

As a user, your risk of an ethical misstep is substantially reduced if you consider the ethical chatbot as merely one piece of information to help you make a decision, and not the sole answer. And importantly, NASDTEC has minimized the ethical risk of chatting with bot through careful design and implementation of the software.

The system was designed and developed for NASDTEC by Victor Nguyen, the Managing Director of Abstrxn Analytic, a software firm specializing in custom AI applications. In an email, he explained the basic function of the NASDTEC project:

The chatbot uses ChatGPT as the LLM to evaluate user prompts (or queries), examine data from its knowledge base that are relevant to responding to the prompt, and then summarizes that data to address the prompt.

Guardrails are in place to keep the chatbot on the topic of educator ethics using a four-page long set of instructions that was greatly informed by input from NASDTEC ... over the past eight months.

Basically, Nguyen said, the ethics chatbot is the equivalent of an open-book test. A student brings to the test their life experience and understanding of the world, but is expected to answer test questions by referring to assigned course materials.

In this case, the bot has been told to prioritize the contents of "the MCEE 2nd Edition (2023), [Dr. Hutchings'] blogs on the MCEE and educator ethics (2019 to 2022), MCEE's two-page pamphlet (2023), and a video discussion guide from the MCEE video series (2022)."

In practical terms, this means that when I typed in the above scenario, the Educator Ethics bot relied on ChatGPT to understand contextual terms and concepts like "midnight," "teacher," "student," "parents," "aren't available," and "high crime rate." Once ChatGPT provided the necessary background knowledge, the Educator Ethics bot then turned to its authorized materials to generate the response.

Forcing the ethics chatbot to rely on the provided materials on educator ethics substantially reduces the risk of hallucinations, Nguyen said. In addition, the chatbot has explicit instructions to inform users if it does not have adequate information in its source data to answer a specific question. Users might see, for instance, a response that includes these lines: "I'm not completely certain about that based on the available information. You may want to consult an education professional for further guidance."

The Educator Ethics chatbot went through two rounds of beta testing in the spring. The most common response, Nguyen reported, was that "The beta testers wanted to see greater empathy in responses and a consideration from multiple perspectives." The opportunity for feedback has not closed; the bot page has a link to a page on which users can leave a review.

Filling a Need: A Model Code of Ethics for Educators

The Educator Ethics chatbot is merely the latest extension of NASDTEC's years-long efforts to develop a national code of ethics for educators. Unlike many other professions, the teaching profession does not have a standard code of ethics for its members. Dr. Hutchings, who has been one of the driving forces behind the development of the MCEE, likes to point out that other professions adopted national codes of ethics decades, even centuries ago. The American Medical Association, for instance, did so in 1847. The American Bar Association followed suit in 1932, and the American Psychological Association in 1952.

Some structural issues have prevented the adoption of a standard code of ethics for educators, the most notable being that, unlike those other professions, there is no national organization that sets licensing standards for teachers. Nonetheless, members of NASDTEC's Professional Practices Institute began discussing the possibility of a model code in the fall of 2009.

Five years later, NASDTEC established a Model Code of Ethics for Educators Task Force, with Dr. Hutchings serving as its subject matter expert. A year later, the task force submitted its proposed code to the NASDTEC Executive Board. The Board approved the Task Force's work and introduced the Model Code to the public at a well-attended event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2015. Joined by fellow panelists Anne Marie Fenton, Katherine Bassett, and Kristin White, Dr. Hutchings presented a PowerPoint describing the history of the MCEE process and the structure of the Code [see below]. A revised version of the Model Code (available on the NASDTEC website) was released in 2023.

A Valuable Training Resource

Based on my review over the last couple of days, I think that it is clear that the Educator Ethics chatbot can be a valuable tool for educating teachers and administrators about the Model Code of Ethics for Educators. Even better, you don't have to be a member of NASDTEC in order to chat with it: The organization has made it freely available to anyone who wants to try it.

Let's be realistic. The odds that a teacher standing in a dark and cold parking lot is going to query the chatbot for advice is pretty low. It's really not designed for high stress moments. But it holds real value for personal reflection and professional training. This innovative tool does a credible job of connecting elements of the MCEE to specific fact patterns, and can respond to dozens of possible scenarios in a short time.

Based on my research over the last couple of decades, it is clear that many educators get into trouble because they feel they can't confide in anyone; even asking "for a friend" carries the risk of embarrassment or worse. But since all of the input to the Educator Ethics bot is anonymous, a teacher can get an initial read on a situation before it goes too far and crosses an important red line.

Again, a response from the Educator Ethics bot should not be treated as a definitive answer. It is likely, however, to identify possible ethical concerns that should be explored more fully. It's an impressive resource that should find wide-spread use in the teaching profession.