Assessment of Professional Values in Education System
I was recently asked for my views on the introduction of an appraisal of 'Professional Value' within university computing degrees. This to support part of a academic paper by a research group at the University of Southampton.
[Alas, the research team rather foolishly made the survey as a MS Word document - rather than a SurveyMonkey, or indeed a GoogleDoc web-form. This would not only have allowed easier community-sharing, but also would have made collating the results a lot easier!]
Back to the survey and my response. The academic work is "part of a wider study of the attitudes of computing professionals, academics and students to the assessment of professional values in Computing degrees". The particular emphasis was made on both the feasibility and the acceptability of assessing professional attitudes and values within a university degree programme.
Perhaps I should add a disclaimer... - as a chartered member of several professional institutions (BCS, EurIng, ...), I have signed a code of conduct. Indeed, the BCS have published their Code of Conduct online (together with the Code of Good Practice). My current employer also has a set of Business Conduct Guidelines, which extend into blogging and virtual worlds... - this might introduce an element of bias in my comments. That said (written), whilst accepting to adhere to these guidelines was a condition on being accepted as a chartered member (for BCS, EurIng) and a condition of my employment; I was quite happy to accept these terms - indeed, I might suggest that I adhere to even stronger (and constantly updated) values than those described in such documents...
Back to my feedback to the research team:
The judgement of character or professionalism is not at the heart of modern education systems. If it were, it might create a conflict between the morale upstanding of the teacher/academic and that ‘imposed’ by the Education Board. Yet, it is through the influence of the academic staff that students might be set on a pathway to professional conduct – and the education environment offers an excellent opportunity to debate professional standards and conduct (link to 70kB MS PowerPoint file, Virginia Tech). It is likely that the institutions, such as the British Computer Society, would lend their support to such a scheme - as it is very much in their interest to enhance the credibility and social standing of their professional members.
An approach that might be seen as a compromise would be to complement the education/syllabus with industrial placements, such that the student can function within a structured professional environment and thus bring back their experiences to discuss/debate with the learning environment AND commence to instil best practices and a professional conduct from an early stage. Mentoring scheme can also offer superb insight into professional dilemmas (for the conspiracy-theory activists, this might be seen to also serve as an early warning system for renegade students).
It might be noted that many great advances have been made in science, technology, and engineering (and indeed Medicine) by individuals and groups who have pushed what might have been deemed unethical or at least questionable research. To take but one example: Charles Robert Darwin and his theory on National Selection - his work was very much at odds with the ethical beliefs in the early 19th century. For this reason alone it would be foolish to impose a particular conduct on young people. Instead, reasonable direction and open discussion could serve a better pattern so as to enhance the professional conduct of those working in the industry.
Perhaps a strong impact could be had by allocating an academic supervisor (mentor) for the whole of the university degree, to serve as a sounding-board for idea sharing and personal development during the students' academic years. Instilling 'mentoring behaviour' into the academics then becomes the task, as not all staff are inclined to allocate effort outside of the domain of their research; it might also be a character attribute (and skill) that they are lacking. Why would they if their employment contract does not specify this? Would a great mentor be well revered amongst their peers? How would this social contribution be evaluated versus research performance?
Donald Gotterbarn made the following distinction:
- Codes of Ethics are "aspirational," often serving as mission statements for the profession and thus can provide vision and objectives
- Codes of Conduct are oriented towards the professional and the professional's attitude and behaviour
- Codes of Practice relate to operational activities within a profession
Evaluating good or bad attributes will necessarily require objective values to be defined. Yet, a professional code is based on behavioural characteristics and on an attitude by which the individual works within a social environment. This might be seen to force a common approach on the collective. One advantage: a customer might receive a similar experience when working with different members of an external company. The quest for conformity should not be at the cost of individual excellence. Instilling a rapid learning loop could bring best practises into the group approach, whilst allowing individual creativity and innovation to flourish.
There is most likely a far larger debate to be had on what might be the attributes of our education establishments in the future.
SmarterUniversities anyone?
. The book offers a collection of short articles that provide insight into the challenges of becoming a listening and open organisation - a participatory corporation. This is a sequel to 
Which has a higher Carbon Footprint: Innocent or Coca-Cola?
