Ethics for Academics

The ethical delivery of social work education is guided by academic and professional codes of conduct, though often these documents fail to explicitly address the array of dilemmas faced by faculty and administrators. This paper examines commonly occurring ethical dilemmas faced by social work educators in carrying out their roles of teaching, scholarship and service. Specifically, the codes of professional social work organizations from four nations, the American Association of University Professors, the International Federation of Social Workers and the Codes of Conduct and Practice from the General Social Care Council in England are applied to four vignettes for analysis and discussion. Recommendations are offered for discerning relevant guidelines to resolve the unique dilemmas experienced by social work educators and consideration is given to the development of a specialized code for social work educators.