Infusing Ethics into Everyday Practice in Higher Education 95its insistence on demonstrable outcomes – preferably with a monetary
gain – is threatening to reshape academic life in terms of an ideology of
calculation.”
6.3 Ethics and the University: the Educator’s Multiple
Roles
The professoriate operates in this vortex and any debate on ethics
should grapple with this reality. Traditionally, the task of the academic
is broadly arranged according to the tripartite mission of teaching,
research and community service but teaching/transmission of knowledge
is its overall distinguishing feature (i.e., as contrasted to a researcher
employed in research institute or a community worker or instructor
employed by a service organisation) (Boyer, 1990). Others suggest more
complex and diversified role sets for the academic (Arreola, Theall &
Aleamoni, 2003). However, even if only taken at the level of the more
traditional three roles, the implications for ethical issues emerge. As
teacher, the university educator communicates values to students,
although some would argue that these are subverted or at least masked
by the substantive issues of the discipline or field (McFarlane, 2004). In
the teaching role university educators should be diligent in the lecture
room and current in their subject matter (Scriven, 1982). Professional
development should be directed towards producing quality teaching not
only career promotion. As assessors of student work, university
educators should be fair, unbiased and thorough. Similarly in the role as
peer evaluator, the university educator must be unbiased and judge on
merit only. These are but a few ways that ethics penetrates everyday
academic life. In the role of researcher, aside from the clear
requirements to meet the well-accepted ethical standards in field or
laboratory work, other issues exist which are more subtle and these are
related to the privileged position held by research production in most
universities due to the potential of the research endeavour for wealth