Return to Teaching Psychology Resources Page
Tabachnick, B. G., Keith-Spiegel, P., & Pope, K. S. (1991). Ethics of teaching: Beliefs and behaviors of psychologists as educators. American Psychologist, 46, 506-515.
Tabachnick and her colleagues (1991) examined teaching psychologist's concerns pertaining to ethics by surveying 482 members of APA who listed an academic department as their address and/or belonged to Division 2 of APA: Teaching of Psychology. They asked these individuals to rate 63 behaviors in terms of their ethicality, and to also indicate if they themselves performed the identified behavior with any regularity.
Their results suggest that teaching psychologists' ratings coincide with some, but not all, of the APA ethics principles. Sexual harassment, teaching while under the influence of drugs, claiming credit for students' work, falsifying information, accepting a bribe from a textbook publisher, insulting students, expressing racist or anti-gay beliefs in class, becoming sexually involved with a student, ignoring cheating, biased grading methods, showing films that have little educational worth, accepting gifts from students, and revealing confidential information to colleagues were all rated as unethical by at least half of the respondents, and these were also the behaviors that they reported rarely, if ever, performing. Many respondents, however, were relatively tolerant of a number of teaching practices that violate APA standards, such as failing to keep up with the field's discoveries, teaching material that they have not yet mastered, teaching when too distressed to be effective, teaching without preparing, to be unethical–and many of the respondents admitted they performing such actions on occasion. The respondents were not, however, as accepting of sexual involvement with students. Most of the respondents felt faculty should not date or have sex with their students, reveal their sexual inclinations to students, or even fantasize about students in sexual ways.
The Percentage of Teaching Psychologists
Who Judged Each Type of Behavior to Be Unethical (unquestionably
not ethical) and the Percentage Who Reported Engaging in the Behavior sometimes, fairly
often, or very often
(Self-report).
| Behavior |
Rating |
|
| Unethical | Self-report | |
| Making deliberate or repeated sexual comments, gestures, or physical contact that is unwanted by the student | 94.6 | 0.0 |
| Teaching while under the influence of cocaine or other illegal drugs | 83.0 | 0.0 |
| Accepting undeserved authorship on a student's published paper | 82.4 | 0.0 |
| Including false or misleading information when writing a letter of recommendation for a student | 81.3 | 0.4 |
| Accepting for yourself a publisher's monetary rebate for adopting their text | 79.7 | 0.4 |
| Teaching while under the influence of alcohol | 79.3 | 0.6 |
| Insulting, ridiculing, etc., a student in the student's presence | 73.4 | 0.8 |
| Teaching that certain races are intellectually inferior | 73.2 | 0.8 |
| Accepting for your department a publisher's monetary rebate for adopting their text | 71.2 | 1.0 |
| Becoming sexually involved with a student | 71.0 | 1.4 |
| Ignoring strong evidence of cheating | 69.3 | 2.7 |
| Telling a student: "I'm sexually attracted to you." | 68.9 | 0.2 |
| Teaching that homosexuality per se is pathological | 64.3 | 3.3 |
| Allowing a student's "likability" to influence your grading. | 63.3 | 9.7 |
| Insulting, ridiculing, etc., a student in the student's absence | 61.4 | 10.4 |
| Using films, etc., to fill class time (and reduce your teaching work) without regard for their educational value | 53.5 | 2.7 |
| Accepting a students' expensive gift | 52.3 | 1.4 |
| Telling colleagues confidential disclosures told to you by a student | 52.1 | 3.3 |
| Assigning unpaid students to carry out work for you which has little educational value for the student | 49.4 | 5.4 |
| Criticizing all theoretical orientations except those your personally prefer | 47.5 | 8.7 |
| Dating a student | 45.6 | 5.1 |
| Privately tutoring students in the department for a fee | 45.4 | 0.0 |
| Using a grading procedure which does not adequately measure what students have learned | 45.2 | 13.9 |
| Taking advantage of a student's offer such as wholesale prices at parents' store | 43.8 | 0.4 |
| Inadequately supervising teaching assistants | 43.2 | 7.9 |
| Giving easy courses or tests to ensure your popularity with students | 39.8 | 3.3 |
| Ignoring unethical behavior by colleagues | 36.3 | 28.8 |
| Using cocaine or other illegal drugs in your personal (nonteaching) life | 30.7 | 7.2 |
| Teaching where there's no adequate grievance procedures for students | 30.5 | 9.5 |
| Selling unwanted complimentary textbooks to used book vendors | 29.7 | 39.6 |
| Grading on a strict curve regardless of class performance level | 28.2 | 8.1 |
| Teaching content in a nonobjective or incomplete manner | 27.6 | 20.6 |
| Omitting significant information when writing a letter of recommendation for a student | 25.7 | 17.5 |
| Requiring students to use aversive procedures with rats, pigeons, etc. | 24.3 | 5.3 |
| Becoming sexually involved with a student only after he or she has completed your course and the grade has been filed | 20.7 | 3.5 |
| Engaging in sexual fantasies about students | 20.3 | 25.5 |
| Having students be research subjects as part of a course requirement | 18.7 | 39.0 |
| Teaching in buildings which could not accommodate physically challenged students | 17.8 | 35.5 |
| Teaching full time while "moonlighting" at least 20 hours per week | 17.2 | 10.2 |
| Allowing students to drop courses for reasons not officially approved | 16.8 | 16.6 |
| Giving academic credit instead of salary for student assistants | 16.0 | 35.7 |
| Teaching in classes so crowded you couldn't teach effectively | 16.0 | 23.5 |
| Being sexually attracted to a student | 15.4 | 38.5 |
| Failing to update lecture notes when re-teaching a course | 14.5 | 35.6 |
| Using profanity in lectures | 14.3 | 20.3 |
| Engaging in a sexual relationship with another faculty member within your department who is of higher or lower rank than you | 14.1 | 3.1 |
| Selling goods (e.g., your car or books) to a student | 12.4 | 4.7 |
| Teaching material you haven't really mastered | 10.8 | 38.4 |
| Engaging in a sexual relationship with another faculty member within your department who is of the same academic rank as you | 10.0 | 2.6 |
| Teaching in a setting lacking adequate ethnic diversity among the faculty | 9.5 | 64.0 |
| Teaching when too distressed to be effective | 8.9 | 21.1 |
| Teaching a class without adequate preparation that day | 8.5 | 40.8 |
| Using school resources to create a "popular" psychology trade book | 7.9 | 3.1 |
| Encouraging competition among students | 6.8 | 36.1 |
| Lending money to a student | 6.6 | 12.2 |
| Using school resources to prepare a scholarly textbook | 5.8 | 25.0 |
| Hugging a student | 5.6 | 34.6 |
| Asking small favors (e.g., a ride home) from students | 5.2 | 25.9 |
| Helping a student file an ethics complaint against another teacher | 5.0 | 5.6 |
| Accepting a student's inexpensive gift (worth less than $5) | 4.8 | 44.6 |
| Teaching ethics or values to students | 3.9 | 79.5 |
| Accepting a student's invitation to a party | 3.1 | 51.5 |
| Encouraging students to participate in your research projects | 2.9 | 39.7 |
From "Ethics of Teaching: Beliefs and Behaviors of Psychologists as Educators," by Barbara G. Tabachnick, Patricia Keith-Spiegel, and Kenneth S. Pope, 1991, American Psychologist, 46, pp. 510-511. Copyright 1991 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.