When taken too far, certain well-intentioned ethical guidelines can become transformed into artificial boundaries that serve as destructive prohibitions and thereby undermine clinical effectiveness. Rigid roles and strict codified rules of conduct between therapist and client can obstruct a clinician's artistry. Those anxious conformists who go entirely by the book, and who live in constant fear of malpractice suits, are unlikely to prove significantly helpful to a broad array of clients. It is my contention that one of the worst professional/ethical (...) violations is to permit current risk-management principles to take precedence over humane interventions. (shrink)

In A Professor's Duties, distinguished philosopher Peter J. Markie adds to the expanding discussion of the ethics of college teaching. Part One concentrates on the obligations of individual professors, primarily with regard to issues about what and how to teach. Part Two expands Professor Markie's views by providing a selection of the most significant previously published writings on the ethics of college teaching.

Student-instructor relationships outside of the classroom have existed for hundreds of years and remain an important topic in the literature. Universities are increasingly concerned with legislating student-instructor relationships. Few empirical investigations of undergraduate student-instructor relationships are reported in the literature, and such relationships are often considered only in the context of sexual harassment or ethics policies. Most of the writings are opinion based or seated in anecdotal evidence, and seldom are students' opinions considered. In this study, 480 undergraduate students attending (...) a medium-sized Western university were surveyed for their opinions about a variety student-instructor relationships. Factor analysis revealed 5 types of student-faculty relationships: sexual, group activities, doing favors, spending time alone with a faculty member, and business relationships. The students' opinions about these relationships varied, with sexual relationships considered inappropriate, whereas group activities were considered very appropriate. These data suggest that university officials who are building policy regarding faculty-student relationships need to consider different types of relationships along with students' developing autonomy. (shrink)