Business Ethics: Lesson Plans, Knowledge Management, Ethics and Capitalism Collide

I recently read about a new website where teachers can post and sell their lesson plans to recover the time they spent in developing these plans. On the surface, this seems reasonable, and why would anyone oppose the teachers who make money a little 'more through a venture capitalist and exploiting their intellectual capital?

However this question is much more to understand the importance of maintaining intellectual capital (knowledge management) within the educational system and how this demonstrates the questionable ethics of teachers.

Consider the following scenario:

I'm an instructional designer (the person who writes training programs) and full-time employees. Part of my job is to create activities that promote learning for the target audience. I do not have the right to sell the assets in my spare time on a website? Although not a lawyer, I know this would be highly unethical and probably illegal. These activities are a direct result of my job description. My employer has already paid me for their creation.

Now, I am a teacher who is paid to educating young people. Also, I'm paid to attend several days of training in which learning to create lesson plans that promote specific learning for my students. I do not have the right to sell the assets in my spare time on a website? From a legal standpoint, I do not know the answer to this question. However, from an ethical point of view, absolutely not! What is happening is that I get paid twice to do the same job. Some people call this double dipping and is illegal in many cases proven.

As a former public school teacher, elected school board trustee and now a consultant in performance improvement, I saw hundreds of thousands of dollars lost by school systems, because they had created a process of knowledge management. Lesson plans created during the school day and during the time designated for professional development of teachers should be filed by the company so that every school teacher benefits from this knowledge. Just think of all that has lost the knowledge and wisdom, and its price very expensive.

Professional development is really expensive. According to the Northern Central Regional Learning Laboratory (NCRL), a quick search revealed the following breakdown of funds for professional development:

Illinois over $ 100 million a year for professional development

Iowa than $ 50 million

Michigan over $ 20 million

Ohio over $ 25 million

Furthermore, within each school day, teachers are paid the preparation time to work on their lesson plans, student quality documents, etc. For many teachers, the time shown is not sufficient time must be spent after school hours to complete their daily tasks. And the question then arises, if I do in my free time, then I own the intellectual capital and have the right to sell this capital. However, many employees take their work home to finish it and are not compensated for these efforts. In the real world, is part of the work.

What is more worrying for me to sell on teachers lesson plans (which in many cases are the intellectual property of the school) is an ethical issue. Since I was a former teacher, I experienced first hand the extra hours invested in preparing my room, grading papers and creating engaging learning activities. Yet, coming from a background in small business, doing all this extra stuff was not perceived that something more was because of the work, pure and simple. To go out and sell the fruits of my work that have been paid by my employer would be totally unethical and probably would get me fired. However, teachers are encouraged to engage in unethical behavior and believe it is probably OK.

And finally there is the issue of copyright. In many professional development workshops for teachers, speakers deploy the sample lesson plans. With today's technology, a quick scan and a few changes can change the visual property of the lesson plan, but the intellectual capital still belongs to the rapporteur of the workshop. Of course, if a student did this, would be cheating or plagiarism.

As a small business and technical education that has created hundreds of learning activities to help customers better understand the key concepts, I have always recognized the source of this activity as a story idea, or an estimate when it was not mine. This always keeps me aware of my own ethical standards and ensures that I hold fast and true to those standards.

So before you sell any teacher what they believe to be their lesson plan, maybe they need to identify where it came from the floor and ask: "I already paid for that lesson plan"