Pre-service teachers' perceptions of ethical student evaluation practices: Comparing impact of online and face-to-face coursework

Abstract

Two groups of pre-service teachers in undergraduate education foundations classes completed a survey with various ethical scenarios related to student evaluation. One group was enrolled in a traditional face-to-face class that met on campus; the second group was enrolled in a completely online course. Each group had 100 participants. For each of the 36 scenarios on the survey, participants indicated their perceptions of the educator's actions as either ethical or unethical. Pretest and posttest data were collected at the start and end of the semester. Although both groups had the same levels of agreement about the ethical scenarios in the post-survey (e.g. 52.8% cases with high agreement, 22.2% disagreement), participants in the face-to-face group changed their views from pre- and post-survey more often than those in the online group at a statistically significant difference (p < .001). On average, face-to-face participants changed their views (ethical to unethical, or unethical to ethical) on 27% of the scenarios; online participants changed views on 16% of the scenarios from pre- to post-survey. Implications include ongoing study of pre-service teachers' perceptions of ethical practice and applications for instruction in both face-to-face and online formats.