Q3 Flashcards
What do professional boundaries do?
Professional boundaries help guide:
- potentially vulnerable teachers in their conduct with students
- they also help teachers follow the legal obligations of their profession
- and they assist the teacher to have an overall positive impact on students that supports their learning and wellbeing.
When are professional boundaries breached?
Professional boundaries are breached when a teacher misuses their power in such a way that a student’s safety or welfare is compromised.
There are 5 categories of professional boundaries:
- Emotional
- Relationship
- Power
- Communication
- Physical
Emotional boundaries
Are about using appropriate levels of emotion in student interactions; and appropriately dealing with students’ emotions.
Common examples of emotional boundaries being breached
- excluding students or preventing them from receiving the same educational opportunities as others
- using subtle forms of control to allow a student to develop an inappropriate emotional dependency on the teacher
- engaging inappropriately with students or acting inappropriately by adopting a role along the lines of ‘friend’ or ‘personal counsellor’ (unless there is a legitimate role designated)
Relationship boundaries
Involve the understanding that the teacher-student relationship is strictly a professional one, with a recognition that teachers are not ‘friends’ with students, in the way students are friends with other students.
Common examples of how relationship boundaries are breached:
- engaging in intimate, romantic or sexual relationships with a student
- engaging in flirtatious behaviour with a student
- intimate gesturing or physical contact e.g. hugging 1 or 2 students after an awards program
- expressing romantic feelings towards a student
- encouraging students to call teachers by their first names, when it is not the normal convention at the school
- meeting a student alone outside school without a valid context & without appropriate school/parent permissions in advance
- gaining the trust of a student’s family & friends as a way of further integrating themselves in the student’s life, such as inviting the student & their family to attend the teacher’s holiday home
Power boundaries
Involves acknowledging that teachers are in a position of power & authority over students & must not abuse that position of power
Common examples of how power boundaries are breached:
- privately giving a student a gift
- using the teacher’s authority to harm or threaten to harm a student
- withholding information from a student to manipulate the student e.g. to be alone with the student
- rewarding or punishing a student based on an inappropriate teacher-student relationship
- using a student to gain a personal benefit
- bribing a student into silence about the teacher’s inappropriate conduct
Communication boundaries
Relate to what teachers say and how they say it.
Common examples of how communication boundaries are breached:
- talking or joking with a student about personal matters or sexual matters that are outside curriculum content
- inappropriate comments about a student’s appearance
- vilifying or humiliating students whether it is about their race, sexuality or any other aspect or characteristic of the students
- facilitating or allowing access to pornographic or overtly sexual material that is outside the curriculum
- failing to appropriately respond to sexual harassment between students
- using pet names for a few particular students
- using social media to interact with a student without a valid educational contact and appropriate safeguards
- asking a student questions about personal / sexual matters
- breaching the confidentiality of others with a student e.g. talking about other staff or students to a student
Physical boundaries
Involves teachers limiting physical contact with students. When using physical contact teachers should use the ‘time, place, circumstances’ as a guiding principle, to reflect if the contact is appropriate & required or necessary. Teachers must ensure they do not engage in inappropriate physical contact.
Common examples of hie physical boundaries are breached:
- physical contact with a student without a valid/authorised reason or context.
- Unwarranted, unwanted and/or inappropriate physical contact with a student, personally or with an object
- Initiating or permitting inappropriate physical contact by or on a student e.g. a massage or tickling games
- being present when students dress or undress when not in an authorised supervisory role
- undertaking it allowing a rough handling, corporal punishment or undue restraint of or on students
