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Students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education launched EdEthics Students at HGSE earlier this semester, a new group that aims to promote engagement in education-based policy and practice under an ethical framework.

The organization, spearheaded by HGSE master’s student Molly Wuerz, is based around the newly emergent field of educational ethics. HGSE professor Meira Levinson helped pioneer the field, which has continuously developed over the past decade.

Levinson, who was a middle school teacher in Boston Public Schools earlier in her career, said she felt concerned by the lack of ethical guidance for educators, which led her to found the official EdEthics organization at HGSE, also known as “Justice in Schools.”

The organization and the field at large explore ethical decision-making specific to the work done by educational leaders and policymakers.

“As a teacher, I was confronting ethical dilemmas in my work all the time, and that was just not something that we had the opportunity to talk about,” Levinson said. “In fact, it would have been kind of shameful to admit that I was unsure, morally, what to do a lot of the time.”

Inspired by the principles of Levinson’s work, master’s student Molly Wuerz founded “EdEthics Students at HGSE” to provide a point of access for students wishing to become involved in the field. The kickoff event, hosted in early February, saw a turnout of more than 50 attendees and featured a panel discussion with four Harvard affiliates who had expertise in educational ethics.

Wuerz — who has 10 years of education experience in various disciplines — said that she has been “failed by the institution of education” and is therefore determined to serve her future students in the best way possible.

While Wuerz said established codes of ethics are common practice in professional fields such as law or medicine, such codes of ethics are often either unclear or nonexistent in education.

“That’s what I really fell in love with throughout my time at HGSE — the concept of exploring an entirely new field for educators that isn’t even necessarily talked about or trained, and that I didn’t get in my own education training,” Wuerz added.

EdEthics Director of Outreach Elizabeth Block said ethical guidance is essential in today’s polarized climate, pointing to book bans, LGBTQ+ issues, artificial intelligence, and the climate crisis as points of contention within education.

Block compared the emerging field to bioethics, which did not exist before the 1960s and is now a crucial component of patient care.

“We’re hoping to be doing something similar with educational ethics that, say in 10 years, there will be educational ethicists that will be working with schools and policymakers and states, as well as universities, in the formation of educators being inducted in the profession,” Block said.

Brandon VanBibber, a master’s student and vice president of EdEthics Students at HGSE, highlighted the importance of long-term sustainability for the new group. Given the one-year constraint of HGSE’s master’s program, both VanBibber and Wuerz will step down from their roles soon.

“We’re spending this semester really figuring out what works, what doesn’t work, in terms of events, in terms of student engagement,” VanBibber said, who specifically cited efforts to build partnerships with the Ed School’s Ph.D and Ed.L.D candidates.

Aaron Diaz, an Ed.L.D student and elementary school principal in Mississippi, said that while his state mandates an educator code of ethics, educators often have to balance their personal judgment with legal standards.

Diaz said he found it more effective to guide decisions through the best interests of his students even in a state like Mississippi that has a code of ethics for teachers.

“I think it was better to just lead with that and basically appeal to the heart and conscience of the people on our staff,” he said.

Wuerz said she hopes that the impact of educational ethics will continue to expand into the future.

“Education is the one career that touches every single person,” she added. “No one goes through their lives without interacting with an educator in some way, shape, or form.”

—Staff writer Katie B. Tian can be reached at katie.tian@thecrimson.com.