Impacts of Computing, Ethics, and Professional Practice
Domain 5 examines computing's social consequences and the professional judgments teachers and developers make. It tests ethical reasoning, privacy, equity, accessibility, intellectual property, and responsible use of data.
Core rules
- Ethical analysis identifies stakeholders, harms, benefits, rights, and alternatives. Legal compliance is a floor, not a complete ethical justification.
- Privacy involves collection, consent, purpose limitation, retention, and disclosure. Student data and biometric data warrant heightened protection because minors may not consent independently.
- Intellectual property includes copyright, licenses, trademarks, and patents. Open-source licenses vary: some require sharing modifications, others permit proprietary reuse.
- Accessibility means designing for diverse abilities, often with perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust interfaces. Equity also includes device, broadband, and representation gaps.
- Professional practice includes documenting decisions, testing for bias, disclosing limitations, protecting credentials, and reporting vulnerabilities responsibly.
Worked example
A school proposes facial-recognition attendance. Identify stakeholders: students, families, teachers, administrators, and vendors. Ask whether attendance is the actual problem, whether less invasive methods work, what data are stored and for how long, whether consent is meaningful, and how errors are appealed. A proportionate response might use ID cards or teacher marking; facial recognition may fail the necessity test and create surveillance and bias risks. The reasoning weighs benefit against rights and alternatives, not just accuracy.
Traps
Equating legal with ethical; treating parent consent as sufficient for all uses; ignoring algorithmic bias; conflating privacy with security; and adopting a tool because it is technically possible. Ethical claims need evidence and affected voices.