This research concentrates on analysing the ethical challenges present in the education export process, particularly on identifying and defining them. The emphasis is put on examining teachers’ visions on the matter, and their lines of action when ethical challenges occur.
The data was collected by using the method of empathy based stories. The analysis conducted is qualitative content analysis. The process of data collection was fairly difficult because the frame stories and the topic were considered too hard to answer, according to some participants. The data (N=27) was collected from professionals, i.e. teachers who work with education export. The requirement for the participants were that they need to have some experience of teaching or training in education export. All in all, there are 26 written stories analysed based on two different frame stories.
Some participants questioned the meaning and connotations of ethical contradictions, some of them claiming they do not exist in the education export field. This fact constitutes a solid reason why these ethical challenges need clarification. There is evidence from the data analysed to support the existence of a variety of these ethical challenges. This also demonstrates that the concept of ethical challenge is rather broad. In the analysis, the ethical challenges are defined based on the experiences of the participants. There is no former research conducted about ethical challenges in education export. However, some factors, such as cultural sensitivity, appeared in most of the stories.
These results present a general overview of the existence of ethical challenges in the field of education export. They also explain how professionals try to solve the ethical challenges when they occur. The aim is to create a field that professionals on the field can use for discussion about ethical challenges. The analysis of the data also indicates that ethical challenges should be considered further during the education export process.
This study tries to arise awareness among professionals to reevaluate their own ethical choices during their work. Some of the teachers expressed their concern that the education export process may not be able to be conducted as ethically sustainable
