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Ontario College of Teachers v Gow Case Study

Kenny Nguyen, Emily Sprague, and Richard Van

Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

EDUC 525: Ethics and Law in Education

Astrid Kendrick and David Scott

October 25, 2023

Ontario College of Teachers v Gow Research

Fact Finding: A hearing, which Member did not attend, was set on May 16, 2014, on James

Kenneth Gow, who was employed at a school in the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District

School Board from 1998 to 2011. During the 2009-2011 school years, Gow’s performance was

evaluated three times, each time Gow received an unsatisfactory rating. Namely, “he failed to

maintain the standards of the profession”, “he failed to comply with the Education Act”, and “he

displayed a lack of knowledge, skill or judgment and/or disregard for the welfare of his students

of a nature or extent that demonstrates that the Member is either unfit to carry out his

professional responsibilities or that the Member’s certificate should be made subject to terms,

conditions or limitations” (Ontario College of Teachers v Gow, 2014). Gow was offered support

by staff members, however, Gow did not take any means to improve his teaching practices. In

March 2011, the Board formally terminated the Member’s employment, and his certificate was

later made subject to terms, conditions, or limitations according to subsection 30(3) of the

Ontario College of Teachers Act. Before returning to a teaching position for which a Certificate

of Qualification and Registration is required, Gow must complete an additional qualification

course, and get a performance appraisal every year for 2 years, all while providing reports on

these appraisals to the registrar 30 days after completion, etc.

Stakeholder Perspectives: Students were negatively impacted by Gow as he had poor classroom

management skills, inappropriate comments, and lack of connection to students. Students often

went to the principal to tell her about incidents that occurred in the classroom. Gow also failed to

create Individual Education Plans and fulfill his duties as a professional. Gow himself did not

appear to be indifferent to attempts made to better his teaching practice. Despite many attempts

from the principal to implement training plans, provide additional resources, and evaluate Gow,
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no changes were made in his classroom. Perhaps he felt immune because he taught for many

years under a different principal with no issues. Gow was also unable to effectively communicate

with parents and Parents have complained about Gow. Finally, The Ontario College of Teachers

sets a regulation and standards of practice for teachers and was a stakeholder in this case. When a

teacher violates these standards, they have a right to terminate said teacher as they are

misrepresenting the profession.

Areas of Conflict: There would be many areas of conflict if the case were to take place today.

Gow was not following Section 1 of the TQS which states “A teacher builds positive and

productive relationships with parents/guardians, peers and others in the school and local

community to support student learning” (Alberta Education, 2023). Due to the number of

complaints from students and parents, and mention of a lack of connection to staff, it is clear that

Gow was not exemplifying this. The teacher was also not adhering to the Professional Code of

Conduct which states that “The teacher shall behave in a manner that maintains the honour and

dignity of the profession” (Alberta Education, 2023), as he made no efforts to improve his

practice and was indifferent to the concerns of everyone around him.

Role as a Teacher: As a teacher, I hope that if there is a problem with my work, the principal

will provide me with additional support and a plan to get back on track, as done in this case. The

final decision was lenient, allowing him to return as a teacher if he completed a course and

received performance appraisals each year for the first two years. You cannot hope for better

treatment as a teacher - the school staff went above and beyond to try and help the teacher fulfill

his professional duties. As teachers and professionals, we must continuously demonstrate a

dedicated commitment to becoming more proficient educators.

Ontario College of Teachers v Gow Discussion Facilitation and Synthesis

Our facilitation of this case brought forward a plethora of new insights. The questions we

devised were mainly designed so that we could gain insight into different lenses and perspectives

on the case. Whether it was ethical frameworks, perspectives on his treatment and penalty, his

reasonings for complacency, or whether this case would set a precedent for future cases we

wanted to look at the case with a broader view, and to do that, we needed multiple lenses.

We asked our facilitation members whether there were any implications within the case

that served to uphold the member's position within education. We created this question because

we wanted to know how the teacher managed to maintain his position for 13 years. The answers

we got from this question along with our perspective on the matter summed up the idea that the

teacher did perform professionally until 2008-2011 when he started to veer off the path of

professionalism and his first violation occurred. The reasoning for this is because if he acted this

way from the start then there was no plausible way it would have been left alone for as long as it

did. Now the reasons for his complacency that our group brought up was perhaps the teacher was

tenured and he abused that “protection”. Another reason our group came up with was perhaps the

teacher had hit his salary cap/status quo and as such decided not to try as hard anymore. Overall

we believe there was a reason for his complacency and this question gave us insight into some of

these reasons.

Our next question asked whether or not this case would set the precedent for future cases.

Our group believed that while it may not particularly be a landmark case it did give other

educators insight into how unprofessional they can be before there are consequences. This being

the case we as up-and-coming educators ourselves take pride in our work and believe that as
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such rather than relying on cases like this to set our standards, we should set our standards,

standards that uphold our moral code and our duty towards our students.

Our next two questions relate to the perspectives our facilitation members had on the

case. Namely, we asked them how they would want to be treated as teachers and whether or not

they thought the penalty for this educator was just. We concluded that most of us want to be

treated similarly to this educator as we all believed that they treated him very leniently and well.

This is because he was given three entire chances as well as feedback on every evaluation to

improve and even at the end of the case despite not listening to any feedback and remaining

complacent, his penalty was merely to attend some workshops and use those workshops to

improve. This led us to believe that his penalty was too lenient and we believe that he should

have been terminated due to the amount of chances he was given already.

For our final question, we asked our facilitation members what ethical frameworks they

believe applied to the case and were used against the educator. The most obvious one we all said

was profession. This entire case started because the teacher was not following the professional

standard set by the TQS, whether concerning his students, his coworkers, or even the higher-ups

such as the superintendent and principal. The other frameworks such as the care framework gave

us more unique insights. We believed the care framework applied in this case because as stated

above the principal and school as a whole was very lenient towards him and treated him well.

Finally, the third framework we came up with was the community framework. This framework

applied to this case because his actions impacted the greater community. It wasn’t just a matter of

some individuals complaining about his professionalism. His coworkers, students, and even

parents had issues with his lack of professionalism and as such based on the community

standards, he was punished accordingly.

References

Alberta Education. (2023). Code of Professional Conduct.

https://www.alberta.ca/code-of-professionalconduct.aspx

Alberta Education. (2023). Teaching quality standard.

https://open.alberta.ca/publications/teaching-quality-standard

Ontario College of Teachers v Gow, 2014 ONOCT 44 (CanLII). https://canlii.ca/t/gv9rm