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In this document,
we provide a summary of the feedback from the participants in the May
23, 2007 meeting, the final meeting of the academic year for the first
cohort of faculty and instructors participating in the Kaiser Ethics
Project. This summary is certainly not intended as a systematic and
complete discussion of the teaching and learning of ethics in higher
education. Nonetheless, it provides valuable insight into the
challenges of teaching applied and professional ethics in higher
education.
Because the
teaching of ethics in higher education is a daunting task, it is
important to separate those issues that are common to teaching any
subject matter at the college level from those that are distinctive to
teaching applied/professional ethics. Although we focus on the latter,
we also include some discussion of more general issues that have been
raised by the Kaiser faculty in this project.
Issues
distinctive to teaching applied/professional ethics
Approach/Structure
- A standard
approach to the teaching of applied/professional ethics is what
we’ll call the “deductive model.” With this model, the course begins
by exposing students to the standard ethical theories
(utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc.), then progresses
to the development of ethical problems within the discipline, and
then finishes with case studies. It is a deductive model because the
combination of an ethical theory plus the facts of a case
deductively entails a judgment of what to do in that case. One group
who employed this approach in the Fall 06 semester found that it has
serious problems. One problem, among many, is that the ethics is not
meaningful without the context, but in the deductive model ethics is
introduced well before the context.
- Although one
group found that starting with and emphasizing philosophical
theories is a mistake because the ethical content is too
inaccessible to the students, they also stressed the importance of
maintaining some philosophical content in the course. This
philosophical content will depend on what is most relevant to that
profession. In an economics oriented profession, for example,
discussion of cost-benefit analysis and utilitarianism more
generally is essential, since it is such a pervasive part of the
profession.
-
Applied/professional ethics cannot be divorced from personal ethics.
So, in teaching applied/professional ethics, the student and
instructor must also consider personal ethics, for example, issues
of academic dishonesty.
-
Applied/professional ethics is also closely connected to social and
political issues, and so there must be integration rather than
compartmentalization of these.
- Many professions
have ethical codes/rules and it is easy to fall into the trap of
teaching the code, rather than the underlying principles, reasoning,
and critical thinking about the code. One problem for the code-based
approach is that it contributes to the mistaken impression among
many students that if a specific issue isn’t addressed in the code,
it is permissible. A related problem is that there are many ethical
issues that the code is silent on. Furthermore, a code might be very
broad, and provide little help in deciding what to do on a
particular case.
Textbooks and reading materials
- For many
professions and disciplines, there is a lack of good text books on
professional/applied ethics. Either there is no text at all, or the
text is written by a philosopher and so is not accessible and
engaging to students in a non-philosophy course.
- There is a lack
of other philosophical resources about ethics that are accessible to
non-philosophers. For example, the Stanford OnLine Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, although an excellent resource, is written for graduate
students and professional philosophers, not for non-philosophers.
- In using the
case method, there is a lack of textbooks and reading materials that
have good, relevant cases. One problem is that many professions
include a number of quite diverse fields under the general rubric,
and so the cases are too general or not relevant to the particular
discipline. Another challenge arises because the presentation of the
case must be sufficiently rich so that there isn’t a single right
solution to the problem, but instead, involves the possibility of
several alternative solutions. Many of the most obvious cases from
current events are not in this grey zone.
- For many courses
and disciplines, the best solution to the lack of good textbooks and
reading materials might be to create a book for that specific
course/discipline. One of the project groups in this year’s cohort
is developing their own book of case studies.
Understanding
students
- In applied and
professional ethics courses, students might be more uncomfortable
because they are more challenged about deeply held beliefs than they
are in non-ethics courses. Furthermore, the subject matter treads on
highly sensitive issues, and yet to teach it well, the students must
be challenged to defend their views and to take alternative
perspectives. As a result, there might be higher levels of student
frustration and aggression.
- Students are
highly susceptible to images of their chosen profession within the
media, even if those images are false stereotypes. For example, when
the media portrays a profession (business) or sphere of decision
making (international relations among countries) as inherently
unethical, it becomes difficult for the instructor to move beyond
this portrayal.
- Students often
do not like ambiguity, in part because they often are highly
practical, see things in black/white terms, and want a quick
solution. But in applied and professional ethics courses, there is a
significant element of ambiguity and often a lack of easy, quick
solutions. In short, students don’t like laboring within the grey
zone and much of ethics is within this gray zone. Pre-professional
courses typically attract students with similar personality
profiles. As a result, classes often lack the diversity of beliefs,
values and perspectives that create lively and vibrant debate, which
is an essential component to developing ethical reasoning.
- Students often
have trouble learning the non-ethical disciplinary material being
introduced in the course (sometimes due to weak backgrounds in the
area), and when applied/professional ethical issues are raised on
top of that, it becomes even more challenging.
- Students are
comfortable citing “how they feel.” The goal is to help students
move beyond the expression of feeling and to articulate and then to
critically assess the reasoning and justification for the judgment.
- Students often
think they already know or understand applied/professional ethics,
and so they are unreceptive to approaching the subject with an open
and learning-oriented frame of mind.
The instructor’s
perspective
For many
instructors, there is a high level of discomfort teaching ethics
because they have little or no expertise in the content.
The course and the
curriculum
In addition to
exposing students to an ethics component that concentrates on
professional/applied issues, students need a more general
(interdisciplinary) and theory oriented ethics course.
Blogs
Blogs are a
distinctive medium of discussion that students regard as a norm of
their culture. Especially when run anonymously, blogs can contain a
large number of different voices and they are an easy way to create a
public space for lively student reasoning. As a result, blogs provide
an attractive option for instructors looking for a way to incorporate
discussion into the class. The downside is that students might use
anonymity as a cover for ranting, for saying things that are
detrimental to moving the conversation forward, or for saying things
that are insulting to class members or towards various groups of
people. The use of a moderator (perhaps rotating students within the
class) is one solution to this problem, though care must be taken to
avoid violating student academic freedom and to avoid creating a
chilling effect on discourse.
Broader
issues of teaching and learning
- One question is
whether to approach discussion of cases through small groups
(perhaps randomly assigned) or a larger group, such as the class as
a whole.
- In team teaching
a course, it is important to avoid the appearance of tension among
the instructors. A solution to avoiding the appearance of tension or
disagreement is the “tag teaching” approach with only one instructor
in the room at a time, but then students might not see the
instructors cooperatively interacting with each other. Likewise,
though it is common for team instructors to provide conflicting
feedback to the same student, it is often difficult for the student
to handle and they perceive the instructors as themselves in
conflict. It is important that the instructors have an academic
rationale for team teaching the course.
- Pre-professional
students want highly specific writing assignments, but in their
professions after college they won’t have highly specific
guidelines.
- Pre-professional
students often regard those within the profession as having
exclusive authority within the profession, and regard instructors as
possessing little or no credibility.
- Students often
have unrealistic views about the workplace, which get in the way of
using assignments that ask students to imagine themselves in the
workplace.
- In senior level
preprofessional courses, students often lack motivation. Since
students often have jobs already lined up, grades become less
important and students often don’t care about doing well in the
course.
Some
suggestions for teaching ethics
- Use a grading
rubric that stresses good critical thinking.
- Be accurate in
the course description about the ethics content of the course,
though be careful in how this content is described.
- Treat ethics as
an integral part of the disciplinary subject matter rather than in a
separate compartment.
- Introduce
ethical content from the very beginning of the disciplinary
coursework, and don’t wait until the capstone experience. Adjust the
level of sophistication of the ethics content to the level of the
course.
- There are many
different perspectives relevant to teaching ethics: the student’s
personal perspective, the student’s pre-professional perspective (as
a scientist, a pharmacist, a social worker, etc.), and the student’s
perspective as a member of a public community. All of these are
important, and they are mutually dependent standpoints.
- Attempt to mix
students with different perspectives and from different academic
levels (example, use seniors as peer mentors in a first year class).
This will contribute both to more robust debate and to students
modeling ethical reasoning for other students.
- Introduce
ambiguity and indeterminacy gradually. For example, in case studies,
start with ones that have few gray zones, and then move to case
studies with substantial gray zones.
- Expose students
to forms of moral reasoning and values well beyond their own, such
as diverse perspectives within the U.S., non-American and nonwestern
perspectives, and global perspectives.
- The aim in
teaching applied/professional ethics isn’t to make students into
better people, but to help them improve their decision making and
critical thinking regarding ethical issues and judgments.
- Given the
inherent difficulties that students have with ethical content in a
course, it becomes critical to develop other aspects of the course,
especially testing and methods of assigning grades, that decrease
student frustration and aggression.
- McKeachie’s
Teaching Tips contains some helpful suggestions about use of the
case method. It isn’t always necessary to write a case or find one
already written. Instead, the use of videos or real life situations
might be used.
- Two resources:
David Resnik’s work (much available online); Anthony Weston, A
Practical Companion to Ethics.
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