Whole Students for a Whole World: Catching Integrity in the Social Conscience Classroom (original) (raw)
Roles of the Social Conscience Teacher: A Literature Review
This is the first entry of a two-part series about the roles that teachers play in facilitating development of students’ social conscience. Both come directly from my dissertation. The first entry is an excerpt from the literature review, while the second describes my research findings. While I considered attempting to merge the two into a “definitive” statement, I believe that both the review and the findings accurately describe aspects of my own teaching practice and those that I interviewed for my research. I also feel it is best to include both entries as excerpts from my dissertation rather than risking over-simplification in pursuit of some imagined larger synthesis. Rather, additional research is needed to further refine these ideas.
Moral Education in the Classroom a Lived Experiment
Expositions: An Interdisciplinary Study in the Humanities, 2020
]t is perhaps the principal task of the political and moral theorist to enable rational agents to learn what they need to learn from the social and cultural tradition that they inherit, while becoming able to put in question that particular tradition's distortions and errors and so, often enough, engaging in a quarrel with some dominant forms of their own political moral culture. 1 What would a course on ethics look like if it took into account Alasdair MacIntyre's concerns about actually teaching students ethical practices? How could professors induct students into practices that prompt both reflection on their cultural formation and self-knowledge of the ways they have been formed by it? According to MacIntyre, such elements are prerequisites for an adequate moral education. His criticism of what he terms "Morality" includes the claim that most courses don't even try to teach the right things. He charges that academic teaching has little if anything to do with character formation, whereas thick practices can transform lives in ways mere argument can never do. 2 Even those of us who appreciate his arguments and agree with his criticisms, however, may find implementing more adequate forms of ethical instruction in the university classroom a tall order.
In this quasi-experimental study, we investigated two elements of ethics education: (1) how participating in ethics education influenced science and engineering graduate students' views of their roles in society, and (2) what students found most valuable and relevant. Participants were 98 graduate science and engineering students. Qualitative analysis indicated that the most prevalent responses reflected a desire to benefit society. Duty-based responses were more prevalent in pretest than in posttest responses. Participants in experimental conditions indicated more complicated notions of their societal roles than control participants. Participants emphasized the value of class discussions for increasing their awareness of issues, alternative views, and their own positions. Results are interpreted using the engaged communication in the disciplines framework with practical implications for educators.
Integrity in and Beyond Contemporary Higher Education: What Does it Mean to University Students?
Frontiers in Psychology, 2016
Research has focused on academic integrity in terms of students' conduct in relation to university rules and procedures, whereas fewer studies examine student integrity more broadly. Of particular interest is whether students in higher education today conceptualize integrity as comprising such broader attributes as personal and social responsibility. We collected and analyzed qualitative responses from 127 students at the National University of Singapore to understand how they define integrity in their lives as students, and how they envisage integrity would be demonstrated in their lives after university. Consistent with the current literature, our data showed that integrity was predominantly taken as "not plagiarizing (in school)/giving appropriate credit when credit is due (in the workplace)", "not cheating", and "completing tasks independently". The survey, though, also revealed further perceptions such as, in a university context, "not manipulating data (e.g., scientific integrity)", "being honest with others", "group work commitments", "conscience/moral ethics/holding true to one's beliefs", "being honest with oneself", "upholding a strong work ethic", "going against conventions", and "reporting others", as well as, in a workplace context, "power and responsibility and its implications", "professionalism", and "representing or being loyal to an organization". The findings suggest that some students see the notion of integrity extending beyond good academic conduct. It is worthwhile to (re)think more broadly what (else) integrity means, discover the gaps in our students' understanding of integrity, and consider how best we can teach integrity to prepare students for future challenges to integrity and ethical dilemmas.
Ethical Education in Schools: Learning to Engage with Others
Ethical Education: Towards an Ecology of Human Development, 2019
Ethical education should help students become more sensitive to the perspectives and experiences of others. However, the field is dominated by the teaching of moral values as a subject-matter, or by the fostering of character traits in students, or by moral reasoning. This book proposes an alternative to these limited moralistic approaches. It places human relationships at the core of ethical education, in its understanding of both ethics and education. With contributions from renowned international scholars, this approach is laid out in three parts. Part I develops the underlying theory of ethics and education; Part II focuses on the relevant pedagogical principles, and Part III provides illustrations of emergent innovative ethical educational practices in worldwide schools. Against a backdrop of divisiveness and apathy, the innovative practices described in this book show how a new vision for ethical education might be centred around caring for students' well-being.
2016
U-M students visit community-based organizations in Detroit on a weekly basis to work on projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of children and their families, such as tutoring youth in afterschool programs. Their site visits are supplemented by relevant readings, class discussions and written reflections on topics such as developmental psychology, poverty, and education, which connect what they are learning in class to what they experience in the field. 1 U-M students with social identities that have historically experienced conflict and differential status come together to engage in critical self-reflection and purposeful dialogue to better understand each other's point of view and solve problems regarding race relations. 2 Using case studies, U-M students learn about the multiple and often competing viewpoints of stakeholders in land management. They attend a local planning commission meeting and reflect on the economic, scientific, and moral implications of various landuse proposals. 3
BUILDING A CULTURE OF INTEGRITY IN THE CLASSROOM.pdf
Among other skills that should be possessed by a teacher is the organization of work in the classroom in which there is cooperation between the entities represented in it. He is obliged to provide a friendly and working atmosphere, democratic environment in which all jointly create the rules in the classroom, behave responsibly and show mutual respect. Democratic classroom is a place of opportunity and self-initiative among students, willingness and authority, freedom of thought and speech, respect for differences and similarities and the integrity of the person. The integrity is manifested in willingness to adhere to the values that are most important in life. Integrity is the foundation of character. It is a choice of values and resolution to live by those values that form the character and personality. And it is integrity that enhances all other human values. The quality of the person is determined by how well she lives up to the values that are most important. Integrity is the quality that locks in the values and causes to live consistent with them. The emphasis in this paper will be placed precisely on building a culture of integrity in the classroom. It should also be understood as an integral part of the democratic classroom and something that shouldn't be neglected.
2018
The piece argues that there is a connection between academic integrity (AI) and teaching ethics across the curriculum (EAC) that extends beyond shared terminology in a practical and purposeful way, i.e., in a way that is responsive to a challenge in practical and professional ethics. The twofold purpose of the essay is (a) to explain how linking AI and EAC is responsive to this challenge and (b) to make the case for the approach it involves. Two large questions are addressed. The first is about how EAC should be done, if it is connected to AI. The second (two-part) question is (a) What would success look like? and (b) How would we know that it had been achieved—how would it (success) be measured? The first concern receives the lion’s share of attention and involves taking cues from Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionism and writing about logic and the law by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and, in particular, John Dewey. Several considerations that argue for the connection are discussed be...
Business Students" Ethical Ideology: A Predictor of Moral Behavior
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, 2020
The rule of thumb is to do the right thing, uphold the laws of the land, and follow appropriate principles. But how about given a situation that will test one's ethical decision-making? Will we just use our personal moral norms, or will it depend on the context of an individual? This study tries to know and understand the ethics position among business students and whether they are more of an idealist rather than a relativist or vice versa. And what ethical ideologies do they occupy. Further, the study would identify if there is any significant difference of these in terms of gender and year level. This would provide ideas and information on how to enhance curricula and engage students to actual business settings. The online survey forms were sent via email to business students being handled by one of the researchers in a public Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Region V, Philippines. Seventy out of 85 active students were able to send their answers. A quantitative research approach was used while weighted mean and analysis of variance were used to statistically analyze the data gathered. Significant findings were that the students belong to the situationist type of ethical position, and can be considered as a positive trait. It shows that students both look at the perspective of what is right as well as judging morality according to their context. The students-respondents also noted exemplary actions or modelling may be the best method in bringing ethics to the classroom. Studies posited that if we wanted to have ethically successful business students, instructional focus must give way to a more holistic view of business leadership. Even safe to note that "…students' mindsets are evolving. Millennials now want to have serious conversations about ethics and corporate social responsibility". Teaching ethics could therefore be daunting and challenging at the same time.
Teaching And Assessing Ethics As A Learning Objective: One School's Journey
American Journal of Business Education (AJBE), 2011
This paper reports the results of a ten-year effort to establish ethics as a learning objective for all business students, to assess the effectiveness in achieving that learning objective and to incorporate ethical conduct as a part of the school's organizational culture. First, it addresses the importance of ethics instruction for all business students. Then curricular concerns are addressed, specifically the establishment of ethics as an overarching learning objective and ensuring adequate coverage of ethics throughout the curriculum. Next, assessment mechanisms are described to demonstrate improvement in student's moral judgment and moral courage, in achieving the ethics learning objective using pre-tests and post-tests. These tests validated the use of ethical vignettes/cases to improve ethical awareness and exposure and writing about moral exemplars to increase student resolve to have moral courage. Finally, the paper addresses ways to measure and improve the ethical cl...
Freedom with Responsibility: Building Student’s Integrity Through a Democratic School Culture
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Social Science and Character Educations (ICoSSCE 2019), 2020
Academic dishonesty has become an unresolved issue in the education world. Dishonesty is related to the character of integrity. This paper aims to determine the importance of the character of integrity for students, efforts to foster the character of integrity and develop a democratic school culture to create freedom of responsibility among students. Positive ways that can be done to foster student selfintegrity with diligence, honesty, and confidence when taking exams or other academic tests. Honesty is a basic value that must exist in the school environment. Honesty for oneself and honesty for others. A positive school culture that fosters democratic attitudes will promote dialogue and peaceful and non-violent ways in school and community life. A free education that is responsible is not just for bearing the consequences but is responsible for making free decisions based on a hierarchy of values, norms, and conscience.
Growing up morally: An experiential classroom unit on moral development
One reason why many of today's business leaders are frequently viewed as unethical, corrupt, and corruptible is that values transmitted (implicitly) by university business education courses influence students to ignore ethics. This paper argues that to help future business leaders become more ethical, business school implicit values should reflect a more ethical direction. The present paper describes an experiential pedagogy designed to help students develop morally. It does so by asking students to: 1) participate in exercises sensitizing them to ethical issues, 2) reflect on their own ethical values and decisions they've made in the past that either mirror or contradict those values, 3) read about and understand moral development models, and 4) self-assess in terms of stages of their own moral development, as portrayed in the models. Qualitative and quantitative results are summarized for five separate uses of the complete pedagogy in undergraduate Social Responsibility courses at a large Midwestern university in the United States, as well as for portions of the pedagogy used in nine other classes over a 14year period.
Turning an Elementary Class Group into Active Participants of their own Ethical Skills Development
Teaching Moral Education to a class group of Elementary school students requires the classroom teacher to facilitate both the transference and development of moral knowledge and social reasoning among class student members. By recognizing that students can be active initiators and reactors (Huitt, 2004) within the context of their environment a teacher can encourage and support their students with independent opportunities to shape how they understand and apply the content of what they are learning. Several approaches to teaching Moral Education and applied teaching and learning examples within the context of Elementary Education follow
Ethics Across Campus and the Curriculum: An Overview of Work in Progress
Essays in Philosophy , 2020
In this essay, I offer an overview of the "Ethics Across Campus and the Curriculum Program" developed at Dickinson College over the past two years as part of a broader initiative to promote civic education and engagement. The essay proceeds in three parts. First, I explain the decision to adopt the language of "ethical reasoning" in our program and how I understand this work as supporting student activism. Second, I describe the faculty study group developed to incorporate ethical reasoning into already existing courses across the college. Third, I focus on how our college has incorporated ethical reasoning into new student orientation and first year student leadership retreats. Finally, I conclude with work on the horizon and a surprising result that has emerged from doing this work.
Morals, Ethics and the Campus Community: Implications for Student Development
2002
Moral education is an issue that higher educatiOn has often avoided. This paper begins with a critical review of the role higher education institutions have taken in the moral education of students and how that role relates to institutional mission. It continues by proposing an educationally defensible moral and ethical standard and finally focuses on the role the student development professional can take in the moral education of students. (Contains 22 references.) (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Ethics and Student Development 1
2006
Everyone recognizes the need for educating youngsters about the importance of moral values, in today's complex world. Teaching moral values to youngsters is easy. However, to make them value what they learnt is not. In Malaysia, Moral Education is a subject is introduced in the primary school and is continued further at the university level as a strategy to ensure that all students are able to discern right from wrong and make ethical decisions. The question raised is, how can we ensure that the knowledge acquired form the subject is internalized, with long lasting benefits to them? One approach is to employ a relevant teaching model. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose -implementing a community-based project as a teaching and learning model for Moral Studies, a strategy which facilitates students' learning and acquisition of lifelong values. In this study, the students were required to plan and conduct a charity fundraising event on campus with the intention of encouraging them to view themselves as personal-social interactive beings, who are part of the larger community. A total of 70 undergraduate students participated in this study. A qualitative case study approach using questionnaire was used to investigate learning outcomes of this community service approach to teaching and learning. Based on this study, it was concluded that the community work has improved the students' learning and in turn, the students' valuing of the unit. Most students prefer incorporation of practical activities. They believed that the ethical theories learnt in the classrooms are not sufficient to equip them with the learning of moral and ethics. The findings indicated that the students acquire important moral values from the project such as teamwork, responsibilities, confidence, respect, and appreciation of life .Most students reported that the project enhanced their ability to work in team. This is because the project required the members to be more dependent on the entire group for successfully completing the task.
Building a Sustaining Classroom Climate for Purposeful Ethical Citizenship
International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, 2010
In an age and society where children and adolescents receive decreasing support for building good lives, best practice for fostering optimal moral character needs to be extended in the classroom beyond mastery learning and positive caring climates. A sustaining classroom climate provides more than a good learning environment or caring classroom. A sustaining classroom climate provides as much as possible the type of environment under which human mammals thrive. It fosters students' sense of positive purpose, as individuals and as a group, and a peaceful moral citizenship. It is characterized by collaborative leadership, community fellowship, democratic practice, and enhancement of human potential. In Triune Ethics theory terms, students learn to foster the engagement and imagination ethics while minimizing the self-centric security ethic. In sustaining classrooms, students learn skills for individual flourishing and enabling community flourishing.