Learning by Doing: Teaching Decision Making through Building a Code of Ethics

Applying abstract ethical principles to the practical business of building a code of applied ethics for a technical communication department teaches students that they share certain unarticulated or even unconscious values that they can translate into ethical principles. Combining abstract theory with practical policy writing can teach technical communication students to become increasingly aware of ethical actions without restricting ethics solely to abstractions or rules.     

论对话教学过程中的言语伦理原则

在对话教学过程中,为了创设师生言语交流道德氛围,实现人的和谐自由全面发展的善性理想,必须设定对话教学的言语伦理原则。提出四条言语伦理基本原则,即仁爱原则、公正原则、合作原则和礼貌原则,希望对对话教学原则理论的探讨有所裨益。     

The role of design ethics in maintaining students' privacy: A call to action to learning designers in higher education

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well-being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision-making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Existing codes of ethical standards from well-known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.
• Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.
• Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.
• Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.

What this paper adds

• A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.
• A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision-making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being.
• Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.
• Methods—using a practical ethical decision-making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.
• A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as “dark patterns” in online course design.

     

Using Movies to Illustrate Ethical Dilemmas in Undergraduate Criminal Justice Classes

Ethics education in criminal justice programs has increased in popularity, but instructors sometimes struggle to teach ethics in such a way that students retain what they have learned and apply ethical principles in the criminal justice field upon graduation. The current research highlights that there are several benefits of presenting ethical dilemmas to students through popular movies such as Mississippi Burning and Road to Perdition. Compared to the control group (Section A) that was taught in a traditional lecture format, students who were required to identify ethical dilemmas in movies (Section B) were more likely to understand the complexities of such situations, to rate unethical behavior properly, and to see how ethical principles could be applied to their everyday lives.     

Introducing ethics using structured controversies

This paper describes a method of introducing ethics to a second-year class of civil engineering students. The method, known as a ‘structured controversy’, takes the form of a workshop where the students assume the identity of stakeholders having an interest in a proposed development in an environmentally sensitive region. The instructor enhances the workshop by deliberately feeding incorrect information into a catalogue of facts that each stakeholder has at their disposal. After the workshop, the instructor draws out three ethical frameworks from which the stakeholders operate. A key component of the exercise is that the students do not know beforehand that the environmental workshop is being used to introduce ethics. When the connection is revealed, the students appreciate that much of their behaviour during the role-play was because they inadvertently adhered to an unknown ethical platform. Since it is an environmental simulation, an explicit connection can be made to the debate over ‘who’ to include in the moral community. In addition, a link can be drawn to the notion of sustainable development which, in this paper, is advocated as an ethical rather than a technical concept.     

A multifocal approach to study pedagogical ethics in school settings

This paper advocates the argument that philosophical and empirical modes of inquiry are seldom brought together to gain a better understanding of pedagogical ethics in the natural settings of school life. Here, it is hoped that this kind of combination provides interpretative lenses for the deliberation of pedagogical practices. The paper aims to shift focus to the scene where the conditions and contingencies of pedagogical ethics may be found. This means exploring day‐to‐day details of pedagogical encounters to see what they might offer in putting forth an understanding of pedagogical ethics. This paper uses three interpretations from philosophy and ethics. It focuses on the perspectives of pedagogical purposes, obligations, and situations, together with their empirical interpretations of the ethic of ideals, the ethic of rights and duties, and the ethic of character and will. It shows how abstract philosophical theories can be translated into real‐world ethics in education and how these reference points can help teachers in their practical ethical reflection.     

How engineers perceive the importance of ethics in Finland

Success in complex and holistic engineering practices requires more than problem-solving abilities and technical competencies. Engineering education must offer proficient technical competences and also train engineers to think and act ethically. A technical ‘engineering-like’ focus and demand have made educators and students overlook the importance of ethical awareness and transversal competences. Using two Finnish surveys, conducted in 2014 and 2016, we examine how engineers perceive working life needs regarding ethics. The data consider different age groups. We research whether an engineer’s age affects their perception of the importance of ethics in their work and if there are differences between young experts and young managers in their use of ethics within work. The results indicate that practising engineers do not consider ethical issues important in their work. This especially applies to younger engineers; the older an engineer, the more important they consider ethics. No statistically significant difference was found between young engineering experts and managers.     

论有效教学的伦理性

伦理性是有效教学的固有属性,越是追求有效性的教学,越有必要凸现其伦理性。缺乏伦理规范的有效教学,越是有效,对于学生身心健康的损害就越大,伦理性已成为有效教学中急需关注的问题。利益最大化原则和平等尊重原则是保证有效教学符合伦理规范的伦理原则,两者共同规约着有效教学的伦理行为。有效教学的伦理实践要求是要构建有效教学的伦理关系,规范有效教学的伦理行为,进行有效教学的伦理反思。     

行政伦理学全程案例教学初探

行政伦理学是一门新兴的交叉学科,也是一门理论性和实践性高度统一的课程。在行政伦理学课程中引入全程案例教学,有助于学生关注和参与行政伦理的理论与实践发展,以达到理论与实践的有机结合与有效运用,使学生获得运用理论来分析实际行政伦理问题的能力。     

Case-based Approaches to Professional Ethics: A systematic comparison of students' and ethicists' moral reasoning

This article provides a systematic analysis of the cognitive processes required for acquiring skill in practical ethical reasoning in a professional domain. We undertook this NSF-supported research project in part to study relationships between case-based instruction in professional ethics and cognitive analyses of ethical reasoning strategies. Using a web-based experimental design, we report striking differences in the students' and ethicists' use of knowledge and reasoning. Virtually all of the ethicists and some students' protocols made significant use of specialized professional knowledge and also used role-specific content in the ethical principles applied in their responses. In contrast, other student protocols made significantly more use of common knowledge and applied more general ethical principles or appealed to consequences in the justification of their responses. Our analyses show how certain strategies were superior to others in regard to identifying alternative moral issues, assessing the moral implications of actions, and providing alternative practical resolutions to conflicts. The findings point to the importance of professional knowledge and role-specific professional obligations in resolving professional ethical conflicts: the same knowledge and "middle-level" principles necessary to comprehend and apply professional codes of ethics.     

“留住乡愁”的伦理意蕴?

德性的教化和道德之民的诞生以伦理的精神家园为始点。缺乏伦理认同和伦理信念,丧失伦理的精神家园,以抽象的道德自由遮蔽甚至取代精神归宿,已成为当前我国社会伦理建设的重大难题和现实困境。故乡作为人们出生或长期居住的地方,本身就是伦理实体的一种现实样态;而在希腊语中被诠释为“返回家园”的乡愁（nostalgia）则是人们形成伦理信念与伦理认同的典型方式,是具有“精神”气质的伦理认同。“留住乡愁”为深陷伦理困境与道德危机的现代人开辟了一条回归伦理精神家园的康庄大道,为个体伦理造诣的提升提供无限可能。     

Ethics courses: Their impact on the values and ethical decisions of criminal justice students

Numerous articles and books advocate the importance of ethics as an essential component of a criminal justice curriculum. While there are several approaches suggested, one of the most popular methods of assuring coverage of this important topic is to add an ethics course to the curriculum either as a required or an elective course. Teaching students ethical theories, principles and providing them with the opportunity to discuss discipline specific ethics problems is thought to help contribute to the establishment of ethical practitioners.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of a semester long criminal justice ethics course on the students' value orientations, and their perceptions of both the seriousness of ethical violations and their likelihood of engaging in such behaviors. Our findings are consistent with the results of researchers evaluating ethics courses in other disciplines. Implications for criminal justice ethics education are discussed.     

Doing right in business: can action learning develop moral sensitivity and promote ethical behaviour?

The question addressed in this paper is whether action learning as a management development technique can be more effective in promoting ethical decision-making than more traditional approaches. Recent examples of moral failures which have emerged in both corporate and public sector organisations in the UK during recent years have prompted a review of some of the literature about the teaching of business ethics in and by business schools. While the use of theoretical approaches to ethical analysis (such as consequentialist and deontological approaches), coupled with the discussion of scenarios or cases is a common way of structuring the teaching of business and organisational ethics, it may be limited as an approach insofar as it does not necessarily address the affective aspects of the learning process which contribute to the development of moral sensitivity and moral character. It is suggested that an action learning approach may help fill this gap, particularly if coupled with an Aristotelian focus on the development of moral character. Action learning as a technique seeks to replace instruction with facilitation, and to enable individual personal growth rather than the acquisition of knowledge. It emphasises practical action in the workplace and working with peers as part of an action learning set. The action learning method may be more suitable to fostering both technical/scientific wisdom (poeisis) and practical or prudential wisdom (phronesis) and could be adapted for use with both business students and practising managers.     

Editors' column

This article proposes a theoretical frame for technical communication peda- gogy based on six layered literacies: basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical. The layered literacies frame advocates diverse instruction in technical communication programs, ranging from the ancient art of rhetoric to the most contemporary of technologies, from basic reading and writing skills to ethical and critical situational analyses. The article also suggests how the frame can be applied to a program of study or individual course in order to establish teaching objectives; develop course and lesson activities; and assess pedagogical materials, students, and programs.     

A comparative study on student perceptions of their learning outcomes in undergraduate science degree programmes with differing curriculum models

ABSTRACT

This study investigated students’ perceptions of their graduate learning outcomes including content knowledge, communication, writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking in two Australian universities. One university has a traditional discipline-orientated curriculum and the other, an interdisciplinary curriculum in the entry semester of first year. The Science Students Skills Inventory asked students (n?=?613) in first and final years to rate their perceptions of the importance of developing graduate learning outcomes within the programme; how much they improved their graduate learning outcomes throughout their undergraduate science programme; how much they saw learning outcomes included in the programme; and how confident they were about their learning outcomes. A framework of progressive curriculum development was adopted to interpret results. Students in the discipline-oriented degree programme reported higher perceptions of scientific content knowledge and ethical thinking while students from the interdisciplinary curriculum indicated higher perceptions of oral communication and teamwork. Implications for curriculum development include ensuring progressive development from first to third years, a need for enhanced focus on scientific ethics, and career opportunities from first year onwards.     

Developing and designing online engineering ethics instruction for international graduate students

The present project embarked on an educational intervention, consisting of a series of online ethics learning modules, to aid international graduate students in overcoming the acculturation barriers to understanding and inculcating normative ethical obligations associated with engineering practice and research in the United States. A fundamental initial step in the process of helping international, as well as domestic, engineering graduate students embrace ethical obligations is to provide clear instruction on fundamental engineering ethical principles and values relevant in the United States. Most institutes of higher education do not have a cohesive approach to basic graduate engineering ethics instruction, much less materials that have been calibrated for international students (National Science Foundation, , 2009). Herein the authors describe our instructional intervention, as well as to document the development, design, and assessment of the learning modules intended to provide students with a framework for learning ethical precepts and applying them in the engineering field. Think-Aloud Protocol and Cognitive Task Analysis results were used to improve the content modules and learning experience. Initial pilot findings indicate that the content modules increased student knowledge acquisition compared to pre-test performance, indicating a step-forward in the formulation of a useful learning tool for graduate engineering ethics instruction.     

Justice and Lecturer Professionalism

Lecturers have significant de facto power and responsibility as arbiters of student justice. However, while the literature on ethics in higher education principally focuses on a self-regarding agenda connected with research codes and power relationships between academics, the more practical concerns of pedagogy tend to be overlooked. Moreover, while many new lecturer programmes stress competence in teaching techniques they tend to give restricted attention to many of the ethical dilemmas which confront university teachers in their daily lives. This paper addresses this imbalance by presenting a conceptual framework for debating the ethics of pedagogy based on four forms of justice. The concepts of procedural, retributive, remedial, and distributive justice are presented as a means of incorporating many of the key ethical challenges that confront lecturers new to higher education. The justice framework is also recommended as a means of encouraging practitioners to identify their own key ethical principles.     

From Deliberation to Responsibility: Ethics,Invention, and Bonhoeffer in Technical Communication

To make technical communication scholarship more reflective of the complexity of work done by such communicators, a new concept that marries recent parallel turns to ethics and invention is needed. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a stranger to the field, offers such a concept: responsibility. It covers more explanatory ground than the most cited of ethical concepts, deliberation, and most importantly, centers ethics and invention squarely within the technical communicator’s relationship to language.     

Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy

This article proposes a theoretical frame for technical communication peda- gogy based on six layered literacies: basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical. The layered literacies frame advocates diverse instruction in technical communication programs, ranging from the ancient art of rhetoric to the most contemporary of technologies, from basic reading and writing skills to ethical and critical situational analyses. The article also suggests how the frame can be applied to a program of study or individual course in order to establish teaching objectives; develop course and lesson activities; and assess pedagogical materials, students, and programs.     

浅析言语交际过程中的准确性与得体性

准确性原则与得体性原则是英语言语交际过程中非常重要的两个方面,从实际的英语讲座这个教学环节中反映出相当一部分学生对此掌握得并不好,认识到此类问题的重要性并在实际运用中避免错误的发生,才能更好地达到交际的有效沟通。