‘The Ethical Student’: Enhancing the Teaching of Ethics in the

Undergraduate CurriculumFunded by the Learning and Teaching Institute, University of Chester

Ruth Healey, Chris Ribchester & Kimberley RossDepartment of Geography & Development Studies

1st July 2011

Outline

• Background to project

• Tutorials Intervention

• Findings and discussion of impact

The ‘Ethical Student’ Project

• The Geography benchmark statement emphasises research and field based studies in relation to ethics, but also recognises “the moral and ethical issues involved in debates and enquiries” within the discipline (QAA 2007: 5).

• Ethics is one of five graduate attributes (Barrie 2004).

• Teaching ethical thinking skills, are the types of skills which will help students to deal with uncertainty and ‘supercomplexity’ in the world.

A conceptual model of the role of ethics and ethical matters in teaching and learning

Capacity for ethical decision making and evolving personal attributes

The Disengaged Graduate

Undergraduate

Ethics implicit

Content patchy

behaviour content

The Empowered Graduate

Undergraduate

behaviour content

Content diverse

Ethics explicit

Content sequential

Scholarly

Processes

Enhancing awareness

Self reflection

Figure A: Current ethical teaching Figure B: Enhanced ethical teaching

Source: adapted from Boyd et al. (2008: 39-40)

The ‘Ethical Student’ Project

• The debate as to whether it is possible to teach ethics without indoctrinating individuals into a particular way of thinking is long standing (Escámez et al. 2008).

• Our project does not involve teaching prescriptive ethics, rather it is teaching for ethical thinking (Hay & Foley 1998; Smith 1995).

Intervention

• Level 5 Tutorials module (SH Geog only, n=30).• The teacher’s role in this module is to

facilitate reflection and focused inquiry (Hay & Foley 1998).

• Introduced to 8 fictitious but realistic scenarios which they had to make decisions about.

• Individually students made the decisions over the course of the year and then discussed their choices in the final tutorial.

Progressive Scenarios

1. Lending your lecture notes

2. Group work problems

3. Conflict at work

Academic world

Personal world

Professional world

5. Data collection error

4. Exam paper found

6. Module choices

7. Plagiarism

8. Research findings

Conceptual Model of Enhanced Ethical Teaching

The Empowered Graduate

UndergraduateContent diverse

Ethics explicit

Content sequential

Scholarly

Processes

Enhancing awareness

Self reflection

behaviour contentSource: adapted from Boyd et al. (2008: 39-40)

Capacity for ethical decision making and evolving personal attributes

Intervention: Evaluation

Methods of Evaluation:•Two questionnaires given to Level 5 Single Honours Geography students who participated in the module one at the beginning and one at the end. •Focus group with students (n=12). •Focus group with members of staff teaching on the tutorials module (n=5).

Questionnaire

The main questionnaire was split into 2 parts:– Open-ended questions which helped to determine

the student’s understanding of ‘ethics’.– Ten bipolar statements (drawn from Clarkeburn et

al, 2003), students asked to choose which statement best reflected their own view point. For example...

Definitely my

opinion

More or less what I

believe

Neither statement represents

my view

More or less what I believe

Definitely my

opinion

Moral questions have absolutely the right answers.

1 2 3 4 5 There are very few right answers in the real world and answers to moral questions are not one of them.

Complexity Uncertainty

Variability Contingent

Greater self-awarenessOpenness to other perspectives

Taking ownership of their decisions

Did the Tutorials Have an Impact?

Did the Tutorials Have an Impact?

Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test: T = 61.5 Significant difference at 0.05

Case Study – Participant 23Questionnaire 1

• What does the term ethics mean to you?Morals. Rights. Non bias.

• Ethics in previous studies...Religious education. Human geography.

• Ethical dilemmaFriend being bullied.

Questionnaire 2• What does the term ethics mean

to you?Ethics is generally doing the right thing by others whilst sticking to my morals.

• Ethics in previous studies...The different scenarios within tutorials provide a range of ethical issues.

• Ethical dilemma...Whether to cut my hours at work and have less money to spend time on my uni work - I did cut my hours.

Student Focus Group

Thoughts on Ethics in General – What have the tutorials helped you realise about ethics?

• “I think you should always consider what action you take, but I think it [ethics] has a special importance to geography due to the nature of field work.”

• “I found out I would change my actions if it [the consequences] was more serious”

• “I think your decisions are influenced by the consequences of the decision”

Student Focus Group

The Tutorial Sessions• “It was perhaps a bit vague at the start about

why we were doing it.”• “The was quite a good range [of ethical

scenarios], some you could relate to more than others.”

• “The options that you have to pick from, sometimes the things I wanted to pick didn’t fit with the choices you had.”

Summary

• Tutorials useful for supporting ethical development

• Polarised views from students over relevance of this within geography

• Distinction between physical and human geographers (reflected in tutors to some extent)

• Highest mark for the ethics tutorial• Considered second ‘most interesting’ tutorial of

the year

Questions?