‘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?