Too often, in STEM education, ethical considerations are understood as instrumentally good, useful tools to justify predetermined values. To consider the intrinsic goodness of ethics education, we propose a new habit, for students and faculty both, that is unproductive and performative: a pause. Undergraduate STEM students learn from textbooks and tests to seek certainty, to remove the unnecessary, and drill into underlying causes. When they become STEM practitioners, however, simplified ethical rules and principles may not accurately guide them. If we teach students to practice a pause, to step back and reflect rather than rush to answer, we faculty must habituate ourselves to such introspection and deliberation in our research and teaching. With answers to any question seemingly a click away, we should develop the habit of deliberating, of holding our own ideas up for critical examination, of being skeptical of what we know.

Peer review is a crucial activity in science but undergraduate students¡¯ knowledge of its purposes and processes has received limited study. We assessed 84 undergraduate students¡¯ knowledge of peer review of scientific articles and grant proposals before and after a class module on peer review. Students reported that peer review was ¡°very¡± to ¡°extremely¡± important both times, but they had a ¡°limited¡± understanding of it before the class module, which increased to ¡°some¡± understanding after the module. Students demonstrated relatively more knowledge of the purposes of peer review than of its procedures. Student ratings of familiarity with peer review, the importance of peer review, and the percentage of knowledge items answered correctly increased significantly after the class module. These results suggest that undergraduates would benefit from more instruction in the purposes and processes of peer review given its critical role in science.

Robert Louis Stevenson¡¯s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a cautionary moral meditation. The story speaks to fundamental questions: How are morality and the good life related? Why do we experience internal moral conflict? How does someone become thoroughly bad? How do we by our free choices become unfree? What are the psychological steps in moral disintegration? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an engaging way to discuss these important moral topics with students. We first describe the format of our interdisciplinary course¡ªwe then discuss how we taught several themes of personal ethics found in Stevenson¡¯s tale.

The way we teach profoundly shapes how students perceive knowledge, how they integrate ethical frameworks into decision-making, and whether knowledge is used to empower social and individual change. While regulations mandate compliance, ethical dilemmas require critical thinking and metacognition. Ethical principles permeate every aspect of life, including research, professional practice, and everyday life. Developing ethical students equipped with the ability for robust critical thinking, meta-cognition, and emancipatory approaches is pivotal to help them navigate ethical quandaries and identify areas of oppression. Emphasizing research ethics education reinforces the significance of ethical research conduct and challenges normative assumptions. By focusing on incorporating education on ethical theories, frameworks, and applications, specialized ethics-focused training empowers students and professionals to confront moral ambiguity confidently, leading to enhanced engagement with ethical dilemmas in both research and practice. Activities and educational offerings, such as, role-play, case discussion, guest lectures, faculty modeling/mentoring, and workshops/seminars, can help foster a more ethically conscious professional landscape.

Undergraduate research experiences have been identified as a high-impact practice that contributes to student intellectual, professional, and personal growth. With the expansion of research opportunities, Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training is increasingly necessary at institutions. Formal RCR training has become widespread at universities though efficacy studies and attempts to promote these events are lacking, particularly at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Here we report on the organization and implementation of a conference to promote and develop RCR training among regional PUIs in Oklahoma. A full day of speakers and breakout sessions allowed participants to think critically to develop and refine RCR programs at their home institutions. Participant pre- and post-survey data indicate that attendees were less familiar with potential RCR training programs at their home institutions but were enthusiastic to learn more about and develop such programs following the conference. Post-conference survey data revealed that 11 of 15 participants intended to develop or improve RCR training at their home PUI. Statistical analysis of pre- and post-survey data showed that conference participants were significantly more knowledgeable about and familiar with RCR curricula after the conference than before (median scores increasing from 2.5 to 5). These findings suggest that conferences are helpful in not only informing institutions about the benefits of RCR programs but also in promoting the future development of such training programs.

This paper defends two main claims. First, that political philosophy deserves a central place in AI Ethics¡¯ curricula. This is a claim about the content of the AI Ethics class. The second claim is about the form of the AI Ethics class: namely, that considerations originating in political philosophy must inform the way in which AI Ethics is taught. The basic idea animating both claims, is that AI has powerful political implications and that preparing students to navigate these implications, requires paying close attention to both the cognitive and practical learning goals of the AI Ethics course.

As artificial intelligence and robotics are increasingly integrated in graduate research and education, graduate students across disciplines need to develop a ¡°technological literacy¡± in how they work along with the ethical understanding needed to navigate these technologies responsibly. To satisfy this need, the corresponding and last author has developed a graduate-level course on AI ethics and human-robot interaction (HRI) designed for students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. The paper offers an overview of the course, detailing its content, institutional context, and the rationale behind its development. It describes the curriculum structure, including key themes and learning objectives, and the pedagogical approaches and assessment methods utilized in the course. The paper concludes with reflections from the instructor on the lessons learned from teaching the course and the experiences gained throughout the learning process.

Student-generated podcasts can promote deep learning and critical reflection, which improves learning outcomes. This paper examines the role of student-generated podcasting as a vehicle to express and apply Feminist Ethics among Health Science students. Feminist ethics is a key ethical theory to help students understand issues surrounding social injustice and gender-based discrimination. Through the Framework Method, we examined how students¡¯ gender affects podcast topic selection, application of Feminist Ethics perspectives and appropriate use of Feminist Ethics nomenclature. Three major themes that emerged from podcasts topics were Procreation, Death and Regulation. Although podcast groups discussed gender-neutral topics, majority-women podcast groups created content with a wider variety gender-specific topics, were more likely to situate their conversation through a Feminist Ethics lens and vocalized Feminist Ethics principles. Although gender differences did appear, student-generated podcasting is a tangible pedagogical, curricular and assessment tool that allows students to critically reflect on ethical theories and principles.

This article outlines a seminar on algorithmic fairness, as part of a course in digital ethics. Part of the function of the seminar was to teach students trade-offs within the use and design of AI systems as it concerns fairness of algorithmic decision-making. Here I reflect on the teaching of trade-offs through the lens of said seminar, and conclude by calling for substantive changes in the pedagogy and methodology of teaching digital ethics.

This paper describes the design and delivery of the stand-alone ¡°Ethics and Governance¡± course at the University of Greenwich (United Kingdom), initiated as part of the novel MSc degree ¡°Data Science and its Applications.¡± Grounded in intersectional feminist tradition, the aim of the course was to help students evaluate the broader societal and systemic implications of data-driven technologies. This is a necessary ability for data scientists since these technologies have been shown to embed and exacerbate existing social inequalities. Here, we describe our approach and the constitutive elements of the course¡ªin particular, its interactive and discussion-based setup, the use of a diverse set of ethical and critical theories, the focus on power dynamics, and the emphasis on participatory approaches. We then offer some reflections on our experience on the first delivery of the course and ideas for future adjustments.

In philosophical ethics, thought experiments seek to clarify moral reasoning by abstracting from the contingent character of real-world moral dilemmas, viewing moral actors as abstract persons. This paper argues that such an approach to philosophical ethics ultimately harms the reasoner as abstrac?tion is linked with decreased empathy and a psychology of dehumanization, particularly regarding debates about the moral status of marginalized groups. It both makes the reasoner callous to the suffering of others and generates anxiety in members of marginalized groups who must defend their moral status in the abstract. Using examples from related fields (legal education, medical educa?tion), this paper argues that moral philosophers would do better if they reduced a reliance on abstract thought experiments and instead relied on more concrete cases from literature and history.

I consider whether instructors in science and engineering can competently teach ethics in their fields without formal training in ethics. I argue that they can teach ethics competently, even without content expertise, by emphasizing the professional norms of their fields and by eschewing moral theories. Instructors can choose essential learning objectives such as knowledge of professional standards and skills for handling conflicting values¡ªrealistic objectives that are achievable within a limited time. Learning objectives can include general skills such as communication and negotiation. To meet these objectives, instructors can use pedagogical strategies whose effectiveness has been established through previous research.

Faculty who teach AI Ethics can learn a lot from those teaching Business Ethics (and vice-versa). This paper provides a survey of a course designed for MBA students, Ethics and AI, exploring the ways in which traditional debates about responsible corporate practices can frame ethical challenges in the responsible design and deployment of AI systems. The course is organized by ethical issue, roughly tracking the flow of information through a model, from data to impacts. Topics include: (1) data ownership, (2) transparency, (3) discrimination, (4) fairness, (5) safety and liability. The course employs normative theories¡ªUtilitarianism, Contractarianism, Libertarianism, and Virtue Ethics¡ªto help students criticize and defend corporate policies and decisions. Ultimately, the goal is to train students in criticizing and defending decisions around the use of AI in products and operations, rather than thinking about AI in a vacuum.

This article describes the design of a course on the ethics of artificial intelligence offered as a seminar in an online master¡¯s program in library and information science titled AI, Data, and Ethics. The course is presented as a model for programs in information science, as well as for adjacent fields such as computer science, communications, and others. The article explains key decision points in developing a course relevant to the professional knowledge and ethical concerns of information professionals. It describes the field, program, and students, as well as the ethics methodology employed, and it explains the course architecture and selection of topics based on their support of the two learning central objectives, which are to promote ethical analysis and ethical design knowledge. Lastly, it provides a detailed review of selected assignments, and it suggests specific ways that the course may be adapted for other graduate and undergraduate curricula.

The National Science Foundation [NSF] has long been a leader in promoting responsible and ethical research environments and responsible conduct in research, both through their research programs and their implementation of the America Competes Act, which mandated training in the responsible conduct of research for researchers supported by their funds. However, many institutions still do not have plans for required RCR education that incorporate best practices in a meaningful way because they have no clearly articulated goal for an RCR program, are not aware of model practices, and face institutional obstacles and constraints. The project reported here brought together subject matter experts and key partners from the research integrity community to develop and evaluate resources that might address those concerns. Here we present two of the resources developed through these workshop activities: (1) recommended approaches for effective and meaningful RCR instruction, and (2) guidance for Institutional NSF RCR Plans.

What is the point of taking ethics classes? In this paper, I would like to discuss a specific answer to this question, according to which ethics instruction can facilitate moral education by directly teaching students what¡¯s morally right. More specifically, I will argue that this view is much more plausible than one might first suspect. Therefore, the widespread disregard of this view in the philosophical literature is unwarranted. To establish this claim, I will proceed in two steps. First, I will argue that the idea of educational transfers of moral knowledge is perfectly in line with specific epistemological assumptions that already underly wide parts of our educational practice. Second, I will argue that moral knowledge transfers would be a promising way of facilitating moral education in ethics classes. Having thus established the claim that the idea of moral knowledge transfers deserves closer scrutiny, I will discuss its implications in a little more detail by delineating some specific desiderata for future philosophical research that arise against the background of the previous considerations.

This paper presents a general education course offered at The Pennsylvania State University that integrates AI ethics within a creative arts context. The course emphasizes AI literacy and the ethical use of AI tools through the creation and critique of AI-generated art, literature, and music. Since its inception, the course has evolved to accommodate increasing enrollments and diverse student demographics while maintaining a focus on hands-on activities and ethical discussions. Student feedback indicates high engagement with the course¡¯s ethical content, prompting considerations for future course revisions. The authors argue that AI literacy, particularly ethical considerations, is essential for all students and advocate for the creation of similar courses across educational institutions to better prepare students for the ethical challenges of emerging AI technologies.

The increasing presence of technology in higher education institutions requires a co-creation process among faculty members and administrative leaders to implement AI education. Unfortunately, most educators currently lack the necessary knowledge and skills to assess AI applications. Fitzpatrick¡¯s research in 2023 revealed that only 6% of instructors had utilized ChatGPT for work, while a significant 32% expressed the need for greater familiarity with such tools. Interestingly, students tend to adapt to AI much more swiftly than their teachers. As advanced deep-learning approaches become more prevalent, updating curricula at undergraduate and graduate levels becomes inevitable. With recent advances in AI models will undoubtedly transform communication with students, there is a growing concern within the field of education regarding the ethical implications of integrating AI into the curriculum, especially in tasks such as essay, thesis, or scientific paper writing, where the use of AI-powered assistants could potentially undermine the learning process.

Ethics education and societal understandings are critical to an education in engineering. However, researchers have found that students do not always see ethics as a part of engineering. In this paper, we present a sociotechnical approach to teaching ethics around the topic of surveillance technology in an interdisciplinary, co-designed and co-taught course. We describe and reflect on our curricular and pedagogical approach that uplifts cross-disciplinary dialogue, social theoretical frameworks to guide ethical thinking, and highlighting collective action and resistance in our course content and praxis to inspire students. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of student reflection writing, we examine the ways students relate society and technology, generate ethical skills and questions, and are motivated to act. We find that, in fact, this approach resonates with student experience and desire for discipline-specific ethical analysis, and is highly motivating.

In this paper, we discuss our approach to developing engaging course content linked to distinct learning outcomes on the topic of academic authorship. Academic authorship is a critical element of research culture and responsible conduct of research (RCR) courses. Drawing on instructional design methods, our online course aims to stimulate critical thinking about ethical authorship practices and to help students develop skills for resolving authorship-related conflicts. The course is scaffolded to facilitate engagement by tying video and podcast-style media, a choice-based interactive simulation, and traditional case study activities, to specific learning objectives. We describe how each instructional technique enhances student engagement and learning for the paired objective, and the benefits of the holistic course design. Finally, we illustrate how RCR instructors can incorporate our materials in full or in part into their own course curricula and encourage others to use our course development approach when designing their own courses.

The context of compliance creates special challenges for research ethics education. It can serve as a positive force in promoting research integrity because it forces academic institutions to provide research ethics training, and it forces some people to complete research ethics training. However, when compliance mandates create patchwork coverage with inconsistent requirements, they can have the paradoxical effect of trivializing the very thing they intend to promote. After providing a background on research ethics education mandates from US federal funding agencies, I review the way in which academic institutions tend to respond to these mandates and I explore the impact of these compliance requirements on the goals of research ethics education. Finally, I consider recent calls to harmonize federal agency requirements, and close by sharing the way in which we are trying to harmonize the requirements at my own institution.

National Institutes of Health¡¯s policies for Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) instruction for individual career development awards (K-awards) stress appropriateness to the career stage and tailoring to the individual¡¯s needs. Early-career faculty have unique needs for RCR instruction. While our institution requires RCR education for ALL graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, we found that many K-awardees 1) are early-career faculty not eligible to participate in postdoc programs, and 2) many had received formal RCR instruction at only basic or intermediate levels. We identified 45 K-award recipients with active grants, 26 of whom needed RCR instruction. We developed a program specifically designed for early-career faculty researchers. Through the first three iterations of the course, we had a total of 24 participants, ranging from senior postdoctoral and clinical fellows to instructor-level and assistant professors. This paper describes our experience and challenges in developing and conducting this course.

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) education has been part of the US research landscape for nearly 35 years. Although at least in part a response to cases of research misconduct, RCR requirements and implementations by instructors often repurpose RCR to focus on many different possible conceptions of ¡°responsible conduct.¡± In reviewing today¡¯s landscape, it is clear that interventions vary widely with respect to goals, audience, topics covered, settings in which education is delivered, pedagogical approaches used, and institutional commitment. Surveying the status quo in each of these areas is taken here as a starting point for a series of recommendations to better promote RCR. A case is made for shifting from hoping RCR education will directly decrease research misconduct (unlikely) or using NIH recommended topics as a checklist, but instead supporting researchers to engage in conversations about the ethical challenges present in their practice of research.

Formalized Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) programs have become a compliance requirement. Yet evidence consistently demonstrates that compliance-based ethics training focused on teaching regulations and ¡°rules¡± fails to create ethical cultures. Research and practice in behavioral ethics have demonstrated that there is value in moving away from rule-based, normative, ethics education toward approaches rooted in descriptive explainations about how and why individuals make unethical decisions, and focused on environmental and cultural influences. We examine the circumstances¡ªand subsequent assumptions¡ªthat lead to compliance-based RCR training, unpack those assumptions, and identify their outcomes. The question at the heart of compliance-based training is ¡°What must we teach people so they will make ethical decisions?¡± The command-and-control nature of this question fails to encompass needed elements for broader research integrity, namely, developing ethical habits and building skills for ethical decision-making. Asking instead ¡°How do we develop people to articulate and act in alignment with ethical values?¡± helps to shift toward more effective and sustainable ethics education. Educating about ethical decision-making develops people who are more practically wise and who can influence the cultures of the environments in which they work. We conclude by offering examples of ethics education and development that are asking the right question and include information about our own leadership development program for elite laboratory scientists that is seeking to support ethical and healthy working cultures.

Formal instruction in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) has been a component of research training in the basic and biomedical sciences for over 30 years, due in large part to federal requirements for RCR education in research training programs funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). With the increasing complexity of basic and biomedical science, federal guidance on the scope of RCR education has likewise evolved to include more and more topics. In 2022, both NIH and NSF significantly expanded the subject matter included in federal policy on RCR instruction, raising concerns among RCR educators about what is required in teaching ¡°RCR¡±. This article examines the topic lists from key professional recommendations and subsequent federal policies on required RCR instruction. Careful analysis of these historical and contemporary documents helps to resolve the challenge of what ¡°must¡± be taught to trainees today.

In this paper, we argue that engineering ethics education does have moral implications. More specifically, practices in engineering ethics education can lead to negative moral consequences if not conducted appropriately. Engineering ethics educators are often passionate about teaching students ways to examine the ethical implications of engineering and technology. However, ethics educators may overlook the moral significance of their instructional classroom practices. In this paper, we discuss two issues: First, we discuss the moral impacts of ethics curriculum and pedagogies on students¡¯ learning experiences. Then we discuss the professional responsibilities of educators who are involved in designing ethics learning experiences for engineering students. The reflections presented in this paper will serve as catalysts for more comprehensive discussions regarding the impact of engineering ethics education on the ethical development of engineering students.

Ethical choice paralysis is a major barrier to the implementation of ethical design materials into the technology design process. Choice paralysis seems to result from tacit background assumptions propagated by humanistic modes of critical inquiry. I propose that one way of obviating choice paralysis at the professional level is to educate STEM students on how to select ethical design materials for a project. In order to advance that endeavor, I propose some obligations especially for humanistically trained STEM ethics educators. Specifically, I propose that these include obligations to affirm that students can indeed select workable ethical design materials for their projects, to avoid using humanistic modes of critical ethical inquiry when instructing on how to make those selections, and to note that maximizing for ideally ethical results may not be a primary selection criterion.

This article advances the thesis that our values and beliefs about engineering critically impact the teaching of engineering ethics, and our representations and assumptions about engineering are, accordingly, ethical questions we must consider. To illustrate how in broader sociohistorical contexts, different understandings of engineering have shaped expectations of ethics, we provide a historical and contemporary review of the literature. Examining the significance of our thesis for teaching practice, we discuss three case studies of our teaching and critically reflect on how our representation of engineering limited the breadth and depth of ethics. Considering that instruction seemingly unrelated to ethics, in fact, influences how engineering ethics is understood and taught, our conclusion calls for critical examination of our beliefs about engineering. This entails, among others, up-to-date knowledge about the changing values of our rapidly-developing engineering fields and how they raise social, ethical questions of engineering relevant specifically to our teaching situation.

Arguably, STEM undergraduate education has narrowed student engagement with the social, ethical, and global. Our paper argues that disengagement is caused by a failure of moral imagination. We propose socio-technical analysis as the cornerstone to a more inclusive approach to STEM education. It promotes four activities: (1) zooming in on technologies by describing their structure, function, and embedded values; (2) zooming out to the surrounding socio-technical system which constrains and enables the technology¡¯s functioning; (3) moving back-and-forth through Appropriate Technology to assess the fit of the technology to its socio-technical surroundings; and (4) using the capability approach to finish the (re)engagement process. We then look at graduate and undergraduate student work that has successfully used our framework to combat disengagement and conclude by discussing materials we have used to assess student engagement.

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research.

Research on ethical formation in engineering has largely focused on assessing students¡¯ abilities to recognize ethical issues and reason through ethical dilemmas. In this paper, we depict a conceptual framework for understanding how students develop into ethical engineers that involves dimensions beyond ethical awareness and judgment. In particular, we explore the role of ethical motivation in engineering students¡¯ ethical formation. Ethical motivation is the process of deciding to act upon an ethical decision based on one¡¯s valuing of ethics, as well as one¡¯s ability to prioritize moral concerns and professional values over personal interests. To prepare students to prioritize ethical and professional obligations, ethical training needs to help students become aware of and prepared to act upon both personal and professional values. This paper demonstrates how ethical motivation can be operationalized and assessed in engineering ethics curriculum by sharing findings from assessments implemented during an interdisciplinary engineering ethics course across two semesters. Findings from this study will provide insights into how students internalize professional values into their views of engineers¡¯ roles and ultimately into their future practice as engineers. The approach used in this study can guide instructors interested in assessing ethical motivation and related constructs in their curriculums.

This paper explores the often-overlooked role of teaching assistants (TAs) in engineering ethics courses, and a particular challenge that TAs face in these roles. TAs not only undertake tasks like instructors, which include teaching, guiding, and evaluating courses, but they also assume the roles of ¡°intermediaries between instructors and students¡± and ¡°learners becoming teachers.¡± These distinct roles present TAs with unique challenges, one of which we call the neutrality problem. This problem pertains to whether TAs can and should maintain a neutral stance in the classroom, particularly when students articulate ideas that deviate from the values promoted in the course or held by the TAs. Using a real-life teaching experience as illustrative, we claim that it is challenging and, at times, undesirable for TAs to achieve pedagogical neutrality, primarily due to their pre-existing understanding of ethics and the actual situation of the students. Nevertheless, we posit that TAs should strive to foster an environment where students are encouraged to improve their ethical awareness. Through the underrepresented lens of TAs, we aim to initiate a multi-faceted dialogue on the teaching philosophy and goal of engineering ethics.

In this paper, we argue for the value of two complementary pedagogical tools for teaching moral emotions: (1) taxonomies and (2) normative case studies. The paper proceeds in four parts. Section One discusses our motivations for teaching moral emotions. Section Two introduces envy as the central example we use to demonstrate the value of developing a scaffolded approach to teaching moral emotions that moves from taxonomy to normative case studies. Specifically, we engage with Sara Protasi¡¯s The Philosophy of Envy (2021). We start by focusing on how an instructor could use Protasi¡¯s taxonomy of envy effectively in the classroom. Then, Section Three engages with Rebecca M. Taylor¡¯s recent work on normative case studies. We build on one of Protasi¡¯s cases to demonstrate how instructors can design normative case studies to speak directly to the experiences of their students and we suggest a sample assignment. Finally, Section Four concludes by reinforcing the complementary relationship between taxonomies and normative case studies for teaching moral emotions.

Research ethics education has taken many forms since federal funding agencies issued regulatory guidance directing those supported by these agencies to complete required training. In the absence of a standard training approach among institutions such as universities, the design and content of courses, workshops, and seminars varies widely. Here we describe a southwestern United States research university program that employed six teaching strategies to assist students in deep learning of ethical principles and behavior. Our purpose was to determine how these strategies impact understanding and empowerment among an interdisciplinary group of graduate students. Results suggested that deep learning design can result in learning that requires students not only to remember and understand key ethics concepts but also to analyze and apply them in a broader ethical domain. Key findings inform design and delivery of future research ethics courses for instructional designers and instructors in higher education.

Distributive justice is the paradigmatic philosophical position regarding matters of contemporary justice. Distributive justice often focuses on issues of resource allocation and/or welfare allocation. In this essay I argue that this paradigm has ¡®the cart before the horse¡¯ because issues of productive justice¡ªlogically and normatively¡ªare of antecedent concern. The way in which people work, and the nature of the productive workplace, conditions the conceptual and concrete possibilities of obtaining distributive justice, thus productive justice is of antecedent concern for realizing justice overall. Contra Rawls, it is productive justice which in the ¡®first instance¡¯ ought to provide ¡®a conception of social justice¡¯. But even if this claim is hasty, it remains the case that distributive justice theorists have not allowed productive justice into their considered judgments and thus are operating with something short of serious reflective equilibrium. Productive justice therefore deserves unprecedented analysis and philosophical consideration.

In this 2022 SEAC Presidential address, I explore the intricate interplay between the notions of greed and Effective Altruism (EA). These notions bear profound implications for both our individual obligations and our collective duties. The dialectic between greed and EA reveals a fundamental conflict. Greed is commonly aligned with the self-centered pursuit of riches, authority, or distinction, often neglecting the well-being of others and the enduring repercussions of one's actions. In contrast, EA stands as a philosophy and societal movement advocating the application of reason and empirical evidence to pinpoint the most efficacious avenues for aiding others and engendering a constructive global influence. Central to EA is the tenet of impartiality and equitable regard for all interests when selecting beneficiaries, resonating across domains such as the prioritization of scientific exploration, entrepreneurial endeavors, and policy undertakings geared towards alleviating suffering and preserving lives.

Little is known about the aims and impact of university-based ethics centers. Less is known about how centers leverage their unique campus positions to engage undergraduates in transformative ethics education. This article provides a foundation for future research on university-based ethics centers. First, this article addresses the history of ethics education in higher education, the rise of university ethics centers, and the factors necessary for successful ethics programs. Next, this piece shows the geographic distribution of ethics centers and which centers provide undergraduate-focused ethics education. Finally, this article enables future research on effective ethics center structure, leadership, and outreach.

The rapid pace of technological development often outstrips the ability of legislators and regulators to establish proper guardrails on emerging technologies. A solution is for those who develop, deploy, and use these technologies to develop themselves as moral agents¡ªi.e., as agents capable of steering the course of emerging technologies in a direction that will benefit humanity. However, there is a dearth of literature discussing how to foster moral agency in computer science courses, and little if any research on the effectiveness of such courses in computer science. This paper addresses this gap by providing an overview of an undergraduate course on technology ethics. It then shares and discusses a subset of data collected from a mixed-methods study using a pre-post design that sought to examine the course¡¯s effectiveness in developing students¡¯ moral, intellectual, and civic virtues, as well as related dispositions.

Whether teachers should take on the role of an advocate in the undergraduate classroom is a thorny question, which has been answered in a variety of ways in the pedagogical literature. What seems to be lacking, however, is information concerning student perceptions on teacher advocacy. Do students believe it is appropriate for a teacher to present and disclose his or her own views on controversial topics? In this paper, the author describes the results of two separate surveys conducted in an effort to answer the question about student perceptions on this practice. Furthermore, the author provides a number of suggestions, based upon the results of these surveys to help mitigate some of the problems associated with advocacy, for those who practice it in the classroom.

The business enterprise is a major instrument in the creation of a just society. However the tension between profit and ethicality requires sound decision making and business ethics instruction is central to creative alternatives to business leaders. Therefore, instruction is aided with a model for framing one¡¯s thoughts about ethics and while several earlier business ethics models exist, they tend to be closed and at times parochial. This paper draws on insights from other academic disciplines to offer a broader yet flexible framework for professors, students, scholars, and decision makers. At the center of the model is the four stage framework of Rest et al. as impacted by four sets of variables¡ªindividual, organizational, environmental, and issue. These are rooted in the work of Dunlop¡¯s Industrial Relations Theory and Jones¡¯ Moral Intensity. A literature review of important variables is presented and the paper concludes with several take aways for instruction and policy suggestions.

Charles Dickens¡¯ A Christmas Carol is more than a happy tale¡ªit is a text of moral self-reflection that challenges us to think about the nature of moral duty, human happiness and personal transformation. The story speaks to fundamental questions: How are morality and the good life related? How does a self-centered person open their heart to the welfare of others? What are the steps in moral change? The story¡¯s characters function as mirrors by which we can examine our own moral dispositions. A Christmas Carol is an engaging way to discuss important and relevant moral topics with students. We first describe the format of our interdisciplinary course¡ªwe then discuss how we teach topics of personal ethics found in Dickens¡¯ tale.

Nel Noddings identifies four core problems with the primary education system in the United States. First, there is no established caring relationship between educational authorities and students. Second, there is no continuity in student-teacher relationships. Third, Common Core neglects deep existential questions in its educational approach. Fourth, Common Core does not emphasize connections between the disciplines to each other or to real-life problems. The four problems with the primary education system identified by Noddings contribute to the fake news problem in the following way: The first two problems sow the seeds for future distrust of expertise; The third problem deadens students¡¯ critical thinking skills and curiosity for knowledge; and the fourth problem plays into the structure of how fake news is designed and consumed. I will argue that Noddings¡¯ education reform proposal is the ideal solution for addressing these problems.

Background: Research ethics training courses are gaining hold in the academia. Learning is affected by learner¡¯s conception of the topic. Thus, knowledge regarding research ethics understandings of the participants of the training courses is needed. Methods: A data driven qualitative content analysis was utilized in a survey after a compulsory research ethics course for doctoral researchers in Finland. In an anonymous online survey, 17 respondents answered open questions concerning research ethics and its relevance. Results: Doctoral researcher¡¯s views can be understood with four core categories: (1) the relevance of research ethics; (2) motivation for learning and following research ethics, (3) the nature of research ethics; and (4) changes due to taking a research ethics course. All categories have subcategories. Conclusions: The views of the doctoral researchers greatly vary along the continuums formed by the core categories and subcategories. Understanding their views is important for the development of the training courses and teaching.

This study examines the effectiveness of teaching business ethics. It fills an important gap in the literature by utilizing students¡¯ own personal reflections and reassessments involving an actual workplace ethical dilemma they have already faced. After submitting a personal ethical dilemma at the beginning of a business ethics course, students are later asked following the course whether they believe they would behave in a similar manner if they faced the same ethical dilemma again, and for what reasons. The paper is organized as follows. Part one briefly summarizes the normative and descriptive research that has been conducted on the effectiveness of teaching business ethics. Part two outlines the qualitative research methodology used in the study followed by a discussion of the results and implications. The study finds that nearly one third of students would now act differently if they faced the same ethical dilemma again in the future.

Alongside fostering academic excellence in their students, many colleges and universities aspire to cultivate responsible citizens. In this article, I explore some challenges accompanying this task and offer my Ethics in Political Action course as one approach to support students¡¯ development as ethically engaged citizens. I begin by outlining two obstacles which make pursuing this civic mission difficult, speaking both as a faculty member and Christian ethicist who works at the intersection of religion and politics. I then describe my Ethics in Political Action course, which examines various forms of political participation so that students can explore ethical issues embedded in U.S. political life as well as critically reflect on their own political activity. By weaving together civic education with the questions and insights of the Christian ethical tradition, this course equips students with the political knowledge and skills they need to engage effectively and ethically in the U.S. today.

Despite the popularity of leadership studies programs at universities, critics have questioned their purpose, costs, and outcomes. In the face of these questions, two ethics faculty who have taught in such programs explore more specifically the purpose of leadership ethics education within higher education. The ¡°Proponent¡± speaks on behalf of these programs and the ¡°Skeptic,¡± responds, well, skeptically. Originally an oral presentation, the dialogue engages in a fair share of rhetoric and comedy in trading points of view. It concludes with a set of questions that might be used by others engaged in such work.

In recent years, ¡®philosophy as a way of life¡¯ [PWOL] courses have emerged as an exciting new pedagogical approach. I explain here what a PWOL-course is. In doing so, I argue that the standard method for teaching such courses¡ªwhat I call the ¡®Smorgasbord Model¡¯¡ªpresents us with a basic problem: viz., how to enable students in the context of a modern university setting to experience fully what a PWOL is. I propose a solution to this problem by exploring a PWOL that most teachers and students alike already find themselves immersed in, what I describe as political liberalism applied to the context of the university classroom. I show how this overlooked fact not only offers us a novel resource for teaching a PWOL-course. It also helps us as philosophy teachers¡ªin a meta-pedagogical sense¡ªto become more self-reflective about and appreciative of our underlying ethical commitments when teaching philosophy.

A perennial topic in introductory ethics classes, abortion has offered students a real-life issue to critically analyze. In this paper, I argue that a popular approach to teaching abortion in such classes fails to attend to the relevant political context of the issue and that this contributes to harms against pregnant people. I will argue for these conclusions by identifying three related problems with such an approach: these lessons frame a political issue as apolitical, value impartiality over lived experiences in moral assessment, and objectify the already-objectified group of pregnant people in the course of debating about them. I will then point to considerations that may help counter the harms caused by this approach and informed by these problems. These involve framing abortion lessons in terms of the relevant political and historical context of abortion and incorporating first-person accounts that engage with the embodied, lived experiences of abortion.

This article discusses the integration of principle-based ethics into business ethics education. It explains how several pedagogical innovations were successfully undertaken in over 20 business ethics courses taught since 2018 to enhance active student engagement with a principle-based ethical framework central to decision making in the complex environment that many organizations face on a day-to-day basis. The teaching initiatives used include case-based projects and discussions, a personal code of ethics developed by each student, and an arts-inspired presentation as well as a student integrity and citizenship rubric assessing students¡¯ ethical conduct throughout each course. To date, this approach to principle-based ethics education seems to deliver very promising results.

Antiracist educators believe that education exists within a racial hierarchy and that students have a right to have their full, intersectional, pluralistic humanity affirmed. Antiracism is an ongoing collective process of learning about and working to eradicate persistent structural barriers. Likewise, teaching ethically involves a commitment to ensure learning creates equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Antiracist education, then, is profoundly ethical for it is rooted in increasing understanding of all people¡¯s experiences and confronting social inequities that exclude individuals and groups of people from participating to their full ability. The syllabus is an entry point for a relationship between students, content, and instructor, providing a guide to action for instructors and students. Any antiracist analysis of the syllabus must consider curricular, pedagogical, and assessment choices to cultivate an antiracist ethic in the classroom. The authors provide questions and examples to raise awareness of the complexity of creating antiracist classrooms.

As attention to the pervasiveness and severity of environmental challenges grows, technical universities are responding to the need to include environmental topics in engineering curricula and to equip engineering students, without training in ethics, to understand and respond to the complex social and normative demands of these issues. But as compared to other areas of engineering ethics education, environmental ethics has received very little attention. This article aims to address this lack and raises the question: How should we teach environmental ethics to engineering students? We argue that one key aspect such teaching should address is the tendency of engineers towards technical framing of (social) problems. Drawing then on engineering ethics pedagogy we propose that the competencies of moral sensitivity and critical thinking can be developed to help engineering students with problem (re)framing. We conclude with an example from our teaching that operationalizes these competencies.

Many students feel despair when addressing systemic issues of ethical significance, such as climate change, and student despair has been exacerbated by the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. This creates an unwelcoming space for authentic student engagement. To address the problem, we present an imaginary of radical hope, a pedagogical tool informed by trauma, for developing a brave space for class discussion. It is psychologically beneficial to acknowledge negative emotions, clearing the emotional space for students to engage. Therefore, we frame ethics courses with an uncomfortable discussion, asking students to draw from their positionality and share their feelings of hope and despair, related to course material. In this paper, we explain the problem of despair motivating the project, describe the pedagogical and ethical support of our strategy, share the assignment, activity, and examples, and discuss takeaways.

Our capabilities in space are growing almost as fast as our ambitions. Many nations, companies, and private actors are currently vying to secure historic ¡°firsts¡± in space, raising complex social and ethical questions. There is surprisingly little serious analysis of these issues, however, and they are rarely discussed in undergraduate class discussions, despite their popularity with students. To help correct this deficit, a student research team designed 11 case studies to help instructors across the curriculum introduce space into their classes. These are designed for ease of use, with self-contained background information, suggested readings/movies, and a series of juicy questions.

In an engineering writing course whose theme is climate change and engineering, I foreground climate change as an ethical problem. At the end of the semester, I ask students to compare their attitudes toward climate change from when they began the course to their attitudes at the end. Some report that, as a result of knowing more about the difficulty and scale of the problem, they have become more pessimistic about our ability to solve it. Climate change despair has been studied from several disciplinary perspectives. Here, I approach the issue from an ethical perspective. My question is, how should I address students¡¯ affective responses to climate change? After providing background on the course and the students¡¯ attitudes, I review the literature on the ethics of climate change despair, hope, and false hope. I then argue for a pedagogy that guides students toward a critical hope and engineering praxis.

This paper discusses the value in implementing photography as a means of assessment in philosophy courses. I specifically discuss how I utilize this interdisciplinary method in my honors environmental philosophy course with encouraging results, and how it can be easily employed in other philosophy courses as well. Photography is the basis for one of my larger course projects, the environmental philosophy in photo project (EPPP). The EPPP offers students novel methods of applying and understanding environmental ethical theories and new ways of making meaning. In the following, I offer a defense of photographic methods for philosophical assessments, project instructions, student learning objectives and feedback, overall effectiveness of the project, and potential uses of photographic methods in other philosophy courses.

Many introductory courses in ethics stress competence in ethical theories popular in modern Western, Anglophone philosophy. This is limiting to ethics students in two ways: 1) it privileges theory over practice in the area of philosophy that has the most intuitive practical importance and application and 2) it privileges modern Western ethical theory at the expense of philosophical and practical engagement with all other world ethical systems. This essay seeks to provide a pedagogical corrective for both of these trends in the context of a virtue ethics course in offering 1) a blueprint for a course in practiced virtue ethics at the high school level based on my version of a required course, ¡°Ethics and the Cultivation of Character¡± in the Leadership Education Department at Culver Academies (where I am one of the Ethics instructors) that 2) draws on a theoretical apparatus for virtue ethics derived from both Western and non-Western world philosophies.

Using picture books to prompt philosophical conversations with children is an effective means to raise awareness of environmental issues and invite children to think creatively about their responsibility for their community and environment. In our Philosophy for Children (P4C) program at Kern County Public libraries in Bakersfield, we address environmental ethics issues as part of our regular curriculum as well as for Earth Day conversations. Children discuss how they may reuse and recycle objects that they ordinarily discard, how small acts of care may have big consequences for their community, and how they share reciprocal relationships to other living creatures, even insects. Most importantly, during such conversations children reflect and deliberate on how they can act on their insights to expand their moral imagination and empower them as citizens of their community and the world.

In this article we reflect on ethical issues arising amid our efforts over the past four years to set up a university-level engineering ethics center to facilitate faculty, staff, and student collaborations across disciplines. In this account we place considerable emphasis on relations with campus administration, including conflicts arising over the interests of potential donors and research sponsors; state and national political contexts; turf (specifically the balance of ownership over vision-setting and action between faculty and administrators); and the scope and role of ethics in a STEM-focused public land grant university. We also discuss challenges we faced in communication, both across disciplines in a large university setting, and with administrators inclined to conflate professional ethics with other topics such as technology ethics or public policy concerns. We share discussions we have had among ourselves around what types of alternative structures might facilitate our mission; and how such alternatives might help us resist replication of the kinds of problematic power dynamics we are already witnessing and navigating. It is our hope that our participation in this conversation provides an opportunity for us to learn from others, share what we have learned thus far, and come to a position of greater clarity regarding our intentions and priorities. Most of all we seek moral imagination to identify creative paths forward for a broad set of stakeholders to more deeply encounter professional ethics in discovery, learning, and engagement.

This article provides guidance and rationales for managing transitions within ethics centers as directors and staff are hired. The structures that reinforce the mission and ensures that the center continues to provide benefit to the community requires delicate strategizing among campus and community constituencies. The principles and practices that serve as a best-practices management approach are articulated within this article..

Social injustice and calls to activism take many forms, whether in environmental, medical, legal, political, or educational realms. In this article, I consider the role of activism in ethics institute initiatives. First, as a case study, I discuss an activist initiative for police reform led, in part, by the Kegley Institute of Ethics at California State University, Bakersfield. Specifically, I outline the formation of the Bakersfield Police Department¡ªCommunity Collaborative (BPD-CC), created to review regional and national police policy and training recommendations and to solicit and formalize community-sourced recommendations for policing reform and building trust and greater partnership between the BPD and community. Second, I discuss outcomes and implications of this project and consider its significance for understanding activist roles available to the community engaged ethics institute more generally. In this discussion, I explore practical dimensions and ethical implications of activist approaches in the work of an ethics institute.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ethics centers were forced to reimagine program delivery. In a tumultuous time with rampant social isolation, the need for ethics education and dialogue was also critical. The authors, members of the directorship team of the Kegley Institute of Ethics (KIE), discuss how KIE met these challenges through organizing over fifty online events during the pandemic, including webinars, pedagogy workshops, ethics bowls, intercollegiate student conversations, colloquia, film viewings, and podcasts. The article describes both the opportunities and challenges that different types of virtual events present and argues that innovation in online programming can help ethics centers show ethical leadership in their communities. As one example, we discuss how online events can both enhance and hinder accessibility for participants. We also describe how online programming presents both barriers and opportunities for community building and can prompt ethics centers to reflect on their identities and missions.

Individual and institutional conflicts of interest arise with increasing frequency and negative sequelae as universities and their principals, as well as individual faculty members, engage in research (and other activities) with support from profit/not-for-profit entities. This essay examines how institutional and individual conflicts of interest (COI) arise for ethics centers and their faculty/staff, respectively. It defines COI, endorses a reasonable person standard for determining when COI exist, and considers problems that arise when disclosure of COI is embraced as a remedy for them. It argues that transparency and disclosure are generally inadequate measures to address COI, especially those of ethics centers. It concludes by sketching other measures that may be ingredients in attempts to avoid, manage, or mitigate the COI of ethics centers and their faculty/staff.

This paper explores some of the reasons why we, as a business ethics center housed at a state university, are transitioning from being a largely neutral platform on business ethics topics to becoming an advocate for specific perspectives. Comprising the topics of interest are issues such as climate change, capitalism, and certain medical and public health controversies. Presented here are four main reasons behind this move: pluralistic arguments, moral ¡°switching,¡± existential crises, and combating disinformation. Two examples regarding capitalism and vaccine mandates are used to demonstrate advocacy in practice.

When evaluating the success of an ethics center, one can look to the center¡¯s level of engagement and achievement with affiliated institutions and communities. Such criteria are appropriate. What can be overlooked, however, is the internal structure and processes that help constitute the ethics center itself. In short, it is not merely the results an ethics center may claim that should be of interest for evaluating institutional health and longevity, but the very character of the organization itself. Using criteria offered in support of corporate agency and character, I argue that ethics centers can possess organizational agency and a ¡°character¡± of their own. While not the same sense of character we associate with human beings, the ¡°character¡± (and ¡°virtue¡±) I describe is still a meaningful and identifiable feature that can and ought to be developed within the structure of ethics centers.

In this essay I propose that ethics centers should take leadership roles in clarifying uses of normatively thick and complex concepts. Using the concept of integrity as an example, I build a case for increased focus on thick concepts at work in ethics. Integrity is a special case, given its conceptual complexity and the diversity of contexts in which it is utilized. I argue that failure to focus on conceptual clarification leaves the door open to misuse or manipulation of ethical concepts and to contextual siloing, each of which limits the work that ethics and ethics centers can do in support of institutional cultures. Ethics centers stand, or¡ªas I make clear¡ªshould stand, as conceptual stewards for articulation of the importance of such concepts in balancing external ethics visibility and personal ethics engagement.

Western Michigan University¡¯s Center for the Study of Ethics in Society has always had a ¡°generalist¡± approach¡ªthat is to say, an interdisciplinary orientation toward studying a broad range of ethical issues. This article explains how the center¡¯s ¡°generalist¡± orientation developed and why it is desirable for promoting public reflection about ethical issues. It focuses on these dimensions: (a) valuing an across-the-curriculum approach to promote understanding of complex ethical issues; (b) adopting a broad, rather than narrow focus, when it comes to ethics; (c) committing to practical ethics, which bridges theory and practice to shed light on issues of practical relevance to all; and (d) decentering philosophy as the arbiter for what counts as ¡°doing ethics.¡± The article ends with a look at challenges concerning stable funding and administrative support for a center that does not fit neatly into a single academic unit or specialty and shares some lessons learned.

The goal of this article is to offer a three-step approach for a systematic discussion on the procedures, roles, and responsibilities of ethics centers. First, we identify three levels of responsibility: scientific, organizational/institutional, societal/global. Second, we propose that justice (as outlined in the concept of Sustainable Development), contextual pluralism, and a process orientation serve as normative foundations for developing ethics centers¡¯ mission. Third, we outline and emphasize the crucial role that teaching plays in the work of ethics centers, as well as in other academic (and non-academic) institutions. As an overarching perspective, we suggest two complementary kinds of approaches for the role of ethics especially in scientific research: i) ethics becoming a constitutional part of any research (and teaching) project. ii) specific in-depth interdisciplinary projects with ethics being the research (and teaching) topic.

In this paper, I respond to one aspect of Elizabeth Barnes¡¯s argument in The Minority Body: a Theory of Disability. To do this, I first explain her argument as it applies towards children: in order to have a genuine ¡°mere-difference¡± view of disability, one may not cause nor remove disability. The consequence of this theory is that it is impermissible for parents to choose to remove their child¡¯s disability. I argue this is incorrect. Barnes¡¯s assumption relies on a non-interference framework, which is inappropriate when applied to children. When we use an interest-protection framework instead, it becomes at least permissible for parents, and in some situations obligatory, to choose to remove their child¡¯s disability. Because the permissibility or obligation is situationally dependent, this view is consistent with Barnes¡¯s overall argument for the mere-difference view of disability.

Since the concept of race is scientifically nonreferential, it is tempting to think that we can simply eliminate it right away from our lexicon, from our statistical categories, from our lives. But those of us who are eliminativists about race in the long run need to take a more roundabout path in killing off this concept. Through the painstaking work of teaching our students that race, though biologically nonreferential, remains part of various systems of oppression, and engaging in open dialogue and political organization in order to make racial categories economically and politically irrelevant, the concept of race must die a slow and painful death.

There are striking points of affinity between Hannah Arendt¡¯s concept of a politico-moral variety of allusive thinking, and Stanley Cavell¡¯s concept of aversive thinking characteristic of Emersonian Moral Perfectionism (EMP). Although both Arendt and Cavell¡¯s EMP are pessimistic if not hostile to the suggestion of the redemption of a vibrant public sphere, their thought suggests possible moves toward a practical politico-moral philosophy¡ªpolitical philosophy as provocative moral practice recognizable in Socrates and Diogenes of Sinope. The paper teases out threads of thought in Arendt and Cavell toward an account of a quasi-public perfectionist philosophical practice¡ªcall it moral friendship¡ªsupportive of political-moral judgment in response to social conditions of its repression. Moral friendship is ultimately the cultivation of moral taste that enables one to notice moral phenomena susceptible to one¡¯s judgment whose failure to be noticed is an occasion for regret.

This essay takes Nietzsche¡¯s remarks on ethics as springboards for developing a method of diversifying the teaching of ethics to confront twenty-first century existential crises. Prompted by Darwin¡¯s research, Nietzsche envisioned humanity¡¯s self-extinction through science and technology unchecked by philosophy. A curriculum for teaching ethics to confront that catastrophe includes all the intellectual disciplines and focuses on the evolution of ethics over time. The curriculum¡¯s primary objective is to stimulate students to create new values appropriate to their changing circumstances. After focusing on Nietzsche¡¯s early efforts to define philosophy¡¯s role with respect to art and science, the essay advances a rationale and methodology for diversifying ethics across the curriculum. The essay then describes African American and African proposals that have the promise of transforming Nietzsche¡¯s remarks on promoting diversity in ethics into practical instruments for guaranteeing life¡¯s future.

Rather than referring to ¡°minorities,¡± ¡°members of minority groups¡± or ¡°underrepresented minorities,¡± we should refer to such individuals as ¡°minoritized.¡± Using ¡°minoritized¡± makes it clear that being minoritized is about power and equity not numbers, connects racial oppression to the oppression of women, and gives us an easy way to conceive of intersectionality as being a minoritized member of a minoritized group. The term ¡°minoritized¡± reveals the fact that white males and other dominant groups minoritize members of subordinated groups rather than obscuring this agency, describes microaggressions better than the term ¡®microaggressions,¡¯ and helps explain the need for solidarity within minoritized groups. It gives us a powerful way to promote racial justice by appealing to the common experience of being excluded. While using ¡°minoritized¡± risks creating a false equivalence that sees all instances of being minoritized as equal and discounting unique forms of oppression by subsuming them under a single term, using this term carefully can ensure that its advantages outweigh these risks.

In the spring 2020 semester six students enrolled in a topics course in the philosophy department at my institution titled, ¡°The Poverty Game.¡± We created this article by collaboration based on fourteen weeks of writing assignments and class discussions. All of us participated in an on-campus poverty simulation ¡°game¡± sponsored by the Teacher Resource Center. Our objectives in the course were to critically analyze the game by asking questions and challenging assumptions about goals, rules, narrative profiles, and solutions to poverty that were implied by the simulation. We then set about to revise the game. Our suggested revisions highlighted structural conditions as part of an explanation about why populations and subgroups are poor. Identifying these inequities positioned us to recommend justice solutions to poverty and, further, to empower players of the simulation to become agents of change.

In order to effectively prepare students for medical decisions with complex, ethical disagreements and value-laden conflicts, a progression from simpler case analysis to multi-layered conflicts is often helpful. Presented here is a unique case of pregnancy in a true hermaphrodite from recent medical literature. The case is artificially layered with additional, medical and discoverable contextual issues to help analyze three distinct questions in medical ethics: 1) Is it ethically permissible to perform an elective termination of pregnancy (ETOP) on a minor, 2) Is it ethically permissible to keep this information from the parents, and 3) are additional and complicating medical features included in confidentiality agreements involving minors? The pedagogical goals include introducing and effectively utilizing the Orr-Shelton, four box method of clinical ethics assessment, demonstrating the need to uncover/discover important contextual (cultural, religious, family, etc.) features not usually incorporated fully into patient charts, to prepare medical students to research and become familiar with the local legal environment, and to illustrate that what appears to be a single a single ethical dilemma is likely far more complex requiring a multi-focused assessment.

Our research addressed an increase of unethical practices in professional settings identified in the literature, and this increase coincides with a shift in U.S. culture from principle-based ethics to one trending toward moral relativism. We discovered many programs lack comprehensiveness to deal with the complexities of culture in graduate education. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to explore and develop a conceptual framework for a comprehensive teaching model targeting graduate-level educators, administrators, and educational boards across disciplines. Data were collected over 13 years from a doctoral professional ethics course at a private, faith-based university in South Texas. Using a Design Based Research process following Reeves¡¯ (2006) guidelines, we developed a multi-disciplinary graduate theoretical teaching model for ethics: Comprehensive Professional Ethics Teaching Model (CPET model), grounded in our data analysis and findings. Recommendations include implementing and testing the efficacy of the CPET model in subsequent studies.