Abstract
A review of university mission statements reveals a commitment to graduating ethical students. The question becomes how to create curricula and classroom experiences (including SoTL research) to ensure the university lives into its mission. This inquiry begins by exploring the purpose of ethics education: What is meant by graduating ethical students? Next, we use a three-stage model to help faculty recognize their role in ethics education. The first stage, challenge, introduces learners to the context of the conversation, describes historical ways of approaching ethical dilemmas, and helps learners explore emerging values-in-tension. The second stage, structure, scaffolds learning to help learners become effective ethical agents. This stage uses a method of inquiry where students learn to discern what actions members of their various communities require to consider a person ethical. The third stage, support, guides students toward ethical maturity by engaging in intentional conversation as faculty encourage students to discover their ethical preferences, learn to appreciate and work effectively with those with other value priorities, and finally explore their ethical blind spots as they embrace uncertainty. This process involves disrupting closely held beliefs as learners use their imagination to envision what can be as they face the ambiguity of what is in an ever-changing world.
The views expressed in this book chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Baird, C.A., McCaig, K. (2022). Everyone Teaches Ethics: An Embedded Approach to Ethics Education. In: Fedoruk, L.M. (eds) Ethics and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Ethics and Integrity in Educational Contexts, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11810-4_13
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