Abstract
This chapter explores the attributes of ethical mindedness and ethical imagination to argue that these are desirable graduate competencies that should be fostered in postgraduate profession-oriented education. Ethical mindedness, guided by defensible, high standards, is a disposition and a practice that encompasses respect and impartiality regarding individuals, teams, organizations and phenomena. Ethical imagination is the capability to examine and identify potential ethical issues in novel situations and create ethical ways to confront them. To ensure that ethical practices occur in higher education research, institutional ethics committees are required to examine the ethical implication of each research application based on publicly espoused regulatory ethical guidelines and standards. However, ethics committees can only call for compliance with regulations and standards but cannot ensure that all researchers will exercise ethical behaviour when they are confronted with unforeseen ethically ambiguous conditions. For this reason, in this chapter, we assert that assuring ethical research practices requires more than ensuring compliance with a set of rules. Ethics should be viewed as a knowledge discipline, incorporating attributes of ethical mindedness and ethical imagination that are fostered as graduate dispositions and capabilities that contribute to the development of ethically-minded business professionals. To conclude the chapter, we will generate a conceptual framework for situating the role of ethical mindedness and ethical imagination in a supportive institutional climate and culture in postgraduate professions-oriented research education. We also offer two propositions that would provide the opportunity for empirical testing and theoretical advancement in the field of ethics education.
Keywords
- Ethical mindedness
- Ethical imagination
- Ethical dilemma
- Ethical scholarship of teaching and learning
- Ethical culture and climate
- Postgraduate professionally-oriented education
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Ala, M., De Vos, S., Nair, S., Orrell, J. (2022). Developing Ethical Mindedness and Ethical Imagination in Postgraduate Professionally Oriented 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_12
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