Unit Code: PGDTHE 506

Unit Title: Ethical Issues in Teaching

A concise presentation of Ethics, morality, Education &
Types of Ethical reasoning
With links to videos and articles on the same.
 Ethics –What is it

• The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can
mean custom, habit, character or disposition.
• Ethics: is a study of what human beings ought to and
ought not to do.
• It is a system of moral principles.
• They affect how people make decisions and lead their
lives.
• Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and
society and is also described as moral philosophy.
• It’s a study that sets principles and rules for right living
 Cont
• It also refers to well-founded standards of right and
wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually
in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society,
fairness, or specific virtues.
• ethics refers to the study and development of one's
ethical standards
• Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues
of honesty, compassion, and loyalty
• (Issues in Ethics IIE V1 N1 (Fall 1987). Revised in 2010).
 Ethics Continued

• Ethics is considered as the systematic study of

human actions from the point of view of their
rightness or wrongness as means for the achievement
of a person’s ultimate happiness….
• A person’s character is thus understood to be his set
disposition to behave systematically in one way rather
than in another. Thus choosing to lead one particular
kind of life as their way of life.
 Ethics contd

• Aristotle called this way of conducting of self ethos

which he described firstly as a disposition or natural
habit and secondly as an actualized habit, an acquired
one which has come about by the repetition of acts
(an actualized operative quality), a custom (Gichure,
C. 1997)
 Cont
• The subject matter of ethics is human conduct, those
actions that a person performs consciously and willfully
and for which he/she is held accountable.
• It is not interested in what a person does except to
compare it with what he/she ought not to do as wrong.
• Ethics does not study how human beings behave, but how
they ought to behave.
• Ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong
that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms
of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or
specific virtues.
 Cont
• Simply stated, ethics refers to standards of behavior that tell us
how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which
they find themselves-as friends, parents, children, citizens,
businesspeople, teachers, professionals, and so on.
• It’s a study that sets principles and rules for right living;
• The subject matter of ethics is human conduct, those actions that
a person performs consciously and willfully for these alone are in
our power, and concerning these alone can rules be prescribed,
not concerning those actions which are performed without
deliberation, or through ignorance or coercion. It is these that we
are accountable.
• (Catholic encyclopedia available on
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/0556a.html-13/01/08)
 What ethics is not
• Ethics is not the same as feelings. Feelings provide
important information for our ethical choices. Some
people have highly developed habits that make them feel
bad when they do something wrong, but many people feel
good even though they are doing something wrong. And
often our feelings will tell us it is uncomfortable to do the
right thing if it is hard.
• Ethics is not religion. Many people are not religious, but
ethics applies to everyone. Most religions do advocate
high ethical standards but sometimes do not address all
the types of problems we face.
 Cont

• Ethics is not following the law. A good system of law does

incorporate many ethical standards, but law can deviate from
what is ethical. Law can become ethically corrupt, as some
totalitarian regimes have made it. Law can be a function of
power alone and designed to serve the interests of narrow
groups.
• Law may have a difficult time designing or enforcing standards
in some important areas, and may be slow to address new
problems.
• Ethics is not following culturally accepted norms. Some cultures
are quite ethical, but others become corrupt -or blind to certain
ethical concerns
 Contd
• Ethics is not science. Social and natural science can
provide important data to help us make better ethical
choices. But science alone does not tell us what we
ought to do. Science may provide an explanation for
what humans are like. But ethics provides reasons for
how humans ought to act. And just because
something is scientifically or technologically possible,
it may not be ethical to do it.(video Link.
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethics-
videos)
https://www.youtube.com/user/appliedethicscenter
on five ways to think ethically
 Cont
• Ethics differs from morals and morality in that ethics denotes the
theory of right action and the greater good, while morals indicate their
practice.
• Ethics asks questions like "How should people act?" (Normative or
Prescriptive Ethics), "What do people think is right?" (Descriptive
Ethics), "How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?"
(Applied Ethics), and "What does 'right' even mean?" (Meta-Ethics)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpwUUNepZc) on What is Ethics
(MORALITY, ETHICS & PHILOSOPHY LECTURES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_t4obUc51A Summary of
ethics
 Why it is hard to Identify Ethical
Standards
• There are two fundamental problems in identifying
the ethical standards we are to follow:
1. On what do we base our ethical standards?
2. How do those standards get applied to specific
situations we face?
 Cont

• If our ethics are not based on feelings, religion, law,

accepted social practice, or science, what are they
based on?
• Many philosophers and ethicists have helped us
answer this critical question.
• They have suggested at least five different sources of
ethical standards we should use.
 Cont

Utilitarian approach
Rights approach
Virtues approach
Common good approach
Justice approach
Refer (https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-
decision-making/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/)
 Morality

• Morality (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper

behavior") refers to a code of conduct, by which human
beings regulate their lives.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Morality
• One of the oldest meanings of morality is behavior
according to custom.
• By ‘customs’ also means an accepted way of behaving or
of doing things in a society or a community;
• “Moral” and ‘morality” means “normatively human” or
“what the human being ought to be”.
 Cont

• Morality in a descriptive sense may be defined as a code

of conduct endorsed and adhered to by a society, group
• It is whatever a society, group, or individual, says it is
• It therefore refers to the codes of conduct regulating how
people behave
Video link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Ns1WEK3
c8
 Cont

• In its normative sense, morality may be defined as a

code of conduct that would be accepted by all
rational people under certain idealized conditions
• It is the set of correct moral principles, which,
though they probably will never be universally
adopted, ought to be adopted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpwUUNepZc
 Cont
• Normative ethics is the attempt to arrive at general moral
standards that tell us how to judge right from wrong, or
good from bad, and how to live moral lives.
• It involves articulating the character or good habits that
we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the
consequences of our behavior on ourselves and others.
• “Moral”, “morality” refers always to human activity in so
far as it is free and either good or bad.
• It deals with the ethical value of the act, i.e. the goodness
or badness or human act as it is governed by certain laws
and regulation.
 Cont
• What human beings out to be is moral and what they ought not
to be is immoral.
• Human conduct is specifically inscribed by law and others by
our virtue of being human; e.g. Human decency-dress well, eat
well or take care of your body, (mind your body odor).
• These are some of golden rules that are not inscribed in a book
but they are within us as persons.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6C38QEJsCY-on
normative and descriptive ethics)
• (https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=chr-
greentree_ff&p=video+on+normative+ethics#id=18&vi
d=92dff70443840fd450f25afaeb9675ac&action=view)
 Cont

• Acting Morally
• Moral deals with value
• What’s moral? Is focusing on the ethical value of the
action (rightness) dealing with the rightness or
wrongness of the behavior
• Conversely, you are dealing with the badness or
goodness.
 Cont

• Acting morally means that we do not make self interest

the sole concern of action but we ask ourselves ‘whether
what we are doing implies respect for the value of the
things and living beings that constitute our world.
• Moral actions-reveal that we acknowledge that human
beings have the same fundamental value as ourselves.
• We acknowledge also that we live in a world that has its
own value .
• The essence of morality is respect for the inherent value
of the world around us.
 Cont

• The motivation is to act morally because this motivation

springs from our experience of the value of the world.
• Thus, human being are moral beings because they have
the capacity to experience and know the good and to
freely respond to it. The moral life is a life freely lived in
response to goodness.
• The discipline we call ethics is therefore a systematic and
critical reflection on the moral life. Morality is about
achieving human fulfillment by living a virtuous way of
life.
 Cont
• Morality therefore involves two essential aspects of humanity:
• Awareness of value, our capacity to experience and
respond to the inherent goodness of the world, things,
beings and persons that makes it up.
• Freedom, the freedom to open ourselves to this experience
or to suppress or ignore it.
• Thus, human being are moral beings because they have the
capacity to experience and know the good and to freely respond
to it. The moral life is a life freely lived in response to
goodness.
 FACTORS THAT AFFECTS
MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS.

• Human acts are morally good if the three sources

namely object, circumstances and intention are in
harmony with the moral norms.
 The object
• The nature of act – Act itself can be good or bad,
indifferent or evil. Some acts will always be good.
• The object of the human act is that effect which an
action primarily and directly causes.
• The result of the act independent of any circumstances or
of the intention of the agent.
• Effect is the impact of the act on the rights and claims of
persons.
• The object is the primary source for the judgement on
the morality of an act.
 The circumstances
• They are particulars of the concrete human act which are
not necessarily connected with its object.
• Circumstances are morally relevant if they increase or
decrease good or evil effects or bring about additional
effects of evil nature.
• These circumstances are to be considered as follows:
• Who, what, where, with what means, why, how and when.
• The circumstances can alter the morality of human acts for
better or for worse.
 The intention
• The end or the purpose is the reason for which the agent undertakes an
act. Intention is the plan or determination of the will to bring about a
certain effect.
• Intention views the end as a source of action.
• The end modifies the morality of an act in such a way as circumstances.
• A good end can make better an act good in its object, make good an act
indifferent in its object and less evil an act evil in its object.
• A bad end can make worse an act.
• Subjective factors depend upon the subject and they confer with an
action subjective morality
 Obstacles of human acts

• Impediment is anything or any condition which hinders

an act from being judged as either good or bad.
• Impairments of required knowledge.
• Subject morality is the morality that an action receives
from the subject who performs it.
• The subjective factors can depend on the intellect
(knowledge and awareness the subject has when doing
something or on the will i.e. the freedom involved in
performing the action.
 Cont
• Ignorance – it may be invisible or visible. Invisible ignorance is when
one is not able to dispel by such diligence reason.
• Invisible ignorance prevents the human act from being voluntary in
regard to that which is known.
• What is not known cannot be voluntary in itself e.g. Food poisoning.
• Visible ignorance does not take the voluntariness of what is effected by
a human act or its omission, but it diminishes voluntariness.
• It does not prevent voluntariness since the ignorance is voluntary in its
cause and is provoked by laziness, or bad will.
• Impairment of free consent – usually it diminishes voluntariness and
guilt.
 Education

• It is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging

and giving time to discovery.
• It is a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation
for future living(’ John Dewey,1916) .
• Educators look to act with people rather on them.
• Their task is to draw, to bring out or develop potential.
 Cont

Such education is:

• Deliberate and hopeful. It is learning that we act with a
purpose – to develop understanding and judgement,
and enable action.
• We act with a purpose – to develop understanding
and judgement, and enable action.
• We believe that learning is possible, that nothing can
keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge
and finding a way to know’ (hooks 2003: xiv)
 Cont
• Informed, respectful and wise. A process of inviting truth and
possibility.
• The process of education flows from a basic orientation
of respect – respect for truth, others and themselves, and
the world.
• It is an attitude or feeling which is carried through into
concrete action, into the way we treat people, educators to
hold truth dearly.
• They should display the ‘two basic virtues of truth’:
sincerity and accuracy (Williams 2002: 11).
 Cont
Being wise means
• appreciating what can make people flourish
• being open to truth in its various guises and allowing
subjects to speak to us
• developing the capacity to reflect
• being knowledgeable, especially about ourselves, around
‘what makes people tick’ and the systems of which we are a
part
• being discerning – able to evaluate and judge situations.
(Smith and Smith 2008: 57-69)
 Cont
• Grounded in a desire that at all may flourish and share in life. It is a
cooperative and inclusive activity that looks to help people to
live their lives as well as they can.
• This commitment to the good of all and of each individual is
central to the vision of education explored here, but it could be
argued that it is possible to be involved in education without
this.
• We could take out concern for others.
• We could just focus on process – the wise, hopeful and
respectful cultivation of learning – and not state to whom this
applies and the direction it takes.
 Cont

• The cultivation of learning is a cognitive and

emotional and social activity (Illeris 2002).
• Education is deliberate. We act with a purpose – to
develop understanding and judgement, and enable
action.