Five Steps to Get Students Thinking About Ethics

Karen Cotter, Laura Bond, & Lauren Fullmer

The Greater Good Science Center

Originally posted 22 FEB 23

Here is an excerpt and the 5 steps:

Five steps for ethical decision-making

Teaching ethical thinking aligns with the mission you may have as an educator to promote global citizenship. “Being a global citizen means understanding that global ideas and solutions must still fit the complexities of local contexts and cultures, and meet each community’s specific needs and capacities,” explains AFS-USA. While investigating real-world problems from many perspectives, students gain an appreciation for many sides of an issue and avoid the pitfall of simply reinforcing their preexisting attitudes.

Ethical thinking also enriches social-emotional learning. According to researchers Michael D. Burroughs and Nikolaus J. Barkauskas, “By focusing on social, emotional, and ethical literacy in schools educators can contribute to the development of persons with greater self-awareness, emotional understanding and, in turn, the capability to act ethically and successfully interact with others in a democratic society.” The five steps below serve as a seamless way to integrate ethical decision making into a science or STEM class.

These steps come from our Prosocial Design Process for Ethical Decision-Making, which itself is a synthesis of three frameworks: prosocial education (which focuses on promoting emotional, social, moral, and civic capacities that express character in students), the Engineering Design Process (an open-ended problem-solving practice that encourages growth from failure), and the IDEA Ethical Decision-Making Framework. This process offers a way for students to come up with creative solutions to a problem and bring ethical consideration to global issues.

1. Ask questions to identify the issue.

2. Consider the perspectives of people impacted to brainstorm solutions. 

3. Analyze research to design and test solutions. 

4. Evaluate and iterate for an ethically justifiable solution.

5. Communicate findings to all relevant stakeholders. 

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This ethical framework guides students to think beyond themselves to identify solutions that impact their community. The added SEL (social-emotional learning) benefits of self-reflection, social awareness, relationship skills, and appreciation of the world around them awaken students’ consciousness of core ethical values, equipping them to make decisions for the greater good. Using prosocial science topics like climate change empowers students to engage in relevant, real-world content to create a more equitable, sustainable, and just world where they experience how their humanity can impact the greater good.

The info is here.

California Requires Suicide Prevention Phone Number On Student IDs

Mark Kreider
Kaiser Health News
Originally posted August 30, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

A California law that has greeted students returning to school statewide over the past few weeks bears a striking resemblance to that Palo Alto policy from four years ago. Beginning with the 2019-20 school year, all IDs for California students in grades seven through 12, and in college, must bear the telephone number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That number is 800-273-TALK (8255).

“I am extremely proud that this strategy has gone statewide,” said Herrmann, who is now superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District near Sacramento.

The new student ID law marks a statewide response to what educators, administrators and students themselves know is a growing need.

The numbers support that idea — and they are as jarring as they are clarifying.

Suicide was the second-leading cause of death in the United States among people ages 10 to 24 in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The suicide rate among teenagers has risen dramatically over the past two decades, according to data from the CDC.

The info is here.

Teaching Ethics In The Trump Era

Kelly Richmond Pope
Forbes Magazine
Originally posted January 15, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Ethical leadership should be a nonpartisan value that we all share. Ethics is under attack and I am no longer sure how we defend it. In class, we often have discussions about conflicts of interests and the dangers conflicts of interest have on the auditor-client relationship. According to the AICPA website. ‘accountants in public practice should be independent in fact and appearance when providing auditing and other attestation services’. When my students see New York Times headlines like ‘Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA Pick Backed Industry Donors Over Regulators’, what should they think? Do ethics rules apply to everyone or only a few?

I spend my time teaching future CPAs that we must continue to adhere to a strict code of ethical conduct but I fear they are growing weary of this message. The headlines that my students are now seeing is very confusing and really causes them to question the role of ethical leadership. If we operate under the mantra of ‘do what I say and not what I do’ I fear that will be revisiting the 2008 financial crisis in the very near future.

The article is here.

Disgraced Chapel Hill Ethicist Says Claims Against Her Are Totally False

by Andy Thomason
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published August 2, 2016

Jan Boxill, the ethicist and former faculty chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose apparent participation in the shocking academic fraud there left observers amazed, says all the allegations against her are false.

In a letter responding to the National Collegiate Athletic Association on Tuesday, Ms. Boxill’s lawyer, Randall M. Roden, said the claims made against her in a report by a former federal prosecutor, Kenneth L. Wainstein, were untrue.

“It did not happen,” the defiant letter reads. “Not one of the allegations against Jan Boxill is true,” Mr. Roden continued, referencing allegations made by the NCAA, which relied on the so-called Wainstein report.

The article is here.

More students are hospitalized for mental health problems

July 2011, Vol 42, No. 7

Print version: page 12

An increased awareness of mental health issues is leading to more college students being hospitalized for psychological reasons, according to new data from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD).

More than 3,700 students were hospitalized for suicide threats and other mental health issues in 2010, a significant jump from the 2,069 hospitalizations reported in 2006, the first year the survey was conducted. The survey found a rate of 7.93 hospitalizations per 10,000 students last year, up from 5.39 hospitalizations per 10,000 students in 2008, a 47 percent increase.

Anxiety was the most commonly cited complaint bringing students in to counseling centers last year, edging out depression as the top reason for seeing a counselor.

One factor driving the increase is that more universities are establishing “students of concern committees,” which coordinate the treatment of students with mental health and behavioral issues who have come to the attention of professors, campus police and residence hall advisers, says Victor M. Barr, PhD, director of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville counseling center.

Compared with years past, most institutions now have specific written policies to help students get treatment and to monitor their progress, Barr says.

The survey also found that:

• 75 percent of directors reported needing additional psychiatric services for students.
• 25 percent of students seen in counseling centers were already taking psychotropic medications.

As a result of increased demand for services, campus counseling centers are getting budget approval from their institutions to hire more psychiatrists and bring on more case managers to track treatment referrals, says Dan Jones, PhD, AUCCCD president and counseling center director at Appalachian State University.

“It used to be that counseling centers would give clients a list of three therapists and leave it in the client’s hands to get treatment when referred out,” Jones says.