We need a field of educational ethics

Abstract

During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers faced numerous ethical questions in biomedical science, public health, educational policy, and education practice. Bioethicists were key partners in informing decision-making in their areas of expertise; educational ethicists, on the other hand, had to fight our way to the table if we got in the building at all. How did bioethics go from non-existent as a field in 1960 to ubiquitous a half-century later, and how could normative work in and about education make the same leap? This article uses bioethics as a foil to argue for why we need a new field of educational ethics, what such a field could accomplish, and how it might do so. It describes the kinds of problems that bioethics was created to address and the different roles that bioethicists play. The article argues that edethicists can and should address the same kinds of problems as well as play similar scholarly, clinical, and policy-oriented roles.