Moral Dialogue Research Articles

Novice teachers reflexively explicate their internal moral dialogues linked with their practical experiences in Dutch primary schools

This article discusses the personal stories of Dutch novice teachers, explicating their internal moral dialogues about their daily work in primary schools. Aside from their didactical work, novices must address sociocultural frictions in school, which seems too little or not developed in teachers' initial education. Using an interview protocol at the Dialogical Self Theory and ethics intersection, novice teachers are challenged to discuss moral involvement with their work. The study reports findings regarding the moral themes that novices discussed when asked about coping with the destabilising aspects and how novice teachers express their reflexivity in narrating the disbalances generated by unexpected experiences during their induction. Results show that novices can handle the contradictory fluctuations in the daily routines and problem-solving issues they were taught about in their initial education by alternating involvement and distanciation of practice. However, they show more discomfort about the interplexity of the cooperation with colleague professionals, forcing them to make tradeoffs between the different perspectives and possibilities that do not always fit their ideas of good work. The conclusion is that a change in perspective on induction from trained problem-solving towards reflexive problem-finding makes novices embrace the uncertainty and move it from dread to the gift for professional development. Conclusive remarks show that teacher education should educate students more consciously about the different results of problem-solving versus problem-finding strategies. Novices should gain more critical thinking skills that facilitate their reflexive practice.

Sustainable political commitment is necessary for institutionalizing community participation in health policy-making: Insights from Iran

BackgroundCommunity participation is currently utilized as a national strategy to promote public health and mitigate health inequalities across the world. While community participation is acknowledged as a civic right in the Constitution of Iran and other related upstream documents, the government has typically failed in translating, integrating and implementing community participation in health system policy. The present study was conducted to determine the level of public voice consideration within the health policy in Iran and address fundamental interventions required to promote the public voice in the context of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This study has originality because there is no study that addresses the requirements of institutionalizing community participation especially in low-middle-income countries, so Iran’s experience can be useful for other countries.MethodsMethodologically, this study utilized a multi-method and multi-strand sequential research design, including qualitative, comparative and documentary studies. In the first phase, the current level of community participation in the health policy cycle of Iran was identified using the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) spectrum. In the second phase, a comparative study was designed to identify relevant interventions to promote the community participation level in the selected countries under study. In the third phase, a qualitative study was conducted to address the barriers, facilitators and strategies for improving the level of public participation. Accordingly, appropriate interventions and policy options were recommended. Interventions were reviewed in a policy dialogue with policy-makers and community representatives, and their effectiveness, applicability and practical feasibility were evaluated.ResultsBased on the IAP2 spectrum, the level of community participation in the health policy-making process is non-participation, while empowerment is set at the highest level in the upstream documents. Moreover, capacity-building, demand, mobilization of the local population, provision of resources and setting a specific structure were found to be among the key interventions to improve the level of community participation in Iran’s health sector. More importantly, “political will for action” was identified as the driving force for implementing the necessary health interventions.ConclusionsTo sum up, a paradigm shift in the governing social, economic and political philosophy; establishing a real-world and moral dialogue and communication between the government and the society; identifying and managing the conflicts of interest in the leading stockholders of the healthcare system; and, more importantly, maintaining a stable political will for action are integral to promote and institutionalize participatory governance in the health sector of Iran. All of the above will lead us to scheme, implement and institutionalize suitable interventions for participatory governance in health and medicine.

Can Video Games Promote Moral Cognition? Supporting Epistemic Play in Papers, Please through Dialogue

Research shows an increasing interest in video game use for educational purposes. However, their use does not always give rise to positive learning, particularly when moral learning is analysed. This result can be explained since video games promote pragmatic goals aimed at success. Therefore, we believe that to facilitate moral learning, it is necessary to promote a moral cognition focus on epistemic goals oriented towards reflection on the actions and events that take place in the game. To identify if epistemic goals can promote moral cognition with a video game, we used Papers, Please. In this game, players take on the role of a customs officer who should face moral dilemmas related to allowing immigrants to cross the border into their country. We analysed the dialogues and decisions made by 12 pairs of students through a category system. The dialogue between players facilitated greater moral activation compared to studies that analysed spontaneous play. In addition, we identified that the game mechanics that promoted moral conflicts between players fostered more moral dialogue. Likewise, when the players empathised with the immigrants, the moral dialogue was more frequent. Therefore, we believe that these characteristics should be considered when designing educational practices using video games to promote moral cognition.

Effect of Structural Moral Case Deliberation on Burnout Symptoms, Moral Distress, and Team Climate in ICU Professionals: A Parallel Cluster Randomized Trial.

Moral case deliberation (MCD) is a team-based and facilitator-led, structured moral dialogue about ethical difficulties encountered in practice. This study assessed whether offering structural MCD in ICUs reduces burnout symptoms and moral distress and strengthens the team climate among ICU professionals. This is a parallel cluster randomized trial. Six ICUs in two hospitals located in Nijmegen, between January 2020 and September 2021. Four hundred thirty-five ICU professionals. Three of the ICUs organized structural MCD. In three other units, there was no structural MCD or other structural discussions of moral problems. The primary outcomes investigated were the three burnout symptoms-emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment-among ICU professionals measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory on a 0-6 scale. Secondary outcomes were moral distress (Moral Distress Scale) on a 0-336 scale and team climate (Safety Attitude Questionnaire) on a 0-4 scale. Organizational culture was an explorative outcome (culture of care barometer) and was measured on a 0-4 scale. Outcomes were measured at baseline and in 6-, 12-, and 21-month follow-ups. Intention-to-treat analyses were conducted using linear mixed models for longitudinal nested data. Structural MCD did not affect emotional exhaustion or depersonalization, or the team climate. It reduced professionals' personal accomplishment (-0.15; p < 0.05) but also reduced moral distress (-5.48; p < 0.01). Perceptions of organizational support (0.15; p < 0.01), leadership (0.19; p < 0.001), and participation opportunities (0.13; p < 0.05) improved. Although structural MCD did not mitigate emotional exhaustion or depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment in ICU professionals, it did reduce moral distress. Moreover, it did not improve team climate, but improved the organizational culture.

Bible teachers cultivate social awareness of otherness

ABSTRACT This article discusses Israeli Bible teachers’ perceptions of the ‘otherness’ and their actions in a reality in which teachers are required to balance the tension between being experts in the field of knowledge, coping with a state curriculum that promotes a faith-religious worldview, and acting as educators in promoting discourse dealing with social issues of inclusion, respect, and tolerance for the ‘other’. The research is qualitative-interpretive, based on interviews with 13 teachers. It focuses on describing and explaining Bible teachers’ perceptions and interpreting their actions. Findings point to two main perceptions: (1) A perception that transcends the boundaries of biblical academic discourse and fosters a moral dialogue of integration, tolerance, openness, and awareness of the ‘other’ as part of the Bible teacher’s role. (2) A perception focused only on biblical discourse and refrains from dealing with issues of ‘otherness’ in the lesson. This research offers new tools and courses of action to implement these perceptions. Its conclusions may encourage teachers to develop pedagogical flexibility and an ability to navigate through issues of ‘otherness’ while responding to social, value, and moral issues that arise spontaneously in the multicultural dialogue in Bible lessons.

The value sensitive design of a preventive health check app

In projects concerning big data, ethical questions need to be answered during the design process. In this paper the Value Sensitive Design method is applied in the context of data-driven health services aimed at disease prevention. It shows how Value Sensitive Design, with the use of a moral dialogue and an ethical matrix, can support the identification and operationalization of moral values that are at stake in the design of such services. It also shows that using this method can support meeting the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Malek’s Programmatic Secularism? A Dissent

AbstractProgrammatic secularism aims to secure public reason from rival rationalities, notably those from religious experience and education. The gathering of knowledge in clinical ethics into a concrete array of consensus claims and consensus-derived principles are thought by Janet Malek to secure such public reason—an essential tool for clinical ethics consultants to execute their professional role. The author compares this gathering of knowledge to an understanding of what technology is. Accordingly, the following interrogates Malek’s programmatic secularism, which is a moral technique (technology) that not only homogenizes moral dialogue but also dehumanizes persons as it tyrannizes the creative freedom for moral conversation and genuine encounter. Thus, the reader is encouraged to dissent of such a vision for delimiting the role of clinical ethics consultants according to the rule and measure of technology, the ontology of our age.

ЙОГО ВСЕСВЯТІСТЬ ПАТРІАРХ ВАРФОЛОМІЙІ ЯК ПАТРІАРХ І ГУМАНІСТ

The article examines the figure of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, his pastoral ministry and humanistic attitude to the world and man on the basis of various sources and from the standpoint of comparative analysis. The problem of humanism and human relations is one of the main problems of the modern world, and Dimitrios Archondonis – Bartholomew I demonstrates with his life and deeds, the example of Christian humanism and love of neighbour, as it is commanded by Jesus Christ himself in the New Testament. The process of Ukrainian state renaissance, its national and spiritual formation are followed by a growing interest in Christian humanism, which in its essence and direction is an effective means of "moral healing", "spiritual revival", the formation of national identity, affirmation of its culture and "healthy" consciousness. Various philosophical, scientific, religious and other ideas and views on ecology, nature and man, the meaning of its existence, place and role in the world, which were developed and implemented throughout the historical development of world philosophy and culture in modern Ukraine need not only ideological and theoretical reasoning, but also a visual demonstration of examples of Christian humanism, an example of which is Bartholomew's I life and pastoral serving of God. Emphasizing the existence of a deep moral crisis in modern society, the Ecumenical Patriarch sees the root cause of all global problems in it. The way out of this crisis, in his opinion, is the formation of a new philosophy of international relations, the focus on broad international cooperation, the creation of a common European home, the Christianization of the whole Earth through the "evangelization of its peoples." Like all Christian churches, the Orthodox patriarch believes that the problem of war and peace is a planetary, global problem and at the same time a global challenge to all "globalized humanity" today. And the development of a new concept called "theology of peace" (or Orthodox "myrology"), started in the 60s of last century created by his ideologues, was the response of Orthodoxy to this challenge. A characteristic feature of the whole period of Bartholomew's I Patriarchal reign is the constant moral and humanistic dialogue not only in the middle of Orthodoxy itself, but also among the whole Christian world as a whole. The idea of harmony, tolerance, mutual understanding for him is the main issue for conversation and constructive dialogue with various religious figures and denominations.

The Moral Involvement of Novice Teachers in Primary Education: Exploring Moral Dialogues

Novice teachers working in primary school experience in their practice, impact the contemporary multicultural, knowledge-based society. This article aims to gain insight into novice teachers' retrospection on their actions, using the modes of Moral Involvement, based on a post-modern stand on morality and a dialogical narrative approach to teachers' moral meaning-making. The modes describe the “mixed moral atmosphere” as the congruities and incongruities between two perspectives, the “I” and the “Other” of the dialogical “Self.” Moral Involvement frames the reciprocity of influences of the workplace, the others and teachers' inner argumentation to balance self-interest, mutual interest and personal attachment to principles. Transcripts of interviews with novices in primary education were analyzed to categorize how novices reflect on their work and how they use different perspectives to explore their Moral Involvement. The results show that novice teachers mainly discuss their achievements from the I-position and use the Other-positions when elaborating on collaborating, alignments or uncertainty about their work. The conclusion is drawn that retrospection on moral issues during Teacher Education and workplace learning supports learning to deal with complex moral issues experienced in school practice.

Extraction of Sense of Transmission in Moral Dialogue Based on Brain Synchronization

Extraction of Sense of Transmission in Moral Dialogue Based on Brain Synchronization

Complexity in restorative justice education circles: Power and privilege in voicing perspectives about sexual health, identities, and relationships

ABSTRACT Restorative justice pedagogies, such as dialogue or peacemaking circles, allow students to learn how to share and listen with peers, set boundaries for moral dialogue, and engage constructively with each other’s perspectives. This study is part of a larger project focused on teachers’ professional development and circle implementation. The focus of this article is on one teacher’s approach to using circles in teaching her intermediate health curriculum unit, situated in a school with a strong restorative justice initiative. In this restorative classroom, dialogue was integrated into regularly enacted academic as well as interpersonal curriculum; this interrupted, or at times reaffirmed, the status quo. Data includes classroom observations, professional development observations, teacher and student interviews, and a reflective researcher journal. Dialogue enacted in this classroom illustrated moral issues students grappled with, relating to sexual health, inclusive sexual identities, and sociocultural relationships. Results illustrated how the teacher’s pedagogical choices transmitted values and shaped opportunities for critical dialogue, and that students’ social and cultural capital impacted how certain topics were discussed.

The Perfectionist Call of Intelligibility: Secondary English, Creative Writing, and Moral Education

This article puts forward moral-philosophical arguments for re-building and re-thinking secondary-level (high-school equivalent) English studies around creative writing practices. I take it that when educators and policy makers talk about such entities as the "well-rounded learner," what we have, or should have, in mind is moral agents whose capacities for moral dialogue, judgement, and discourse are increased as a result of their formal educational experiences. In its current form, secondary English is built mainly, though not exclusively, around reading assessment; around, that is, demonstration of students' "comprehension" of texts. There is little or no sense that the tradition and practice of literary criticism upon which this type of assessment is based is a writerly tradition. By making writing practices central to what it is to do English in the secondary classroom, I argue that we stand a better chance at helping students develop their capacities for self-expression, for articulating their developing webs of belief and for scrutinizing those webs of belief. I thus wish to think about English and Creative Writing Studies in light of Cavell’s moral perfectionism, and to conceive of it as an arts-practical subject and a mode by which one might, in Baldacchino’s sense, undergo a process of "unlearning." My arguments are tailored to the English educational context.

Reflexiones filosóficas entre madres adolescentes víctimas de maltrato infantil

Esta investigación, se efectuó en un aula del centro de desarrollo integral de la familia (DIF) en el municipio de Durango, México. En este lugar, se capacitan personas para el trabajo artesanal; ahí fueron seleccionadas 13 madres adolescentes con un rango de edad que fluctúa entre los 15 y 23 años de edad, todas ellas víctimas de maltrato infantil. En este grupo de personas se implementó la propuesta filosófico-pedagógica denominada “Filosofía para Niños y Adolescentes” del filósofo norteamericano Matthew Lipman. El principal objetivo fue conformar una “comunidad de indagación”, donde, a través del dialogo razonado las participantes desarrollaron habilidades cognitivas, posibilitándolas a departir de manera ética y moral sobre sus experiencias de vida dentro de un entorno democrático. Los resultados obtenidos se dan a conocer a través de las revelaciones expresadas por las participantes durante los diálogos filosóficos, además, fueron registradas las habilidades cognitivas detectadas durante 20 sesiones. Los resultados fueron contrastados con las teorías para demostrar el cambio cognitivo de las participantes en las comunidades de diálogo. También se registraron ciertos hallazgos inesperados en otras áreas académicas que favorecen el pensamiento ético y moral.

In whose interest? Exploring care ethics within transformative learning

This article brings attention to a seemingly pervasive and underlying assumption in critical management education that transformative learning is a good thing. We explore this assumption through a series of narratives examining the ethics of educators overtly seeking to enable transformative learning with owner-managers in order to impact their businesses. The focus on owner-managers is of significance in terms of transformative learning because of the centrality of the owner-manager to the delicate ecosystem, that is, the small and medium business. The article makes salient relational care in critical management education and the need for educators to engage in a moral dialogue regarding the relational impact of transformative learning in pedagogic designs. Such dialogue necessitates addressing in whose interest is transformative learning being sought, along with the orientation and framing of such learning.

Alternatives to War Within Medicine: From Conscientious Objection to Nonviolent Conflict About Contested Medical Practices.

When we figure medical practice as warfare, an individual clinician may be either a dutiful combatant or a conscientious objector. The rhetorical structure of this choice means that clinicians may exercise their consciences by loyally joining or disloyally exiting the medical ranks' battle against disease. But there are alternatives to loyalty and exit, and within psychiatry, these alternatives have transformed clinical services. In the 1970s, gay activists successfully resisted the American Psychiatric Association's characterization of homosexuality as a mental illness. In the 1940s, Mennonite nonresisters created the Mennonite mental health movement as a noncoercive alternative to standard psychiatric care. These gay activists and Mennonite volunteers opened communal alternatives to violence. When clinicians pursue nonviolent conflict about contested medical practices, they practice with the integrity that develops out of engaging in moral dialogue. Medicine becomes something more than a war in which individuals serve or to which they object: instead, it becomes a prudential set of practices that advance through principled disagreements and that expand the imagination of clinicians as they respond to the vulnerability of the people they meet as patients.

Analyzing Moral Deliberation During Gameplay: Moral Foundations Theory as an Analytic Resource

This article explores the role of interplayer moral conversation in multiplayer games with three subquestions: how to design and use games for morality research, how advances in moral theory can inform game-based research into morals, and how game-based research can inform moral theory. A long tradition has investigated morals using games such as Ultimatum and Dictator; however, this research often omits interplayer moral dialogue. Further, when moral foundations theory is accounted for, analysis of these games seems to investigate a narrow range of moral reasoning. In this methodological critique, we draw upon data from gameplay of a simulation of climate change debate and find a wide range of moral foundations through analysis of dialogue. Our analysis suggests that in-game player dialogue is a source of rich moral deliberation and potential for using simulation games as grounds for discovering new moral foundations.

Urban Sanctuary Schools for Diverse Populations: Examining Curricular Expectations and School Effectiveness for Student Learning

ABSTRACTThis ethnographic case study problematizes the current high stakes accountability efforts that have led many school leaders to inadvertently maintain a school environment in which deficit perspectives and low academic expectations in the classroom persist. Drawing from an urban sanctuary school framework, this study works to center the voices of low-income students of color from an urban high school in California, who have historically faced school alienation and academic challenges, to describe their notions of academic expectations held by their teachers. The centrality of student voices and ethnographic descriptions of the school illuminate a moral dialogue that can assist school leaders in challenging ineffective school structures. These efforts must place deficit thinking and low classroom expectations into question as our nation's biggest obstacles toward schoolwide excellence.

THE PROBLEMS WITH MORAL SUBJECTIVISM

Moral dialogue for moral subjectivists is gravely limited. As soon as moral subjectivists hold another person to any moral standard independent of the person's belief, they must give up their moral subjectivism. Some moral subjectivists might turn out to be moral realists who accord primacy to autonomy. This, however, is a senseless position that renders all persons equally worthless, unless such moral realists concede that norms that limit autonomy exist. But if so, they are not different from any other moral realists after all.

Moral Perception, Cognition, and Dialogue

The aim of the paper is to analyse the concept of moral perception. Moral perception gets characterized as a distinctive, non-inferential moral response to concrete situations. In order to relate moral perception with a suitable model of moral cognition the position labelled morphological rationalism is elaborated. Moral judgment follows a dynamical model of reasons, according to which reasons are situated in an agent’s structured morphological background, chromatically illuminating the judgment. The key claim is that such a model is particularly well-suited to accommodate moral perception. From such a perspective some practical implications are elaborated (disagreement, intercultural dialogues).

Editorial. Dialogue, Communication and Collaboration: Aspects of Philosophy and Communication

Acting as a usual means of everyday communication and collaboration, dialogue is also a fundamental mode of human presence in the world. It is innate and, therefore, feels organic to people. Nothing but a dialogue determines and defines the inborn human potential of reflexivity, empathy and communitivity. Naturally, it is hardly surprising that as a phenomenon, a dialogue constantly fell within the purview of most prominent European thinkers and throughout different historical epochs, in the spaces of philosophy and communication, it unfolded in a diverse and multidimensional manner. Ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the form of dialogue, this way opening the possibility to a reader to learn about the world and the order of things as well as defining a certain relationship between the perceiving subject and the perceivable object. In the early Middle Ages, writings of Saint Augustine encouraged people to immerse into themselves and start a conversation with God, which established a certain living relationship between spaces empirical and transcendental. Much later, towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who developed the theory of the intentionality of the consciousness, perceived that no living relationship between people is feasible without intersubjectivity. In this case, the communication is conditioned on the focus of at least two subjects on a certain object. This object, in particular, ensures the potential of the meaning, content and the purpose of communication. Another German author Martin Buber treated the dialogue as a phenomenon, in which an individual establishes a personal relationship with the Christian God, and this gives rise to a certain immediacy: a confrontation with the Ruler of the Kingdom of Heaven gives meaning to all the other interpersonal relationships. These are but few different philosophical interpretations of dialogue as a phenomenon. The universe of issues related to dialogue emerges from thinking perspectives of philosophers as well as communication theorists. On the one hand, the perspective of communication trivializes the phenomenon of dialogue, depriving it of its depth and profoundness; and on the other hand, it defines and specifies the concept of dialogue, assigning to it a form or function. This issue of the journal is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of dialogue both in the fields of philosophy and communication, inquiring into different contexts of its development. In her article Communication Solutions by Improving Interactive Art Projects, Gintarė Vainalavičiūtė analyses the relationship between visual arts and contemporary technologies, which determines both the rise of the forms of dialogue and non-traditional understanding of works of art. Mindaugas Stoškus contributed an article entitled Disciplines of Political Philosophy and Political Science: Antagonism, Cooperation or Indifference? in which he investigates the relationship between these two disciplines, conditions and problems pertaining to their dialogue, and the particularly intensified dynamics of the dialogue in the fifties of the 20th century. In their article Online Artistic Activism: Case-Study of Hungarian-Romanian Intercultural Communication, Gizela Horváth and Rozália Klára Bakó delve into the interactive relationship between works of art and their perceiver, as these works of art send messages via the social media environment. Moral Perception, Cognition, and Dialogue is an article authored by Vojko Strahovnik, in which he examines the causes for the rise of cases that hinder intercommunication and mutual understanding, such as disagreement, intercultural dialogues, etc. Problems of visual communication and the specificity of visual languages, bringing together subjects into dialogue are discussed by Arto Mutanen in his article Relativity of Visual Communication. Another article entitled Scientific Realism versus Antirealism in Science Education is a contribution by Seungbae Park, in which he attempts to define how the dialogue between teachers and students is possible, as he takes the position stating that the doctrine of scientific realism is much more effective than provided opportunities of scientific antirealism. And finally, Algis Mickūnas, in his article The Different Other and Dialogue, discusses the reasons why members of different communities find it difficult to establish dialogue-based relationships and why in some cases they remain imprisoned in the state of a monologue. This issue of the journal presents a truly wide field of investigations into opportunities and obstacles for communication, interaction and collaboration. It is pleasing to see that representatives of various humanities and social sciences joined the same dialogue. Looking forward to the productive insights in the future, the Editor would like to express her gratitude to the authors of this issue.