Ethical School Research Articles

Purpose and principles of the Ethics school course

Ethics belongs to the worldview disciplines. It is often called practical philosophy and is studied not only to find out what charity is, for example, but above all to be charitable. The content of ethics as a science is the knowledge realized in the attitude of the individual towards other people, society and nature.

Creating the ethical school: a book of case studies

Addressing the many ethical issues that arise daily in school, this volume is a hands-on guide for all K-12 practitioners, an excellent teaching tool for preparing future teachers, and an essential resource for anyone who wants to create a caring and supportive school environment.

The Politics of the Aesthetic: Cricket, Literature and Empire

In his study, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture ofColonialisrn, Simon Gikandi suggests that cricket exemplifies the ambivalences and contradictions of colonialist culture. Cricket 'was considered, in both Victorian England and its colonies, to be the perfect expression of the values of bourgeois civility, Anglo-Saxon ethics, and public school morality', Gikandi writes, and because it was so closely linked to ideas of Englishness and nationhood, ' ... nationalists in India and the Caribbean were to posit their entry into the field of cricket as the mark of both their mastery of the culture of Englishness and their transcendence of its exclusive politics.' 1 Gikandi also notes that cricket in colonies such as India and the British West Indies worked itself out of such colonial ambivalences by radically reinventing the sport's terms of play and thus providing the colonial centre with a model of how to aesthetically reinvigorate one of its most important cultural forms.2

Students' perception of school moral atmosphere: From moral culture to social competence. A generalizability study

The School Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire (SMAQ) was constructed to measure differences in students' perception of school moral atmosphere between schools. The instrument is based upon the constructs defined by the Just Community Approach that focused on students' shared perspective and portrayed ideal types of school moral culture. This study presents reliability estimates of the SMAQ based on a generalizability study. A total of 1280 students from 32 normal secondary schools participated in the study. The design of the study includes the factors: type of school varying in educational level; school; grade level; class; and student. Variance components and reliabilities are estimated for two models. In Model 1 grade level is a fixed effect, in Model 2 grade level is a random effect. The results indicate that moral atmosphere in school can be measured reliably, although in Model 2 a considerable number of observations may be needed. Because score levels for some subscales depend on the school type, reliabilities are higher for the entire population than for populations consisting of one particular school type. It is concluded that students' perception of moral atmosphere in normal secondary schools have a strong individual flavour. Perceived moral atmosphere should not be regarded primarily as a shared perspective among students within a school like a moral school culture, but as an instance of the social competence of the individual student.

Ethical School Leadership

Ethical School Leadership

Teaching morality in schools in Utah's Religion-based society

More and more school districts in the United States are enacting morality or character education into their schools' curricula to address what they see as their students' declining moral behaviour. Utah, a state that was a homogeneous religion-based culture for 100 years, has not been immune to this need. However, the contrast between the programs being used in the now-diversifying and undiversified areas of Utah reveals what can create the sense of need to which Utah is responding. This article examines the moral environment in three school districts in Utah--one highly diversified, one in the process of diversifying and one as-yet undiversified. It reviews the various moral and character education programmes being used in these three environments and compares and contrasts their methods in terms of literature, textbooks and activities. The article concludes with an evaluation of these programmes' relative effectiveness in their specific environments.

Felix Adler's Universal Moral Code: Drama Activities in the Ethical Culture School

Felix Adler's Universal Moral Code: Drama Activities in the Ethical Culture School

The ethics of zero tolerance

“Zero tolerance” has become the international “buzz word” of the secondary building administrator. As school violence has increased so have the legislative and regulatory policy‐making mandates calling for increased disciplinary consequences for inappropriate student behavior. Ethical problem‐solving and decision‐making have taken a back seat to reactive discipline by school officials. Media publicity has forced proactive principals to become reactive impulsive decision‐makers. In this article, Starratt's three‐part model for ethical school administration – encompassing the ethics of critique, justice, and care – is applied to a fictional scenario and the ethical dilemma that evolves. Recommendations for practice are offered in a proposed resolution of the dilemma within the context of a central conclusion: if the school administrator of the twenty‐first century is to build and maintain an ethical educational setting where all students can learn, zero tolerance cannot dictate the only outcomes for inappropriate student behavior.

The Ethical Law School. James P. White Lecture on Legal Education

The Ethical Law School. James P. White Lecture on Legal Education

Universal Ethical Standards?

If a quest for universal ethical standards in journalism is to be productive, we should first be able to articulate an overarching set of universal ethical standards that can apply across cultures, across ethical schools of thought, across professions. In this article I offer 4 likely universal standards that have relevance to journalism, suggesting universal journalism standards can also be identified. Although these and other standards will not be panaceas for the ethical dilemmas journalists often face, they provide needed anchors for decision making.

Ethical Medical School Applicants?

While ethical behavior is both desirable and necessary in medicine, requiring an ethics entrance exam as part of the medical school application process is not the best means to achieve that goal. Virtual Mentor is a monthly bioethics journal published by the American Medical Association.

The Rhetoric Of Sympathy In Smith And Wordsworth

would seem to have little in common. The sonnet—though not limited to any one subject matter—was so thoroughly associated with the poet’s own self and feelings that Coleridge wrote in the preface to his Poems of 1797, ‘‘To censure [Egotism] in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round’’ (xiii). By contrast, the humanitarian poem necessarily looked outward, focusing on figures typically far different from the poet himself or herself. In practice, however, the opposition was rarely this simple, and there were far more connections between the two genres than one might initially expect. Even when they focused on the poet’s own self, many late eighteenth-century sonnets were either devoted to humanitarian themes or drew upon stock figures from the humanitarian tradition such as peasants, slaves, or forsaken women. And, despite their seemingly altruistic nature, humanitarian poems were often nearly as self-oriented as the sonnets of the time since, in the course of describing their unfortunate subjects, poets frequently called attention to themselves and their own benevolence. In the essay that follows, I shall examine the intersections between the sonnet and the humanitarian poem, analyzing how Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth—two of the most creative and self-aware poets of the late eighteenth century—negotiated the different demands of these two seemingly opposed genres. 2 To understand why it is that these two types of poetry would have gained such prominence at this time, we need only to turn to the prevailing moral philosophy—the ‘‘sentimental’’ school of ethics that culminates with Adam Smith’s 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Like Shaftesbury and other members of this school, Smith believes that morality results from an emotional response rather than any rational decision; however, what makes him particularly relevant to our purposes here is his emphasis on ‘‘sympathy,’’ what he describes as a ‘‘fellow feeling with any passion whatever’’ (1: 5) that can be so complete that ‘‘we become in some measure the same person’’ (1: 2) with the object of our sympathy. Largely beyond our conscious control, sympathetic responses come upon us suddenly and powerfully; we simply observe a particular situation and react: ‘‘When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of

Care Theory and "caring" systems of agriculture

Care Theory is a growing schoolof ethics that starts with the assumption ofthe relational nature of human beings. Incontrast, the dominant assumption of theautonomous view of human nature has made itdifficult to integrate ``relational'' aspects ofreality into the realm of political actionrelated to agriculture. Variables such ascommunity attachment, community vitality andrichness, and environmental ``fit'' cannot beincorporated into policy because such variablesare perceived to be tainted by ``attachment,''and compromise rational judgement. Feministagricultural theorists parallel Care Theory andhave the potential of extending Care Theory tohuman-nature relations. Both taken togetherenrich each other and through that process,contribute to our understanding of the moralchoices embedded in agricultural systems,particularly hog production systems, the focusof this paper.

A three-year comparative longitudinal study of a school-based social work family service to reduce truancy, delinquency and school exclusions

A three-year longitudinal school-based family social work service in two project schools was compared with the 'standard' service of two comparative schools, in respect to truancy, delinquency, school-exclusions, family functioning and school morale. A multi-method evaluation demonstrated significantly better outcomes in the project schools, halving truancy; reducing delinquency, improving teachers'morale and pupils'educational achievements. A cautious cost-benefit analysis identified a 250 per cent 'saving' above the cost of the project.

John Wilson and the Place of Morality in Education

This paper asks whether it would be better not to talk about morality in schools. The issue is raised through a consideration of changes in public discourse and especially in educational discourse, where categories such as ''personal, social and health education'' and ''citizenship education'' are more salient than ''moral education''. Drawing on John Wilson's arguments, the paper considers claims for the indispensability of the concept of morality. It is argued that such claims, in Wilson's own writings, are applied to both an ''individual'' and a ''social'' conception of morality. Contrary to Wilson, the paper argues that the ''wisest strategy'' for public education is to take the social conception of ''morality in the narrow sense'' as a central focus.

Morality and Ethics in Government Schools: The Dilemmas of a Christian Educator1

But I hear a cry from ordinary Christians in Australia, many of whom have stopped going to regular worship, for a more clearly articulated framework of thinking about life's issues which would enable them to respond Christianly in an instinctive way, as dilemmas, choices, moral issues and relationships difficulties face them in daily work, in the neighbourhood and at home. They ask, “what difference does it make to my behaviour and attitudes if I am a Christian?” (Nichols 1997, p. 2)

The role of existentialism in ethical business decision‐making

This paper presents an integrated model of ethical decision‐making in business that incorporates teleological, deontological and existential theory. Existentialism has been curiously overlooked by many scholars in the field despite the fact that it is so fundamentally a theory of choice. We argue that it is possible to seek good organisational ends (teleology), through the use of right means (deontology), and enable the decision‐maker to do so authentically (existentialism). More specifically, we provide a framework that will enable the decision‐maker to integrate the various ethical schools of thought available to them and to apply this framework in the ethical decision‐making process. The model presented makes explicit the existential position of choice and takes into account other contextual moderating factors. Negative Option Marketing is used as a running application to illustrate the role of existentialism in the decision‐making process.

Morality and Ethics in Government Schools: The Dilemmas of a Christian Educator

Morality and Ethics in Government Schools: The Dilemmas of a Christian Educator

For debate: the virtuous public health physician.

This paper argues that although public health physicians have shown interest in ethical dilemmas relating to specific problems within the specialty, few have addressed the central ethical dilemma in public health, namely the conflict between the rights of the individual and the responsibilities of society for all its members. The paper reviews a number of public health programmes, where different approaches have been taken to this central dilemma. It then examines a number of schools of ethics, in an attempt to resolve the problem. Of these, only virtue ethics, perhaps supported by the insights of feminism and the ethics of care, appear to help with an irreconcilable conflict. The paper then makes an attempt to apply the concept of virtue ethics in public health medicine and to answer the question, 'what would a virtuous public health physician look like?' Finally, it lists some of the consequences of such an approach.

School psychology in the new millennium: Legal influences and ethical issues

This article presents a scenario describing federal education policy initiatives in the year 2008. The scenario depicts one image of the future and serves as a framework for discussion of legal influences and ethical issues school psychologists may encounter in the years ahead. In addition, it is anticipated that advances in technology and science will result in ethical and legal challenges for the profession, and those challenges are also discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.