5.1 Introduction to Applied Ethics
Applied Ethics takeaways accessible to all teachers
On this page you will find easily accessible activities for Applied Ethics that get students talking, presenting, debating and creating. These activities can also be used by any teachers connected with the CP and contextualised to their subject matter. This is a great way for students to build understanding of ethical issues and dilemmas across their CP course and not limit it to one area of the core. You will find suggestions for stand alone lessons with suggestions on how connections can be made to their other subjects and the real world.
The Applied Ethics theme seems to find its way into everything in this course! There are so many exciting ways to engage students in this topic that this page has 10 lesson ideas for taking students through different aspects of Applied Ethics and enable them to embrace this area with confidence.
Understanding Applied Ethics in context
The theme of Applied Ethics can be a little intimidating when you know how important it is the reflective project. Sometimes a PPS teacher doubles as the RP coordinator; sometimes there are separate coordinators and timetabled reflective project lessons. What helps is for Applied Ethics to become a common theme across the whole CP programme - particularly the Career-related Studies - but also the DP courses too. It might well not be a situation where these specific exercises are taught in the CRS or DP subjects but the reflection part of the session is key for students to make connectiosn across their CP course.
Engagement 1: Personal morality and Applied Ethics
Inquiry
For students to understand, explore and reflect on responses to general ethical dilemmas and share responses in debate.
Source: 'The Hardest Morality Test Ever':
Action
Students take the test individually, recording responses and then collaboratively to discuss different responses.
Reflection
Students reflect on easiest/most difficult/most surprising decisions and if they have changed their minds.
Students also reflect on their internal monologue during the 10 seconds allocated for decision making- were they sure from the start or did they change their mind once, maybe twice?.
What does it show about the nature of ethical dilemmas? What does it tell us about how willing we are to defend our instincts or do we change our mind to fit the company we are in?
Engagement 2: Investigating ethical dimensions 1 - Looking at traditions of person, action and consequence based ethical frameworks can help you understand where your own ethical compass points.
Inquiry
What is meant by 'virtue ethics'?
Source: Aristotle and the Golden Mean.
Carry out your own research, using at least three different sources, to discover what Virtue Ethics is about.
Action
Create a flipgrid video of your understanding of Aristotle’s Golden Mean. Once you have done this, review Hank's crash course philosophy to help consolidate understanding. Crash Course Philosophy #38
Reflection
Students comment on other members of the class’s responses and discuss on google hangouts how this branch of ethics is significant now.
Then review Hank's crash course philosophy all together to help consolidate understanding.
Crash Course Philosophy #38
Where does your own ethical compass point after this? Consider a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of virtue ethics.
Reflect on the way you can connect your experience and understanding here to a topic/topics in your DP or CRS subjects. What role might virtue ethics play in your experiences in Service Learning?
Want to explore further?
Applied Ethics: The Agent
Ethical decisions that develop moral characterThis page expands on the general Applied Ethics page which explores how you can utilise the three key branches of normative ethics to give students user-friendly...
Investigating ethical dimensions 2 - Looking at traditions of person, action and consequence based ethical frameworks can help you understand where your own ethical compass points.
Students take out the key ideas and assess the strengths and limitations of Kant's ideas.
Record a video with their response (platforms like Flipgrid are good for this).
The class watch everyone’s response and discuss how this branch of ethics is significant now.
Inquiry
Does the intention behind an action matter more than the consequence?
As a group, mindmap whether there are some moral stances that are always right even if they might lead to controversial outcomes.
Action
Divide students into pair or group. Give each pair or group the phrases 'categorlcal imperative' and 'three maxims to research.
If there are enough students, have half the class consider the strengths of Kant's ideas that they have researched and the other half the limitations and pool their ideas together in a big mindmap.
Reflection
Then students can watch Hank's video that weighs up the strengths and limitations of Kant's ideas.
Compare your ideas before your research with your ideas after. Can you connect them?
Want to explore this further?
Applied Ethics: The Act
Actions speak far louder than consequencesDeontology is an approach to ethics in which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged by its conformity to duties, rules and obligations. Therefore an individual...
Engagement 4: What are my values? [1]
In addition to the theme of Applied Ethics and exploring ethical frameworks such as Virtue ethics, this engagement expands into Intercultural Understanding and consideration of personal context in forging identity.
Values and the lifelong learner
First of all, what are values?
Place yourself in the Ethical Dimension
Step 1: Identify times when you were happiest
Find examples from both your school and personal life. This will ensure some balance in your answers.
What were you doing? Were you with other people? Who? What other factors contributed to your happiness?
Step 2: Identify times you were most proud. Use examples from school and personal life.
Why were you proud? Did other people share your pride? Who? What other factors contributed to your feelings of pride?
Step 3: Identify the time you were most fulfilled and satisfied
What need or desire was fulfilled? How and why did the experience give your life meaning? What other factors contributed to your feelings of fulfillment?
Step 4: Determine your top values based on happiness, pride and fulfilment
Why is each experience truly important and memorable? Look at the three values pictures here to explore what your values might be. Sometimes it is a matter of having the right vocabulary to put a name to the specific value you see as important. There are far too many to choose from here, on purpose. Which words sit well with you or jump out at you?
Which words sit well with you or jump out
at you?
Choose at least 5 and at the most 10!
Engagement 5: Exploring your political compass. An extention of exploring your moral compass and building an idea of your overall values system is to explore your political values too.
Inquiry
For the students: before you consider the following exercise, how would you place yourself politically? Do you have a definite answer to this question or do you not know? Who influences your political thoughts?
Action
Students take the political compass test and reflect on the experience using the questions that follow.
Reflection
What did you think about the design of the questions?
How long did it take you to make a decision? Were some areas easier than others?
What did you think of the outcome? Did it surprise you? Can you think of the different influences that have helped you have these political inclinations?
Want to explore more about consequentialist theory?
Applied Ethics: The Consequence
The greatest good for the greatest numberThis page expands on the general Applied Ethics page which explores how you can utilise the key branches of normative ethics to give students user-friendly ethical...
Engagement 6
Finding the Story - A Harvard Project Zero thinking routine.
A great exercise for the reflective project specifically but generally in developing the idea of multiple perspectives and intercultural understanding
Inquiry: What's the story?
Look at the picture given and develop your answers individually to the following questions:
Questions:
What is the story?
What is the untold story? What is your story?
What is his/her/their story?
What is our story?
What is the smaller story?
What is the scientific/historical/cultural story?
Reflect
Share individual responses collectively as a class and build up the story of the picture. Try and make the ideas that are built up visible in your surroundings on the classroom wall.
Engagement 7 - Create your own ethical theory.
Activities to use as a reflection after exploring Applied Ethics in some detail.
As recommended throughout this page, exploring the following pages in more detail, will really prepare students for this exercise
Ethical Thinking Applied Ethics: The Agent
Applied Ethics: The Act Applied Ethics: The Consequence
Inquiry
How might you make an ethical framework? What would be included? Consider Person, Act, Consequence and Situation.
Action
Using all the areas you have explored in Applied Ethics, mindmap with a partner all the aspects of the frameworks that you like and come up with your own ethical theory that demonstrates how people can make moral judgements. Create a presentation of your ethical theory that guides how people can ethical decisions. This should have a visual and spoken element to it such as presenting a flow chart or diagram you have created to support your ideas.
Reflection
Take a step back and consider what is its overall purpose? How does culture and society affect it?
Engagement 8: Research skills
Source Using the website https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/
Inquiry
Do I know what information is real and not real?
Explore the following questions that help in the pursuit of credible sources.
Action
Work together as a pair and then discuss as a whole group. Explore the website given here and show your thinking visibly in a mindmap.
What is the site claiming?
What information can be used from it and how?
It is fact, opinion or speculation?
How do you know?
If factual, how can you check the accuracy of the facts?
If opinion, how is it reliable and how do you know?
Reflection
What are the wider implications for the results of your research?
Engagement 9: Building research skills
This takeaway builds on Takeaway 8 and exploring bias and trustworthiness.
Inquiry
Why does proof and truth so important in research?
Consider an ethical issue or dilemma as a class or one that you have decided on as a potential area for your reflective project. Pick 5 sites that connect to the ethical dilemma and evaluate their trustworthiness individually.
Action
What is the site claiming? What information can be used from it and how? It is fact, opinion or speculation?
How do you know? If factual, how can you check the accuracy of the facts? If opinion, how is it reliable and how do you know? You can use:
Reflection
What else you need to know to be able to trust a site?
Create a presentation on your detective work to the rest of the class and see how they present different perspectives.
Engagement 10: Reflecting on the Learner Profile and Applied Ethics
This takeaway builds on the students' work in takeaway 4 about core values. These activities are designed to help them reflect on their values, how it links to the learner profile and how that is significant.
Inquiry
How are my personal values relevant to my IB journey?
Action
Look at your responses to your exploration of your personal values inspired by the three word cloud images.
How do your personal values link to the IB learner profile attributes of
Balanced, Risk-taker, Reflective, Communicator, Open-minded,
Caring, Knowledgeable, Principled, Inquirer, Thinker
Create a visual - this can be a poster, a drawing, a mindmap, a piece of drama... - where you connect the IB learner Profile to your own values.
Reflection
What were you least or most surprised about? Come up with some statements (say3-5?) to describe the process you went through and your discoveries.
- How might this exploration help with your courses?
- Break down your CP into the DP, CRS and core areas but also expand outside the world of school and consider where you demonstrate these attributes?
- How successfully do you demonstrate them?
- Are there areas you feel strongest in?
- Which areas do you find the hardest to develop and do any of these thoughts and discoveries link to your awareness of your own personal values?
Footnotes
- ^ This exercise makes use of www.mindtools.com