Module Introduction

Graduate students will participate in a follow up workshop during their second semester of study that will be designed to add skills of ethical evaluation to those of ethical awareness. This workshop will advance on the first workshop (Graduate Awareness Workshop) through presentations of a taxonomy of ethical issues in research called the "Double Axiological Axis" and through a framework that integrates teleology and deontology to enable students to introduce ethical theory and principle into moral deliberation. Students will practice the skills presupposed by these presented materials by deliberating on a case in research ethics that has been chosen because it presents a conflict between moral considerations. Students will be guided through the process of identifying the conflicting moral elements and designing ethically acceptable courses of action. This workshop will target the skill of ethical evaluation and be assessed in terms of the success of the participants in resolving the conflict posed by the case over which they deliberate. Workshop objectives, outcomes, and activities are summarized below.

Module Under Construction

This workshop module is still under development. It is being published in the Connexions Content Commons to allow students participating in the workshops and interested faculty to react to its different parts and to participate in its continued development.

Module Activities

Module Objectives

Objectives This workshop series is based on four skills for ethical empowerment that have been detailed in Cruz/Frey 2003: ethical awareness, ethical evaluation, ethical integration and ethical prevention. This list of moral skills is by no means exhaustive or exclusive. For example, it does not cover moral imagination, moral creativity, becoming a member of a professional community, or perseverance. Readers are encouraged to consult the moral development skills that are available in Kohlberg, Rest, Huff/Frey, and the widely accepted Hastings Center List. Bibliographical references below will provide ample resources that different institutions or groups can use to build a list of skills of moral development to fit their needs and resources.

These objectives form a series in which the more complex skills presuppose and build upon the simpler ones: ethical evaluation takes place when awareness skills are mastered; integraiton presupposes evaluation and awareness; prevention builds upon the mastery of the three more basic skills. To reflect this serial relation of ethics objectives, the graduate students workshops--each of which targets a particular skill set--are sequenced so that subsequent workshops build upon the skills mastered in earlier ones. Those who adopt this module are cautioned against taking this idea of sequential development to its extremes. The sequence is not uni-directional; students can and should work on maintaining awareness even after they have practiced prevention. More than one skill can be pursued at a time. Students could take the workshops out of sequence and still benefit. But ordering these workshops sequentially and generally requiring students to move from awareness, through evaluation and integration, to integration makes enough sense to test this model.

References