Transcript presentation

What do we know about
preparing students for value
conflicts in the workplace?
“No social role encourages such
ambitious moral aspirations as the
lawyer’s, and no social role so
consistently disappoints the
aspirations it encourages”
William Simon (1998)
Workplaces
“If we are to achieve an approach to legal
education which prepares students as well as
possible for the ethical demands of practice
we must consider the nature of the challenges
that will face them.”
Nigel Duncan (2011)
Three Models of Ethics and Efficacy
1. Richard Moorhead et al (2012)
2. Mary Gentile (2012)
3. Rest & Narvaez (1991)
Moorhead, Hinchly, Parker, Kershaw, Holm
(2012)
Interaction between
Character - refers to the values and attitudes held
by individuals.
Capacity - refers to the ability to reason ethically.
Context - refers to the ethicality of the
environment within which people work (and
live).
Mary Gentile (2012)
Post decision making
Effectiveness – a curriculum for effectively giving voice
to values which involves:
1. Pre-scripting – how would you try to persuade,
overcome objections
2. Practice – role play in a safe learning environment
3. Coaching – peer support and development (what
worked? How could it have been better?)
Example in Legal Education
Preparing students for the reality of practice
through practice management: Empowering
values and relishing uncertainty
Anneka Ferguson and Stephen Tang, Australian
National University
48th Annual Conference of the Association of
Law Teachers, 24th – 26th March 2013
Rest & Narvaez (1991)
• Moral Sensitivity – awareness of the moral
dimensions of the situation;
• Moral Judgement – ethical reasoning, familiar to us
from Kohlberg’s work on the subject;
• Moral Motivation – wanting to act morally - which
may involve putting concerns about ethical rectitude
above e.g. money, or professional success, or the
approval of superiors;
• Moral Character – the ability to see it through.
Where does one teach ethics?
“The activity in which knowledge is developed and
deployed, it is now argued, is not separable from or
ancillary to learning and cognition. Nor is it neutral.
Rather, it is an integral part of what is learned.
Situations might be said to co-produce knowledge
through activity. Learning and cognition, it is now
possible to argue, are fundamentally situated. “
Brown, Collins and Duguid, Situated Cognition
and the Culture of Learning 1989
In and Out of the Curriculum
• SOMUL – reported Brennan et al (2010)
Improving What is Learned at University: An exploration of the social and
organisational diversity of university education
• Pascarella and Terenzini (2005)
How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research: 2
• LETR – Legal Education and Training Review
• Is Acting Ethically A Skill?
• Graham Ferris, 48th Annual Conference of the Association of Law Teachers,
24th – 26th March 2013
And our workplace?
Higher Education Authority
The possibility of introducing a “Code of
Practice”
Survey will be open from the 21st March to
the 18th April 2013 and the analysis will be
completed by the 15th May 2013.