Ethics Course Schedule
Week 1
Monday/Tuesday Independence Day Holiday
Introductions, review of syllabus and readings for the semester.
Wednesday
Watch First Class video blog
Login to the class Blackboard site and post your first journal entry and describe a professional moral dilemma you experienced and how it was resolved. Add your thoughts on how you would deal with the issue.
The link between learning theory and moral development & Exploring ethical dilemmas
Thursday
Watch the Pijanowski Ethics Workshop part 1 - This video is me and a group of students. I interact regularly with the audience. For the journal entry for today I would like you to write while you are watching the video. When I ask the audience questions - write down your responses and throughout the video document your questions and reflections. If it is easier for you then you may want to use a word document for your notes and copy and paste them into the discussion board later. That would protect against losing your work during an internet outage, being timed out of the Blackboard journal feature, and also give you as chance to take notes in your own shorthand and clean it up a bit later if you like.
Reflecting on your practice
Friday Reflect in Journal on Blackboard about how what we have covered so far might inform your practice
Week 2
Components of effective moral reasoning & Developing ethical self awareness as a leader
Monday
Read Narvaez - The Neo-Kohlbergian Tradition and Beyond (2005), pp 132-148. This article can be found by clicking on the link and logging into the class blackboard account.
The PowerPoint on moral schemas is now available on Blackboard for your review (and essentially serves as notes on some of Narvaez's work).
Tuesday
Watch Pijanowski Ethics Workshop part 2 - This video is of me and a group of students. I interact regularly with the audience. For the journal entry today I would like you to write while you are watching the video. When I ask the audience questions - write down your responses and throughout the video document your questions and reflections. If it is easier for you then you may want to use a word document for your notes and copy and paste them into the discussion board later. That would protect against losing your work during an internet outage, being timed out of the blackboard site, and also give you as chance to take notes in your own shorthand and clean it up a bit later for all of us to see if you like.
The role of normative ethics in thinking about moral development.
Wednesday
Read Narvaez - The Neo-Kohlbergian Tradition and Beyond (2005), pp. 148-156. This article can be found by clicking on the link and logging into the class blackboard account.
Thursday
Watch Pijanowski Ethics Workshop part 3. As before this video is of me and a group of students. I interact regularly with the audience. For the journal entry for today I would like you to write while you are watching the video. When I ask the audience questions - write down your responses and throughout the video document your questions and reflections. If it is easier for you then you may want to use a word document for your notes and copy and paste them into the discussion board later. That would protect against losing your work during an internet outage, being timed out of the Blackboard journal feature, and also give you as chance to take notes in your own shorthand and clean it up a bit later if you like.
Reflecting on your practice
Friday Reflect in Journal on Blackboard about how what we have covered so far might inform your practice
Week 3
Conditions of, and obstacles to, moral courage & the judgment-action gap
Monday
Read Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (1999, May). 4 Steps to Keeping Change Efforts Heading In the Right Direction. Journal for Quality & Participation, 22(3), 6. - This article can be found by clicking on the link and logging into the class blackboard account.
Tuesday
Watch Pijanowski Ethics Workshop part 4. As before this video is of me and a group of students. I interact regularly with the audience. For the journal entry for today I would like you to write while you are watching the video. When I ask the audience questions - write down your responses and throughout the video document your questions and reflections. Include your response to the "3 moral failures" prompt I give the audience at the end of the video. If it is easier for you then you may want to use a word document for your notes and copy and paste them into the discussion board later. That would protect against losing your work during an internet outage, being timed out of the Blackboard journal feature, and also give you as chance to take notes in your own shorthand and clean it up a bit later if you like.
Some thoughts on your journal A moral failure is when some part of you (if even a small part) knew the right path, but you acted differently. The result of your actions is not what makes it a success or a failure for this discussion, simply that you knew that the right thing to do was one thing, and you did something else. For each of the moral failures you identified respond to the following:
How did you eventually resolve the dilemma?
What were the pressures and considerations that influenced your eventual action (e.g., social, cultural, cognitive).
Do you think you are susceptible to a similar failure now? Why or why not?
What strategies can you employ to be more aware of your barriers and effectively overcome them in the future?
Framing the context of moral problems and shaping a culture of ethics
Wednesday
Read “Forsaking Honor” case study - This article can be found by clicking on the link and logging into the class blackboard account.
Post your thoughts on the Forsaking Honor case in your journal today. I want you to consider Bolman and Deal's frames and the case study "Forsaking Honor" together - This is a judgment-action gap case in many respects so the primary question I want you to consider is: why did the president, institution and others stumble as they worked through the issues before them? You should also comment on how you would have acted in Dr. Whitehall's position. Finally, what similar issues might come up in the k-12 environment (or other sectors you have experience with) - in other words: how does this higher ed case translate to what you may experience in a leadership position?
In many ways this case begins to bring together much of the work we have done so far including some we did not address explicitly but were assigned readings or videos. Issues like personal fudge factors, zero tolerance, ethical culture, frames and schema can all inform reflections on this case.
Thursday
Watch Dan Ariely talk on moral intuition. I discuss his work in my previous talk and here you can cover it in more depth. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it's OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we're predictably irrational -- and can be influenced in ways we can't grasp. Students who have taken my decision making class will be familiar with Ariely and this is an opportunity to dive into that work from a moral lens.
Reflecting on your practice
Friday Reflect in Journal on Blackboard about how what we have covered so far might inform your practice
Week 4
Prioritization of Values and Metacognition & Socio-cultural obstacles to ethical leadership: Incentives behind accountability
Monday
Read F. Clark Power, Building Democratic Community
Tuesday
Watch Amy Edmondson, Learning from Failure
In the journal entry for today I want you to consider the learning from failure video (and in your followup the Monday readings and video). What are the barriers you see in learning from your personal failures (think of the 3 and others I had you think about at the end of last week) and how can leaders create organizational cultures that support a positive approach to processing failure, learning from it, and incorporating those lessons in to future behavior or decision making?
Mean Girls case study & bystander ethics
Wednesday
Review mean girls case study supporting documents on Blackboard.
Focus your journal entry on the Mean Girls case. As you read the “Mean Girls” case study and begin to prepare your response for this post there are a few possible lenses you may use to analyze the case:
a) The moral schemas used by the central characters in the case
b) The dominant frames
c) The stages of decision making and obstacles that made it difficult to successfully move from one stage to the next
You do not need to exhaust each of these three lenses and in fact I am leaving it to you to choose how to structure your response. So that means that you should feel free to choose any of the approaches we have used in this class to think about the moral issues in this case. As always, try to consider the role of the leaders (broadly defined) on this campus and how you suggest they might have handled this situation more effectively.
Shaping a Culture of Ethics, Conformity and Obedience
Thursday
Watch my video blog, Lenses for thinking about moral dilemmas
Watch Asch Conformity video
Watch Milgram Obedience video
Some thoughts for you to consider as you begin writing in your journal today - I think it is easy to make links between research on conformity and the work we do in schools. We see issues of conformity in the social lives of students, in the classroom, and we see it when staff are working together.
By thinking about norms in schools during our reading this week I ask you to consider real life examples of conformity (and many examples are present in the cases we have studied so far). Keeping that in mind will serve as an important backdrop to our thinking about obedience (another important theme at work in schools).
Let me explain what I mean by that a little: I think that people often oversimplify (and misrepresent) Asch's work by thinking of the subjects motivations as a dichotomy. Either they conform (sometimes called failures) or they are honest about what they see. Conformity is not that simple in real life, nor was it even in the context of the Asch studies. Asch intended his experimental situation to be a moral dilemma, one that pitted "truth" against "consensus“ (Asch, 1952), or "independence" against "submission“ (Asch, 1951).
It is also not a hierarchy where we simply create an order of rules to follow and that dictates how we respond to a conformity dilemma. Instead, think of it as a heterarchy of values. A heterarchy is an organization of equally important components of a system that mutually constrain one another, so that over time and situation they vary in which ones take the lead. For example, in driving a vehicle, accuracy (e.g., how close can I come to another car?) does not always take priority over safety (e.g., leaving adequate space between vehicles), or vice versa. Sometimes we "cut it close;" other times, we "err on the side of caution." Good driving involves jointly realizing values such as accuracy, safety, efficiency, and kindness, which requires shifting priorities over time and tasks.
Applied to the Asch dilemma, this understanding of values suggests that no rule-following procedure (e.g., when in doubt, trust yourself and ignore others) will be adequate to the task. Neither will some attempt to focus on a single value (e.g., truth) do justice to the complexity of the situation. If values are equally important (or comparably considered), but heterarchically related, which value or values should take the lead in an Asch-type situation? Specifically, which ones will be considered in the examples you encounter in your own life?
I always think it is interesting to cover Milgram after Asch back-to-back and to think about how the concepts of conformity and obedience are connected. In your response to recent discussion it was interesting to see how you started to explore the idea that conformity may not always be negative - that there are different motivations involved including some positive social implications of conforming. To start the dialogue this week I would like you to consider the following question:
How can schools effectively teach independent thinking, nurture individuation, and expect students to take a stand against their peers on issues of bullying and immoral behavior? Consider those tasks within the current (and traditional) social structure of schools which is hierarchical, and values (often explicitly teaching) conformity and obedience. What are the obstacles? How is it done well? Where does our traditional approach fail?
Reflecting on your practice
Friday Reflect in Journal on Blackboard about how what we have covered so far might inform your practice
Week 5
Democratic principles in schools
Monday
Read How to Design an Ethical Organization by Epley and Kumar
Tuesday
Watch Deb Meier video
For your journal today consider Deb Meier's call to search for the cracks in the structure of schools that can be widened to provide more opportunities for democratic discourse and a learning by doing approach to creating a shared community for students and teachers. For this post I would like you to consider where those cracks might be, how they may be widened, and what you think the benefits/challenges will be to infusing democratic principles in your school.
Building Towels and Raincoats
Wednesday
Watch my video blog, Building towels and raincoats
Thursday
Reflect on your personal action plan part 1: Revisit the exercise of thinking of 3 or more difficult decision you made that you would change if you had to make it again - A moral failure where some part of you (if even a small part) knew a better path but you made another choice. Identify different examples than you used in Week 3. This does not need to be a formally written response to the prompt but for your own reflection free write your memories of what was going on as you wrestled with your decisions. How did you feel, what else was going on, how did other people react, and so on.
Friday
Personal action plan part 2 due as final journal of the course by following these prompts:
As you reflect on these decisions can you identify any common themes, experiences, distractors or levers, emotions, or any other commonalties from that time?
What were the pressures and considerations that influenced your choice (e.g., social, cultural, cognitive).
Do you think you are susceptible to a similar failure now? Why or why not?
What strategies can you employ to be more aware of your barriers and effectively overcome them in the future? These could be towels, raincoats, or ways of thinking through the issues. The goal her is to challenge yourself to think about how you can better position yourself if similar difficult decisions came your way in the future.
Finally, as you reflect on the way you responded to these prompts today vs a similar exercise in week 3 what is different about the way you approach this sort of reflection?