In response to the challenges of teaching a course in environmental ethics to engineering majors at a technological university, I have developed an approach that emphasizes the role of moral imagination in conjunction with systems imagination in responding to problems that arise in shared environments. The course is set out on a model of problem-based learning, conceived as a cognitive apprenticeship: by working together to understand and consider responses to problems that are of interest to them, with guidance and tools provided by the instructor, students develop their capacity to notice, respond to and think about systems and values with greater sophistication. After setting out the rationale and the design of the course, I note the challenge that remains: developing a systematic assessment of the course, which would involve detecting and tracking subtle changes in student cognition.

Higher education continues to see a shift toward online course delivery. Many professional graduate programs offer online courses when content does not necessarily require face-to-face contact. The use of movies to teach ethics and professionalism to medical students is not a new pedagogical approach. At a university in the United States, a shift in a tracked physical therapy curriculum triggered a course in ethics and professionalism to be delivered earlier in the program, leaving students without prior clinical experience before starting the course. The instructor revised this online course using movies to provide context for the topics covered making them relatable to physical therapy practice. This article describes student reactions to the implementation of movies into this course. Students valued the addition of the movies as they provided context using relevant health care situations, ultimately helping them relate the concepts to the physical therapy profession.

Some engineering educators recognize the necessity and challenges of teaching students moral sensitivity. As recently pointed out by some scholars, along with moral sensitivity, promoting “self-knowledge” is significantly lacking in engineering curricula. We suggest that the “ethics autobiography” employed in some health and psychological science programs can serve as a useful tool for helping engineering students develop moral sensitivity and self-reflective competencies. First, this paper briefly discusses some unique potential strengths of introducing ethics autobiography as a tool for moral pedagogy to engineering education. Second, this paper provides five specific examples on how to implement ethics autobiography in the classroom. Among the five examples, two are directly related to engineering education and the other three can easily be adapted to meet the needs of engineering education. Finally, this paper concludes with some discussion of the implications of ethics autobiography for engineering ethics education reform and the limitations and ethical considerations of using autobiography in moral pedagogy.

Noting that issues raised during clinical bioethics consults at a southeastern US hospital involve the application of basic ethical principles, the Clinical Bioethics Consultation Service developed and piloted an interprofessional ethics immersion. The goal of this 4-week immersion was to improve teamwork and collaboration, support resolution of basic ethical dilemmas, and develop on-site ethics scholars who apply basic ethical principles to challenging clinical situations. The impact of the immersion on ethical environment, team communication, and confidence in resolving of basic ethical dilemmas for interprofessional clinical teams was examined using follow-up interviews with seven of the eight participants from two ethics immersion offerings. Findings support that an interprofessional ethics immersion training is a valuable strategy to improve ethics knowledge and resolve common patient care dilemmas. The unique aspects of this ethics immersion, team-based and interprofessional, are important considerations for ongoing development of clinicians to address the daily challenges encountered in healthcare.

This article gives a broad sense of existing debate about Global Citizenship Education (GCE) to help situate and contextualize a novel case study. Scholars for Syria originated at a small university in southern Indiana. This grassroots response to the turmoil in Syria bridges the gap between a seemingly distant crisis and a midwestern city in the United States. The unique pedagogical and curricular dimensions of the case study work as a helpful framing device for facilitating exploration of debates about the shape of GCE, as well as providing new ways in which to imagine GCE curriculum, pedagogy, and embedding ethics into wider university initiatives.

In-course marks and final grades each have their own nature and purpose and conflating the two does a disservice to both. Final grades represent a fixed and final statement about how a student did in the course in the end. They are a communication between the professor and anyone who will pick up that student’s transcript someday. In-course marks, by contrast, are a communication between the professor and student alone, and ought to be representative of an ongoing conversation about how the student is currently doing in the course. They are subject to change with each lecture, assessment, and conversation, and should embody that dynamism and potential for progress. Building upon the pedagogical concepts of differentiated learning, growth mindset, and backward course design, this paper will examine the advantages of differentiating between the two types of grades and present three grading models that incorporate the distinction.

This paper argues that business ethics would enhance its relevance if it is ceases to be a moralizing discourse and instead becomes a mediating discourse between conflicting and multiple interests. Yet business ethics can be relevant as a mediating discourse only if it acknowledges the “embedded” nature of market. To clarify this point, the paper draws from Freeman’s theory of narrative cores, Rehg’s Problem-based Approach and De George’s vision of business ethics as an interdisciplinary field composed of descriptive, managerial and normative components. Finally, we argue for the relevance of the case study, whose juxtaposition of “bi-polar” or irreconcilable dichotomies makes it a vital pedagogical tool for our proposed reconfiguration of business ethics as an interdisciplinary, mediating field of enquiry.

Ethics training is becoming increasingly common in pre-professional contexts to address ethical misconduct in business, medicine, science, and other disciplines. These courses are often taught by philosophers. The question is whether such ethics training, which involves philosophical reflection, is effective in cultivating ethical behavior. This paper takes a closer look at the goals of teaching ethics and how our current methods are ineffective in achieving the affective and active goals of teaching ethics. This paper then suggests how experiential learning and, specifically, service learning may be one way forward in achieving these goals. While some pre-professional programs have implemented service learning, the ethics courses offered by philosophers also may be improved by giving students more opportunities to engage their communities through service learning.