Resources for learning and teaching ethics

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Resources for learning and teaching ethics
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Overview

• Is ethics theoretical or practical?
• What is teaching ethics for?
• Resources

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Is ethics theoretical or practical?

• Theoretical subjects e.g. AP
• Practical subjects e.g. CPR, sutures
• Ethics?

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Theoretical or practical?

• the aim of the practical sciences is different
  For we do not wish to know what bravery is but
  rather to be brave, nor what justice is but
  rather to be just just as we wish to be in
  health rather than to know what health is.
  Aristotle (trans. Wood, 1997).

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Theoretical or practical?
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Theoretical or practical?
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What is teaching ethics for?

• Moral development
• Moral guidance

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Teaching ethics moral development

• Eschew value neutrality
• Agreement on the that
• Framework based on the virtues
• Fast-track moral development e.g. using
  humanities, case studies

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Teaching ethics moral guidance

• Nursing places exceptional demands
• Practitioners need help e.g. from ethical
  theories and principles use
• Theories to aid decision making
• Topic-based teaching
• Case studies

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Resources Ethical theory

• Help practitioners identify ethical parts of a
  practical problem
• Enable practitioners to develop skills and tools
  to tackle ethical parts
• Develop soundness of beliefs and values
• a) and b) relate to moral guidance c) to moral
  character

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Resources - humanities

• Too poncey Austen
• Too grotesque - Emmerdale

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Resources case studies

• Exaggerate controversial nature of morality
• Not clear what counts as a moral problem
• Tempt students to contemplate the unethical
• (Christopher Coope)

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Resources Ethics topics

• Informed consent, euthanasia, abortion and so
  forth