Analysing the Level of Ethical Instruction in the University Curriculum
ETHICS EDUCATION FOR THE UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM: ENABLING GRADUATES TO BE ETHICALLY RELEVANT IN PROFESSIONAL DECISION MAKING.
A DPhil proposal by Beauty Dondo
Over the years professionalism has been used to describe the stature of health workers and those involved in business issues. What has remained unclear is how people develop into professionals. Debate has been raging and continues to rage on how people develop into professionals. This paper takes a close look at literature to establish the prevailing perceptions of lecturers and students on the teaching of ethics education. The paper is in four sections, it starts by contextualizing and giving an overview of ethics and ethics education. It then goes on to analyze concept papers that have been published or presented at conferences on the teaching of ethics in universities. The analysis takes the reader through some theoretical considerations of ethics education. Here the idea is to look at how ethics education improves the knowledge and performance levels of the graduate.
The Northern Illinois University defines ethics as: “--- a body of principles or standards of human conduct that govern the behavior of individuals and groups. Ethics arise not simply from [human’s] creation but from human nature itself making it a natural body of laws from which [human’s] laws follow”.
Ethics therefore is generally defined as ‘doing something right’. What is interesting about ethics is the question of who decides on what is right and what is wrong. This question is further complicated by the dynamic nature of the social environment. What maybe considered right today may not be considered right tomorrow? Further to that what maybe right in one community may not be right in another community? To add to the complexity of ethics, some situations raise a lot of conflict that decision making becomes difficult.
An observation by Sims and Felton (2005) was that the definitions of ethics were so abstract and theoretical that
A DPhil proposal by Beauty Dondo
Over the years professionalism has been used to describe the stature of health workers and those involved in business issues. What has remained unclear is how people develop into professionals. Debate has been raging and continues to rage on how people develop into professionals. This paper takes a close look at literature to establish the prevailing perceptions of lecturers and students on the teaching of ethics education. The paper is in four sections, it starts by contextualizing and giving an overview of ethics and ethics education. It then goes on to analyze concept papers that have been published or presented at conferences on the teaching of ethics in universities. The analysis takes the reader through some theoretical considerations of ethics education. Here the idea is to look at how ethics education improves the knowledge and performance levels of the graduate.
The Northern Illinois University defines ethics as: “--- a body of principles or standards of human conduct that govern the behavior of individuals and groups. Ethics arise not simply from [human’s] creation but from human nature itself making it a natural body of laws from which [human’s] laws follow”.
Ethics therefore is generally defined as ‘doing something right’. What is interesting about ethics is the question of who decides on what is right and what is wrong. This question is further complicated by the dynamic nature of the social environment. What maybe considered right today may not be considered right tomorrow? Further to that what maybe right in one community may not be right in another community? To add to the complexity of ethics, some situations raise a lot of conflict that decision making becomes difficult.
An observation by Sims and Felton (2005) was that the definitions of ethics were so abstract and theoretical that