ETHICS (Ethics Teaching Highlighted In Contextualised Scenarios)

During 2003-04 UKCLE participated in the Ethics Teaching Highlighted In Contextualised Scenarios (ETHICS) project. The project, funded by the Learning and Teaching Support Network (now part of the Higher Education Academy), was conceived as a response to the growing requirement for ethics to be both a professional and academic component of qualifications throughout higher education.

The project included representatives from five subject centres, covering bioscience; health sciences and practice; law; medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine; philosophical and religious studies; and psychology. They examined the current provision of professional and academic ethics teaching in their subject and identified key concerns and problems as well as evidence of good practice.

Outcomes

The ETHICS project website offers a range of resources to teachers of ethics, including a bank of case studies. An online guide, Approaches to ethics in higher education: teaching ethics across the curriculum, outlines three diverse approaches to ethics teaching and examines the future of ethics learning and teaching in higher education. This work is being taken forward by IDEA, the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL).

The case studies, known as scenarios, provide examples of topical and controversial issues suitable for use in teaching both undergraduate and vocational students. They include guidance for use in seminars and ideas for assessment, and may be used ‘as is’ or adapted as required.

The following scenarios were contributed by UKCLE:

• asbestos (based on a scenario developed as part of the Professional Conduct course on the Legal Practice Course at Oxford Institute of Legal Practice)
• burglar (based on a scenario developed as part of the Professional Conduct course on the Legal Practice Course at Oxford Institute of Legal Practice)
• defective cot
• parent

UKCLE also funded a mini-project examining teaching legal ethics in contextualised settings as part of its work on the ETHICS project.

Last Modified: 6 July 2010