Teaching ethical behaviour ?

“It was your responsibility!”, just a random remark I picked up during our European Grundtvig project meeting in Palermo, when something went wrong. Just one of the many comments that we often hear people make when they want to remind others of particular expectations that they had as regards the performance of a task that was not carried out satisfactorily or as expected. Somehow we all have our own (implicit) standards and norms. However, only when something goes wrong or turns out a failure , suggestions, remarks, hints but also outright criticism are expressed that point to a code of conduct that was hidden from sight before the incident took place.
Such incidents often give rise to discussions, debate or (preferably) dialogue, but can potentially lead to frictions. They alert us to the fact that one’s own perspectives and values may differ from others. Now suppose we could identify and establish universal (and perhaps even perennial) values, would conflicts then be erased from today’s world? Or is it naive to expect that a universally adopted code of ethical conduct will prevent any future friction?
Even though I usually have a positive (perhaps sometimes idealistic) view on life, there is no doubt in my mind that in the practical application of such a universal code of conduct multiple decisions and choices can be made in similar contexts.
Still, if we then decide that identifying common ethical values or formulating a common ethical code of conduct is a hopeless task, I feel we would be missing an ideal opportunity of sharing views and harvesting the benefits of finding common ground on an important issue such as ethical behaviour. No matter what the outcome will be, all people involved in this collective exploration of coming to a joint code of ethical behaviour will benefit. It will provide them with a variety of perspectives, clarify different approaches and increase understanding of their own points of views in relation to others. After all, the actions of individuals are largely shaped by social experience.
As someone working in education the ensuing question for me is: can we teach ethical behaviour and if so, how ? Wasn’t it Socrates who said: “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” and similarly Galielo Galilei : “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." Then there is also Plutarch who said: “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." It is this approach to educating people, combined with serious dialogue that should be the way to encouraging students to express ethical behaviour and which will continue to be valuable in times of change and globalisation.
Why am I reflecting on this? I’m after all not a lecturer in ethics; I’m just an interested layman in ethical issues who started collecting resources on ethics on the web via the delicious bookmarking site (click here for a direct link), when we were on the point of submitting an application for a European (LLLP) learning partnership about ethical competences. Ethics is one of the courses all students take in the school of social work, so I felt we could benefit from sharing views and focussing on this issue in a European project with partners from various countries.
In our first meeting in Vilnius (see my earlier blog post) we identified 20 ethical values, here’s a visualisation of them, thanks to wordle.

All these have now been worked out in a joint format, a framework identifying aspects like knowledge, skills, attitudes, potential instruments, pedagogical issues etc. Following that, at the 2nd project meeting in Palermo we tried to come to a common understanding of all these issues. However, all the steps we've taken so far have still been very much theoretically oriented and unfortunately, much of the meeting time was spent on presenting theoretical foundations of ethical values and competences and ways of categorising them.
The real challenge will be to put it all into practice by designing and implementing appropriate tools to use in educational settings. This will be the focus of our 3rd meeting in Romania in November. We expect to share experiences in the educational/pedagogical approach and discuss how each partner, in their own context, applied a diversity of instruments for a limited number of the identified ethical values. Let's hope that this upcoming meeting will have a more interactive working mode than the one I've just come back from. It's to a great extent the European project meetings that are favourable to exchanges, discussions and dialogue and where participants in a learning partnership can familiarise themselves with a wide variety of European views in a way that is unparallelled.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.