Brett Santo

Dr. David McGough

EDU 6933 - MPPE

7/12/15

Final Reflection: Moral Philosophy and Professional Ethics

I found this class to be the most intellectually stimulating of all the classes that I have taken thus far, and felt that the content provided will prove useful in my future professional endeavors. Before coming to this class, I had always been a strong supporter of the adage “question everything,” and the curriculum revolving around moral and ethical deliberation allowed me to explore this idea further than I could have ever anticipated. 

Firstly, I found the differentiation between the concepts of morals and ethics to be one of the most intriguing observations ever encountered in my higher education career. As the two concepts of morals and ethics are often perceived to intertwine, this class addressed the fact that they are in fact different on many levels. Firstly, morals typically involve an individual's internal code of what they feel to be right and wrong, while ethics involve a societal standard of norms where one may choose to apply their morals as they see fit. Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson believed there to be a stark difference between morals and ethics as well. He claims that all behavior has an evolutionary lineage, and that humans are born with certain instincts that dictate their behavior. Accordingly, when philosophizing as to whether an issue is a moral issue or an ethical concern, one needs to determine whether the incident involves the individual and the realm of biology, or the external entities and infractions from the norm, respectively. 

Delving into multiple ethical paradigms allowed me to analyze moral and ethical situations from different lenses, and thus fostered questions from perspectives that I had not previously been aware of. As a scholar of transformational and servant-leadership theories and having brief experience from a myriad of areas within a higher education institution, I find an important aspect of a school community to be the establishment of an ethic of care. Additionally, this class has broadened my awareness of three other ethical paradigms that are certainly important to consider moving forward. Specifically, Shapiro and Gross describe the four lenses of ethical deliberation to be Justice, Care, Profession, and Critique (Shapiro & Gross, 2013). I developed a greater understanding of both an ethic of justice and an ethic of the profession as it relates to educational leadership as these concepts provided evidence that it is important to align certain decisions with educational policies/guidelines, as they are what is sometimes expected in institutions. However, I found the ethic of critique to be my favorite ethical lens, as it provided opportunities to ask the questions that no one has considered before, while taking into account aspects of the three other paradigms. Specifically, this ethical paradigm raises difficult questions by "critiquing both the laws, rights, and policies themselves and the process used to determine if the laws, rights, and policies are just" (Shapiro & Gross, 2013, p. 24). I found this idea to align directly with my own morals related to questioning the reasons behind policies and guidelines, rather than simply accepting them. Moving forward in my professional career, I will continue to question policies, guidelines, and standards to ensure that all perspectives are being considered, and if a moral deliberation arises, I will now have the knowledge to feel comfortable taking on the challenge.

I have never taken a philosophy course throughout my higher education career, let alone one that encompassed philosophical debates revolving around one’s personal morals. My undergraduate degree was in psychology, with a minor in counseling, and this class allowed me to combine my passions of understanding humans and the concept of questioning everything in such a way that truly was illuminating. The choice book assignment allowed me to understand an anthropologist’s view of society as it related to culture via energy capture. Ian Morris contends that cultural and biological evolution are contingent upon the method of energy capture of a particular society, and that change will ensue inevitably as a result of humans reaching their capacity to produce energy in a given societal structure. Accordingly, Morris expresses his views on human values by stating, “Our values change in similar ways to our genes, through back and forth interactions between moral systems and the environment (social as well as physical), combined with external shocks” (Morris, 2015, p. 142). Reading this book allowed me to gain a better understanding of the external forces that may be in place while dealing with moral/ethical deliberations. Through the use of the four ethical paradigms that I was introduced to in this class, I will be able to gain a better understanding of how to approach difficult situations in the future. As an aspiring educational leader, being able to view situations through a myriad of perspectives, and accordingly offer varying solutions will prove conducive to both my professional and personal growth. 

Additionally, I found that the individual cases that we analyzed during class provided pragmatic applications of the theories and concepts that were introduced. By providing ways to approximately measure the success of ethical interventions through the use of ABAB-experimentation, I was able to visually understand and hypothetically quantify the effects of each ethical paradigm. Also, the inquiry project assignment provided an opportunity for personal moral philosophizing and professional problem-solving that gave me a glimpse into the world of ethical consultation. The process of making ethical deliberation into a quantifiable experiment, rather than an ambiguous debate, provided a new perspective into moral philosophizing that I not only enjoy, but will certainly use in the future.

Furthermore, I truly enjoyed reading the articles that were assigned each week, and found the assignment of reaction papers to be developmentally beneficial from both a scholarly and a personal standpoint. One of my favorite articles was the critique on feminists as it related to ableist rhetoric during the eugenics period. At first, the essay seemed rather daunting, as it encompassed several complex topics intertwined in a moral dilemma, however, I found this paper to be one of the most illuminating of all the reading assignments. From a moral standpoint, one may think that all feminists are morally sound and inclusionary, however this paper provides evidence that two prominent feminists actually perpetuated discriminatory ableist rhetoric by overlooking the rights of women who were labeled as disabled. Accordingly the two authors assert that, “Feminists must not only examine the eugenic roots of feminism but also root out the ablest bias that now perpetuates their movement” (Lamp & Cleigh, 2011, p. 187). I believe that this statement can be generalized to all areas of ethical debate as well. It is only by looking at ethical and moral situations through multiple ethical paradigms, in which we question the varying contexts of a situation, that we may attempt to truly evade biases. 

This class sparked my interest in ethical deliberation and moral philosophizing, and allowed me to grow as a scholar, a professional, and as a person. I have even considered the possibility of ethical consulting as a future career option, as these types of questions truly align with my passions. I will certainly continue to consider multiple perspectives as I encounter difficult situations in the future, (as they are of course inevitable), however, I will be better prepared to take on such challenges as a result of this class.   

References

Lamp, S. & Cleigh, W.C. (2011). A Heritage of Ableist Rhetoric in American Feminism from the Eugenics Period. In K.Q. Hall (Ed.), Feminist Disability Studies (pp. 175-189). Bloomington,Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Morris, I. (2015). Foragers, farmers, and fossil fuels: How human values evolve. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Shapiro, J., & Gross, S. (2013). Ethical educational leadership in turbulent times: (re)solving moral dilemmas (Second ed.). New York, New York: Rutledge.