Navigating Ethical Waters in the Classroom

By Donna Qualters, Director, CELT

Should teachers strike? How should government balance privacy rights with national security? Should companies value their shareholders over the environment? How quickly should a software company fix a known bug?

Regardless of discipline, faculty are faced with ethical issues in our classes around a variety of sensitive topics, and students will question the ethics of certain practices or topics in our field. As trained academics, we are not always comfortable having discussions where there is no clear right or wrong answer or talking about ethical areas in which we do not feel we are experts. So, how do you respond to students who really want to know “the answer” to these types of questions?

For more, read the report at Faculty Focus: Navigating Ethical Waters in the Classroom