Dr. Matthew Schertz
Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction
Addendum for Ethics 407 General Education Application
1) An early field experience provides students with direct access to the teaching and
learning that occurs in K-12 environments. Issues such as individual rights, and
legal concerns such as in loco parentis, are better understood after students have
spent some time in schools. Moreover, students can better evaluate ethical
questions common to the profession if they have been in the role of teacher and
have realized some of their responsibilities. Other professional programs at UM,
such as pharmacy and business, also require prior fieldwork because they provide
context that can only emerge via a progressive educational experience. That
being said, we do offer overrides so students in other programs can take our ethics
course without prior field experience. The prerequisite is designed to ensure that
our own students come to the session with some prior knowledge of working in
public schools.
Our ethics course is required for obtaining any teacher education license offered
at UM. This requirement ensures that our teacher education graduates are
afforded the opportunity to explore education through the lenses of philosophy,
history, policy and law. One of the great pleasures of teaching the course is that
college students with a wide range of interests, from art to chemistry to early
childhood, are provided an opportunity to collectively explore the richness of
education. Part of the 400 level designation of the course is due to the fact that
all students, including graduate students, are required to take the course. A 400
level designation enables advanced students to obtain graduate level credit. Our
department lacks the staffing necessary to offer 200 level and 400 and/or 500
level versions of the course. We include additional components for graduate
students taking the course.
2) Edu 407 has three separate and yet complementary foci and three distinct
assessments that accompany each part of the course. The first part of the course
focuses on philosophy, history and educational policy so students get the chance
to explore education with depth. These readings specifically delve into ethics,
the history of moral education, and educational policy.
For the first section of the course, students are expected to come to class having
read the assigned readings and with written notes wherein they highlight 4 things:
and observation, a question, a connection and a surprise. I require that they
highlight these 4 things because it helps to facilitate dialogical pedagogy. Any
student-derived question or surprise can become a vehicle for discussion. I
collect these notes and evaluate them as the class progresses.
Here is a partial list of readings from the Spring, 2016 version of the course.
Most are selections from the book highlighted:
Week 1: Plato, Republic
Week 2: Montaigne, Essays
Week 3: Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Week 4: Kaestle, Rural Schools in the Early Republic
Puritan Primer
Week 5: Schertz’s “The Mother’s Magazine: Moral Media for an Emergent
Domestic Pedagogy”
Kaufman’s Women teachers on the Frontier
Week 6: Foucault’s Discipline and Punish
W. E. Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk,
Week 7:_ David Wallace Adam's "Fundamental Considerations: The Deep
Meaning of Native American Schooling, 1880-1900." Harvard Educational
Review
Week 8: John Dewey’s, My Pedagogical Creed or Experience and Education
Week 9: Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Weeks 10-12 during Ethical Analysis work:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Strike and Soltis, Consequentialism vs. Nonconsequentialism
Nell Noddings, The Challenge to Care in Schools
Weeks 12-15: Studying Education Law and Policy
3) Ethics and Human Values (E) student outcomes:
“analyze and critically evaluate the basic concepts and forms of reasoning from
the tradition or professional practice they studied.”
This class is run utilizing the Socratic Method. Students are afforded the
opportunity to analyze and critique various approaches to ethics through
class discussion and their own notes on the readings. Identified concepts
and forms of reasoning include: the Dialectic, Virtue-Based Ethical Theory,
Lock’s Pedagogy, Utilitarianism, The Categorical Imperative, Dewey’s Moral
Education method and Nodding’s Caring.
“correctly apply the basic concepts and forms of reasoning from the tradition or
professional practice they studied to ethical issues that arise within those
traditions or practices”
All students in 407 complete an ethical analysis. For this assignment, students
read an authentic case study and then utilize Aristotelian Virtue Theory and the
Professional Educator of Montana Code of Ethics to support their analysis.
Please see the attached assignment description for further details.
Students who exceed expectations at this assignment correctly identify the virtues
that are of concern in the case study and argue for pursuing the mean. They also
apply the state ethical code in a compelling manner. They are also able to reflect
upon their own ethical/moral development. They write thoughtful prose.
Students who meet the criteria for the assignment correctly identify some of the
virtues, and apply the ethical code in a sufficient manner. They are able to
engage in some amount of self-reflection. Their prose is adequate with minimal
errors.
Students who do not meet the criteria for successful completion of this assignment
misidentify and/or misapply virtue theory and the ethical code. Self-reflection is
lacking. Poor prose.
I welcome any additional questions you have.