Ethical Fitness® for Tomorrow’s World
Grade level: K-16
Promising
Approaches
- Guided Discussions of
Issues and Current Events
- Service-Learning and
Community Service
Overview
Special Features
Civic Learning Goals
Evaluation Studies
Required Resources
Available Resources
Professional Development Opportunities
Snapshot of Practice in Action
Contact Information
Overview
The Ethical Fitness® approach can be found
in schools across the United
States and around the world. This approach gives school
leadership, classroom teachers and other educators – inside schools and in the
larger school community – specific, developmentally appropriate tools for
building students’ understanding about the need for ethical behavior in an
increasingly complex world. Serving children
K – College, this approach is based on a conceptual framework for understanding
and thinking through tough ethical dilemmas.
Since the
approach is concept-based, it is easily adapted to a number of different areas
of learning, notably civics and citizenship. In 1996, The Institute for Global Ethics received a three year research
grant to combine the Ethical Fitness® conceptual framework with successful service learning approaches. One outcome of the project is a curriculum
tailored specifically to service learning.
The Ethical Fitness® approach involves
three major concept areas:
1. Ethical Awareness: This stage
helps students understand what ethics is, what it isn’t, and why it
matters. Older students explore
“obedience to the unenforceable”, and consider the urgent need for ethics in a
world in which our scale of systems and our technology mean decisions can have
a truly global impact.
2. Shared Values: This stage helps
students understand that while individuals can think differently about issues,
they often believe in similar core ethical values. Students explore the Institute for Global
Ethics worldwide research on shared ethical values across cultures,
ethnicities, age and gender. Students
experience a process for determining the values they share with others.
3. Decision making: This stage
helps students apply specific tools for making tough decisions, and to
appreciate the complexity of ethical decisions, and the ethical issues that may
impact them, their community or their world. While choices between right and wrong are examined, the main focus here
is on the complex dilemmas in which two or more core values come into
conflict. Students practice specific
strategies for analyzing and resolving ethical dilemmas, and are encouraged to
bring real personal examples to the discussion.
Special Features
This framework has been taught successfully all over the world. It provides a language and non-confrontational
approach, especially for considering controversial issues that challenge
exploration in a way that is balanced but maintains relevance and meaning.
Civic
Learning Goals
Civic Knowledge
- Key historical periods, episodes, themes, and experiences of individuals and groups
Civic Skills
- Critical
thinking, active listening, analyzing public policies, problems and assets, and
understanding multiple perspectives
- Communicating
one’s position through writing or speaking
- Planning
and implementing civic action through managing, organizing and building
consensus
Civic Dispositions
- Developing
tolerance, respect, and appreciation of difference
- Developing
concern with the rights and welfare of others
- Developing
a belief in one’s ability to make a difference
- Developing
attentiveness to civic matters and a desire to become involved in
the civic life of the community
Evaluation
Studies
Two
evaluation studies are currently available regarding Ethical Fitness® as an
instructional approach. Please contact
the Institute for Global Ethics: and
request the Executive Summaries of our research with inmate populations, and
our research with high schools implementing service learning programs.
Required
Resources
A
classroom teacher or peer leader is required to lead groups. We provide stand-alone
curriculum, but recommend the Ethical
Fitness® Workshop.
Available
Resources
Curricular
materials for K – College are available at our website. www.globalethics.org
Professional
Development Opportunities
One day Ethical Fitness® Workshops and two day Ethical Fitness® train-the-trainer
programs are offered periodically at the Institute for Global Ethics.
Snapshot
of the Practice in Action
Excerpted
from Centerpiece The Principals’
Center for the Garden State,Princeton,NJ: www.princtr.org:
“Good
decision-making under pressure is one of the hallmarks of leadership. And as the leader of the school campus, the
principal must make tough choices every day. But if a principal is unsure how to resolve a particularly difficult
situation, where do they turn? To their gut instinct? To the school handbook? To the law?
At Lawrence High School
in Lawrenceville,NJ, Principal Donald Profit has instituted an ethical decision-making model to guide the tough choices made
on campus. The system, designed by the
Institute for Global Ethics (IGE), provides a way to analyze ethical dilemmas….
Through workshops with the students, the schools chose a code of ethics –
honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, and compassion. On top of this foundation, Don uses [the Ethical
Fitness®] framework … Don
reiterates this system for ethical living in the school newsletter, when making
announcements, and when speaking to the student body. That way, students and staff understand what
is expected of them and how disciplinary decisions are made. .. “I talk step-by-step through the situation
and work out what happened and what values are in conflict. This model gives the campus a sense of
fairness. And it equips the students
with a way to stop and think about their actions.”
Contact Information
Paula Mirk, VP Education
The Institute for Global Ethics
PO Box 563
11/13 Main Street
Camden, Maine 04843
207-236-6658;
800-729-2615
ethics@globalethics.org
www.globalethics.org
