In the rural elementary school where Jennifer taught, resources were thin. Teaching assistants, student interns, and adult volunteers were scarce. And she couldn't arrange schedules so that older students could help younger ones.
But help was exactly what Sally, a 4th grader in Jennifer's class, most needed. A bright child, well-meaning and engaging, Sally had limited social skills. Getting along with others was difficult for her. In cooperative activities, she lapsed into willful, manipulative behaviors. It didn't take a trained psychologist to see that she needed much more direction than the other students.
What Sally needed was an adult's full-time attention—attention that Jennifer, in charge of 23 other children, simply couldn't give.
Like many teachers, Jennifer focused heavily on team-based work. And increasingly, she noted that whatever team Sally worked on got into difficulties. They lost focus. They never completed their objectives. One group even avoided working with Sally, and others were ready to follow suit. A sullen rebellion seemed to be brewing. Yet Sally was making progress, however slowly, in learning to work with others.
So Jennifer had a dilemma. Should she continue to allow Sally to participate fully, even if her group suffered as a result? Or should she remove Sally from cooperative learning activities so that all the groups could progress faster? More important, what conceptual framework could she use to weigh these two mutually exclusive courses of action?
We might see Jennifer's problem as a lesser-of-two-evils choice. Or we might see it largely as a pedagogical challenge, to be resolved through educational psychology, behavior theory, or teacherly traditions. And because it doesn't involve any unethical behavior—nobody here was doing anything bad—we could be forgiven for not seeing it as a moral or values-driven issue.
Yet what Jennifer faced is a classic ethical dilemma—amenable to resolution not so much through competing theories of learning as through the principles of moral philosophy. True, it's not a matter of right versus wrong, which is one way most dictionaries define ethical issues. Instead, it's the toughest sort of ethical challenge, the kind most commonly faced by teachers, administrators, and institutions committed to doing the right thing. It's a right-versus-right dilemma.
How so? Well, think of it not as a standoff between two awful alternatives, but as a conflict between two right courses of action. We could build a powerful moral case for both sides of Jennifer's individual-versus-community dilemma. It's right, we might say, for Sally to continue in the group activities—right for Sally herself, whose progress as an individual student is a hugely important factor, and right for her parents, who want her to succeed. Yet it's also right to permit the group to progress smoothly. It's right, in other words, to honor the needs of the individual. But it's also right to honor the needs of the community. What makes this a tough choice is that Jennifer can't immediately see how to do both right things at once.
Typical Tensions Behind Complex Dilemmas
- Truth versus loyalty, in which personal honesty or integrity is at odds with responsibility and promise keeping. For example, it is right for an educator to maintain the confidentiality of a student who shares a personal dilemma—and right to take action on that information if a student might be in some jeopardy.
- Short-term versus long-term, in which the real and important requirements of the present come up against foresight, stewardship, and deferred gratification. For example, it is right to take the family on a much-needed vacation—and right to save that money for our children's education.
- Justice versus mercy, in which fairness, expectation, and an equal application of the rules are opposed to empathy, compassion, and a desire to make exceptions. For example, it is right to throw the book at good employees who make dumb decisions that endanger the school—and right to have enough compassion to give them another chance.
What makes these choices so tough? The fact that they are rooted in core moral values. If Jennifer had scant concern for individuality, Sally's case wouldn't strike her as a dilemma: Putting community above all, she'd have no difficulty excluding Sally from the groups. Similarly, if the claims of personal rights were all that mattered to her, she might simply force Sally into teamwork activities with little regard for the internal dynamics of the groups. What makes this a genuine dilemma is that these two values are so exquisitely balanced. Both, obviously, are right.
Defining Our Shared Values
But are they right for everybody? That question hints at a deeper one that arises whenever the words values and education appear on the same page. Do shared moral values exist? Don't we all have different values? Are we not compelled to respect the tremendous diversity of values in the educational arena? When we talk about "teaching values," whose values will we teach?
- compassion
- honesty
- fairness
- responsibility
- respect
The words may vary, with love or truthfulness, for example, replacing compassion or honesty. But these five ideas appear to be at the heart of humanity's search for its shared values. That finding has profound implications.
Clearly, any school in a pluralistic society wants to include all its constituencies as it seeks to understand how core values fit into academic achievement. If the values discussed are the five identified here—values so universal that according to our research, they are part of most religious perspectives—that's a reasonable assurance that nobody will feel left out of the dialogue.
- Help build a common language.
- Help define a common purpose.
- Develop and maintain trust.
- Influence total school climate to enhance the teaching and learning goals.
- Provide the basis on which to nurture the spirit, extend the inspirational and holistic vectors, and create a deeper sense of meaningfulness.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas
What does all that have to do with resolving ethical dilemmas? It helps us understand where right-versus-right dilemmas originate. They don't arise out of a lack of values. Quite the contrary: They arise because we have values, two of which are pitted against each other. And others recognize these dilemmas because we share a core of common values and meet ethical challenges in similar ways.
Of course, it is not enough to understand that right-versus-right dilemmas are difficult to resolve or that they may be analyzed in an organized manner. A resolution process is essential. This process involves applying three time-tested principles for deciding ethical dilemmas: ends-based, rule-based, and care-based.
Ends-based thinking is best captured in the phrase, “Do whatever provides the greatest good for the greatest number.” The ends-based approach is a form of consequentialism because we cannot determine the greatest good without guessing what the future consequences will be.
According to rule-based thinking, we must ask, “If everyone in the world were to do what I am about to do—to follow the rule that I am about to follow—is that the kind of world I would want to live in?” Rule-based thinking is opposed to ends-based thinking. it challenges the idea that we can ever really know what the consequences of our actions will be. Instead, the rule-based thinker says, we must always stick to our principles and let the chips fall where they may.
The third principle, care-based thinking, commands that we do to others what we would want others to do to us. This is most commonly known as the Golden Rule, although philosophers also call this a rule of reversibility. It asks us to put ourselves in another person's shoes and imagine how it would feel if we were the recipient of the action we are about to take.
- Ends-based: In considering the greatest good for the greatest number, Jennifer concedes that Sally's behavior is detrimental to the larger group's achievement. Unless and until Sally learns to cooperate, her fellow group members will do much better without her.
- Rule-based: Jennifer asks herself, "What if every teacher in the world, in this situation, were to do what I am about to do?" Would they always allow Sally to participate or never allow Sally to participate? Remember, there can be only one standard. It would be tough to decide that the Sallys of the world would never be allowed to participate.
- Care-based: Under this principle, Jennifer must identify the most important "others" requiring consideration. Sally is clearly important, but so are her classmates. Is including Sally the caring thing to do no matter what the consequences are for others? Or should Jennifer try to find some alternative for her?
Throughout the process, Jennifer also needs to ask, "Is there a third way out?" Can Sally be taught to be more team-oriented, for example, thus preparing her for reentry into a group setting? Or is there another setting altogether that would be better for Sally?
In applying the model, Jennifer's dilemma does not suddenly become easy to resolve. But she has worked her way through a process of solving the dilemma she faces. She has adopted a language of ethical decision making that can be applied in ethical dilemmas of all types. She has learned a powerful teaching tool for working with dilemmas that occur throughout all aspects of her professional practice.
And what happened? In this real-life scenario, Jennifer decided to request that Sally visit the special education resource room during cooperative learning exercises. She felt her obligation was to provide the rest of the students with the most rewarding experience possible, even at the risk of disappointing Sally.
Most teachers face decisions like the one Jennifer had to make, and most take their responsibilities seriously, because young people are constantly monitoring the adults around them. This hidden curriculum has a very real effect on what students learn. In the area of ethical values, teachers must be cognizant of how their words and actions coincide with the values they profess to uphold. And with ethical decision making, educators must model a balanced, reasoned process based on these intrinsic values. The stakes are no less than the future of the world, where personal responsibility will be essential to surviving the challenges of the 21st century.
