Philosophy has consequences! Developing metacognition and active learning in the ethics classroom

The importance of enchancing metacognition and encouraging active learning in philosophy teaching has been increasingly recognised in recent years. Yet traditional teaching methods have not always centralised helping students to become reflectively and critically aware of the quality and consistency of their own thinking. This is particularly relevant when teaching moral philosophy, where apparently inconsistent intuitions and responses are common. In this paper I discuss the theoretical basis of the relevance of metacognition and active learning for teaching moral philosophy. Applying recent discussions of metacognition, intuition conflicts and survey-based teaching techniques, I then outline a strategy for encouraging metacognitive awareness of tensions in students’ pretheoretical beliefs, and developing a critical self-awareness of their development as moral thinkers.

Virtue ethics, CSR and corporate citizenship

The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management values the dignity of the individual; human rights; and equal opportunity. Its Code of Ethics declares a professional’s duty to broader society. The code advocates education to reinforce this ethical outlook. This paper contributes a specific approach towards the practitioner’s ethical understanding. It enlists the critique of Alasdair MacIntyre who strongly criticises much conventional ethical theory. MacIntyre’s teleological approach is joined with a notion of a hierarchy of narratives of ethical expectations in an argument which counsels that public relations must always operate at the highest level of these narratives.

Food fortification : the evidence, ethics and politics of adding nutrients to food

This research book presents a critical analysis of mandatory food fortification as a technology for protecting and promoting public health. Increasing numbers of foods fortified with novel amounts and combinations of nutrients are being introduced into the food supplies of countries around the world to raise populations’ nutrient intakes. Three topical food fortification case studies representing the different public health rationales for adding nutrients to food were assessed for their public health benefits, risks and ethical considerations: Universal salt iodisation (USI) to help prevent iodine deficiency disorders; mandatory flour fortification with folic acid (MFFFA) to help prevent neural tube defects; and mandatory milk fortification with vitamin D (MMFVD) to help prevent vitamin D deficiency. These assessments found that whereas USI performs strongly as a public health intervention, MFFFA and MMFVD are associated with more risks and less ethical justification than an alternative policy option. Food fortification can be a blunt policy response to complex policy problems. The findings highlight that the primary predictor of a mandatory food fortification policy’s benefits, risks and ethics is its ability to address the underlying cause of the policy problem. The analysis of the policy-making processes for each case study found that certain powerful actors use their influence to determine what counts as evidence in policy processes to privilege food fortification activities over alternative policy options. Policy-making frequently was notable for the low prominence it afforded ethical considerations and its lack of public engagement. Priority activities to help strengthen policy processes and outcomes are suggested.

Journalism ethics and law: stories of media practice

Journalism Ethics and Law ignites the conversation about journalism ethics and the function of the law in today’s media. Emphasising a practical work-based approach to develop best practice multimedia journalism; this book presents a combined ethics and law experience for journalism students and uses stories and case studies to highlight the most significant questions for the practice of law and ethics today.

Journalism Ethics and Law offers readers a new way about thinking about journalism ethics and empowers future journalists to make good and ethical decisions in the field.

Improving the value of the national curriculum through ethics and the religious

Ethics and religion are currently being considered for inclusion into Australia's national curriculum. This paper argues that such a consideration ought to be founded upon an education for democracy, where students are encouraged to become critical inquirers. It is also contended here that an engagement with ethics and the religious has a lot of potential for enhancing the educative value of our national curriculum because currently ACARA lacks any aspirational purposes for education and is merely focused upon the technical concerns regarding teaching and learning.

Migrant mothers: family photographs and the intra-active fashioning of a visual-material ethics

Migrant mothers play crucial roles within the social landscape of schools, particularly in providing care, education and a transition between home and school for their children. My research considers the relevance of theories of space, place, temporality and mobility in Iranian migrant mothers’ production of subjectivity for themselves and their children in and through their family photograph collections. Gillian Rose’s anthropological approach to visual objects is put to use in an exploration of the co-constitution of migrant women and their photographs. In this paper, I trace the shaping of a visual-material ethics within the research context and appropriate to the sensibilities and needs of the participant women who each moved from Iran to Australia with their children. Karen Barad’s notion of a posthumanist ‘ethics of mattering’ is drawn upon in conceptualising a visual-material ethics as fashioned in the intra-actions of people and visual objects. Specific ethical issues considered include the collaborative process of producing a family photograph, and the shaping and reshaping of images from photograph to line drawing to hybridised photograph-line drawing. A research ethics committee’s application of a liberal individualist, utilitarian and positivist biomedical paradigm in considering the research project is discussed as not only inadequate but also incompatible with the fashioning of a visual-material ethics in concert with the participant women and their photographs.