Teaching of Ethics in School Education in Europe: International Perspectives

• In Event: Ethics Education Across Contexts and the Life Span

Abstract

This paper considers ‘ethics’ as a curriculum subject and it aims to present the models of which were developed and practiced in some Latin European countries (like Spain and Portugal) and Scandinavian countries (like for example Finland) or Central and West European countries (like Poland and Germany).

In European countries “ethics” as a school subject encompasses principles, virtues and ideas about right and wrong, duty and obligation in human conduct and reasoning and choice about right and wrong, and what it is to be a good person and what means the good life. Ethics is situated differently in the curriculum and we can identified at least two models of teaching of ethics in European countries. In some countries ethics is treated as a separate subject and it has been a part of the school curriculum for many years (however, it can be called not directly ethics but as we have in Germany “Praktische Philosophie” – practical philosophy). In some other European countries “ethics” is a part of religious education and refers to religious and philosophical approaches to moral decision making and ideas of what constitutes the good, and particular issues of a personal, social or scientific nature which attract significant debate and dispute.

In the paper the main research questions are: What is the place of teaching of ethics in school education in Europe? What are the main challenges of teaching of ethics in perception of teachers? What is the role of teaching of ethics in the youth development?

The study derives from a larger project completed between 2014-2016 and entitled ‘Ethics in the Systems of Education in Poland and Selected Western Countries (Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, France, Norway, Finland)’. The project was implemented under the National Programme for the Development of Humanities of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland. The project was conceived as a contribution to educational research and knowledge on teaching of ethics in the school system and to the building of ethics as a school subject in the school system in Poland.

The special attention will be paid to teaching of ethics in Poland, where ethics is a relatively new subject in school education. The paper will focus on the place of ethics class and practice of teaching ethics in schools in Poland and it will include: i) a content analysis of legislation regulating the functioning of ethics in the education system in Poland and the analysis of data obtained from the Ministry of Education and the data commonly available from the Education Information System. In the analysis such indicators were took into account as for example: the number of schools implementing ethics classes, the number of teachers employed to teach ethics in schools, or the average weekly amount of time ethics teacher per one school. The study also sought to show the ethics as a subject in primary and secondary schools in the dynamic approach based on the analysis and interpretation of statistical data for the years 2014-2016. The subject of discussion is the availability of courses in ethics, depending on the type of school, its location (region, municipality, city with county rights) and the school year (school year 2014/15 and the school year 2015/16); ii) analysis of the perspectives of teachers of ethics concerning the main challenges of teaching ethics and the role of teaching ethics in the youth development. An on-line questionnaire „Teaching of Ethics in Schools” was designed and distributed among every teacher of ethics in Poland in school year 2015/2016. Opinions, experiences and reflections of these teachers, relating to issues such as: core curriculum, textbooks and teaching materials, ethics as a subject, ethics and / and religion at school, challenges that teachers of ethics have to face up with, the relationship between ethics and religion and teacher education for teachers of ethics, were a valuable source of knowledge. In total, 1,266 teachers of ethics responded to the survey.

The research findings indicated the marginal position of ethics as a school subject in Polish schools. Teachers' opinions on teaching ethics reveal the fundamental challenges that the teachers of ethics have to face up to during their everyday school work. The challenges of particular note include those associated with teaching, teaching materials, work organization, the characteristics of students, the priority and support for the subject from the authorities, the issues connected with ethics and the curriculum, and stereotypes associated with the perception of ethics as a school subject.

The paper directs our attention to such issues as e.g.: (i) What is the purpose of teaching ethics in European schools (e.g. ethics as an exercise in shaping moral consciousness of the individual; ethics as a preparation for the life of a citizen and member of society; ethics, understood as a vital part of humanities, preparing to understand the contemporary world)?; (ii) Should teaching ethics aim to shape attitudes, or should it be a transfer of knowledge? How much time end effort should be devoted to meta-ethics and how much to so-called "applied ethics"? (iii) What about the axiological neutrality of the school as an institution, in particular how important in the teaching of ethics is to be impartial and axiologically neutral? Whether such approach can be consistent with the aim of shaping moral sensitivity of individuals? (iv) The emergence of ethics as an alternative to religion (as school subjects) provokes the question whether ethics contributes to the process of secularization and promotes the post-secular cultural model.

Author

• Joanna Maria Madalinska-Michalak, University of Warsaw