Challenging and Changing Mindsets through Interventions in an Ethics & Professionalism Class

• In Event: Reception with Effective Learning Strategies Display

Abstract

As I developed a new Ethics & Professionalism class, I wanted to develop a class that could be life-changing for my students. As an ethics class, we would study and read cases involving ethical decision-making, but I wanted to add an experiential component to the class.

The class gave me an opportunity to build the “soft” skill set of our accounting students. I wanted my students to explore venues of "positive" professionalism that I had been privileged to learn through executive training and at Ivy League schools.

In my class, I created and/or adopted unique interventions to help my students develop their own virtues, honesty, and courage. In addition, I added exercises to help them discover how to build their expertise, resilience, and to understand what it means to have a service orientation. Lastly, students complete a job crafting exercise to help them plan for their future careers.

My poster presents the following interventions, most of which are practiced every day for one week:

Building an ethical mindset:
• Virtues interview* – interview the most virtuous person you know and learn about their ethical challenges.
• Honesty intervention* – practice telling the truth, reflecting on how honest you are, and how honest others are to you.
• Courage intervention* – do something courageous and reflect upon the experience.

Building professionalism:
• Strengths intervention – reflect on your top strengths and practice one or more.
• Self-regulation intervention* – write down this evening the top three things you need to take care of tomorrow.
• Service journal – write about your experiences regarding service.

Building for the future:
• Resilience intervention – learn to unravel your actions, beliefs, and consequences.
• Flow intervention* – evaluate when you are in the “zone” and recreate that environment.
• Job crafting exercise – Gain a different perspective of what you want in your job or career.

The interventions marked with an asterisk are those that I created. The other interventions are adopted from other disciplines or universities.

My poster is designed to inspire others to think about creating experiential interventions for their own classes. Since my class is a new offering this spring, I will be gathering assessment data to evaluate the value of these interventions. Finally, I will offer “steps for implementation” on my poster for others who might want to adopt these interventions for their own schools.

Author

• Marsha M Huber, Youngstown State University