There are no Answers,Only Choices: Teaching Ethical Decision Making in Social Work

Abstract

In teaching students about ethical decision making in social work, it is essential that the students are able to recognise the moral implications of their work and develop a deep understanding about ethical issues and their personal responsibility for making ethical choices. Thus, more than a “how to do it” approach is needed and teaching students about values and ethics is an essential thread that runs through our experience-based social work education program. The present paper describes a learning unit that sought to teach students about ethical decision making as a critical thinking process and, in so doing, to integrate students’ knowledge and experience of values, ethics, policy, and research in the final year of study. The relationship between values, ethics, policy, research, and social work practice provided an ideal context within which students could learn to integrate their knowledge and experience and apply it directly to their fieldwork practice. The paper ends with our critical reflection on this teaching experience and a critique of decisionist ethical frameworks.     

Ethical challenges of community based participatory research: exploring researchers’ experience

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has been proposed as an equitable, empowering partnership approach to collaborative research. International literature about the ethical implications of CBPR suggests a continuing strong interest in the topic. However, there is a notable lack of research that captures the experience of ethical challenges of researchers from different countries who engage in CBPR. The aim of this research was to address this lack of evidence by exploring researchers’ experience of ethical challenges in CBPR at an international level. An innovative data collection method was designed utilising a purpose-built blog. Balancing participant protection and autonomy, partnership tensions, and enduring impacts of the researcher role emerged as the main themes. These findings illustrate the specific conflicts faced by researchers engaged in CBPR. This is largely as a result of the complexities of CBPR coupled with rigid ethics committee review that does not always take into account the more fluid nature of the approach.     

Aristotle’s virtue ethics as a conceptual framework for the study and practice of social work in modern times

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to highlight the importance of Aristotle’s model of virtue ethics for today’s social workers and students, as it can help them to build an ethical character and promote ethical conduct in both their personal and professional lives. In doing so, the paper first provides an overview of virtue ethics theory and its revival over the last decades in western societies and then, discusses the basic tenets of Aristotle’s ethics theory in relation to the social work profession. In addition, the main types of Aristotelian virtues are presented including cardinal virtues (courage, justice, practical wisdom/phronesis, temperance) and the concepts of eudaimonia and golden mean in relation to their applications in social work practice are described. The paper briefly explains cardinal virtues and provides a case example of moral courage that will help social workers and students to better understand the concept of Aristotle’s golden mean. Finally, it discusses and responds to the main criticisms of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, considering alternative ways to discuss and think about this approach to social work.     

Ethical–aesthetic critique of moral organization: Inspirations from Michael Haneke's cinematic work

This paper looks at the work of the Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke as an inspiration for developing an ethical–aesthetic critique of organization. Haneke's practice of film-making is located in the tradition of an ‘ethical parrhesia’, the courageous and often dangerous ‘truth-telling’, which aims at the transformation of being. Haneke's approach is then illustrated with an analysis of his film The White Ribbon. This example is taken to illustrate an ethical critique of moral organization and for analysing strategies that seek to instigate the open-ended moral reflection. By discussing implications of this form of critique, the paper contributes to the development of a critical aesthetics of organization that seeks to open a reflexive space on how we are formed in social and organizational life, and at what costs.     

Beyond anonymity: temporality and the production of knowledge in a qualitative longitudinal study

Anonymisation processes are an embedded, if contested, element of ethical research practice. Current debates, highlighting various challenges to anonymity, suggest the importance of situated ethics and negotiated solutions. However, the strategies adopted are necessarily mediated by the researcher’s epistemological positions. Longitudinal studies with their extended timeframes and intensive research relationships tend to amplify ethical dilemmas and highlight the contingency and fluidity of ethical processes. Here we explore how temporality intersects with epistemology in a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of organisations located in a contemporary policy context. We reflect on the confidentiality and anonymity dilemmas that develop and change over time, the strategies adopted and the implications of these for the type of knowledge produced. We suggest that QL studies entail flexibility within epistemological frameworks. These issues have particular resonance and consequences for researchers in light of contemporary pressures around public scrutiny of academic performance and wider debates around public sociology.     

Relational Ethics and Moral Imagination in Contemporary Systemic Practice

This article discusses an approach to relational ethics in contemporary systemic practice. It explores the possibilities offered by traditions of moral philosophy in attending to problems from a relational ethics perspective. This includes a focus on relationships as a crucial element in the development and maintenance of a moral self and how couples and families construct an ethical platform together, both consciously and unconsciously; and also how relational ethics may inform ideas about the values‐driven problems people present in therapy. Finally, it suggests how ethical responsibility and accountability can be constructed as relational responsiveness. Despite our associations with morality as judgmental and rule driven, moral conduct and decision‐making can involve imaginative, creative and aesthetic possibilities.     

Moral bureaucracies and social network research

In the wake of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), research ethics governance does not just affect the ethical dimensions of social research but also the range of scientific decisions available to researchers. Because of the sensitive status of personal data and the aversion to even minimal risk by what we call “moral bureaucracies”, we are concerned that social network researchers will increasingly limit their research decisions to “safe” options, like reusing anonymized datasets, choosing target populations based on convenience rather than theoretical relevance, and routinely subcontracting fieldwork to professional data collection companies, among others. We also suggest that scientific associations and social scientists in general need to adopt a proactive role in preserving both scientific freedom and genuine ethics advice within this new regulatory framework.     

Ethical turn in the social sciences

This paper discusses the ethical or moral turn of the social sciences, especially in sociology in the works of Zygmunt Bauman and in anthropology in the works of Didier Fassin. These scholars have embarked on relating morals or ethics to their particular area of specialization. We note that their contributions have highlighted the moral or ethical questions in their respective field works and empirical observations and have produced moral or ethical discourses or frameworks in their respective area or field. Ethics or morality (sometimes) morals is not just a theory but also practice in their respective disciplines and advocacies. This moral or ethical practice is translated into questioning our cognitive frameworks and political consequences of globalization or consumerism affecting some groups or individuals in contemporary world. We shall consider morality as human actions while ethics is the reflections on those actions.     

Respect for persons

Abstract

The notion of ‘respect for persons’ is a key notion in moral philosophy as well as in social work ethics. The Kantian notion of a person has, together with individualism, liberalism and positivism, given rise to a strange ideological mixture which ‘guided’ social work theory and practice for some time. Gaita's concept of respect for human beings, examined in this paper, contrasts with the poverty of this ideological mixture. Concepts such as ‘goodness’, ‘remorse' and 'sensibility’ explain why Gaita sees the ethical as something that is both sui generis and of the utmost practical importance. They clarify the irreplaceability of human beings, emphasise the need for moral agents to have ‘historical integrity’, and in general show that a moral agent is much more substantial than a res cogitans. This paper attempts to indicate the relevance of these considerations for social work.     

Relational Ethics and Moral Blindness: Startling Incongruities in Couple and Family Life

This article explores the common experience of working with couples and family members who describe their partners and children as important to them yet at the same time are cavalier, neglectful, ignorant, and even destructive in dealings with their loved ones. People who fail to relate ethically are said to be prone to have stagnant relationships, become corrupt in seeking solutions to moral problems, be more depressed, have poorer health problems, and experience lower quality relationships. This article describes ethical fading and moral blindness in couples and families and in our work as therapists. It argues a relational ethics frame that fosters ethical sensitivity and stronger moral identity both in ourselves and others is an important addition to our therapeutic repertoire.     

Children’s Experiences of Completing a Computer‐Based Violence Survey: Ethical Implications

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about the ethics of research on children when studying sensitive issues such as violence. The empirical analysis is based on the accounts given by children (11 377) who completed a computer‐based questionnaire about their experiences of violence (‘The Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008’) and their reflections on the survey. We argue that experiences of violence should not be excluded from the research agenda on children due to ethical reasons, but that a more sophisticated practice should be developed instead to meet the needs and rights of children as informants. © 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

Making a difference: ethical consumption and the everyday

Our everyday shopping practices are increasingly marketed as opportunities to ‘make a difference’ via our ethical consumption choices. In response to a growing body of work detailing the ways in which specific alignments of ‘ethics’ and ‘consumption’ are mediated, we explore how ‘ethical’ opportunities such as the consumption of Fairtrade products are recognized, experienced and taken‐up in the everyday. The ‘everyday’ is approached here via a specially commissioned Mass Observation directive, a volunteer panel of correspondents in the UK. Our on‐going thematic analysis of their autobiographical accounts aims to explore a complex unevenness in the ways ‘ordinary’ people experience and negotiate calls to enact their ethical agency through consumption. Situating ethical consumption, moral obligation and choice in the everyday is, we argue, important if we are to avoid both over‐exaggerating the reflexive and self‐conscious sensibilities involved in ethical consumption, and, adhering to a reductive understanding of ethical self‐expression.     

Governing through accountability: Gendered moral selves and the (im)possibilities of resistance in the neoliberal university

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics’ narratives of their ethical relations of (non‐)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re‐conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.     

Ethical challenges in researching in group homes for people with severe learning difficulties: shifting the balance of power

Our aim in this paper is to open up debate about informed consent. We do this by presenting stories from group homes where staff have frustrated our research efforts and marginalised the interests of people with severe learning difficulties. We problematise normative ethics and argue that in some circumstances the basic principle of informed consent should be waived for employees of human service organisations. We maintain that, in such circumstances, researchers and an organisation’s senior managers can still act in a manner that is consistent with the broad aims of ethical regulation. We consider the role of Research Ethics Committees and suggest that in order to fully consider the conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, the application of different ethical theories is required. A requirement for making balanced ethical judgements is to see outside the extant dominant view of ethical research standards and behaviour.     

Social network analysis: New ethical approaches through collective reflexivity. Introduction to the special issue of Social Networks

Research in social network analysis (SNA) faces unprecedented ethical challenges today due to both technological developments (‘big’ data) and a growing tendency toward institutionalization of ethics governance. We argue that a suitable response requires a more comprehensive approach to SNA ethics, and we identify two main paths toward this goal. First, we need to recognize the breadth of the subject, no longer limited to anonymity and consent. Second, we need to encourage the active participation and contribution of SNA scholars. We advocate a need for greater reflexivity at both individual and collective levels, whereby researchers can learn from their own and their peers’ experiences, and foster a more ethically ‘virtuous’ approach within the whole SNA community.     

Informed Consent with Children and Young People in Social Research: Is There Scope for Innovation?

Over 20 years of research has enhanced our understanding about the methodological and ethical benefits and challenges of involving children and young people in research. Concurrently, the increasing bureaucratisation of research ethics governance within UK universities has reified expectations about the methods used to gain informed consent for research participation. This paper explores how social researchers in the UK are navigating this tension and whether there is any scope for innovation through the use of technologies in how children and young people provide informed consent to take part in research. We conclude there is a need for the co‐creation of research information with children and young people and greater transparency by sharing creative solutions.     

Ethical challenges in conducting research with hard to reach families

This paper reflects on some of the ethical challenges encountered by the authors whilst undertaking sensitive qualitative research with parents and children who are traditionally hard to reach. The research aimed to provide more holistic and in‐depth accounts of parenting on a low income in diverse social circumstances than already exist. The nature of the sample and the subject matter that was covered inevitably raised many familiar ethical dilemmas and some that are less often encountered in practice, particularly in relation to child protection. In this article we discuss our approach to ethics, some of the ethical challenges we encountered undertaking work with families and discuss the complexity of decision‐making around risk of harm to children. We conclude that a clear framework to avoid harm should be developed at the outset and a transparent approach to child protection issues should be used. Additional time and resources need to be incorporated at the planning stage of similar projects in order to develop appropriate methods, ensure effective decision‐making and support researchers. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethical living: relinking ethics and consumption through care in Chile and Brazil

Mainstream conceptualizations of ‘ethical consumption’ equate the notion with conscious, individual, market‐mediated choices motivated by ethical or political aims that transcend ordinary concerns. Drawing on recent sociology and anthropology of consumption literature on the links between ordinary ethics and ethical consumption, this article discusses some of the limitations of this conceptualization. Using data from 32 focus groups conducted in Chile and Brazil, we propose a conceptualization of ethical consumption that does not centre on individual, market‐mediated choices but understands it at the level of practical outcomes, which we refer to as different forms of ‘ethical living’. To do that, we argue, we need to depart from the deontological understanding of ethics that underpins mainstream approaches to ethical consumption and adopt a more consequentialist view focusing on ethical outcomes. We develop these points through describing one particular ordinary moral regime that seemed to be predominant in participants’ accounts of ethics and consumption in both Chile and Brazil: one that links consumption and ethics through care. We show that the moral regime of care leads to ‘ethical outcomes’, such as energy saving or limiting overconsumption, yet contrary to the mainstream view of ethical consumption emphasizing politicized choice expressed through markets, these result from following ordinary ethics, often through routines of practices.     

For the greater good? Ethical reflections on interviewing the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in qualitative research

ABSTRACT

There is increasing emphasis on understanding economic advantage alongside disadvantage – on studying both ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’. This trend prompts and requires new ethical reflection. I argue that in qualitative interview research, a clearer distinction needs to be drawn between ethical commitments to individual research participants, and the group(s) to which they belong. This distinction is often elided in ethics guidelines and when researchers discuss their own work. Attending to the distinction highlights a symmetrical ethical dilemma: researchers studying disadvantage are often motivated to further the interests of the wider group to which their participants belong, yet the study itself risks eliciting or exacerbating negative experiences or identities amongst participants themselves. Conversely, the process of studying advantage frequently bolsters the positive identities or experiences of individual study participants, even as the research findings challenge or subvert the interests of their group.     

State of the Arts: Using Literary Works to Explore and Learn about Theories and Models of Leadership

Skills and knowledge in leadership are frequently cited as being key to delivering a vision of quality services and this supposes a relationship between ‘effective leadership’ and transforming services. How students engage with learning about their own leadership potential, however, is a challenge to educators. Leaders are constantly presented with moral and ethical choices within a rapidly changing and challenging environment and are expected to promote distributory and participatory leadership models. This paper shares our experiences of arts-based leadership pedagogy where students were encouraged to confront fundamental moral challenges in their everyday work and to develop leadership skills in moral analysis and judgement through the examination of case studies embodied within well-known literary works. A structured evaluation demonstrated that this method facilitated deeper learning in relation to the students' interrogation of key leadership concepts, and promoted a safe learning environment for engaging in the experience of taking up a leadership and respective followership roles.