| The teaching of ethics and values in American higher education is currently undergoing a resurgence of interest and attention. This concern is not new, but rather part of a cyclical and recurrent pattern of interest and disinterest, noted at the graduate and undergraduate school level. The profession of social work has long articulated a very specific commitment to ethics, values, and professional identity as integral in education for the profession. This author notes that despite this historic educational articulation, actual current instruction is uneven, and there is a dearth of teaching materials and a paucity of courses in ethics in contemporary graduate school programs. Few instructors can or do present an operationalized approach to the profession's Code of Ethics. No doubt this meager offering reflects the ambivalence, the fear of indoctrination, the overall specialization, the focus on technical subjects, and the time constraints in the crowded curriculi in all institutions of education.;This author's interest in the formal study of, and teaching of ethics was based on concerns as an educator about students' socialization to the profession, and sense of professional identity and professional self-esteem. Developed were specific propositions: (1)Professional identity and ethics form an integral aspect of education for the profession. (2)Applied ethics serve to operationalize the Code of Ethics. (3)Exposure to applied ethics can aid the student in the complex task of integration of a complex course of study, and socialize the clinical social work student to the broader profession, beyond their specialization in clinical practice. (4)Exposure to applied ethics enhances not only a school's curriculum and students' professional identity, but the quality of skilled direct practice, be it policy, planning, administration, or direct clinical work with individuals, groups, and families.;The bioethics or normative ethics model is applied ethics, borrowed from the field, Egoism, Utilitarianism, etc., and moral reasoning to enable the practitioner to operationalize in actual practice the allocation of scarce resources, examine the consequences of interventions, question models of research, etc. Applied ethics employs values clarification and ethical analysis to achieve the following objectives (educational goals set forth in Hastings research and publications): (1)actually help students recognize ethical issues and dilemmas; (2)actually help students in values clarification, examination of their own value base and the shifts in their choices and decision-making as the outcome of their professional training; (3)stimulate their moral imagination; (4)aid them in development of analytic tools; (5)elicit a sense of moral obligation and personal responsibility; and (6)aid their tolerating and resisting disagreement and ambiguity.;Additionally, there appears to be specific and unique impediments in the field of social work education, the professional educational program that led all others in the historic enunciation of values and ethics as the underpinning of practice. Many educators would suggest that additional focus is unneeded, as the content is supposedly existant and pervasive in all courses. Actual research on the subject, by Pumphrey (1959) and Levy (1976), suggests otherwise, and they note that professional lip service and interest does not ensure student exposure, except entirely by chance. Time constraints, uneven faculty interest and expertise, have failed to ensure students actual opportunity to discuss such issues as their moral commitments, professional and personal bias and values often at variance with clients' values and life styles, and loyalty and identification both to the agency and to the client. |
