International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 2, Number 1, January 2008
Return to current issues pageReader's Response
Excerpt
Response to K. Hornsby’s
Developing and Assesssing Undergraduate Students’ Moral Reasoning Skills
Hornsby’s article is timely because of the current popularity of ethics and “character education.” We can agree with her that the development of “moral reasoning skills” is a very desirable outcome for an ethics course. Hornsby, however, does not stick to her stated goal: ”not to change or alter students’ moral positions but provide them with the tools to reflectively endorse their views and to evaluate the consistency of their positions.” This would be consistent with the objectives of any philosophy course, but there is an essential equivocation in Hornsby’s actual discussion about what it is possible or appropriate to teach in such a course. Her final decision to focus exclusively on virtue ethics also carries with it an implicit endorsement which subverts the critical stance.
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Carla Payne
Community College of Vermont
West Danville Vermont, USA
paynec@fairpoint.net
I retired in 2006 as Professor of Graduate Studies at Vermont College of Union Institute & University in Montpelier, Vermont, USA, where I supervised low residency M.A. students in individualized interdisciplinary studies, and designed and implemented an online Master’s program. This same program had been established at Goddard College, transferred to the Vermont College campus in 1981 when it was sold to Norwich University, and then sold again to UI&U in 2001. I continue to teach ethics and philosophy courses online for the Community College of Vermont. My B.A. in Philosophy is from Barnard College, and my M.A. and Ph.D., also in Philosophy, were earned at SUNY/Buffalo. In addition to the teaching of philosophy and ethics, I am interested in the impact of information technology on the implementation of constructivist and Deweyean educational principles.