‘Equipping students with an ethical compass.’ What does it mean, and what does it imply?

ABSTRACT

The expression that professionals should be led by their moral or ethical compass is increasingly used by academics, policy makers, professionals, and educational institutes. Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS), for example, explicitly aim to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass. This moral or ethical compass is a metaphor of which people intuitively grasp its meaning, but our literature review also shows that various interpretations are possible. We found three clusters of proposed ethical compasses expressing its a) content, b) form, or c) use, which we present in this article. Thereafter, we evaluate which compass can meaningfully assist (young) professionals and, therefore, should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS. Based on this evaluation, we describe the possibilities and boundaries of UAS’ contribution to the development of their students’ ethical compass.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethical compass
• professional development
• professional ethics
• university of applied sciences
• student formation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ are complex and controversial notions that have been subject to philosophical debate since time immemorial. The current article does not necessary enter into this debate, but we have to be clear on the concepts used. We will use the term ‘ethical compass’ throughout the paper, which has, in our view, both a deontological and aretaic dimension. The deontological aspect of the ethical compass has to do with the question what professionals ought or must not do, answering this question by explaining and justifying which choices are morally required, forbidden, or permitted by focussing on rules and duties. The aretaic dimension of the ethical compass, in contrast, comprises the kind of life professionals aspire to be, drawing on notions such as virtues and ideals (Alexander 2016). In describing the ethical compass propositions, we follow the authors’ terms for the ethical/moral compass.

2. Dutch UAS initiate students into a profession via four-year bachelor programmes. In 2018–2019, these institutes encompassed 453,354 students who were being educated in 36 institutions by 31,027 lecturers/researchers.

3. Although we take the Dutch situation as a starting point, we expect this review of the international literature on the ethical compass to be valuable to any academic who is involved in professional academic courses.

4. In the early 1980s, the concept of ‘moral identity’ emerged in the field of moral psychology and proved to be a crucial element of our understanding of the gap between moral judgment and action. Blasi (1980) argues that congruence arises between moral judgment and moral action only when the self is at stake in moral action; in other words, this only occurs when one’s moral understanding and concerns become part of one’s sense of identity (see also Lapsley and Narvaez 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science [Grantnumber 023.006.014] and the Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Human Resource Management/Applied Psychology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.