Teaching Public Ethics with TV: Parks and Recreation as a Source of Case Studies

Abstract

Codes of ethics seek to inspire public servants to work ethically, yet ethical misbehavior by public officials appears often in the news. While there exists a lack of consensus about whether ethics education leads to behavioral changes, public administration programs typically include ethics instruction anyway, as either a separate course or sprinkled throughout the curriculum. Student engagement is critical for ethics education, and audiovisual media are known to increase engagement and active learning. Parks and Recreation, a popular NBC sitcom, is proposed here as a useful source of ethics case studies and scenarios that instructors can use to supplement their ethics instruction. A content analysis of the series indicates that more than 35% of the episodes contain ethical content, much of which may be beneficial for the classroom. Three episodes are explained in depth and the utility of the show for ethics education is explored.

Keywords:

• ethics pedagogy
• media as moral exemplars
• public ethics in television
• teaching with popular culture

Acknowledgements

Appreciation and thanks are due to Courtney Roberts for her assistance with the research of Parks and Recreation, and Natalie Campbell for her invaluable suggestions in the process of writing this manuscript. The author also thanks the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback; this manuscript is better because of it.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a 2015-2016 College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.