Ethical Dilemmas

I love a good theoretical ethical dilemma. I could solve those all day long. What I don’t like is a real-life ethical dilemma. Those are hard. I REALLY don’t like an ethical dilemma at work. I’ve had to quit jobs in the past because my ethics didn’t jibe with what the company was doing. It stinks to have to look for work because of something like that. But most of us, whether employed in the instructional technology, performance technology, or learning sciences, or even something entirely unrelated, will be faced with these dilemmas throughout our career. My response when I’ve come up against this is that I’m a human first, and a <insert job title here> second. If after careful examination, consideration, and introspection a situation doesn’t jibe with my human-ness, it won’t jibe with my employee-ness. Simplistic? Yes. But so far it’s served me well.

I wanted to know more about potential dilemmas designers might face and found this presentation from 2002. There are some interesting situations to chew on that I hadn’t thought of. Every career has a moral dim

ension, but I feel like those working in education are faced with so many more layers and complexity, especially when it comes to the education of children. One needs to factor in so many things when designing or evaluating instruction or performance–socio economics, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, vast differences in prior knowledge, learning (dis)abilities, etc.

The burden seems very heavy.

And who, ultimately, is the customer? Is it the end-user or the person writing your paycheck?

photo courtesy Flickr user Chris Suderman

I’m going to go with the end-user and hope I work for somebody that agrees with me. : ) Because even if instead of designing for those above I’m designing for what’s below, my job ultimately is to care about their experience and potential for learning.

 

photo courtesy Flickr user Jake Kitchener

Designing for a Greater Good

Dr. Osguthorpe‘s discussion of the moral dimension of instructional design contained principles that would benefit any working person.

I appreciated his distinction between mimetic methods of teaching (goal to transfer knowledge) and transformative methods (goal to change the way the student sees him or herself).

He seemed to support one of my favorite quotes that I mentioned in class a couple months ago:

“Students learn what they care about . . .,” Stanford Ericksen has said, but Goethe knew something else: “In all things we learn only from those we love.” Add to that Emerson’s declaration: “the secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.” and we have a formula something like this: “Students learn what they care about, from people they care about and who, they know, care about them . . .”

Barbara Harrell Carson, 1996, Thiry Years of Stories

As I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Osguthorpe for a class assignment I can tell you that he believes this philosophy whole-heartedly. I knew this to be true even prior to reading his article. His concern for students is deep-seated.

I appreciated the five components of his moral dimension framework

1. Conscience of Craft
2. Conscience of Membership
3. Conscience of Sacrifice
4. Conscience of Memory
5. Conscience of Imagination

All of these spoke to me in one way or another. I most love conscience of craft. To think of one’s work as “craft” gives it an air of importance no matter how banal or rote. A craftsman is one who takes pride in his/her work and pays attention to every detail, not wanting it to leave his/her hands before it is perfected. I definitely want to be a crafts(wo)man in whatever field I find myself.

I thought back to this article when I had a few moments to watch an Independent Lens program entitled Objectified. This program discussed design of a different type–that of industrial design. But it’s amazing that they are asking themselves the same questions as instructional designers, “how can I change people’s experiences?” In fact one of the designers interviewed, Karim Rashid, actually asks the question.

It gets really interesting at 1:35 (for some reason I can’t get the deep link code to work so you’ll have to move the scrubber manually)

This might also sound familiar:

Those with a conscience of craft require their best work not only for themselves, but because they care about the people who will ultimately interact with their product.