Ethical Frameworks for Education

Socrates is credited with saying 'An unexamined life is not worth living'. Following this maxim, a life that is worth living requires self-reflection. If such self-reflection involves evaluating our actions as 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'wrong', we enter into ethics. Ethics is about how we ought to live, but how are we to determine how we ought to live? Responses to this question can include intuition, experience and an understanding of ethical theory. If, however, a defensible justification is required for a particular belief or course of action, only the latter two responses will suffice and Singer (1993) insists in the necessary interplay of both. For Singer, ethics involves a fusion of ethical theory and lived experience, framed within the context of specific circumstances. Kant, however, who expounded that an ethical life involved fulfilling one's duties in relation to universal ethical truths, would assuredly reject Singer's stance. Ethics, then, is a contested field.