Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

How can learning environments best promote both critical thought and ethical actions, scholarship and character? Tell Me What You Really Think: A Report On the Schools of Integrity Project, is now online, the conclusion of a joint project from the Institute for Global Ethics and the National Association of Independent Schools. The report describes the common themes and practices balancing academic rigor with attention to ethical development found in exemplary independent high schools in the U.S. and Canada, and suggests ways other schools might replicate them in their own programs.

These are the 10 key findings as reported in the Executive Summary:

1. Cross-cutting dimension: Attention to values and ethics permeate these learning environments at both the adult and the student level. If we want students to be truly good people, the climate of their learning environment—the “how we do things around here” of their school’s organizational culture—must clearly stem from and telegraph a platform of shared ethical values. However, while all the adults we met were clearly committed to promoting ethics and values, many of them could not point to a poster or recite an official “code of ethics” for their school. The more seamless, natural, and earnest the effort to seek “the good,” the more likely students will internalize this lifelong quest.
2. Driver and connector: Across participating schools, higher-order thinking skills are emphasized and deliberately linked to the moral realm. Values and ethics undergird critical thought by connecting “the personal” to the more academic topics and concepts. Deep critical thinking and learning take place as students are encouraged to articulate and test their true perceptions of the world, forming and defending authentic opinions.
3. Fueling relationships: The perceptions and opinions students volunteer will only be authentic in an environment where they feel trusted and can really speak their minds. Students in these schools develop trust through strong relationships with people who are committed to honest self-examination and try to model this quality in all their interactions.
4. Culture of open feedback: For adults to build these strong, successful relationships with students, the same high levels of trust must permeate faculty relationships. In the majority of these schools, teachers are clearly empowered to be bold learners. They speak their minds without reprisal, take different tacks without rebuke, take risks with support, and take feedback or criticism as an expression of caring.
5. Trustees as keepers of the moral compass: If there is a source from which trust most effectively evolves in a school, it may be from the body bearing the name. Despite a mostly behind-the-scenes role, in several cases,participating schools’ trustees view their primary role as developing and sustaining the trust level of the school.
6. Tone at the top: The most important conduit for trust is the head of school. Students, faculty, trustees, and parents frequently refer to this important leadership feature. Throughout these cultures the ethical actions, decisions, and communication of the school head are noticed and appreciated.
7. Tolerance for ambiguity: Is trust conveyed simply through incantation of a philosophy? Not in these schools. Specific codes of ethics and values may or may not be articulated, but heads and other adults in the environment model and live “trust:” they trust their collaboration and processes, they trust that they’ll sometimes get stuck and that they’ll constantly have doubts, and they trust their personal ability to think things through and their personal commitment to see things through.
8. Professional development from the ranks: In many of these schools, teachers are expected to trust their professional judgment and to share it, just as they expect students to contribute their very best perceptions, opinions, and understanding. These educators readily build on colleagues’ or students’ learning in a creative synergy, rather than feeling competitive or defensive.
9. Authentic student input: Teachers and other adults naturally and expertly welcome serious student input in a variety of aspects of these school communities. They trust their students’ ability to make good decisions.
10. Growth, not punishment: Disciplinary approaches are the most consistent area of student input across these schools. Students are trusted to provide effective feedback and consequences that educate, rather than punish, fellow students who have broken the rules.

The report is posted at the website of the Institute For Global Ethics, and here is a direct link to a copy: schools_of_integrity_report.pdf.

The Institute also publishes an ethics newsletter. Current issue articles include:

Internet

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Education
Harvard Adds Ethics Requirement to General-Education Curriculum

Years of sometimes bitter discussion led to revision of core curriculum to be required of all students

Human Resources
‘Pay Gap Exists as Early as One Year out of College’: Study

‘Women earn less even when working in the same career field, likely due to sex discrimination,’ researchers say