WHO IS THIS GUIDE FOR?

This resource is designed to support ethics tutors and teachers. It may be of interest to:

- philosophy tutors/teachers who are confident in their grasp of their subject but new to teaching and are looking for some guidance on how to structure their sessions so as to best transmit what they know to their students,

- non-philosophy tutors/teachers who are experienced in their own subject area but new to teaching ethics within their discipline, e.g. medicine, biomedical sciences, pharmacy, law, business, engineering, etc.

- experienced philosophy tutors/teachers who maintain an interest in education and wish to exchange pedagogical ideas.

This resource is not designed to be used directly by students. It includes a number of ideas for running seminars but these should be placed in context by the tutors. 

The ideas on this website were developed mainly for undergraduate and postgraduate students in higher education and in some cases for AS Level students, but they can be adapted to suit students of all levels. 

HOW DO I USE THIS GUIDE?

There are two sections to this site:

A bit of theory: if you are new to philosophy you may wish to start here to read about the author's understanding of philosophy which underpins the aims of the practical strategies for small group teaching. Here you will also find ideas for assessing ethics, what counts as a good ethics essay and how to help students work with essay plans.

Strategies for small group teaching: you may also go directly to this part of the website and browse through the strategies. You can read and use the strategies and their examples in any order you like. Each strategy has three sections:

- Rationale: this explains the reasoning behind the exercise, what you are trying to achieve by using it.

- What is it in a nut-shell? A bried account of the strategy which acts as a summary and reminder for each one.

- Examples: of the strategy in practice. Usually there are more than one, most are on topics in ethics but some cover other areas in philosophy.

You can use the strategies in different ways. You can use the examples directly in your own teaching, or you can adapt them to fit your needs, or you can take inspiration from the rationale to create new examples, or you can take inspiration from the resource to create new strategies. Feel free to share your insights, suggestions and comments on our Facebook page or contact me directly.

The examples are written in the form of Tutor Notes, i.e. text in italics is for the use of the tutors and explains the reasoning behind the exercises and the likely developments in the discussion, normally formatted text is for the use of students.

You may want to ask students to split into small groups to discuss the exercises and report back to the larger group or you may want to tackle some exercises with the whole group.

WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF USE FOR THIS SITE?

This is an entirely free resource which you are welcome to use in your own teaching, pass on to colleagues, adapt to your students' needs or simply take inspiration from. You may copy, distribute, transmit and/or adapt the work. Please reference the work as appropriate. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. For more details see Copyright.