Ethical Competences Expressed by Pupils in Grade Six when Solving an Ethical Dilemma

• The aim of this paper is to present some ethical competences expressed in texts from pupils in grade six (age 12-13 years). The texts were first selected randomly from the 25 000 national tests in RE taken by grade six pupils in Sweden in spring 2013, then a strategic selection was made and from this sample 50 texts were chosen for this presentation. Parts of Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy about virtues and capabilities will be used to discuss and interpret the findings. The 50 texts are taken from a task about two friends, Keyla and Maria. Maria smells of sweat and some of her friends avoid her because of this. The task for the pupils is to show what it means to act in a good way by reasoning about how Keyla, as Maria’s best friend, could handle this situation: tell Maria that she smells bad and risk hurting her or let Maria smell, knowing that she risks losing some of her friends. The pupils are also supposed to reason about what consequences their proposal might have for both Maria and Keyla. The first overall analysis shows that the pupils’ answers include both abilities that are written in the syllabus for RE, but also some other competences not highlighted in the syllabus. For instance the texts show that the pupils have an ability to feel empathy. The answers also show that the pupils believe that to act in a moral way, you have to do what is best for your friend even though it might cause you discomfort. Further they show an ethical insight (Osbeck, Franck, Lilja & Lindskog, 2015; Osbeck, in print) when they, for example, write about the guilt one can feel when not doing what is right. Nussbaum’s writings (2010, 1995) about cultivating imagination, i.e. the importance of a narrative imagination for refining the capacity to see the world through another person’s eyes, and her writing about the capabilities all people should be able to develop to live with human dignity (Nussbaum, 2013) will work as tools to develop the understanding of the ethical competences found in the pupils’ responses. References Nussbaum, M.C. (1995). Känslans skärpa, tankens inlevelse: essäer om etik och politik [The sharpness of emotion, the insight of thought: Essays on ethics and politics]. Stockholm: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposium. Nussbaum, M.C. (2010). Not for profit. Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M.C. (2013). Creating Capabilities. The human development approach. Cambrige USA: The Belknap press. Osbeck, C. (in press). Ethical competences in pupils’ texts – Existential understandings and ethical insights as central but tacit in the curriculum. Dordrect: Springer. Osbeck, C., Franck, O., Lilja, A., Lindskog, A. (2015). Challenges of Assessment in Ethics – Teachers’ reflection when assessing National Tests. Educare, 2015(2),19-47.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)