Ethics education is a substantial function of ethics consultation. However, the current focus is largely on education for healthcare professionals rather than for patients and their families. Informed consent, as the basic application of the principle of respect for autonomy/persons, requires patients to have a complete understanding of their medical conditions, treatment options, and available alternatives. Nevertheless, without meeting the ethical aspects of the therapeutic relationship, providing patients with relevant medical information cannot make consent informed. Besides the pertinent medical information, patients should know how to incorporate ethical standards into their care, how to reflect their values and preferences in their medical decisions, and how to make autonomous choices. In this view, patients’ literacy in ethics should be considered an essential component of informed consent. Therefore, this paper sheds light on ethics education for patients and recommends healthcare institutions provide patients with education on key ethical subjects through ethics consultation services. Although current challenges of ethics consultation cause a major limitation to achieve this, the significant increase in the number of ethicists/bioethicists can allow healthcare organizations to improve their capacity, capability, and quality by employing more well-educated ethics consultants. For this reason, the availability of leadership and financial support may alleviate the problems and give an opportunity to ethics consultation services to extend ethics education to patients and their families. Not only can ethics education for patients ensure that consent is informed, but it can also notably benefit patients, healthcare professionals, and healthcare organizations.
This study examined the impact of a collegiate ethical leadership course on students’ perceived leadership self-efficacy, addressing a gap in research that often focuses solely on knowledge gain rather than on self-efficacy development. Using Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Framework, student self-efficacy was explored through semi-structured interviews. Data was analyzed using a combination of open and deductive coding to identify key themes. Results of the study showed that the ethics course positively influenced students’ leadership self-efficacy in five ways: the development of new leadership skills, an increased understanding of ethics, increased confidence, an enhanced understanding of ethical leadership, and the development of personal ethics. These findings highlight the importance of assessing self-efficacy in leadership education and suggest that self-efficacy can serve as a valuable metric for evaluating both short-term and long-term program impacts. They also underscore the value of incorporating self-efficacy assessment into the practices of researchers, leadership education practitioners, and other education professionals seeking to measure program effectiveness.
In philosophy and ethics education, instructional methods are often developed independently of specific historical or cultural contexts. Underlying this approach is the widespread assumption that the primary goal of ethics education is the promotion of “independent thinking” (Selbstdenken). Using the discourse in the German-speaking world as a case study for a broader international paradigm, this article critically examines the pedagogical reliance on independent, rational thought. While intended as an ameliorative project to foster student autonomy and social participation, this metacognitive focus is deeply rooted in Enlightenment concepts that risk epistemic blindness toward diverse philosophical traditions. Furthermore, drawing on sociological and psychological perspectives (including Bourdieu and Lareau), the paper argues that treating independent thinking as an educational panacea obscures the reproduction of social inequalities. It euphemizes cultural capital as a natural cognitive gift, thereby individualizing systemic disparities. To counter this, the article concludes by proposing seven pedagogical principles for ethics education. These principles aim to diversify instructional arrangements, deconstruct the illusion of meritocracy in the classroom, and shift the focus toward collective emancipation and the explicit recognition of complex sociocultural identities.
In an era characterized by profound moral polarization, In an era characterized by profound moral polarization, epistemic uncertainty, and contested public values, ethics education faces a pressing pedagogical challenge. It must cultivate not only cognitive moral reasoning skills but also the ethical dispositions necessary for responsible engagement with deep disagreement. This article proposes a structured pedagogical framework for teaching humility as a foundational ethical disposition within pluralistic educational contexts. Moving beyond conceptions of humility as self-effacement or relativism, we conceptualize it as an ethically robust disposition comprising epistemic openness, moral attentiveness, and dialogical responsibility. Drawing on virtue ethics, moral psychology, and educational philosophy, the framework outlines specific educational aims, guiding principles, pedagogical strategies, and intended learning outcomes. Through critical analysis, we argue that a humility-oriented pedagogy enhances moral agency, fosters ethical presence, and prepares learners for democratic engagement while mitigating dogmatism and disengagement. By foregrounding ethical formation alongside moral reasoning, this study contributes a theoretically grounded and practically applicable model to contemporary debates in ethics education.
Preparing students to participate in scholarly bioethics debate is a central challenge in medical ethics education. Beyond understanding ethical theories and methods of analysis, students must learn to critically engage with ongoing debates, articulate and defend arguments in dialogue with other scholars, and navigate normative disagreement in respectful and constructive ways. While existing pedagogical approaches, including flipped classroom models, support active learning, they often remain confined to classroom settings and teacher–student dynamics. In this article, we analyse the pedagogical design and educational aims of the Oxford–Amsterdam Winter School in Bioethics, a collaborative programme that has been running annually for over a decade. The Winter School is structured as a conference-based learning environment in which Dutch graduate students pursuing a Master’s degree in Bioethics and Medicine or another health-related programme, and more recently undergraduate medical students from Augsburg, Germany, present critical analyses of published bioethics papers. Students present their work to an audience that includes the authors of the original papers as well as fellow students and scholars, enabling direct engagement with ongoing scholarly debate. The Winter School takes place at the Ethox Centre of the University of Oxford. We argue that this conference-based format provides a distinctive pedagogical model that treats students as emerging scholarly interlocutors rather than solely as learners acquiring new skills. In this sense, the Winter School functions as a liminal educational space between classroom teaching and participation in academic conferences, specifically designed to support students’ transition from medical ethics education to active participation in the scholarly bioethics community. We discuss the educational aims and didactic foundations of this model and reflect on its transferability and limitations. The Winter School illustrates how advanced medical ethics education can foster critical engagement with ethical debate, scholarly rigour, and the development of academic identity by enabling students not only to study bioethics but also to actively practise scholarly bioethics.
A growing focus on STEM at all levels of education creates a need for subject-specific, STEM-relevant bioethics education. Such education can establish a strong moral foundation for aspiring science and health professionals. It can also promote just and principled future work in science. However, a key challenge to teaching young people the concepts and methodologies of ethics is making educational materials accessible, relatable, and engaging. Science fiction can meet all three of these components. The genre is widely popular among younger learners, and its stories can both reflect and inform students’and the public’s attitudes toward science. This article describes the utility of science fiction as a valuable teaching tool for younger learners, using a high school bioethics program in the United States as an illustrative case. The authors further argue for the development of robust ethics education programs for high school students on the international level by utilizing original and pre-existing science fiction stories.
Nursing is characterized by ethical complexity, emotional intensity, and relational asymmetry. While bioethics is often included in nursing curricula, it is frequently taught in a fragmented or purely normative manner, leaving students insufficiently prepared to interpret and inhabit the moral dimensions of care. To describe a three-year educational pathway in Medical Humanities, philosophical anthropology, and bioethics developed for pediatric nursing students at the University of Genoa – Istituto Giannina Gaslini, and to explore the ethical themes articulated by students. The structure of the program, which integrated philosophical anthropology, ethics of care and vulnerability, narrative practices, and dialogical pedagogy, was outlined. A thematic analysis was conducted on students’ written reflections which were presented at a public conference at the end of the program. Students’ reflections reveal the emergence of a coherent ethical sensibility structured around key themes: embodied care, vulnerability as a shared human condition, relational presence, the moral significance of everyday clinical gestures, and the integration of technology within caring relationships. The educational experience fostered reflective depth, interpretive sensitivity, and an understanding of ethics as lived moral practice rather than abstract rule application. An integrated, humanistic approach to bioethics education can meaningfully contribute to the formation of pediatric nurses capable of ethical presence, moral judgment, and relational responsibility. Students can be helped to cultivate an ethically attuned professional identity responsive to vulnerability and care.
Ethics education constitutes a fundamental component of nursing development, shaping practitioners capable of sound moral judgment, responsible action, and ethically grounded clinical decision-making. Despite long-standing written ethical codes within the nursing profession, substantial gaps persist between theoretical instruction and real-world practice, leading to fragmented moral competence among nursing students and nurses. This discussion paper synthesizes evidence from the “Promoting a Morally Competent Nurse” project, insights derived from an international blended intensive program to examine the multifaceted challenges that hinder effective nursing ethics education, and expert contributions. Identified challenges include complexity of ethics theories; inconsistencies in the nursing curricula; the misalignment between formal and hidden curriculum; lack of resources and time dedicated to ethics education; inconsistencies in the training methods; and issues related to ethical leadership. The paper argues that cultivating moral competence requires more than the transmission of theoretical knowledge -it demands experiential learning, role modelling, and ethically supportive environments. A roadmap is proposed outlining complementary roles for academic nurses and nurse managers in strengthening ethics education across educational and clinical settings. Enhancing ethical leadership, harmonizing curricula, and investing in educator preparation are critical steps toward building an ethically resilient nursing workforce The paper concludes that ethical competence is not a static achievement but a lifelong developmental process that must be nurtured through intentional, coordinated, and context-sensitive strategies.
In this paper, I will discuss egoistic preconceptions among students – a phenomenon that I will dub ‘Student Egoism’ (SE) – as a potential challenge to successful ethics education. While the prevalence of this phenomenon is occasionally mentioned in the philosophical literature, there has been no systematic discussion of its pedagogical significance to date. The aim of this paper is to initiate such a discussion. To achieve this, I will first elaborate on egoism as a philosophical position in some detail in order to develop a more comprehensive account of SE. Against this background, I will argue that there are indeed good reasons to consider SE (i) a potentially widespread phenomenon that (ii) could have problematic implications for ethics education. Based on this, I will then identify three general desiderata that any successful strategy of dealing with SE has to fulfill and sketch one specific strategy in a little more detail
Medical ethics education is increasingly expected to prepare students for the moral complexity of clinical practice, including situations marked by uncertainty, suffering, and institutional constraint. However, ethics curricula often focus on principles, codes, and decision-making frameworks, leaving students insufficiently prepared to engage with ethically challenging situations that resist moral clarity or resolution. This article examines the pedagogical use of the documentary Take Care of Maya (dir. Henry Roosevelt, 2023) in undergraduate medical ethics education as a resource for ethical understanding that cannot be easily captured by principle-based approaches alone. Drawing on my classroom experience and relevant literature, the article analyses how documentary film can support ethical reflection at a level that precedes explicit decision-making. The case of a child diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) foregrounds ethical issues related to chronic pain, epistemic injustice, and fractured trust between families and medical institutions. Rather than functioning as a tool for emotional engagement alone, the documentary integrates ethical reflection with clinically relevant learning about pain and its contested diagnosis. The article argues that, when embedded within a carefully structured and psychologically safe learning environment, documentary-based teaching can foster ethical attentiveness to suffering, pain, uncertainty, and institutional responsibility. Used in this way, documentary film complements existing approaches to medical ethics education by supporting reflective engagement with morally complex situations that cannot be adequately addressed through dilemma-based methods alone.
This article examines the role of teachers in strengthening akhlāq (ethical character formation) and sustainability values within the Smart Education framework for Muslim students in Singapore. Smart Education is often framed in technocratic terms as data-driven, adaptive, and efficiency-oriented learning, which may marginalize ethical, spiritual, and ecological dimensions of education. In a meritocratic and highly digital educational environment, Muslim minority students face academic pressure, technological dependency, and value-identity challenges. This study employs a qualitative conceptual-analytical approach grounded in an Islamic worldview, particularly the concepts of khalīfah fī al-arḍ (human stewardship of the earth) and maqāṣid al-sharīʿah (the higher objectives of Islamic law), as normative foundations for value-based sustainable education. The analysis draws on contemporary Smart Education literature, Islamic educational philosophy, and the socio-educational context of Singapore. The findings indicate that teachers hold a strategic role not merely as digital facilitators but as value leaders who cultivate akhlāq, guide digital ethics, and foster ecological responsibility. Teachers function as mediators between technological advancement and the ultimate aims of education, namely the formation of knowledgeable, ethical, and socially responsible individuals. The article argues that Smart Education oriented toward akhlāq can serve as a civilizational educational model rather than merely a technical modernization project.
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into clinical practice presents a paradigm shift in healthcare, necessitating a parallel evolution in medical education. While current curricula increasingly address the technical functionalities of AI, a critical gap remains in the systematic education of medical students and professionals on the profound ethical implications of these technologies. Given this, we screened out research articles published in recent years on the ethical issues of AI in medical education, resulting in a total of 26 papers. We conducted a scoping review of these 26 articles along with other relevant literature. This review argues that the failure to embed robust, critical, and nuanced AI ethics education within medical training is not merely an academic oversight but an impending catalyst for ethical crises in clinical care. It delineates the core ethical challenges—including algorithmic bias, opacity (“black box” problem), accountability, data privacy, and the erosion of professional autonomy—and critiques the prevailing, often superficial, approaches to teaching them. The review further proposes a transformative educational framework that moves beyond simplistic ethics modules towards a pervasive, interdisciplinary, and case-based integration of AI ethics across the entire medical curriculum. This approach aims to cultivate a generation of “digitally literate physicians” who are not passive consumers of AI outputs but critical, empowered, and ethically discerning partners in the age of intelligent medicine.
In the wake of Noddings (1984/2003) advocating for the recognition of care as a fundamental component in educational relationships, there has been a significant increase in research on the role of care in educational settings. Despite existing research supporting the significance of creating a supportive atmosphere for the academic success of online learners, there is limited insight into the experiences of online instructors regarding care, both for their students and themselves. This study delves into the phenomenological aspect of care as perceived by the Graduate Studies and Applied Research (GSAR) instructors in their interactions with students. The narratives shared by ten instructors shed light on the constant demand for care experienced by online educators, leading to a delicate balance between caring for students and self-care.
The systematic integration of ethical and humanistic dimensions into medical education in Italy has progressively strengthened since the late 1990s. However, no studies currently provide an up-to-date and comprehensive mapping of the teaching of bioethics within Italian Medical Degree Programs (MDPs). To provide a complete and systematic overview of bioethics courses included in the MDPs offered by Italian universities. Using the official list of Italian universities published by the Ministry of Universities and Research, a manual review of the institutional websites of all universities offering MDPs – whether taught in Italian or English – was conducted. Only mandatory courses containing at least one of the following keywords in their title were included: bioetica, etica, morale (Italian) or bioethics, ethics, moral (English). Elective courses were excluded. A subsequent manual search of publicly available online sources was carried out to verify the consistency between each course instructor’s academic degree and the Scientific-Disciplinary Sector (SSD) of the course. The reference academic year was 2025–2026. A substantial portion of the examined curricula ( 71
In Finland, teachers have historically held a high degree of trust and respect, where they have been thought of not only as teachers but educators in a broader sense. This is reflected by the national curriculum dictating that teachers should not only teach, but see to their students’ social development. Interested in how this second task relates to ethics education, this study interviewed teachers in Finland how they reasoned about this second role, how it related to morality, and what supports and deters it. The teachers saw this role as central and deeply moral, where relationships, empathy and scaffolding the student in self-reflection were of great importance. Sound cooperation between home and school, school and municipality, and between school staff were seen as clear supporting factors — whereas the inverse of these were seen as clear detriments. As a whole, the study acts as an entryway for deeper investigation of ethics education in Finland.
We aimed to identify Complex Family Planning (CFP) fellowship programs’ needs in preparing fellows for ethically challenging situations. An anonymous paper survey was distributed to CFP Program Directors and Associate Program Directors at the 2022 Society of Family Planning Annual Conference. Data was reviewed in aggregate and analyzed using Redcap software using descriptive statistics. Thirty-one of 36 potential participants completed surveys (86
The need for high-quality, accessible training in responsible conduct of research (RCR) globally is evident in the annual increase in paper retractions for scientific misconduct. This paper describes an RCR course that we developed as part of a master's in bioethics degree (MScB) program available to a culturally and linguistically diverse group of scientists, clinicians, and other research stakeholders from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The course has been delivered fully online simultaneously in English and Spanish using instructional materials informed by the perspectives of two culturally diverse co-teaching faculty members. In addition to aiming to educate learners and inspire them to conduct research responsibly and motivate others to do so, the pedagogical and technical design of the course is intentionally structured to strengthen fellows' critical thinking, deepen their understanding of regional and international research ethics guidance, and promote collaboration between Spanish- and English-speaking participants. The RCR course has earned Quality Matters certification, reflecting its commitment to high-quality online pedagogy, whilst containing cost. In this paper, we outline the course's structure and core design elements to offer a model that can be adapted for other RCR programs across diverse countries and cultural contexts.
Healthcare management students undergo an educational process aimed at acquiring various knowledge and skills to achieve professional competence. Self-discipline and ethical values play a crucial role in both academic success and professional development during this process. Self-discipline contributes to students’ timely and effective completion of their duties, while ethical values enhance individuals’ ability to distin-guish right from wrong and to act in accordance with social norms. This study examined the relationship between the ethical value perceptions and self-discipline levels of Gümüshane University Health Management students. Quantitative methods were used in the study and data were collected via a survey. The data obtained were analyzed using t-tests, ANOVA, and correlation analysis. The analysis results revealed a significant relationship between students’ ethical value perceptions and self-discipline levels. These findings demonstrate that ethical values and self-discipline are not inde-pendent concepts; rather, they are interconnected, complementary, and reinforcing. The research is expected to contribute to the development of educational programs in the field of healthcare management and to guide practices aimed at increasing students’ ethical and self-discipline levels.
