Applied Ethics: The Specifics of Educational Practices. Round Table Discussions of the Ethics Department of St. Petersburg State University

Abstract

This article is the result of the discussion at the Department of Ethics (Saint-Petersburg state university) of the peculiarities of teaching academic disciplines within the educational pro­grams “Applied Ethics” (bachelor’s and master’s degrees) at St. Petersburg State University. The focus is on how to combine fundamental theoretical training, based on the traditions of the history of moral philosophy and modern ethical concepts, with the study of the problems of contemporary applied ethics. On the one hand, this is ensured by the structure of the cour­ses studied. On the other hand, most academic disciplines have not only theoretical but also practical components. Participants of the discussion using examples of teaching such train­ing courses as “History of Ethics”, “Bioethics”, “Ethics of Education”, “Ethics of Virtues”, “Sociology of Morality” identified the following groups of educational and methodological practices for solving the indicated problem. First, the use in the educational process of vari­ous methods according to the case study model. This includes experience in discussing and resolving “open moral issues”, moral dilemmas, and situations of moral conflict. An essen­tial circumstance in organizing the educational process is the use of not only knowledge of theoretical ethical concepts and terminology, but also an appeal to the available data of em­pirical research and materials of public discussions in the media and the Internet. Secondly, training in practical activities in the field of applied ethics. The most successful ones are the fulfillment by students of educational tasks on the development of draft ethical codes and the conduct of ethical examination of various phenomena of social and cultural life. The presented experience allows us to conclude that this method of organizing education al­lows us to provide a combination of theoretical and practical components, as well as to maintain the relevance of its content.