What Can Moral and Social Intuitionism Offer Ethics Education in Social Work? A Reflective Inquiry

There is broad agreement that attention to codes of ethics, ethical reasoning and social work values is an important component of any social work education. There appears to be less consensus about ethics content and how best to teach ethics and ethical practice. Situated within a reflexive methodology - and utilising a pair-interview technique - this paper presents the results of an inquiry designed to explore out practice as social work educators in the context of the debates about ethics in social work education. We found that our experience is best illustrated by a social intuitionist approach to moral development that has emerged in recent years. We found that this model developed by Jonathan Haidt can bride the divide between rational an a socially situated and reflective approach to ethics, often considered appropriate to practice. We argue that the model also encompasses the way in which culture and learning can inform intuition as well as the role of critical reasoning in the formation of ethical judgements. The model fits closely with our experience as educators and we conclude the paper by linking classroom and field practices with different aspects of the model.There is broad agreement that attention to codes of ethics, ethical reasoning and so- cial work values is an important component of any social work education. There ap- pears to be less consensus about ethics content and how best to teach ethics and ethical practice. Situated within a reflexive methodology—and utilising a pair-interview technique—this paper presents the results of an inquiry designed to explore our prac- tice as social work educators in the context of the debates about ethics in social work education. We found that our experience is best illustrated by a social intuitionist ap- proach to moral development that has emerged in recent years. We found that this model developed by Jonathan Haidt can bridge the divide between rational and a so- cially situated and reflective approach to ethics, often considered appropriate to prac- tice. We argue that the model also encompasses the way in which culture and learning can inform intuition as well as the role of critical reasoning in the formation of ethical judgements. The model fits closely with our experience as educators and we conclude the paper by linking classroom and field practices with different aspects of the model