scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Topic

Situational ethics

About: Situational ethics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4023 publications have been published within this topic receiving 145379 citations.


Papers
More filters
Journal Article
TL;DR: Translating students' right to their own language has been a touchstone in composition studies for progressive language campaigns as discussed by the authors, and it has been recognized as a good cause for many scholars of color.
Abstract: The arc of moral composition studies is long, King might say, but it bends toward translingualism.1 I would agree insofar as the term translingualism galvanizes the multidimensional repudiation of monolingual curriculums and yields praxis informed by an understanding that language and language standards are situational, political, arbitrary, and palimpsestic. If, as Vygotsky indicates, a "word is a microcosm of human consciousness" (153), then it is also a microcosm of human history. Every utterance contains tracings of migration, mixing, negotiation, or conquest. Stories have been programmed into our languages just as they have been stamped into our genes. Moreover, translingualism incorporates the view that all language users, or languagers, are perpetually producing and experimenting with multiple varieties of language. Thus, translingualists grasp that the institutional enactment of language standards is repressive in some cases and restrictive in all.Yet I imagine that proponents of translingualism will still have to grapple with the question of how much language prescriptiveness they are comfortable with-lest they assert "none at all" and, as they work in political arenas in which they assess students, seem to evade politics, the last thing a self-respecting translingualist wants to be caught doing. It also appears to me that continual revisiting and reworking of several other concepts of language and difference are necessary to forge a stronger narrative about translingualism. In addition to talk about student language rights, I am concerned on this occasion with the flattening of language differences, the notion of language as an abstraction, the danger of translingualism becoming an alienating theory for some scholars of color, and deeper study of powerfully translanguaging students.As is evident from reading essays such as John Trimbur's discussion in this issue of the 1974 CCCC "Students' Right to Their Own Language" (SRTOL), the resolution remains a touchstone in composition studies for progressive language campaigns. But as I have suggested elsewhere, the language rights of ethnic assemblages, most prominently African Americans, were the issue and not the language rights of students conceived as individuals (Gilyard 95). No vision was expressed claiming, for example, "my own idiosyncratic thing" as a language that should be honored in schools. Rather, a particular political problem, the harsh penalizing of students who were firmly tethered linguistically to an institutionally discredited heritage, was being addressed. The representative students at the heart of the students' right work of earlier decades were not the idealized ones at the heart of the present translingualist conception. The latter students are more shifting and unpredictable, heterogeneous and fluid, as we all are. They are not the minority others numerically but are the majority not-others occupying the default position, the norm, and are being hindered, at the very least, by gatekeepers. They are less the repressed indigenous ethnics overdetermined by dialect and more the polyglot products of contemporary global dispersion.None of this depiction is objectionable. A good cause needs a good symbol. I advocate, however, that this symbol needs to be highlighted more and needs its specific hardships detailed. Perhaps numerous accounts in this vein exist of which I am unaware. That would be no surprise. My current impression, though, is that the translanguaging subject generally comes off in the scholarly literature as a sort of linguistic everyperson, which makes it hard to see the suffering and the political imperative as clearly as in the heyday of SRTOL. In other words, if translanguaging is the unqualified norm, then by definition it is something that all students, including high achievers, perform. So what problem is there to address? If the answer is that every translanguaging student, regardless of educational success, could stand to be better educated with respect to the inner workings of the discourses and power dynamics that impact their lives, then the project of translingualism is indistinguishable from other species of critical pedagogy. …

35 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a portfolio of strategies and tactics that seek to design-out, deter, and discourage academic misconduct was collated and framed in the context of crime opportunity theory and the 25 techniques of situational crime prevention.
Abstract: Approximately one-half to three-quarters of university students commit some form of cheating, plagiarism, or collusion. Typical university responses are policy statements containing definitions plus punishment procedures. This paper collates a portfolio of strategies and tactics that seek to design-out, deter, and discourage academic misconduct. It finds many routine tactics exist, from silence and the use of large halls for major exams, to restrictions on electronic devices. Others are less consistently adopted, such as splitting lengthy exams in two to discourage washroom-visits where cheating takes place. The portfolio of tactics is framed in the context of crime opportunity theory and the 25 techniques of situational crime prevention. It is proposed that more consistent application of tactics focusing on environmental design, curricular design, and class management offer significant potential for reducing misconduct. Future research should seek to evaluate and enhance such interventions.

35 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Sobesky et al. as discussed by the authors found that when negative consequences for the actor were severe, students were less certain that they should and would act to help another person; they also displayed less principled thinking.
Abstract: SOBESKY, WILLIAM E. The Effects of Situational Factors on Moral Judgments. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54,575-584. Little empirical investigation has focused on how specific situational variables, such as negative consequences, interact with cognitive developmental variables, such as moral judgment stage, to influence moral decisions and moral thinking. In this study, 223 high school and college students completed 2 questionnaires. In the first, students answered the short form of the Defining Issues Test, which provided a measure of their predisposition to use principled-level rationales in solving moral dilemmas. In the second, students made moral judgments about what they should and would do, and they indicated their use of principled-level thinking in resolving 4 versions of the Heinz dilemma. Each version presented a different combination of negative consequences for the actor (Heinz) and for another (Heinz's wife). Results indicated that, when the negative consequences for the actor were severe, students were less certain that they should and would act to help another person; they also displayed less principled thinking. When the consequences for another were severe, individuals who had displayed a greater predisposition to make use of principled thinking were more certain of acting to help.

35 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors considered situational and dispositional factors underlying behavioral opposition characteristic of a "not-in-my-back-yard" (NIMBY) response to a change having adverse personal consequences.
Abstract: The present study considered situational and dispositional factors underlying behavioral opposition characteristic of a “not-in-my-back-yard” (NIMBY) response to a change having adverse personal consequences. Students considered the proposition of comprehensive exams required for graduation taking effect in the near or distant future (high and low vested interest, respectively). Although both groups had similarly negative attitudes toward the idea, the high vested interest group perceived greater personal consequence and expressed greater intention to oppose the plan. From a situational-dispositional interactionist perspective, it was the impact of the situation (perceived stake), rather than personality traits presumed to underlie a NIMBY response, that proved to be the primary determinant of oppositional behavior.

35 citations


Network Information
Related Topics (5)
Personality
75.6K papers, 2.6M citations
85% related
Empirical research
51.3K papers, 1.9M citations
85% related
Social relation
29.1K papers, 1.7M citations
85% related
Cognition
99.9K papers, 4.3M citations
84% related
Job satisfaction
58K papers, 1.8M citations
82% related
Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20242
20231,132
20222,631
2021154
2020179
2019133