Rock Ethics Institute Videos

In this conversation, Dr. John Doris and Dr. Laura Niemi talk with Dr. Daryl Cameron about the study of moral psychology: how and why do people act ethically and make moral judgments? Dr. Doris studies how empirical findings in psychology inform normative theories of ethics, and Dr. Niemi studies how social factors shape ascription of moral agency and moral rights. How can philosophers and psychologists work together to study these questions? What is the relationship between moral psychology and other areas of inquiry, and what are some of the exciting new directions in moral psychology?

Dr. Sue Knight holds a PhD in philosophy and a BEd (both from Adelaide), and has spent more than 20 years researching and teaching within the University of South Australia's School of Education. Her research interests include the development of justificatory reasoning skills and the embedding of philosophy within school curricula across the year levels. She has published extensively in these areas. Dr. Knight drafted the South Australian Years 11 and 12 Philosophy curriculum and remains actively involved with the South Australian Association of Philosophy for Children. In 2010 she served as chief evaluator of the NSW Ethics Course Trial, and is currently curriculum writer for Primary Ethics, the organisation delivering K-6 Ethics classes as an alternative to Scripture in NSW public schools. This lecture is part of the Lippin Lecture Series and the Moral Literacy Colloquium.

Dr. Sue Knight holds a PhD in philosophy and a BEd (both from Adelaide), and has spent more than 20 years researching and teaching within the University of South Australia's School of Education. Her research interests include the development of justificatory reasoning skills and the embedding of philosophy within school curricula across the year levels. She has published extensively in these areas. Dr. Knight drafted the South Australian Years 11 and 12 Philosophy curriculum and remains actively involved with the South Australian Association of Philosophy for Children. In 2010 she served as chief evaluator of the NSW Ethics Course Trial, and is currently curriculum writer for Primary Ethics, the organisation delivering K-6 Ethics classes as an alternative to Scripture in NSW public schools. The Lecture Abstract In New South Wales, Australia, a new kindergarten-year 6 ethics curriculum is being rolled out in public schools. The curriculum adopts a ‘community of inquiry’ pedagogy, central to which is the ‘discussion plan’. Discussion plans consist of logically sequenced questions designed to scaffold children’s thinking about the ethical issues under investigation. Issues range from whether it is important to keep a friend’s secret, at kindergarten level, to questioning appeals to authority and moral relativism in year 6. Following Socrates, ethical questions are introduced using an initial provocation, which generally takes the form of a story. We have been concerned to write a curriculum that helps teachers themselves come to grips with the ethical issues raised, while at the same time, assisting them to facilitate children’s philosophical dialogue. In this talk Sue Knight will outline the aims and guiding principles of the curriculum and, using examples, describe its content and pedagogy.

Larry Nucci is a faculty member at the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley and Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Nucci has published extensively on children’s moral and social development. His two most recent books: the Handbook of Moral and Character Education (Routledge 2014 (2nd edition), and Nice is Not Enough: Facilitating Moral Development (Pearson, 2009) have each received the “Book of the Year” award from the Moral Development and Education SIG of the American Educational Research Association. An aspect of his work has focused on children's judgments about issues they consider to be personal matters of privacy and discretion. This research has been carried out in a number of contexts including Asia and Latin America (where he was a Fulbright Fellow). Recently his work has focused on the assessment of moral and social reasoning and on the integration of moral education within the regular academic curriculum. He is Editor in Chief of the journal Human Development and a member of the editorial boards of Cognitive Development, Parenting Science and Practice, and the Journal for Research in Character Education.

On November 6, 2014, Dr. Judith Smetana visited the Rock Ethics Institute to participate in the Waterbury Lecture Series on Moral Development. Prior to her public lecture, Dr. Smetana sat down with Dr. Michael D. Burroughs to discuss her current research in early childhood moral development. Dr. Burroughs and Dr. Smetana discussed a number of central issues relating to moral development, including the moral agency of children, the extent to which children are proper subjects of moral praise and moral blame, and the relationship of philosophy and philosophical theories of morality to moral psychology and theories of moral development. The result was an engaging conversation that will be of value to those with interests in early childhood education, ethics, moral responsibility, and moral development, among other areas.

The Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) gives promising under-represented students the opportunity to work intensively with faculty mentors and their peers whose experiences and commitments resonate with their own. PIKSI makes it possible for these students to see that they can have a future in philosophy and that there is a place for them in the discipline. We know that PIKSI has been valuable to the individual students who have been fellows over the last nine years. This Summer Institute is also vitally important to a discipline that has remained the least diverse of the humanities. The founders of PIKSI—they themselves senior feminist philosophers—drew from their own experiences in the profession to address the persistent lack of diversity in philosophy. They reflected on the obstacles they faced and the kinds of help they required to succeed; they envisioned how their successes, both individual and collective, in changing the field could be expanded even more. The result is a program that enables undergraduate students to pursue their passion for philosophy and honor the discipline’s legacy as an agent of personal and political transformation. We encourage students from under-represented groups to learn more about PIKSI and to apply for the next Summer Institute at http://rockethics.psu.edu/education/piksi

Produced by WPSU (a PBS affiliate) and the Rock Ethics Institute, this short film reviews the current state of scientific understanding about the human influences on climate change through straightforward explanations by top geological, meteorological, and geographic scientists working on climate related research at The Pennsylvania State University. The film concludes with the argument that while the sciencehas reached a high degree of certainty and there is little remaining disagreement about the causes of climate change, there remain questions as to what to do about climate change which are fundamentally ethical in nature and are now the responsibility of decision-makers and the public-at-large. The film features professors Richard Alley, Katherine Freeman, Michael Mann, James Kasting, Petra Tschakert, Klaus Keller, and Nancy Tuana.

Charles Burford is an Academic and Management Development Consultant, presently Associate Professor in Leadership, at The Australian Catholic University. He has been an administrator, academic and consultant in the University, School and Business sectors in Canada, U.S.A., Hong Kong, PNG and Australia. His work in the development of programs for Leaders has received international recognition. Dr. Burford's work is widely published and was a National Seminar Presenter for Scholastics Australia for several years and has presented extensively to Conferences of Teachers and Administrators in Education and to Leaders in Health, Business, Legal and Police Associations at the National and International level. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar at Penn State University and Fordham Universities in the USA. He has been the Invited International Keynote speaker to the International Conference on Values and Ethics in 2004 and 2006 in Barbados and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. In this interview, Dr. Burford discusses his taxonomy for Moral Literacy. See more at: http://corner.acu.edu.au/research_supervision/framework/browse.php?srperid=102#sthash.nfGFf65w.dpuf

Melanie Killen, Ph.D. is Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, Professor of Psychology (Affiliate), and the Associate Director for the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice and Group Identity (2011), co-editor of Social Development in Childhood and Adolescence: A Contemporary Reader (2011), and serves as the Editor of the Handbook on Moral Development (2006, 2014). Dr. Killen is the Director of the NICHD/NIH Graduate Training Program in Social Development (2003- present), and has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for her research on social exclusion, moral reasoning, and intergroup attitudes. Her research has been profiled at the "NSF Highlights on Research" by the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. She was invited to present her research at the Coalition for National Science Funding in Washington, D.C., with senators and congressional staff on social science research funded projects. In addition to her published empirical journal articles and book chapters, her book on morality in everyday life won the outstanding book award from the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Killen serves as Associate Editor for the journal Child Development, and is the former Chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child Development. Commissioned by Anderson Cooper, Dr. Killen conducted a study on children's racial bias for a set of stories aired on CNN AC360, "Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture" in April, 2012. Dr. Killen's research areas of expertise include children's and adolescents' social and moral development, peer relationships, social exclusion, prejudice and bias, morality and theory of mind, children and the media, and the role of school environments on development.

Moral judgments involve the understanding of fairness, justice, and equality. How do these judgments emerge in development? While new research has revealed the origins of morality, few studies have examined the role of intergroup relationships for formulating notions about fairness. Increasingly, there has been new evidence that the ability to apply morality to the outgroup exists in early development, but it appears to be complex. The challenges associated with applying moral judgments to members of outgroups include understanding group dynamics, the intentions of others who are different from the self, and having the capacity to challenge stereotypic expectations of others who are different from the ingroup. In this talk, I will discuss current findings, guided by theories from ethics as well as developmental and social psychology. Research with children provides a window into the complexities of moral judgment and raises new questions which are ripe for investigations into the emergence of morality and its developmental trajectory. Melanie Killen, Ph.D. is Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, Professor of Psychology (Affiliate), and the Associate Director for the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice and Group Identity (2011), co-editor of Social Development in Childhood and Adolescence: A Contemporary Reader (2011), and serves as the Editor of the Handbook on Moral Development (2006, 2014). Dr. Killen is the Director of the NICHD/NIH Graduate Training Program in Social Development (2003- present), and has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for her research on social exclusion, moral reasoning, and intergroup attitudes. Her research has been profiled at the “NSF Highlights on Research” by the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. She was invited to present her research at the Coalition for National Science Funding in Washington, D.C., with senators and congressional staff on social science research funded projects. In addition to her published empirical journal articles and book chapters, her book on morality in everyday life won the outstanding book award from the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Killen serves as Associate Editor for the journal Child Development, and is the former Chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child Development. Commissioned by Anderson Cooper, Dr. Killen conducted a study on children’s racial bias for a set of stories aired on CNN AC360, “Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture” in April, 2012. Dr. Killen’s research areas of expertise include children’s and adolescents’ social and moral development, peer relationships, social exclusion, prejudice and bias, morality and theory of mind, children and the media, and the role of school environments on development. Part of The Richard B. Lippin Lecture Series. This lecture is SARI@PSU approved for participation credit. This credit is only given to those who attend the live, on-campus lecture in person.