Ethical Dilemmas the Pull between the personal and the professional Assessment

DUE DATE: Monday 6¹'' December by 11.59pm (Turnitin submission — PDF ONLY)

Poster: A3 page size with 500 words (+1-10%)

The poster assessment is designed to help you explore potential conflicts (ethical dilemmas) between your personal moral values and the professional ethical codes that you will encounter in your future professional practices. The point of this exercise is to create a poster that might guide assist others in resolving ethical dilemmas that they face in professional practice.

For this assignment, a few key terms:

Moral values — personal judgements about what is right/wrong (good/bad) based on what we value as important. These are often driven by communal or societal norms (such as cultural influences, the social context of our lives, family, religion, etc.). Ethical Code — the standards of right/wrong or good/bad that assist with the assessment of what is good/bad (right/wrong) in certain community or social settings (such as in a professional context).

Ethical Dilemma (aka moral dilemma) — A conflict in decision-making as a result of conflicting moral and ethical values. In the context of the assessment, this is where there is a conflict between personal moral values (suggesting one pathway) and the standards of behaviour/outcome set by the professional Ethical code (or code of conduct).

There are three parts to this assessment:

1. Your moral 'family tree' (should be drafted for tutorial 1) — 4 marks (this part should be very graphic so 100 words should be plenty

What is the foundation of your moral values?

Use a mind map or a 'family tree', to plot out where your sense of right/wrong or good/bad comes from. Review the material under the Individual Learning Task 1 to examine your own life, experiences, and social interactions to try and establish as honestly and accurately as possible where your moral values (personal ethics) might have come from. This task will be unique to you. It is important to also identify some of the key values that you might hold because of your 'family tree'. You should present this element as a diagram, rather than as a 'chunk' of text.

There are many resources within module 1 to inspire you. You could also discuss this with your family or friends. Another useful resource might be the various resources on the YourMorals website - https://www.yourmorals.org/.

A useful reading here is Zigon, J. (2009). Morality and Personal Experience: The  Moral Conceptions of a Muscovite Man. Ethos, 37(1),  78-101. Retrieved July 19, 2020,  from www.jstotorg/stable/20486600  (this is a scholarly resource)

2. Professional Code of Ethics (or Code of Conduct) — 3 marks (aim for 150 words — concise!!)

You need to identify (and present) the Ethical Code or Code of Conduct for your professional pathway. If you are in the Bachelor of Social Science, or another degree that has more ambiguous employment pathways, then identify a profession within which you would like to work in the future.

Often these are extensive documents, so you will need to convey the spirit of the Ethical code, whilst meeting the limitations of space and the word count. You will need to emphasise  the core/key values and summarise the ethical responsibilities of people in that profession. It would be a good idea to present this information as bulleted/numbered lists.

3. Ethical Dilemma (we will discuss ethical dilemmas in Tutorial 2) — 9 marks (aim for 250 words)

You need to identify an ethical dilemma (or moral dilemma) that you could face in your future professional pathway. This should be a decision that you could have to make about how to act, where you would face a conflict of your personal moral values and your professional ethical code. The conflict is likely to arise from personal/professional beliefs about how you should act/behave (towards other people or the environment), your sense of self (what makes you a good/bad person), or the outcomes/consequences of your actions. It could also result from your beliefs and judgements about other people and their actions.

You need to:

• Identify an ethical/moral dilemma.

o A starting point here might be to search the library (or google) for "ethical dilemmas" AND your profession

• Describe the situation that could arise
• Explain the conflict that would exist: between your personal moral values and your professional code of ethics.
• Discuss how you might resolve this conflict: what decision would you make? Why? (at the end of the day you either act or you don't act (not deciding is not acting), and we are interested in how/why you make this decision). Did you strictly follow one set of morals or values? Did you find compromise? What might be the consequences of the decision you made for you? For your profession? For others?
• Reflect on the process of making this decision: How do you feel about the decision you made? What does it tell you about your commitment to either your profession (and its ethics) or your personal moral values? What reflections can you offer to others who might be faced with the same situation?

This section should be written using concise paragraphs (think about how easy it is for the reader to engage with your work). It must utilise formal English, and make use of scholarly references to support your discussion.

Presentation — ONE A3 page submitted in PDF format only — 2 marks

This assessment is a poster. This enables you to innovate with the presentation when it comes to the moral family tree (and your professional code of ethics). Your poster will need to be a concise presentation of the three sections: enough detail to cover the content, but edited text that is not verbose.

Your poster should be presented in an interesting and visually appealing manner, utilising no more than 1 A3 page (including all headings and references).

Academic referencing and in-text citations should be done correctly. If you use images or figures, these should be referred to in your text (i.e. see figure 1) and should be appropriately captioned and referenced (not included in the word count).

References (not included in word count) — 2 marks

You are expected to use a minimum FIVE unique resources to support and justify your decision marking.

• At least THREE of these should be scholarly resources, and ONE should be the Professional Ethical Code (or Professional Code of Conduct).
• They should be distributed throughout the task

Professional Codes of Ethics or Codes of Conduct need to be properly referenced (but you don't need to cite each piece of text in PART 2 in this instance).

• These are NOT scholarly resources.

The preferred reference styles are Harvard or APA Style. In-text citations are required.

All published works (academic and lay readings, textbooks, websites, newspapers, videos, etc .) need to be referenced in the reference list. The reference list needs to be included at the bottom of your slide. This can be in very small font.

A good assessment will not depend on unpublished works from vUWS (slides, online modules, research wall videos), or on Youtube videos. These are a starting point only and should never be the final resource in assessment.