“‘Why? Why? Why?’ is the question of the course”: Master’s of Public Administration students’ perspectives on their learning in a standalone ethics course and the implications for ethics education throughout the curriculum

Abstract

This paper reported the findings from 18 qualitative interviews of students across two sections of an elective, standalone ethics course in a Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) accredited Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) program at a northeast university. The findings suggested that a survey of normative ethical theories and opportunities to practice applying those theories to case studies in public administration led students to uncover the values upon which they stood and consider the strengths and deficiencies of those values in practice. Students generally described the value of this learning experience as developing the ability to identify and systematically consider the reason and logic of their ethical perspectives, consider alternatives presented by others, and take a principled stance. Implications of these findings for embedding ethics education across the curriculum in NASPAA accredited programs was considered.

Keywords

Teaching ethics ethics education ethical competence network of schools of public policy,affairs and administration guidelines Master’s of Public Administration curriculum development public service values

There is general agreement among scholars that ethical behavior can be learned and the available evidence suggests that formal ethics education prepares students to exercise ethical behavior in practice (Jurkiewicz, 2002; Jurkiewicz and Nichols, 2002; Kennedy and Malatesta, 2010; Menzel, 1998; Perun, 2020; Peters and Filipova, 2009; Svara, 2015). Accordingly, faculty in Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) programs bear a responsibility to teach public administrators the knowledge and practice of ethics, as well as how to integrate the two (Jacobs, 2015). Inculcating ethical competence requires inspiring commitment, imparting knowledge of codes, laws, theory, and teaching ethical reasoning skills (Menzel, 2010), as well as a teaching students a “design approach” to use their knowledge and skills to resolve ethical dilemmas (Cooper, 2012). Further, there seems to be consensus that achieving these pedagogical aims requires integrating the principles of normative ethical theories and relevant professional standards (e.g., Cooper and Menzel, 2013; Jacobs, 2013; Svara, 2015) in the application of case study deliberations (e.g., Jacobs, 2013; Jurkiewicz, 2013; Matchett, 2009; Menzel, 2009).

However, the NASPAA accreditation standards do not necessarily compel curricula that explicitly achieves what the literature has demonstrated. Rather, the standards rely upon the notion of public service values as opaque guiding principles for the development of ethical competence in graduate students (King et al., 2021; Svara and Baizhanov, 2019). Indeed, according to the NASPAA Standards (Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration [NASPAA], 2019) a “requirement” for ethics education is only implied through precondition number two for accreditation, which states that programs emphasize in all aspects of an accredited program Public Service Values, including, but not limited to “acting ethically so as to uphold the public trust” (p. 2). Moreover, the competencies graduates in an accredited program are to achieve as articulated in the five domains of student learning do not include ethical competence per se, rather ethical competence is implied vis-à-vis precondition number two, in domain 1, “to lead and manage in the public interest” and in domain 4, “to articulate, apply, and advance a public service perspective” (pp. 7, 8). The only explicit mention of something like ethical competence is in the rationale for Standard 5 wherein it states that “Graduate students should reflect upon the social and ethical responsibilities and the equity implications linked to the application of their knowledge and judgments” (p. 8).

This all leaves considerable ambiguity about how, as a professional field of study, faculty are expected to inculcate ethical competence in their graduate students. An analysis of course offerings across accredited programs reflects the same. Jurkiewicz (2013) reported that NASPAA accredited MPA programs offering a standalone ethics course increased from 23% in 1981 to 74% by her analysis of curricula in 2011. (Of note, in 2010, Brudney and Martinez’s (2010) survey of graduate programs across nonprofit management fields more generally reveled a similar count with roughly 66% of all respondents reporting that their program offered a standalone ethics course; however, no more than 39% required it as part of the core curriculum).

During the 2022–2023 academic year, 62% of all U.S. based NASPAA accredited programs offered a standalone ethics course, and only 32% of all programs (or roughly half of programs with such a course) required it (see Methods section below for counting method). Therefore, if ethics are taught systematically in the 68% of programs that do not require a standalone ethics course, then it must be incorporated throughout the curriculum.

Teaching ethics throughout the curriculum is what Jurkiewicz (2013) described as a “scattershot” approach whereby ethics education components are embedded in other topics. While it is important to incorporate ethics across the curriculum (see for examples Jacobs, 2014; King, et al., 2021; Svara and Baizhanov, 2019), it is unclear to what extent students develop the habits of mind necessary to integrate knowledge and practice of ethical competence when their exposure is limited to the context of other topics and ethics is typically focused upon finding acceptable administrative resolutions to complex problems.

The present study contributes to the literature of teaching ethics and curriculum development by qualitatively exploring the learning experiences of 18 MPA students in an elective, standalone ethics course in one northeastern NASPAA accredited MPA program. Drawing upon the students’ comparative perspectives on how their learning in the standalone course differed from their development of ethical competence in other courses across the curriculum, the findings suggest that, above all, the scrutiny of principles was the major contributor to the students’ development of ethical competence and a distinction from their learning experiences in other courses wherein ethics education was embedded. These findings suggest that students can develop ethical competence in courses across the curriculum as long as they are given a course context to consider normative ethical values, uncover the values upon which they stand, and opportunities to explain and defend those values in the face the “public” scrutiny.

Inculcating ethical competence

Jacobs’ (2015) review of the literature on teaching ethics across the professions revealed there is widespread agreement among scholars that ethical competence (a) exists, (b) is a good thing for professionals to have, and (c) can be taught. While the idea of ethical competence has existed in the public administration literature since the 1930’s (Plant, 2013), the most comprehensive, often cited, and prevailing definition of ethical competence in public administration today comes from Menzel (2010) who defined ethical competence as a commitment to high standards of behavior, knowledge of relevant ethics codes and laws, the ability to engage in ethical reasoning, act upon public services ethics and values, and promote ethical behavior in one’s organizations (p. 18).

The available evidence in the public administration literature suggests that formal ethics education at the graduate level can inculcate ethical competence and likely results in the practice of more ethical reasoning (Jurkiewicz, 2002; Jurkiewicz and Nichols, 2002; Kennedy and Malatesta, 2010; Menzel, 1998; Peters and Filipova, 2009). For example, Jurkiewicz and Nichols (2002) survey of MPA graduates in the field who had a formal ethics course were more readily able to identify ethical dilemmas and resist engaging in sanctioned unethical behavior than those who did not take an ethics course. Using a more objective measure, Jurkiewicz (2002) deployed Rest's (1979) Defining Issues Test as pre and post-tests for an MPA and MHA ethics course to measure the impact of her course design (based upon Kohlberg's (1981) framework) and found that the course significantly increased the students ethical reasoning skills.

Considering Menzel as the prevailing standard and the evidence that ethical reasoning can be taught, approaches to inculcating ethical competence in MPA programs have considerable overlap (Jacobs, 2013, 2014, 2018, Jurkiewicz, 2002, 2013; Kennedy and Malatesta, 2010; King et al., 2021; Matchett, 2009; Menzel, 1998, 2009; Perun, 2020; Peters and Filipova, 2009; Svara, 2015; Svara and Baizhanov, 2019). For example, Jurkiewicz (2013) asserted that to develop an ethically competent public administrator, ethics education in public administration ought to achieve the learning objectives of (a) “understanding moral philosophy,” (b) the “ability to distinguish moral issues,” (c) the ability to use logic and reason to resolve ethical problems, (d) understanding one’s “own and others’ ethical frameworks,” and (e) “perform ethically despite pressures” to do otherwise (p. 141).

Perhaps the only notable variations among scholars are the foundations of normative ethical principles. For examples, Jurkiewicz (2013) emphasizes moral philosophy and Svara and Baizhanov (2019) emphasize public service values, especially as codified in relevant codes of ethics. The emphasis may drive slightly different course designs, learning activities, and assessments, but the overlap in these examples—Jurkiewicz included “ethical frameworks” like codes of ethics and Svara and Baizhanov called for knowledge of relevant “philosophical models” (2019, p. 86)—suggests both, codified values and moral philosophy, are central foundations for ethical principles in public administration.

While there is considerable agreement about what ethical competence in public administration includes and what teaching ought to achieve, Jacobs (2015) argued that his own definition (Jacobs, 2013), and therefore Menzel’s (2010), is little more than “motherhood and apple pie,” and, Jurkiewicz’s (2013) educational goals for inculcating it, “generic.” The critique notwithstanding, perhaps motherhood and apple pie and generic are salient features of a good formal ethics education since it creates the space for students to uncover who they are and what they stand for.

Importantly, Menzel’s (1998) survey of MPA graduates from NASPAA accredited programs to identify to what extent the participants believed their standalone ethics course during their program shaped their ethical behavior in practice after graduation found that their ethics course helped them take a systematic approach to resolving ethical dilemmas, but did not necessarily change their ethical beliefs. Menzel’s analysis identified that an ethics course generally reinforced the ethical values students already held. In these ways, the available evidence suggests that formal ethics education helps students develop complex ethical thinking but does not necessarily change their principles or help them develop a specific public service ethic.

Svara (2015) has argued that formal ethics education ought not inculcate a specific public service ethics. Rather, he argued, that ethics education is best when it helps students align their personal ethical stance with the one required of them in their work as public administrators. The implication of this perspective is that public servants will be attracted or recruited to those organizations and positions that require the ethic that they hold. And, perhaps this is an ideal aim of a formal ethics education. Plant (2013), Jacobs (2105), and DeSchrijver and Maesschalck's (2013) maintain that, to at least some extent, ethical competence depends a great deal upon the context in which it is exercised. These scholars have acknowledged that the importance of ethical competence and what it includes is shaped by the context in which the administrator operates.

The opportunities in formal ethics education then, is for the students to define ethical competence within the context in which they exercise it, identifying and defining values for a given profession, sector, or locale, and consider what their values look like in practice. Of course, this must be accomplished without reducing the idea of ethical competence to relativism, which would preclude any meaningful definition of ethical competence in the first place. That is, if ethical competence is simply a matter of local values, then anyone enacting those values, regardless of how objectively objectionable they may be, would be observed as exercising ethical competence.

If the role of formal ethics education is to inculcate ethical competence without reducing it to relativism, and the principles upon which ethical competence rests are largely defined by the individual and/or the context, then formal ethics education whether embedded throughout the curriculum or required in a standalone course must provide the arena in which principles can be identified and rigorously scrutinized for their strengths and deficiencies.

One way to approach it might be DeSchrijver and Maesschalck’s (2013) framework, which defines and evaluates ethical competence based upon the utilization of at least three levels of argumentation when identifying and resolving an ethical dilemma. First, one needs to be able to argue the ethicality of conduct based upon consideration for the policies governing the conduct and break a policy only if there is sufficient reason to do so. Sufficient reason to break a policy would come from the other two forms of argumentation, consequences for others, and consequences for self (not in the psychological egoism sense (Rachels and Rachels, 2023), rather in the self-appraisal sense (Cooper, 2012)). Since the argumentation in the latter two require an individual to consider the consequences of their conduct, even if they are demonstrating good followership, ethical competence is operationalized to include an observable demonstration of bearing full personal responsibility for all consequences—to others and self—for all conduct.

Jacobs’ (2018) framework advanced this idea further by asserting that ethical competence is only observable when one takes full personal responsibility for one’s conduct by revealing their intentions to self and others. From this perspective, conduct demonstrates ethical competence—regardless of the outcome—when a leader’s intentions are virtuous given the context of the situation in which the leader acts. Integrating Jacob’s framework, the focus is shifted in DeSchrijver and Maesschalck’s (2013) second and third argumentation from justification for violating policy to the standard upon which the policy and following it (the first argumentation) is judged in the first place.

While this operationalization of ethical competence may be difficult to measure, the present study sheds light upon how course design and pedagogy enacted in a standalone ethic course helped students integrate knowledge and practice of ethics in ways the ethics education scattered throughout the rest of their program did not.

Drawing upon qualitative interviews of 18 students who completed the course, the findings suggest that the survey of normative ethical theories and the practice of applying those theories to case studies in Cooper (2012) using the design approach, led students to deep (and sometimes frustrating) reflection upon their closely held beliefs. The findings revealed that students did not necessarily change their values as Menzel (1998) found, but they were compelled to think deeply about what their values were and why those values were worth holding. All of the students described, to varying degrees, how the ethics course prompted them to systematically consider the reason and logic of their ethical perspectives, consider alternatives presented by others, and take a principled stance.

Methods

For perspective on the present study, I reviewed all 177 U.S. graduate programs accredited by NASPAA (this count excludes Guam, a U.S. territory) during the 2022-2023 academic year. Analysis of programs’ curricula and degree requirements revealed that 62% of all programs had a standalone ethics course listed in the course catalogue, and 32% of all programs required a standalone ethics course as part of the core curriculum.¹

To understand students’ learning experiences in a standalone ethics course, and how those experiences contributed to the development of ethical competence, I conducted a phenomenological study of two sections of an elective, standalone administrative ethics course that I taught in the MPA program at a north-east university. The course was generally fashioned after Jacobs’ (2013) design, whereby students survey moral philosophy in the Western thought tradition (Rachels and Rachels, 2023) for the first three-quarters of the course and then use the theories studied to deliberate the cases studies in Cooper’s text (2012).

The Institutional Review Board application for this study resulted in an Exemption on the basis of the “research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, involving normal educational practices, such as (i) research on regular and special education instructional strategies, or (ii) research on the effectiveness of or on the comparison among instructional techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods.”

I conducted 1-h semi-structured interviews with 18 total student volunteer participants (n = 18) at the conclusion of the two separate sections of a standalone ethics course, asking them questions about what value they found in the course and how they thought it would contribute to their ethical competence in their practice of public and nonprofit administration. All the students were early or mid-career professionals working in local, state, or federal government, or nonprofit corporations. The basis of this analysis are the thick descriptions from students about the ways the case study deliberations contributed to their overall learning in the course. The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and loaded into NVivo 9 for analysis.

I coded the data set identifying “patterns of behavior, subjects’ ways of thinking, and events repeat[ing] and [or] stand[ing] out” (Bogdan and Biklen, 2007: p. 173). I paid particular attention to repetitions, similarities and differences that were evident in the interview transcripts (Ryan and Bernard, 2007). I then used descriptive codes with very little interpretation to achieve more manageable subsets of data to develop pattern codes that provided a sense of “what [was] happening and why” (Miles and Huberman, 1994: p. 65).

The findings resulted from the main analytic theme: Ethical Reasoning (students’ learning experiences whereby they realized they needed to think deeply about what they stood for, why, and the implications thereof). Using Miles and Huberman’s (1994) “analytic induction” process, I focused upon the coded interview data from Ethical Reasoning to understand the similarities and differences among students. During this iterative process I relied heavily upon contrasting and comparing to test my conclusions (Miles and Huberman, 1994), identifying three subthemes, Own Principles (the identification of the values upon which one stood), Principles of Others (the identification of the values upon which others stood), and Own Principles in Relation to Others’ Principles (the adoption, rejection, or adaptation of one’s own principle in relation to the principles of others). This process continued until my understanding of a phenomenon was both plausible and supported by the data.

The study in all these regards has two significant limitations. First, I am a faculty member in the program and was the professor for both sections of the course. Accordingly, students’ responses to the interview questions may have been skewed in ways that omitted negative perspectives about the course and/or other learning experiences throughout the program. In this way, it could be that the students’ learning in the ethics course was not as impactful as they reported. Similarly, positive distinctions they drew between their development of ethical competence in the ethics course compared to their other courses throughout the curriculum may have been, to some extent, exaggerated.

Additionally, since I designed and taught the course, bias may have led to interpreting students’ reports of their positive learning experiences in the course as a matter of the course design and enacted pedagogy rather than the students who participated in the study shaping their own learning in the course.

To help overcome these limitations, I worked to achieve a high level of both descriptive and interpretative validity (Maxwell, 1992). That is, by ensuring the accuracy of the participants’ descriptions, preserving the context in which their perspectives were shaped, and comparing the descriptions among all participants and my own observations, the interpretations of the students’ understandings can be judged as reasonably accurate. In any case, the biases that may have shaped the data collection and analysis are not particularly material to findings of students reporting the learning that best enabled them to develop their ethical competence.

The second significant limitation is that qualitative research in general, and this study in particular, is neither entirely representative nor generalizable. The inductive approach to data collection and analysis is simply grounded in my and my students’ observed realities. In this way, the findings present a grounded theory approach (see Charmaz, 2006 for history and extensive treatment, and Riccucci, 2010 for tradition in Public Administration) in large part to help MPA programs navigate the ambiguity and dearth of focus on ethics education in NASPAA accreditation requirements. Of course, this problem will look very different in different MPA programs; however, the purpose of this study was to establish a practical theoretical perspective to guide program and course-level curriculum development, as well as NASPAA accreditation. That is, rather than deduce to what extent students developed ethical competence in a curriculum governed by NASPAA accreditation requirements, the present study established a theoretical perspective to explore how an MPA curriculum might help students develop ethical competence using an example of one such program.

Given the limitations detailed here, the question of whether or not the findings presented below are trustworthy and significant (Lincoln and Guba, 1986) relies upon the thick descriptions from the students and the reader’s judgement of the analysis in the context in which the study was conducted. Further, the extent to which the findings and theoretical perspectives generated are significant to curriculum development, depends upon close comparison of the study to other contexts in which it may be applied (Lincoln and Guba, 1986).

Findings

All 18 students described the central value of their learning in the course as being focused upon examining the underlying normative ethical principles that they do, or would, operationalize in their professional and personal conduct. The students generally reported that the course design and pedagogy helped them achieve this by the practice of identifying the logic that underpinned their conduct and scrutinizing that logic until sound ethical principles were revealed. Additionally, students reported that they found this process valuable for a range of reasons, including (a) thinking more deeply about one’s own principles, and (b) developing an appreciation for the principles of others, even if they disagreed.

Own principles

All 18 students reported that the class discussions in general and deliberating case studies in particular were central to helping them uncover the principles upon which they stood. In a typical example, one student responding to an interview question about how this course stood in distinction to all the other courses she had taken in the program reported that her central challenge was in the classroom discussions when she had to state, and defend to the whole class, her resolution of a case study by describing the ethical principle from moral philosophy that justified the decision. The student explained:

to articulate what that principle is… that was like very fruitful for me. [In the discussion] you’re trying to figure out “ok, but why are you saying this”? “Well, this is the right thing to do,” and it's like, “but why”?! “Why, why, why,”?! is the question of the course…. That's what made it productive, because at the end we had to come to a conclusion [about what we stood for].

The class discussion in this example was a case study from Cooper’s (2012) text and the student articulated a typical description from all the students that she had to think about why her resolution was the “best” or most ethical conduct. While ethics was embedded throughout her MPA curriculum, this was the only course in the program where she was asked not only to consider what she would do in a given dilemma, but also asked to publicly justify why based upon a normative principle that she had total personal responsibility for selecting, which in turn revealed what she stood for.

In this regard, the pedagogical aim for ethical competence seems to differ significantly from the general context of the graduate education throughout the program wherein students are taught and encouraged to develop balanced arguments that considers nuance and synthesizes two or more sides of an issue. Indeed, these are important learning goals as they help students demonstrate nuanced understanding, appreciate competing interests, and identify viable paths for administrative resolutions. However, these learning activities likely fall short of helping students develop ethical competence because they focus neither upon helping students uncover their principled stance with an appropriate level of argumentation—policy, others, and self—(DeSchrijver and Maesschalck, 2013), nor help them reveal their intentions to self and others (Jacobs, 2018).

It is important to note that her deliberation resulted in the same course of action as many other students; however, asking students to identify and describe why they selected that course of action based upon normative ethical principles revealed a wide range of values in the class. In this case, the student described the fruitful and productive nature of the exchanges with classmates because not only did she identify the principles upon which she stood, and their corresponding strengths and deficiencies, but she learned of the principles upon which others in the course stood and could compare and contrast the relative strengths and deficiencies with her own. To achieve that level of reflection and ethical reasoning, course design and pedagogy must crate the learning context in which students are encouraged to take a principled stance and defend their position publicly.

Principles of others

Affirming Menzel’s (1998) work, only one of the 18 students reported that they had fundamentally changed an aspect of their ethical stance and acquired new principles in the course. The rest reported that the course developed their ethical competence by helping them understand and articulate the logic of the values they held and applied in principled decision making.

Still, all 18 students reported that they gained an appreciation for the values and principles of others. For example, one student explained:

I think it is definitely very helpful to know the theoretical basis people have for making their decisions. It was definitely very helpful to learn how different people think and there are many different ways of approaching one problem in the public world. I think I appreciated them [different ways of approaching one problem] even more once we started doing the case studies.

This student described a typical learning experience he found valuable in the course whereby one’s values and the values of others were uncovered by subjecting principled arguments to public scrutiny. This was achieved largely by the structure of learning activities that required students to maintain some level of objectivity and an open mind to evaluate the values being expressed and the corresponding strengths and deficiencies. Accordingly, students reported that even if they did not agree with the “why” behind a decision (which may have been the same decision in administrative terms), they developed an appreciation and respect for the values that others held and the implications for their ethical decision making.

Students also reported developing an appreciation for the principles of others through their assignment that required them to critique a code of ethics that governed their professional work. In one such example, a student reported that after reading and discussing Kant’s Categorical Imperative in the course she had rejected it, noting “I'm not a fan of absolutism, I'm not at all.” However, in her code of ethics critique essay toward the end of the course, she found through her analysis that the theory might hold more value for her practice of public administration than she initially thought. She explained:

When we did the code of ethics critique, looking at the principles, that [Kant’s Categorical Imperative] is exactly what… aligned a lot with the code of ethics. And, I thought the code of ethics was pretty good! Because that's actually what happened. At first I went through all the theories, “this one, nope., This one, nope.” And, I was like “ok, I don't think any of them fit. So, let me actually revisit the principles underneath each one [of the tenets of the code of ethics].” And when I did that, I found more so that they [the principles in the code of ethics] aligned better [with Kant’s Categorical Imperative].

The student reported that this learning experience led to an “openness to accept others’ principles,” and explained that “I am willing to continue to learn, whether it's a differing opinion or something I don’t agree with, I'm willing to learn more.”

Like the learning outcomes students reported from the class discussions, this student found that working with the principle(s) that underpin ethical theories positioned here to uncover the foundational principles being articulated by others. As importantly, the ability to think principledly rather than in terms of a philosopher, a specific theory, or ideology opened her up to seeing the merits of those principles applied to ethical decision-making in practice.

This analysis suggests that the element of ethical competence that scholars have referred to as ethical reasoning (e.g., Menzel, 2010) can be developed by requiring a systematic approach to identifying the strengths and deficiencies of the principles of self and others revealed in public principled arguments about why one particular course of actions is the most ethical. The development of ethical reasoning in this way also seems critical to contributing to ethical organizations wherein leaders typically develop and/or reinforce culture and adopt approaches to ethical issues that need systematic scrutiny by leaders and followers alike. Students prepared to do so are arguably more likely to ensure the values expressed through the practices of the organization are aligned with their own (Svara, 2015), and resist acting unethically in the face of pressure to do so (Jurkiewicz, 2013; Jurkiewicz and Nichols, 2002).

Own principles in relation to others’ principles

As the students in the course searched for their convictions and the soundest principled arguments to defend them, they reported developing the practice of uncovering and considering the principled arguments of others before drawing their own conclusions. These learning experiences generally resulted in three different outcomes: (a) a realization that their principle(s) in a specific context was somehow inferior to the principle(s) of others, (b) a discernment process that led them to uncover where they stood on an ethical dilemma, and/or (c) a deeper conviction for their own principles.

Students reported that these learning experiences emerged for them in two places. First, inside the classroom when deliberating case studies in small group settings (i.e., two or three students) based upon Matchett’s (2009) cooperative learning model for ethics education, whereby the groups were asked to derive consensus before reporting back and defending their decision publicly to the whole class. Second, in their professional roles outside of class where they were beginning to practice uncovering the principle(s) underpinning the arguments of others in the ways they were learning to practice in the course.

In an example of a student reporting that she was convinced a particular situation required a different principled stance then the one she took when deliberating a case study in a small group in class, the student explained:

we got to the “if[we do this]/then”[this will be the likely outcome] arguments and it just kind of became more clear to us that this path [of one of the group members] was the strongest. We felt we could really defend it [to the whole class] the most strongly.

This student’s learning experience was shaped by a goal for the group to achieve consensus regarding the actions and the underlying principle(s) to resolve the case study. Importantly, the student’s description of the experience suggests that the cooperative groups (and to a lesser extent, maybe even the individual deliberations) might also encourage students to abandon what they stand for and instead adopt or go along with the most forceful or persuasive argument. While dissent was encouraged in the course and students were given the opportunity to defend a “break” from the group publicly, the protection of a group in a public setting can be highly desirable.

However, other similar data suggested that students were not so much going along with the group as they were contemplating the principled reasoning of others and drawing their own conclusions. For example, one student reported that during one case study deliberation she was so convinced by the logic of two of her classmates that she said to herself “oh my, I'm throwing my approach out the window because this makes so much sense.”

Reports from students about their application of the prescribed decision-making model (Cooper, 2012) practiced in the real-world also suggested that students were drawing their own conclusions rather than going with the crowd. For example, one student detailed his experience at work where the course led him to uncover and appreciate competing perspectives in his organization, and ultimately take a principled stance. He explained:

It [the course] actually really did make me think… [at work] we had a case where a volunteer wants to come on board with the organization and she’s federally charged… My immediate supervisor was like “no, absolutely not… it’s dirty money.”

The executive director was like “sure no problem, it's a white-collar crime… people use this organization for different reasons, and that’s OK.”

So, there was an internal conflict in the way those two parties thought about it. I definitely looked at it more not as a right or wrong but more of what are the reasons people are using to defend the answer that they’re giving.

If I were making the ultimate decision… I don’t see a problem with her volunteering with us regardless because we are in the business [of volunteering]. So, if someone wants to volunteer with us or offer their service… it plays no relevance as to where she is in her personal life as long as she is not a violent person.

This student’s report of his learning experience in the course as he applied it to his real-world context may reveal an intent to clarify the values conflict in an ethical dilemma and be open to the principled arguments of others, discerning the ethical principles upon which the arguments of others stand. As importantly, this example suggests that the student’s conclusion of accepting the volunteer and money was predicated upon the shared purpose of the organization—volunteering in the community—rather than the avoidance of being perceived negatively by stakeholders (the director’s stance), or the value of quid-pro-quo arrangements (the executive director’s stance).

The student explained the role of the course in his development of competence, stating:

Understanding or evaluating the reasons why other people are making their decisions was a learning curve. If not everyone is growing in the organization, then I think me as an individual, I feel like I'm growing from thinking about what decision they [leaders of the organization] are making. I would refer to that as like Kohlberg’s stages of moral development as an individual basis not as an organizational basis.

Accordingly, the data suggest that students were not so much going along with the group, in class or in their professional roles, rather they were developing the ability to surface and analyze the values conflict constituting an ethical dilemma, identify the principle(s) underpinning the arguments of others, judge the merit of those principles applied to a specific situation, and then draw their own reasoned and principled conclusions.

In the final analysis, it is unclear if performing ethically—defined as exercising ethical competence described above, including revealing one’s intentions (Jacobs, 2018), despite pressure to do otherwise (Jurkiewicz, 2013)—was achieved in these cases. It is difficult to know to what extent a student opted for the group’s strength and protection or was convinced of a more ethical approach. If uncovered, the former would reveal the intention to shirk one’s ethical responsibilities, and a failure to demonstrate ethical competence.

The interview data was clearer regarding learning experiences in group deliberations were students concluded that their principled resolution was the most ethical. Still, the cooperative groups led these students to think more deeply about their convictions and the normative ethical principles that animated them. In a typical example, one student reported that during a deliberation with classmates he had to think more deeply to understand why he was so sure of his argument:

[During the deliberation] I was so confident that I actually didn’t agree with the other two… I spent a lot of time making the case about why my [moral philosophy] theory choice was the right one.. [so] having to come to consensus before we went to the large group provided a way for me to say “well ok I'm listening to what my classmates are saying, and do I agree? Or do I not agree”? So it provided some feedback on my very firm position…. When you have one or two or three different opinions, yeah I think it certainly does force you to reevaluate and think a little deeper. You have to consider the alternative in that case. The small groups challenges you to consider their standpoint or position and what evidence they have to support that position…. But ultimately, I concluded that my [chosen moral philosophy] theory was the most correct.

This student’s learning experiences suggest that his interactions with others under the direction to work in small groups and derive consensus set the stage for collaborative exploration of the strengths and deficiencies of the positions held and the arguments made in the group. In the case of this student, it is clear that he has developed and is practicing ethical competence to the extent that he is engaged in ethical reasoning, evaluating the strengths and deficiencies of principled responses to an ethical dilemma.

Regardless of whether a student abandoned or strengthened their principle(s) as a result of the collaborative group deliberations, the structure of the learning activity created the learning context for students to uncover for themselves the principles upon which they stood (Svara, 2015), and consider the implications of those principle for leading self and others in public and nonprofit agencies (DeSchrijver and Maesschalck, 2013).

Shaping learning experiences to foster the development of ethical competence

The findings of the present study suggests that when ethics education focuses students upon why an action is ethical and holds students accountable for their ethical reasoning accordingly in coursework and class discussion, it creates a learning context for students to (a) uncover the ethical principles upon which they stand, (b) appreciate the principles upon which others stand, (c) develop the ability to assess the strengths and deficiencies of all principled arguments in light of the implications for self and others, and (d) take full responsibility for a principled stance as a practice of ethical leadership.

In courses across a curriculum this could take on various shapes and forms, but there would generally be three key elements to course design and pedagogy for ethics education. First, students must be introduced to a wide range of normative values from which they can reason, deliberate, judge, and defend their arguments. This can come from many places as the literature demonstrates, but it is important that it is not limited to one context or specific subset of normative values in public administration. Limiting the ethical principles that students are introduced to and can bring to bear in resolutions of dilemmas will limit the students’ abilities to draw conclusions about who they are what they stand for regardless of context, and therefore what they would do in any given context. This is why moral philosophy and the public service values it has helped shape, especially as they are codified in relevant codes of ethics, serve as good foundations for helping students develop their conversancy in ethical principles.

Second, there needs to be learning activities structured in ways to focus students upon resolving values conflicts where two or more right options for conduct are mutually exclusive. This is likely a feature of several learning activities involving case studies across a program and need only be refocused so students are asked to identify the options for resolution they could pursue, and then describe each of the options they identified in terms of its expression of one or more normative values under consideration in the course. In this way, students are redirected from focusing upon resolutions in terms of administrative savvy or ethical compliance, to resolving values conflicts embedded in options for conduct for which they are entirely responsible. That is, they are asked to stand for something.

The centrality of this cannot be overstated since the development and practice of ethical competence requires a sharp focus upon the implications of a decision for self and others regardless of policy, as well as one’s corresponding intentions, therefore leading students to practice bearing full personal responsibility for all outcomes, known or unknown, good or bad.

Third, students need to have structured opportunities in the course—ideally through a mix of informal and formal assessments—to identify the underlying values of their logic and get feedback on their reasoning and relevant aspects of the implications in practice through discourse with others. At a minimum, this discourse should take place with a course instructor, for example through written work, to provide an audience for students to demonstrate their engagement with the first two key elements described above. However, that will likely stop short of helping develop the appreciation of the values held by others, and significantly limit the opportunities to continue to develop ethical reasoning skill by judging the strengths and deficiencies of ethical proofs offered by classmates. Those outcomes require cooperative learning contexts achievable only through small group work and/or whole class discussion activities.

Taken together, embedding these learning activities across an MPA curriculum will further students’ development of their ethical competence and give them experience articulating decisions of interest to stakeholders in ways that are grounded in shared values and purpose, as well as standing by those decisions accordingly in the face of strong opposition.

Shaping the MPA curriculum to foster the development of ethical competence

There seems no sufficient reason, other than perhaps time constraints, why the ethical competence fostered in a standalone ethics course could not be achieved (or reinforced) by embedding similar approaches to ethics education across the curriculum.

The bigger barrier seems likely to be how ethics education is institutionalized across NASPAA accredited programs. Svara and Baizhanov’s (2019) analysis of NASPAA accredited MPA programs’ self-study reports revealed that many mission statements do not reflect inculcating public service values—the basis for developing ethical competence and the precondition for accreditation. Further, the analysis revealed that 25%+/- of programs did not include a quarter to almost half of the very values they state in their missions as the competencies developed and measured in the program. This suggest that even when public service values are integrated into programs as the NASPAA Standards seemingly require for ethics education, how they are operationalized into measurable concrete learning that develops ethical competence in students is not necessarily assessed and likely left to individual faculty.

For programs that want to take a more systematic approach, several scholars have provided frameworks for integrating ethics education throughout an MPA curriculum (Jacobs, 2014; King, et al., 2021; Svara and Baizhanov, 2019), which can be used by faculty to help their students develop ethical competence in any course context. These frameworks can also be used by the NASPAA Commission on Peer Review and Accreditation to more systematically develop standards for ethics education across MPA programs.

One starting place might be the frameworks detailed by Svara and Baizhanov (2019), and Jacobs (2014), who have suggested using the ASPA Code of Ethics to systematically integrate ethics education by operationalizing the principles of the Code into concrete knowledge and skills to be applied in practice. At the program level, Jacobs’ (2014) framework focuses more upon the process of deciding how to introduce and reinforce the knowledge with learning activities throughout the curriculum, and then continuously collecting data to assess students’ competencies in the desired ethical knowledge and skills, adjusting the curriculum as needed.

To the extent that mapping and revising the core curriculum of an MPA program as Jacobs suggested is not viable for whatever reason, the evidence (King, et al., 2021) suggests that it cannot be assumed that simply offering or requiring a standalone ethics course would remedy the various programmatic shortcomings that Svara and Baizhanov’s (2019) analysis revealed.

King et al. (2021) analysis of syllabi for standalone ethics courses in NASPAA accredited MPA programs suggested that even in the standalone courses, the ASPA Code of Ethics principles are not all typically represented in course content, with a heavy focus upon personal responsibility and less of a focus upon leadership around societal equity and democratic values. Perhaps this suggests the prevailing literature regarding how to inculcate ethical competence focuses too much upon personal accountability (see for examples Jacobs, 2015; Perun, 2020), and personal accountability in ethics education should focus more upon leading in pluralistic, democratic contexts.

Still, in light of the potential programmatic challenges of systematically embedding ethics education throughout the curriculum, the present study suggests that the standalone ethics course was the one place in the curriculum of this program where students were challenged to answer the why behind their reasoned arguments, which led to the observed learning outcomes students reported.

Given the potential that a standalone ethics course stops short of helping students fully develop ethical competence in the context of the field (i.e., developing ethical competence to exercise ethical leadership around societal equity and democratic values), the development of ethical competence is likely best achieved with a required standalone ethics course and ethics education embedded throughout the curriculum.

Regardless of how ethics education is structured in a program, the findings and analysis reported here suggest that to create learning contexts that help students develop ethical competence, the curriculum development goals should focus upon systematically (a) teaching students relevant normative ethical frameworks (e.g., moral philosophy and/or public service values codified in codes of ethics), (b) giving students opportunities to “test” principles in order to identify strengths and deficiencies in relevant contexts, and (c) providing structured learning activities and assessments that require students to take a principled stance and defend publicly why their stance is the most ethical.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Stefan A Perun

Note

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