The Fundamental Folly of Excluding Learners’ Perspectives

I think that if we were honest with ourselves we would recognise that much of what we do in the classroom involves an overwhelmingly unidirectional dynamic wherein the teacher spends most of her time talking not with, but at learners—outlining theories, documenting research, sharing philosophical speculations and generally conveying information that is to be learned, memorised and reproduced in a series of assignments or exams. This is not surprising given that in working this way, we accord with the default model of tertiary teaching which overwhelmingly sees information-transfer as constituting our primary responsibility. Yet I would argue that such a model is inappropriate to working with ethical themes and particularly so if we want to have any meaningful impact on learners’ present and future conduct. As things stand, the dominant approach in which expertise is always located beyond the ken of the learner, constitutes an education about responsibility. Unfortunately, it cannot be deemed to be an education for responsibility.

Over the years, I have found myself moving further and further away from simply educating about responsibility as I have become aware of its profound limitations as an educational model. An approach that arranges learners in passive ranks in order that they can efficiently absorb externally derived perspective may be appropriate for many subject areas—as in exploring the nature of the periodic table, or a complex mathematical proof, or the bearing capacity of engineered structures. Here, it is probably sound practice. Yet ethics and social responsibility do not so easily fit this model and its assumption that the naïve learner knows little to nothing of the subject at hand. In reality, all of those present in an ethics classroom are already experienced with the dynamics involved as a simple function of being members of a social species. They daily negotiate competing claims, values and desires and all have experienced unfairness, generosity, sacrifice, hypocrisy, guilt and compassion. Each one brings a complex body of existing perspective into the room and to ignore this basic fact severely compromises our ability to deliver meaningful courses that genuinely make a difference to the lives of those we teach.

There are many problems that stem from ignoring the perspectives of learners in an ethical space but outlining three central ones should give a flavour of its real folly and all have to do with failing to build useful synergies for learning. The first and perhaps most fundamental problem of dismissing the perspective of learners is that teaching becomes immediately patronising. We do not tend to talk about such issues very much as educators but to enter a classroom and arrange interaction in ways that are openly dismissive of input is deeply offensive to many people as it points out in no uncertain terms, that their own perspective is of little value and of no real interest (Kauchak and Eggen 2012; Menzel 1997). Students’ experiences are seldom unpacked, their emotional reactions are rarely aired while their desire to direct learning in ways that clarify their own lived responsibilities is normally fundamentally frustrated. The message that learners take from this (and I have asked many about their feelings) is that their own views are of no real consequence. Such a failure to connect with the deep and varied views already in the room inevitably means that topics, theories and themes begin to drift into an abstract world that is of little consequence to learners’ lives (Baron 1998; Biggs 1999; Furman 1990). In not listening to what the group wants and needs to learn about from their own perspective, we tend towards an increasing irrelevance that leads in turn to significant levels of withdrawal on the part of many. The end result is that with a lack of genuine and spontaneous engagement spawned by true relevance, this has to be effectively forced through a combination of threats and punishments (Leach et al. 2014; Pintrich 2004). In many classes, few learners would freely choose to read the arcane details of a case study that they cannot relate to or an abstract theory that has nothing to do with their actual experience. Thus, to ensure learning, we force attention by structuring assessment to reward those who ingest our teachings and punish those who do not. This patronising and dismissive model wholly underestimates the learning that can occur when respect is shown and relevance ensured by allowing students’ own confusions and conclusions to take centre stage and drive the learning process (Arlow 1991; Case 2008; Herrington and Herington 2006; McWIlliams and Nahavandi 2006).

Second, in dismissing the vast experience that already exists in the room, we squander a golden opportunity to advance learning quickly and effectively and particularly to target our work to the actual dynamics that are most determinative of the group’s perspective and indeed of their potential as ethical actors. It is a strange model indeed that assumes that intellectual information, gathered from always external sources, will be strong enough to shift behaviour long into the future. In reality, when faced with a future ethical quandary, precious few, if any of our students are going to reach for a volume of Kant or Rawls to help them decide on a course of action. It is distinctly unlikely that they will base their actions on a dimly remembered study conducted in a foreign country several decades ago, and their class notes will be long gone. Peoples’ decisions will emerge instead from the personal perspectives that they carry with them into all situations. Conduct will be a function of their assumptions, their disconnections, their egotism, their considerateness, their desire for social acceptability and their ability to reason and rationalise. These are deeply personal dynamics and are little impacted by detached abstract information developed by and applied to others (Boud et al. 2001; Solberg et al. 1995; Waples et al. 2009). To make a difference to the ethical potential of those present, we need to bring their own lines of thinking, their own beliefs, doubts, priorities and values into the open so that we can work with these as our primary materials. When we do this, we begin to work with the dynamics that really do have power to alter and improve behaviour both now and in the future. Approaching our work with the intention of getting learners thinking out onto the table in order that it can be worked with, improved, refined and unknotted enables us to work towards an individual ethical empowerment based on increased personal clarity and understanding (Felton and Sims 2005; Gray 2007; Gentile 2010; Laditska and Houck 2006). If we insist on education as usual and on ignoring this base material, we move to the periphery not only of relevance, but also of real empowerment.

A third fundamental problem with the default model of simply conveying de-personalised abstraction is that it breeds an inevitable passivity as learners expertise is voided and they are asked to accept the musings of others as a replacement for their own judgment. Usually token attempts are made to apply some of the theories we divulge to students own thinking as for example when people are asked to demonstrate utilitarian thinking by creating a specific scenario or to apply the categorical imperative to some distant case study. Still, in the main, it is expert opinion derived from the literature that is deemed to be authoritative. The role of too many learners is thus reduced to that of scribe, whereby their primary duty is to copy and ingest the wise perspectives of others, largely without serious questioning. This makes learning exceptionally passive and fails to bring the leavening qualities of active thought and personal reflection to bear. The impact of this is to make whatever learning does occur much more temporary than it could otherwise be. It is well understood that actively working out a solution has a much more permanent effect on deep learning than passively accepting another’s ‘truth’. As we fail to engage learners in the active construction of a better personal perspective, we curtail much of the impact we might potentially have by insisting on an engagement that only scrapes the superficial surface of really impactful understanding. Taken together then, these fundamental problems point to a model that is radically out of step with the requirements of our times (Clegg and Ross-Smith 2003; Floyd et al. 2013; McDonald 1993; Ulrich 2008). Young people want and need assistance in figuring out their own ethical confusions and in revealing their own potentials to craft a better world for themselves and those around them. We can only begin to be of genuine assistance when we begin respecting their existing wisdom and working with this to clarify how they might personally improve their own perceptions and practices.

Yet to suggest this is to stray far from the mainstream and to enter into terrain that is at first sight, deeply disconcerting. Most teachers in most fields, including ethics and social responsibility, have become habitually used to working in ways that maximise our own authority and minimise that of the learners we work with. I sense that most of this does not come from a willed desire to marginalise learners’ inputs but from the general assumptions that surround our structuring of education in the modern university. Thus, under the increasingly salient imperative of economic efficiency, classes are often made so large that scores, if not hundreds of students are crammed into the same room with a single “instructor”. Large gatherings of this type are minimally conducive to learners voicing tentative opinions or confusions as the sheer size of the audience acts against open and potentially embarrassing interjection. Even in relatively small classes it takes a good deal of fortitude for young people to speak up and usually only a small proportion of those present will ever seriously contribute to the unfolding perspective. Such contribution is made more unlikely by the fact that most university departments demand that a pre-conceived and rigid curriculum be followed by the teacher, one that obviates the opportunity to follow unfolding questions and ideas or delay proceedings while serious doubts over the validity of presented material are dealt with. In most instances the pre-determined agenda is effectively forced on the group as the tyranny of the timetable comes to overrule the value of unstructured exploration and responsive discussion. This is often compounded by the common emphasis on a form of assessment that puts regurgitation at the apex of learning and which, in its strictly individualised form, makes open collaboration and sharing a potentially punishable offence. The competitive nature of learning, whereby students are pitted against each other in a struggle for the few excellent grades available, means that the best ideas and the most useful resources are kept private as individuals strive for advantage in the all-important grading stakes. All of this, large impersonal classes, rigid pre-conceived curricula and competitive grading severely compromise collaboration and the deep learning that is possible when learners are freed and encouraged to bring their best thinking to the table and work above all, to clarify their own confusions in synergistic ways. In order to move forward and leverage a meaningful improvement in our practice, we need to undo the architecture of these constraints and create in their place smaller, more flexible and much more collaborative learning spaces (Bean 2011; Smith et al. 2005).

The Many Benefits of Inclusion and Collaboration

For many teachers, the prospect of moving towards more open and collaborative practice is inherently unsettling as it exposes us to a real potential loss of control in the classroom. In the many conversations that I have with teachers in this area, it would seem that the fear of impending chaos is high on the list of concerns as people imagine the classroom descending into a sort of anarchic mayhem where a profusion of half-baked, contradictory and potentially disturbing views flood into the room and overwhelm the teacher’s ability to make authoritative sense of what is happening. I find that many, when they speak honestly, raise concerns about how to deal with emotionally charged material, with open dissent and with a fundamental questioning of the teacher’s authority if they move too far in the direction of opening up the classroom to learners’ perspectives. Better then to stay within the familiar structures which ensure that such intrusions never come to the fore. It is an understandable reluctance, but one in which the fears are radically misplaced. In many years of experimenting with open and flexible processes, I have rarely encountered any problems on these dimensions but instead have witnessed a tremendously positive flow of perspective driven by real engagement and an appreciation that the wealth of experience and perspective present is being respected. The subsequent dynamic in my experience is not driven by any sense of having free license to ‘attack’ the teacher and create disruption, but in fact by the very opposite, to support a respectful process and to contribute in measured and constructive ways.

But this is not to say that in giving up some of the dismissive control we often wield that complex, disconcerting and emotionally charged arguments do not enter the room because they most certainly do. This flood of unpredictable perspective is, however, not as disturbing as one might assume and can be easily managed by an adept teacher if she bears two fundamental understandings in mind. The first of these is to realise that inviting a rich variety of perspectives into the open makes the complexity of thinking present in the group visible and tangible and that this is not a weakness in learning but one of its great strengths (Williams and Dewett 2005; Malcolm and Zuckas 2001). In any classroom, there will be a huge range of unique perspectives, insights and experiences. There will be learners who are religious and others who are agnostic. Some will be straight and some will be gay. Some will be optimists and some will be pessimists and some will be on the political right while others are on the left. To bring this variety out is to illuminate the real range of thinking in all its complexity and when strong emotion enters the room, this is a sign of people caring about what is being said—an essential pre-requisite for any learning. Bringing chaos and confusion out into the open is an essential first step in building better perspectives and a very valuable phenomenon.

But how can this confusion, all of these contrary views and conflicting sentiments be managed properly? How can a teacher possibly take on the responsibility for making sense of such a richness of expression? The answer to this is key to understanding how to work with openness as it points to the powerful capacity that the group has not only to generate complex richness, but also to also manage that and refine it into consolidated views that are deeply informed and fundamentally focused. In a collaborative model of teaching, it is not the sole job of the teacher to make sense of the groups’ expressions but rather this responsibility is shared with the learners themselves. Thus, people come to work in ways that build useful synergies—exploding multi-faceted and richly diverse views into the open and then distilling these into powerfully informed viewpoints that can be shared and validated by the whole group.

In essence this process balances authority and responsibility for learning in profoundly important ways. The goal of educating for responsibility is ultimately to have learners assume an authoritative perspective on ethics in their own lives. As pointed to before, the current model of educating only about responsibility removes authority from the group and places it beyond their experience—in expert opinions, in the literature and so forth. This compromises the ability to consciously assess one’s own actions and in dismissing personal authority, we also unwittingly work against the assumption of personal responsibility as the two are inextricably bound (we should recall at this point that every introductory management textbook points to the fundamental importance of aligning authority and responsibility in a functional organisation as either one without the other is an ethical liability). As learning spaces in ethics are opened up to work with learners' wisdom, the learners themselves are made responsible for developing their own authoritative perspectives, a dynamic that allows the adept teacher to employ two fundamental techniques that allow chaos to be avoided and clarity to emerge.

The first of these refers to the use of good targeted questions that are asked to bring out a breadth and depth of thinking in relation to particular points of central interest in perspective building. Carefully thought-through questions are the key to generating useful and important inputs and in working with the wisdom of any group, these are among the most potent tools available. In the approach that I have developed in educating for responsibility, the whole structure of learning is guided by a series of critical questions, each one designed to bring into the conversation diverse articulations of critical ethical values, assumptions, barriers and potentials. In the traditional default mode of teaching, it is answers and not questions that structure curriculum design and ‘experts’ answers that are used to silence ‘naïve’ learner opinions. In this approach, however, authoritative views are constructed by students as they strive together to create robust answers to relevant and deeply challenging questions.

Once these critical questions have been used to prompt a rich and diverse expression, learners are charged with the responsibility for condensing this diversity into incisive insights through a process of consensus-seeking. This is a little appreciated but remarkable powerful way of deepening and refining perspective, and it provides the essential counterbalance to the provocative use of questions to generate a breadth of views. As will be seen below, when consensus is arranged such that sub-groups work to refine their varied viewpoints and find a basic alignment of understanding, great diversity and breadth become the basis for robust views that can be validated and understood by all who participate. This may however take some time and certainly the amount of time cannot easily be prescribed in advance—hence the need for flexible timetables. But to bring these two dynamics into balance, the centrifugal generation of diverse perspectives through targeted questions, and the centripetal distillation into essential understandings, is to bring a remarkable energy into the classroom, an energy that engages, inspires and empowers learning in potentially transformational ways.

Educating for Responsibility as a Way of Working with the Wisdom in the Room

How then can these understandings be put to good practical use? The answer to this is an open one and is limited only by a teacher’s imagination. However, in the many years, I have been using them I have found that the dynamics of divergence and distillation work particularly well when they are applied to two basic themes of central importance to ethical action. The first involves bringing learners perspectives to bear in forging a framework of critical ideals and values that can be used to orient the group in a complex ethical landscape. The second follows from this and uses this emergent framework to hold personal action to account as learners experiment with achieving a better alignment between their own ethical perception and their own action. In the sections below, I will outline how this basic process can be effectively utilized and the impacts that it can have on learning in the classroom.

The most fundamental requirement for acting with greater responsibility is to clearly discern what the meaning of responsibility is and what it implies for behaviour. With this in mind, I often begin courses in educating for responsibility by asking a series of questions designed to bring learners deeper ideals and values to the surface where they can be worked with and refined into a useful orientation. This is grounded in a fundamental understanding that at root, all truly responsible action is intentional. Thus, being responsible begins with becoming consciously clear on what constitutes ethical conduct and what contravenes it. A fitting starting point for an empowering education in ethics is then to clarify what the group sees as being the essential criteria for responsible conduct in the world.

One way that this can be done efficiently is to begin with a simple question asking whether the group believes that the world is getting better or worse. If this question is focused on a tangible reference point (say 15 years in the future which allows the prospect of change without entering into an unimaginably distant future) then learners quickly and adeptly articulate deep feelings about the direction of the contemporary world. In doing this, a basic process of evaluation is prompted that begins to bring to the surface deep and often only partially rationalised feelings and intuitions. Some will claim that the world will be a little worse in fifteen years’ time and some that it will be a lot worse while others will argue that our collective affairs will have improved significantly. This basic question has an important function in placing authority in the hands of the learners themselves as no-one can clearly be an authority on what they think, nor on what will definitively happen in an open and yet to be determined future.

Once learners have engaged this basic evaluation they are asked to define what it is that they mean when they use the terms “better” and “worse” What criteria are they specifically referring to when they make these judgments? When this question is posed, an explosion of particulars enters the room as learners bring out deep fears and cherished aspirations. Beginning with asking people to individually develop a set of five specific words or phrases that capture the essence of what they mean by a better or worse world, learners articulate a wide range of concerns ranging on the negative side from more pollution, to collapsed biodiversity, increased terrorism, more war, more surveillance, greater levels of corruption, over-population and many more other undesirable outcomes. On the positive side, they will spontaneously point to the possibilities of greater cooperation, higher food security, environmental restoration, increased harmony, more freedom, wealth and happiness among a rich variety of other related criteria. This richness is then distilled in a series of group discussions beginning with small groups of four and proceeding through increasingly larger conversations (in groups of eight and then sixteen, with each distilling the variety of views to 5–7 core criteria) until a solid consensus is reached. In the process, discussions range far and wide as learners find themselves being challenged to justify their individual reasoning, to question others and ultimately identify the essential core that lies at the heart of their mutual concerns. As they do this, they are forced to apply a constantly deepening analysis to diverse sets of particular views. As each tentative consensus is reached, it is vigorously tested until a clear list of widely shared and validated criteria for judging social progress (and regress) is arrived at. With most of the groups I work with (and I have applied this in many countries from Bhutan to Vietnam to Samoa) at the end of the process, a common core emerges that tends to emphasise greater sustainability and natural thriving, increased peace and harmony, more equality and inclusion and fuller health and happiness. As these are refined by structured group discussion, they can be converted easily into a series of basic scales which on the opposing end, anchor regress and a “worse” world in criteria of more extensive ecological collapse, spreading conflict, extreme polarisation and high human suffering.

These are clearly ethical criteria of immense value and in bringing these to the fore, learners find that they have created for themselves a basic orientation that allows them to think systematically about the behaviour of a huge variety of actors and actions—ranging from corporations to politicians. Does a product or a service, or a business strategy or a particular company behave in ways that secure a better future or not? If their actions clearly facilitate an improved world as defined by the group’s criteria then they can be deemed ethically progressive, and if not they can be viewed as ethically regressive. Once these ideals are made apparent and rigorously cross-examined, they can be used as a critical framework to clarify a whole range of ethical issues and in terms that are clearly understood and owned.

The above process of balancing diversity with distillation creates a framework of ideals capable of orienting judgment clearly and relevantly but in the way the question is posed, it pulls attention outward to focus on the broad collective picture and emphasises future outcomes or desirable ends. This is very valuable, but it is incomplete and I find it useful to engage a complementary process which asks learners to identify the more individual and means-oriented criteria necessary for bringing this ethically improved world into being. Using targeted questions to bring out diversity and then consensus to reduce this to a distilled clarity, the group can be asked to identify the individual characteristics—the values or personal qualities—that we need to collectively cultivate within us if this better world is to be made possible. How must we act to ensure a world that is more equal, sustainable, harmonious and thriving than it is at present? As individuals wrestle to find 5-7 critical characteristics on their own and then take their conclusions into increasingly large groups for refinement, a tremendous diversity again emerges bringing to the fore values such as honesty, compassion, empathy, humility, appreciation, generosity, kindness, integrity, self-control, wisdom, resilience and determination among others. These are then brought into a deepening alignment until this second set of orienting criteria are agreed to and validated. I often find that learners reasonably come to agree that if a more sustainable, inclusive and peaceful world is to be achieved then we need to exercise greater compassion, generosity, self-restraint and respect above all. As with the ethical ideals that learners identify and use to define social progress, these essential human virtues are ethically potent and given the process involved, learners see this as a function of their own deep thinking and discussion. They are the result of a highly active collaboration and as such are deemed far more relevant and authoritative than they would otherwise be if presented only as the opinions of distant others who have no tangible connection with the learners in the room.

As with the collective ideals that learners develop to gauge the propriety of a wide range of actions in the world around them, the individual values can similarly be put into use so that learners can test their veracity and so gain valuable practice in using these to make active sense of the world around them. Who in business, society, politics or the media is demonstrating these virtues and who is contravening them? What is the impact of marketing on these values and where are they accommodated or denied in modern consumer culture? These basic questions give learners the opportunity to directly work with their own values in ways that are maximally meaningful and empowering. But the greatest value of collaboratively creating these orienting frameworks lies in their ability to bring a clear ethical focus to bear on learners’ own personal conduct in the context of their own lives.

We can move then into a series of discussions, reflections and practical exercises that challenge learners to align their own actions with their own ideals and values and through this, to ask fundamental questions about where, when, how and why we act in violation of our own ethical principles. This form of learning takes us beyond the easily known and exposes the group to new insights as they try to act more responsibly as gauged by their own ethical ideals. If asked for example to identify areas of consumption in which they act directly against the ideals they say they hold—as for instance in consuming a great deal of unsustainable meat, or plastic, or products made under exploitative conditions—and challenged to modify their conduct for a period of a week or more, learners find out a great deal about themselves and their own particular ethical proclivities. In reluctantly having to align actions with ideals, a host of rationalisations, defences, excuses and other escape strategies are flushed into the open as people face the real restrictions that operate in their own ethical lives. Reflective writings can be set that are designed to specifically articulate such excuse-making patterns of thought and these can again be shared in their diversity and then condensed into essential insights of great utility to understanding the real dynamics of trying to live ethically. If exercises are designed to also encourage learners to engage practical changes that allow them to more consciously engage the positive values that they have identified—say through being actively more generous or compassionate for a period of a week—then additional essential personal understandings are brought out into the open that provide the basis for rigorous insights into personal potentials and the real felt consequences of acting in accordance with one’s own ethical judgment.

As these questions come to focus on reflective exercises, learners move into patterns of action more consciously ethical than before and in performing deliberate acts of generosity, kindness, forgiveness that push them beyond the bounds of their normal behaviour, they come to directly experience an uncommonly gratifying boost of self-esteem as strangers thank them, friends hug them and parents sincerely praise them. This provides a highly tangible validation of their own potential to both do good and feel good—and the sense of achievement inherent in that most ethical joining is enormously empowering. In pushing people to embrace new experiences, an openness is created where certain truths, in this case, that applying one’s values can have highly positive results, are realised rather than merely rationalised. This is a much deeper form of learning with a far more profound resonance.

Conclusion

In describing the above processes of building a personally authoritative perspective on the ethics of one’s own life though, it is important to note that this does not mean that the other more traditional sources of authority so central to the mainstream curriculum are ignored or excluded. In practice, educating for responsibility brings academic knowledge, philosophical theory and research evidence to perspective building but in ways that aim to support learners’ insights rather than over-rule them. This is largely a simple matter of temporal arrangement whereby formal theory or evidence is brought to bear in order to augment understanding as it is forged by the group itself. Any ethical theory has authority if it is generally applicable to most peoples’ behaviours, much of the time. It finds it verification then in our lived experience, and learners are quite capable of bringing the basic logic of utilitarianism to light for themselves given that they apply naïve versions of it all of the time. The same goes for Kantian imperatives and virtue ethics. In each case, it is far better to structure learning so that the group can make conscious their own use of these tools and then have these validated and refined by the rigorous thinking of expert opinion. This provides an assurance for an emerging personal authority and on reflection, a deeper appreciation of the wisdom of formal theory as its relevance and veracity are made more apparent. There is then no substituting of rigour in these more collaborative ways of working, but in fact a much greater emphasis on it as teacher, learner and expert views are brought into play and coordinated constructively.

Educating for responsibility rests on the solid premise that those in the room are already ethical actors and that as such they bring a wealth of experience and perspective to the room along with a great deal of personal potential. I believe that it is our primary duty as teachers is to help people to realise that potential, both in intellectual and in practical terms. Education for responsibility creates a framework within which groups of intelligent and informed individuals can work to realise a clearer understanding of where their collective ethical priorities lie and then, through a series of exercises and reflections, attempt a better alignment between their own understanding and their own conduct. It works well as a process because it consciously and very carefully aligns the processes involved with the aims sought. But as an educator who has experimented well beyond where I began many years ago in the traditional mode of unidirectional teaching, I now find myself asking what exactly the aims of an education about responsibility really are and who and what that process empowers. Educating for responsibility is all about empowering the individual to consciously develop a more defensible ethical viewpoint and then to apply that to their own personal conduct. My fear and my suspicion is that an education that is merely about responsibility works against the cultivation of any meaningful sense of ethical purpose or agency.

We need to see more acutely that when people are encouraged to constantly defer ethical authority to others and to hand responsibility for decisions over to experts, superiors or systems, they are encouraged into a passive amoralism that allows every form of abuse and scandal to thrive as people look the other way, do what they are told, do their job, play the game and point the finger in a constant diffusion of responsibility. This is the core dynamic that sends whole systems ethically adrift and is the organisational Nuremburg Defence that is so evident in financial and political scandals alike (Singer 2010; Stiglitz 2010). We should not be validating this type of non-thinking and we should not be using processes that unwittingly encourage such a maladaptive denial of ethical authority and responsibility.

Now I do not know what fellow educators in this space think of these things or indeed if they think of these things at all, but I believe that it is high time that we all begin to. The young people who come into our classrooms increasingly bring with them not only a good deal of experience and intelligence but also an increasing anxiety about the trends of the world and what the future might be like under the strains of climate change, increased population, mountainous debt and extremist ideologies. They want to be able to comprehend that world and to navigate it wisely and well. Our work with them should be focused and meaningful and it should above all, help empower them to build an improving world for themselves. For all the reasons outlined above, changing our practice and moving away from our all too often irrelevant, impotent and disempowering habits would be liberating for all concerned. It would signal a shift away from the dysfunction of division and towards the synergies of collaboration. In sum, learning to work with the wisdom in the room represents a leverage point of enormous significance as it changes the whole flow and meaning of interaction in the classroom.

Educating for responsibility opens the door a completely different way of working. It utilises dynamics that are potent yet easy to manage and builds an enthusiastic engagement by employing respect and relevance. The basic framework described here is more fully explained elsewhere (McDonald 2013) and I make no claims about its superiority above any number of other frames one could adopt in working more directly with learners abilities and insights. As an example of how such an approach can be effectively implemented though, it is good to note in conclusion that the above framework has been the basis for a wide range of teaching awards at student, institutional, national and international levels and that the ethics classes organised in this way are the most highly rated courses in the large established business school where they are taught. It does work very well then and in a way that brings much positive feeling and energy into the classroom. Learners appreciate being included and personally challenged and they report learning a good deal, with many each semester reporting that is has been a truly transformational experience. Given the general drift of a world increasingly impacted by climate change, radical inequality, financial instability and ideological insecurity, this generation of young people needs to rapidly develop an authoritative sense of ethical perspective and to clearly see how this can lead to actions capable of changing their world for the better. Educating for responsibility is one opening attempt to respond to this need and imperfect though it may be, it is a far more timely and appropriate approach to working with people than the patronising practices of an education only about responsibility—one that dismisses so many young peoples’ views and squanders their opportunities to really learn about being ethical in an increasingly troubled world.