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Development, Reliability and Validity of the Assessment-tool for Moral Authorship

This presentation reports on the status of an assessment-tool for Moral Authorship that is being developed for teachers and discusses its reliability and validation. Moral Authorship refers to the ability of teachers to observe, identify, articulate and reflect on moral aspects in their work in a thoughtful and dialogical way. The developed assessment tool is based on the concept of Moral Authorship, which describes moral meaning-making in a narrative way and distinguishes six tasks as points of attention, to identify topics of concern which arise when reflecting on the development of one’s morality (Gertsen, Schaap & Bakker, 2017). Paper presented at the AME 2017 Conference

Moral authorship of novice teachers in primary education

This article focuses on moral authorship as an element of the professional development of novice teachers in the Netherlands. Moral authorship refers to the ability of teachers to observe, identify, verbalize and reflect on the moral aspects of their work in a proactive and dialogical manner. We elaborate on moral authorship by theoretically exploring six interdependent tasks of moral meaning making: moral commitment, awareness, orientation and positioning, moral performance and evaluation. Narratives of 19 novice teachers were analyzed to explore moral authorship in teachers’ talk. The results show the opportunities of moral authorship to support, navigate, and reinforce the professional development of novice teachers. This study suggests professional self-dialogs for enhancing the development of moral authorship.

New moral dilemmas in online journalism

In this article, the main question is whether and, if so, to what extent online journalism raises new moral issues and, if any, what kind of answers are preferable. Or do questions merely appear new, since they are really old ones in an electronic wrapping, old wine in new bottles? And how does journalism deal with the moral aspects of online journalism? The phenomenon of the Internet emerged in our society a few years ago. Since then, a large number of Dutch people have gone online, and the World Wide Web is now an integral part of our range of means of communication. Dutch journalism is online too, although certainly not in the lead. More and more journalists use the Internet as a source, especially for background information. Newspapers have their web sites, where the online version of the printed paper can be read. And that is it for the time being. There are no more far-reaching developments at present, certainly not on a large scale. Real online journalism is rather scarce in the Netherlands. The debate concerning the moral aspects of online journalism is mainly being conducted in the United States. First of all, by way of introduction, I will present an outline of online journalism. The first instance is the online version of the newspaper. Here, only to a certain degree new issues come up for discussion, since the reputation of reliability and accuracy of the papers, in spite of all criticism, also applies to their online versions. Besides, especially in the United States and increasingly in European countries as well, there is the so-called dotcom journalism, the e-zines, the online news sites without any relationship with printed newspapers. This may be the reason why these sites do not have a strong commitment to moral standards, at least as they have developed in the journalistic culture of the newspapers. After having outlined the moral issues arising in online journalism, the question will be addressed whether and, if so, to what extent it is meaningful and desirable to develop instruments of self-regulation for this new phenomenon of journalism.

Moral food lab: Transforming the food system with crowd-sourced ethics

Moral food lab: Transforming the food system with crowd-sourced ethics

Competencies in nursing students for organized forms of clinical moral deliberation and decision-making

Bachelor-prepared nurses are expected to be competent in moral deliberation and decision-making (MDD) in clinical practice. It is unclear, however, how this competence develops in nursing students. This study explores the development of nursing students’ competence for participating in organized forms of MDD in clinical practice, with an eye to improve nursing education. A cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted by a questionnaire among first and fourth year bachelor nursing students and two cohorts of novice nurses of one bachelor program in nursing. Items included the variables knowledge, attitude and skills in relation to the nurse as professional, to the nursing process, and to the organization. Data collection took place in March 2009. Across 179 respondents, scores in MDD knowledge and skills are significantly higher for students later in nursing education, especially with regard to the variable ‘nursing process’. Attitudes towards MDD score significantly higher after completing nursing training, but lower scores appeared for MDD knowledge and skills, particularly in relation to the organization. Results suggest nursing education should reinforce students’ attitudes to structural forms of MDD, and clinical practice should reinforce nurses’ MDD knowledge and skills. Both education and practice should reinforce nurses’ MDD competence in relation to the organization.

Moral development, moral positioning and ethical decision-making