This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Traditionally, Aristotle is held to believe that philosophical contemplation is valuable for its own sake, but ultimately useless. In this volume, Matthew D. Walker offers a fresh, systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good. The book situates Aristotle's views against the background of his wider philosophy, and examines the complete range of available textual evidence. On this basis, Walker argues that contemplation also benefits humans as perishable living organisms by actively guiding human life (...) activity, including human self-maintenance. Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good thus cohere with his broader thinking about how living organisms live well. A novel exploration of Aristotle's views on theory and practice, this volume will interest scholars and students of both ancient Greek ethics and natural philosophy. It will also appeal to those working in other disciplines including classics, ethics, and political theory. (shrink)

Informed consent is an essential step in helping patients be aware of consequences of their treatment decisions. With surgery, it is vitally important for patients to understand the risks and benefits of the procedure and decide accordingly. We explored whether a written IC form was provided to patients; whether they read and signed it; whether they communicated orally with the physician; whether these communications influenced patient decisions. Adult postsurgical patients in nine general hospitals of Italy’s Campania Region were interviewed via (...) a structured questionnaire between the second and seventh day after the surgery at the end of the first surgical follow up visit. Physicians who were independent from the surgical team administered the questionnaire. The written IC form was given to 84.5% of those interviewed. All recipients of the form signed it, either personally or through a delegate; however, 13.9% did not know/remember having done so; 51.8% said that they read it thoroughly. Of those who reported to have read it, 90.9% judged it to be clear. Of those receiving the written consent form, 52.0% had gotten it the day before the surgery at the earliest 41.1% received it some hours or immediately before the procedure. The written IC form was explained to 65.6% of the patients, and 93.9% of them received further oral information that deemed understandable. Most attention was given to the diagnosis and the type of surgical procedure, which was communicated respectively to 92.8 and 88.2% of the patients. Almost one in two patients believed that the information provided some emotional relief, while 23.2% experienced increased anxiety. Younger patients and patients with higher levels of education were more likely to read the written IC form. The written IC form is not sufficient in assuring patients and making them fully aware of choices they made for their health; pre-operative information that was delivered orally better served the patients’ needs. To improve the quality of communication we suggest enhancing physicians’ communication skills and for them to use structured conversation to ensure that individuals are completely informed before undergoing their procedures. (shrink)

In this paper, I will attempt to develop and defend a common form of intuitive resistance to the companions in guilt argument. I will argue that one can reasonably believe there are promising solutions to the access problem for mathematical realism that don’t translate to moral realism. In particular, I will suggest that the structuralist project of accounting for mathematical knowledge in terms of some form of logical knowledge offers significant hope of success while no analogous approach offers such hope (...) for moral realism. (shrink)

Since Benacerraf’s ‘What Numbers Could Not Be, ’ there has been a growing interest in mathematical structuralism. An influential form of mathematical structuralism, modal structuralism, uses logical possibility and second order logic to provide paraphrases of mathematical statements which don’t quantify over mathematical objects. These modal structuralist paraphrases are a useful tool for nominalists and realists alike. But their use of second order logic and quantification into the logical possibility operator raises concerns. In this paper, I show that the work (...) of both these elements can be done by a single natural generalization of the logical possibility operator. (shrink)

Background Nurses play an integral role in the care of children hospitalised with a serious illness. Although information about diagnostics, treatments, and prognosis are generally conveyed to parents and caregivers of seriously ill children by physicians, nurses spend a significant amount of time at the child’s bedside and have an acknowledged role in helping patients and families understand the information that they have been given by a doctor. Hence, the ethical role of the nurse in truth disclosure to children is (...) worth exploring. Methods A systematic academic database and grey literature search strategy was conducted using CINAHL, Medline Psych Info, and Google Scholar. Keywords used included truth, children, nurse, disclosure, serious illness, and communication. A total of 17 publications of varying types were included in the final data set. Ethical Considerations As this was a review of the literature, there were no direct human participants. Empirical studies included in the review had received ethics approval. Results Of the 17 articles included in the review, only one directly reported on the experiences of nurses asked to withhold the truth from patients. Empirical studies were limited to HIV-positive children and children diagnosed with cancer and the dying child. Conclusion A paucity of literature exploring the experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of nurses with regard to truth-telling to seriously ill children is evident. Little consideration has been given to the role nurses play in communicating medical information to children in a hospital setting. The 17 articles included in the review focused on cancer, and HIV, diagnosis, and end-of-life care. Further research should be undertaken to explore the experiences and attitudes of nurses to clinical information sharing to children hospitalised with a wide range of serious illnesses and in diverse clinical scenarios. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of moral evidentialism, the view that we have a moral obligation to form the doxastic attitude that is best supported by our evidence. I will argue that two popular arguments against moral evidentialism are weak. I will also argue that our commitments to the moral evaluation of actions require us to take doxastic obligations seriously.

Growing nursing workforce maldistributions impede rural healthcare access globally. In‐depth exploration of underlying philosophical ideas about rural health in nursing curricular could support recruitment and retention of nurses who are well positioned to support and advocated for health care and services relevant to their communities. Through a lens of positionality, the purpose of this paper is to explore rural health and nursing within the United States and Australia from the perspective of undergraduate students. Recognizing that both countries have ‘first world’ (...) health services, issues of access to services associated with systemic and structural biases were significant features identified by participants. Their perceptions were supported by discussion with attendees of the 26th International Nursing Philosophy Conference from several countries, during a presentation titled ‘What is different about rural health nursing: A philosophical exploration.’ This international consistency suggests that systemic and structural biases are global phenomena. While exposure to rural health and rural nursing may be beneficial for recruitment, preparing nurses for rural practice requires more than educating students to complete clinical tasks. Uncovering collaboration, advocacy and policy development opportunities for nurses in rural communities could move the dial from recruiting rural nurses to fulfill immediate needs to retention of well‐educated and highly skilled nurses. Building a stronger philosophical base for rural healthcare inclusive of all people, honouring their distinguishing characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, is long overdue. Positionality can inform how nurses across the globe relate to other countries' governments, cultures, norms, values, expectations, etc., which can influence the advancement of the profession and address social inequities among rural populations. (shrink)

Many contexts shape and limit moral thinking in philosophy and life. Human conditions of vulnerability and interdependency, of limited awareness and control, of imperfect insight into ourselves and others are inevitable contexts that neither moral thought nor theory should forget. To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. This collection of essays by Margaret Urban Walker seek to show how to do this, and why (...) it makes a difference. Contingent and changeable contexts that shape moral thinking include our individual histories, our social positions, and institutional roles, relationships, cultural settings, and social arrangements, and the specific moral idioms we pick up along the way. The paradigms and specialized language of ethical theory are contexts, too; they shape how moral theory looks and what or whom it looks at. Ethical theory and practice are meaningless without these Moral Contexts. (shrink)

Stanley Fish opens the collection with a persuasive argument for the role of intention and biography. Michael McKeon, Gordon Turnbull, and Jerome Christensen are concerned with the late eighteenth--and early nineteenth-century English cultural discourse that gave rise to the nearly simultaneous emergence of literary biography, Romantic sensibility, and reflexive human consciousness. The essays by Alison Booth, Cheryl Walker, and Sharon O'Brien reveal that the recognition or lack thereof the biographical subject has received and remains both a problem and (...) an opportunity for women writers and readers. The essays by Valerie Ross, Rob Wilson, Steven Weiland, and William Epstein pursue the question of difference and cultural reification in the theory and practice of a specifically American biography and biographical criticism. (shrink)

This paper explores two questions in moral philosophy that might at first seem unrelated. The first question is practical. While it’s not a truth we like to contemplate, each of us faces the eventual loss of everyone and everything we love. Is there a way to live in full awareness of that fact without falling into anxiety or depression, or resorting to one form or another of forgetfulness, denial or numbing out? The second question is metaethical. Is it possible to (...) vindicate a strong form of ethical objectivity without positing anything metaphysically or epistemologically mysterious? In this paper, I sketch a partially Buddhist-inspired metaethical view that would, if it could be made to work, give a positive answer to both questions. The overall view is too much to defend in one paper, so I focus on developing one limited part of it. I begin by characterizing the general constructivist strategy for vindicating the objectivity of ethics. After briefly discussing Christine Korsgaard’s Kantian implementation of the strategy, I suggest an alternative implementation. I explore the idea that every agent necessarily faces what I call the problem of attachment and loss. I close with some speculative remarks about why, even though the problem of attachment and loss presents itself in a different substantive guise to each individual agent, it is still possible that the best solution to the problem is universal, and involves taking up an ethical perspective on the world. (shrink)

In their Target Article, “Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies,” Lynch et al. propose a framework for ethical payment to research participants and apply it to the c...

This article addresses the conceptual challenges of articulating the ethical–political limits of ‘higher education as we know it’, and the practical challenges of exploring alternative formations of higher education that are unimaginable from within the dominant imaginary of the higher education field. This article responds to the contemporary conjuncture in which possible futures have been significantly narrowed, and yet these possibilities also appear increasingly unsustainable and unethical. It invites scholars of higher education to rethink the epistemological and ontological frames within (...) which most imaginaries and institutions of higher education are embedded. If we fail to denaturalize these frames, then efforts to pluralize possible higher education futures will risk reproducing existing conceptual limitations and enduring colonial harms. (shrink)

Human nature and its implications for moral philosophy has been a recurrent topic of philosophical inquiry. Thinkers from Plato to Arendt, struggling with the testimony of human experience, have attempted to explain the relation between reason and wickedness. Some have stressed the intrinsic rationality and goodness of human beings, relegating evil to the influence of factors alien to reason. Others have viewed humans as intrinsically evil, their capacity for reason a weak and inconsequential force.

(2013). Introduction. Journal of Global Ethics: Vol. 9, Critical Approaches to Global Justice: At the Frontier, pp. 111-114. doi: 10.1080/17449626.2013.818467.

Summary Although the changing role of high-level educational leaders has received increasing attention in recent years, few studies have targeted concerted culture change attempts by such important players. The data discussed in this article were drawn from the perceptions of one Australia state-level chief executive officer (CEO) and a group of administrators within his department during the first 18 months of his appointment. The study sought to describe briefly the leader, identify the shape of the culture he set out consciously (...) to develop, the reasons behind the change attempt, the methods utilised to lead to change and the initial impressions of change success and blockages to acceptance. The rationale driving the attempt at change stemmed from the perceived failure of devolution, negative work attitudes, the CEO's own style and a system driven by micropolitical agendas. The culture change attempts utilised cultural and bureaucratic strategies. The blockages to culture change were related to the strengths of the previous culture, personal political networks and perceived contradictions between the values, actions and politics. A number of issues relating to the findings are discussed, including an examination of the culture change process, its success to date and the confusing role of the leader in the process. (shrink)

The Sustainable Development Goals are an opportunity to address major social and environmental challenges. As a widely agreed framework they offer a potential way to mobilise stakeholders on a global scale. The manner in which the goals, with time-based targets and specific metrics, are set out within a voluntary reporting process adopted by both governments and business, provides a fascinating and important case for organisational studies. It is both about advancing performance measurement and evidence-based policy-making for sustainable development, and also (...) participation and consultation at a wider, more global scale, than has ever been possible before. This paper contributes to the notion of SDGs as a wicked problem, answering calls for deeper theorisation, via synthesis with core ideas in the management field of decision theory. A case study on the wicked problem of deforestation and its links to supply chains, multi-stakeholder initiatives and SDG reporting, provides an illustration of the relevance of the application of decision theory to wicked problems, presented using a novel conceptual framework. This helps to illustrate new avenues for research and practical application regarding the balance of technocratic and participative approaches for sustainable development. (shrink)

The main goal of our paper ‘The Critical Dialogue method of Ethics Consultation’ was to make a particular method of clinical ethics facilitation visible and therefore accessible to others. We believe that our method is a good one, but the idea behind exposing and explaining a method of ‘doing’ clinical ethics was not to claim that our model was the ideal model for clinical ethics facilitation or the most effective in achieving ethical resolution. Instead, we wanted to enable readers to (...) ‘see’ a set of specific goals of ethics facilitation and to ‘see’ the facilitation steps used to achieve them. By uncovering and demystifying the ethics facilitation processes and goals, our objective was to advance the scholarship of clinical ethics work. To advance scholarship in fields of education and research, the work or practice must be public, available for peer review and critique according to accepted standards and able to be reproduced and built on by other scholars.1 The five responses to the ‘Critical Dialogue’ (CD) method paper suggest that we have achieved our objective of advancing scholarship in clinical ethics work. In the responses, we see ethicists engaging with our method, reflecting on their own methods and goals, and thinking critically about the nature of clinical ethics work and how to do it well. In this brief response, we discuss three key issues raised in the responses to the ‘critical dialogue’ paper and then identify how they could be used to further refine and broaden specific steps of our method (table 1). View this table: Table 1 Refinements to the critical dialogue method of ethics facilitation Both Knox et al 2 and Boretti3 discuss some challenges of having consensus as a key goal of the CD method of clinical ethics consultation. Boretti explains that reliance on consensus building may not address …. (shrink)

This note points out a conflict between some common intuitions about metaphysical possibility. On the one hand, it is appealing to deny that there are robust counterfactuals about how various physically impossible substances would interact with the matter that exists at our world. On the other hand, our intuitions about how concepts like MOUNTAIN apply at other metaphysically possible worlds seem to presuppose facts about ‘solidity’ which cash out in terms of these counterfactuals. I consider several simple attempts to resolve (...) this conflict and note they all fall short. (shrink)

At a time when the public is increasingly exposed to public scandals, moral defences of privacy are hard to come by. Privacy, it is argued, is merely a cloak for deception and vice. Since the virtuous have nothing to hide, full disclosure of ourselves to others must be a moral obligation. Given the rigour with which Kant defends the prohibition on lying, many have inferred that Kantian ethics must be equally strict on the necessity of truth telling. Do we in (...) fact owe others the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? (shrink)