Ethical Practice Plan

Description

To afford students the opportunity to apply what they have been learning in this course to their current or anticipated careers in the professions or public service, students will prepare a plan for fostering their own ethical practice. This assignment also allows students to delve more deeply into one or two ethical issues that the student may encounter in their chosen career and that they may find particularly interesting or challenging (e.g., racial profiling, sexual harassment, privacy and cybersecurity, bribery, conflicts of interest, etc.).

This Ethical Practice Plan will require you to develop a plan with the following section (please use these or similar section headings):

A. Introduction. Clearly identify preferably one or at most two problem(s) that you will address in your paper. Provide a road map of your paper by stating the problem and the relevant ethical principles. You can also mention that you will offer solutions to the problem.

B. Description of the Problem. Provide an in-depth description of each problem. In this section, you should include one or two examples from current news articles, dated 2023 (include citations in the bibliography).

C. Ethical Analysis. This is the most important part of this assignment. Identify and explain the relevant ethical principles and apply them to the problem (it helps to begin with an ethical question that is then answered by your ethical analysis). Your paper should identify and describe the relevant ethical principles (e.g., Rowson’s principles, Kant’s deontology, Mill’s utilitarianism, or any other approaches discussed in this course). Your paper also should explain the application of the relevant principles to your specific problem to reach an ethical conclusion (e.g., by using the relevant decision-making procedure or method of moral reasoning as discussed in the lectures). This part also should not consist of a laundry list of principles, but rather, focus on one or two main principles and then work through the analysis (e.g., if your claim or conclusion is that sexual harassment constitutes a violation of Rowson’s principle of justice, then provide a complete description of the principle and a thorough application of the principle to explain how the principle is violated in such situations).

D. Practical Solution. Identify and explain a practical strategy or solution for addressing the problems. After working through the ethical analysis, identify and explain a practical strategy or solution that is consistent with your ethical analysis. This part should be as specific as possible. Because your paper discusses problems that arise in your chosen profession, in this part, you should provide specific details relevant to your profession as you think about the strategy and its implementation.

E. Conclusion. In your concluding paragraph, you should state the problem(s) and summarize the ethical analysis and solution sections in a sentence or two. You should also briefly explain how your proposed solution would benefit your chosen profession and those affected by that profession (e.g., professionals, clients/public, profession as a whole).

F. Bibliography. Your bibliography should include all sources from the course and any outside research used in the paper. The bibliography is not included in the word count below. No particular style manual is required, but you should pick a particular style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) and apply it consistently. For course content, just make sure to include author, title, and page or slide (e.g., Choe-Smith, Professional and Public Service Ethics Spring 2023, Module 1.1 video, slide 5).

Your paper should be no more than 2000 words (should be at least 1600 words). Your paper must be in a word document, Times New Roman (or similar) 12 font, double-spaced, and with one-inch margins. Your paper must be submitted in Canvas through Turnitin by 11:59 pm on the date provided in the syllabus. For any paper that is turned in late, the paper may receive a half grade deduction (-5%) per calendar day that the paper is late (e.g., -10% for a paper that is two days late). Except in cases of an emergency that is supported with documentation, late papers will not be accepted once all papers have been graded (about a week after the due date).

For complete instructions, including the grading rubric, see the Ethical Practice Plan Instructions under General Assignment Instructions.