Directions in Empirical Studies of Educational Ethics

Introduction

This entry provides an overview of the contributions of empirical research to the field of educational ethics as well as an outline of methods of systematic data collection being utilized. For such a task, the entry will take as a starting point a definition of empirical ethics in education provided by Schjetne et al. (2016):

We distinguish empirical ethics from traditional philosophical ethics and descriptive ethics. In empirical ethics, one articulates the goods that are embedded, situated and distributed within social practices. (Schjetne et al. 2016, p. 30)

Emphasis will be placed on the contribution of empirical methods for researching educational ethics by highlighting the role of the actual lived experiences of students, teachers, school leaders, parents and caregivers, policy-makers, researchers, and children as well as the contributions made by situating ethical concerns in broader institutional and sociopolitical contexts.

While there is a well-established body...