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Alright, I've made it to my computer before 9am in readiness for the @Monash_MCSHE webinar by Rachel Ellaway. Now, what's the hashtag??
Today Rachel will be talking about moral agency. Intro from @M4hbubS and Director @ClairePalermo.
(Moral agency in health professional education scholarship) ... she claims she's going to present us with more problems than solutions today, and also tools to think about it. We are in a time of ideological dissent and we need to consider how we as people exist in scholarship
So much is going on in the world - climate change, the virus, the role of expertise, 'cancel' culture... so, what role does science have and how should we be scientists? Rachel introduces the idea that as scientists we are concerned with epistemology and ontology.
But there's a missing piece: axiology, i.e. value. It has to be part of the conversation. It's about what is right and good, aesthetic/harmonious, what worth/value things have. It is linked to ideology (a value system), which can have both ethical & moral dimensions
So, we need to think about the values embedded in the work and its focus. Also, who is our work of value to? (the translation question) What about others' work? How is it seen in institutions?
An excellent point - we have a biomedical heritage, which is itself based in the sciences. The 'original' physicists etc had good philosophical conversations about the value of knowledge, but we seldom go into this nowadays.
Our work might reflect or replicate power & inequity - who gets their ideas aired/shared and who doesn't. Ideology can also clash - esp in HPER where a lot of different fields come together.
Also a phenomenon in medicine where apparently there is no culture ... as described by Taylor 2003: https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2003/06000/Confronting__Culture__in_Medicine_s__Culture_of_No.3.aspx
If we don't attend to our ideologies we might slide out of a scientific sphere altogether - if certain things just aren't considered because the axiology makes it unconsiderable (i.e. linked to the values)
The problem is that it is difficult to see ideology when we live, breathe, swim in it. And there is no true neutral - everything has ideology. To progress we also need to accept some axioms (e.g. maths, gravity, so on) or we'd need to restart every day.
Meded is rife with ideology - ask yourself what the purpose of meded is - there are so many potential answers. Accreditation reinforces this since it is mainly values based rather than evidence based. E.g. nature & importance of meritocracy, graduate autonomy, social contract.
More examples - that RCTs are "best", that words are better than numbers.... we've also been perhaps operating under the impression that things would get better overall. But this isn't actually the case... civil society is increasingly under attack :(
And we cannot see society as 'out there' and academe as an ivory tower - we operate in the world, and contribute to it. What we do has impacts on others. Billy Bragg noted that ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/10/free-speech-young-people) free speech needs to be tempered by equality and accountability
We have some systems for accountability (e.g. peer review) but we must be conscious of how these things also silence or privilege ideas - through the implicit axiology & ideology of these systems.
So, what does it mean to be a scholar? There are several systems out there to talk about it - Glassick et al, Boyer, Ellaway et al. In HPE, what does professionalism mean? Sure, concern about plagiarism and criminal stuff, but what else is there??
Some have tried to unpack this - all the problems with research conduct at the moment: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1525/jer.2006.1.1.43 but Rachel points out that there is an ethical and moral dimension beyond/underpinning this.
And if we took "primum non nocere" as a guide, what would harm look like?? Moral agency is: recognising potential for harm, reflect on consequences, choose to avoid doing harm/minimise it through action/inaction. (I think I see the trolley problem here...)
So - moral agency is not about superiority, but of responsibility and autonomy (which is accountable). Don't do stuff just because it's acceptable, popular, or cool. Will it make the world a better place? Is it enough just to do what will get funded or published?
So... we have to think about our power plays out. Inequities in dominant voices - publications skewed towards the US and Europe. Consider this when doing a systematic review!
We shouldn't just only play by the rules and work within it. We should get to the point where we can change the rules - be the difference. Academic freedom is about saying "we can do better" (call out the wrongs)
But it's not about trashing everything. And we can't be without principles (nihilism isn't helpful here). There's no one way to do this "right" - about individuals finding their own balance and way forward.
We often worry about doing the thing right. But are we doing the right thing??
Great talk from Rachel! Now for discussion time.
Great talk from Rachel! Now for discussion time.
