The Art of Ethics Bowl

Overview

These 10 lessons are designed to provide 9th through 12th grade students with engaging, collaborative, and rigorous activities that will strengthen their moral reasoning, critical thinking, and discussion skills. While each lesson focuses on ethics, this is not a guide on how to compete in Ethics Bowl. Instead, these lessons develop a firm foundation in the skills needed to successfully engage in dialogue and debate about ethical issues.

As such, all Ethics Bowl teams will benefit from these lessons. New teams will find introductions to key principles, moral frameworks, and reasoning skills. Returning teams will find explicit practice that goes beyond case studies and into the world of applied ethics.

Learning Goals

These lessons feature learning outcomes that align with the Ethics Bowl competition rubric, along with foundational literacy skills needed to be successful in a competition setting. To keep things simple and functional, each lesson also comes with a short overview and a section titled, "How will this help in Ethics Bowl?" In short, these lessons will help your team...

• Directly answer ethical questions / prompts
• Develop clear and systematic primary presentations
• Identify central moral dimensions and ethical tensions
• Collaborate to create clear arguments
• Support positions with moral reasoning
• Thoroughly discuss moral positions
• Develop awareness of different viewpoints
• Thoughtfully consider opposing perspectives
• Create constructive and insightful commentary
• Collaborate in respectful discussions

How to Use

These lessons have been designed with a gradual build of skill / complexity. For that reason, approaching the lessons in numerical order may be of value. However, many teams, especially returning teams, may find value in approaching lessons based on the team's need or interest rather than numerical order.

As a coach or facilitator, the easiest way to use the lessons is to look at the "Overview" and "Lesson Facilitation" section to understand the scope and sequence of the activities within.