Facilitating the Integration of Ethical Reasoning into Quantitative Courses: Stakeholder Analysis, Ethical Practice Standards, and Case Studies

Abstract

Case studies are typically used to teach 'ethics', but in quantitative courses it can seem distracting, for both instructor and learner, to introduce a case analysis. Moreover, case analyses are typically focused on issues relating to people: obtaining consent, dealing with research team members, and/or potential institutional policy violations. While relevant to some research, not all students in quantitative courses plan to become researchers, and ethical practice is an essential topic for students of of mathematics, statistics, data science, and computing regardless of whether or not the learner intends to do research. Ethical reasoning is a way of thinking that requires the individual to assess what they know about a potential ethical problem (their prerequisite knowledge), and in some cases, how behaviors they observe, are directed to perform, or have performed, diverge from what they know to be ethical behavior. Ethical reasoning is a learnable, improvable set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable learners to recognize what they do and do not know about what constitutes 'ethical practice' of a discipline, and in some cases, to contemplate alternative decisions about how to first recognize, and then proceed past, or respond to, such divergences. A stakeholder analysis is part of prerequisite knowledge, and can be used whether there is or is not an actual case or situation to react to. In courses with mainly quantitative content, a stakeholder analysis is a useful tool for instruction and assessment. It can be used to both integrate authentic ethical content and encourage careful quantitative thought. It is a mistake to treat 'training in ethical practice' and 'training in responsible conduct of research' as the same thing. This paper discusses how to introduce ethical reasoning, stakeholder analysis, and ethical practice standards authentically in quantitative courses.