Ethical moves : how teachers can open-up a space for articulating moral reactions and deliberating on ethical opinions regarding sustainability issues

This chapter focuses on teachers’ influence on students’ ethical and moral learning and, in particular, on how teachers can promote students’ growth as moral subjects in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) practice. It describes and discusses a variety of ‘ethical moves’, i.e. actions performed by a teacher that open-up a space for articulating moral reactions and deliberating on ethical opinions. Six types of ethical moves are distinguished: Clarifying ethical moves, Articulating ethical moves, Evaluating ethical moves, Testing ethical moves, Controversy creating ethical moves and Hierarchizing ethical move. By performing such moves, the authors argue and illustrate, teachers can turn students’ moral experiences into fruitful drivers for pluralistic ESE by enabling students to express and share moral experiences and standpoints, to articulate ethical differences and controversies and to reflect and deliberate on moral reactions and dilemmas