1. Introducing the Ethical Capability
Understanding the Victorian Curriculum: F-6 Focus
Hello.
Welcome everyone to this session.
Laura Barton and Danielle Ey
Ethical Capability Specialist Teachers

2. Acknowledgement of Country
Before we begin,
we would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land, and their Elders past and present.

3. Introducing the Ethical Capability
Understanding the Victorian Curriculum: F-6 Focus
Laura Barton and Danielle Ey
Ethical Capability Specialist Teachers

4. Objectives of Webinar By the end of our webinar today, you should:
gain insights into the structure and content of the Ethical Capability curriculum and how it fits with other areas in the Victorian Curriculum: F-10
develop understandings around how to plan, explicitly teach and assess student learning
Engage with some example activities and resources
Complete an evaluation of the webinar to inform future PL
In today’s session we will introduce you to the main features of the Ethical Capability and explore ways to effectively plan, teach and assess student learning.
We want you to have a better understanding of the structure and how to use it, as well as the messages within the content.
We hope to help you feel more confident in your reading and understanding of the curriculum, which should start to open up possibilities for its delivery in your school.

5. The Capabilities
Are a set of discrete knowledge and skills that can and should be taught explicitly
Will be developed, practised, deployed and demonstrated by students in and through the learning areas
There are four capabilities within the Victorian Curriculum, as you can see here in the centre of the diagram. We need to view the Capabilities as holding a level of importance equal to the other curriculum areas
As you can see, the capabilities integrate with other curriculum areas, and in doing so, add a richness to the content being taught and learnt. Skills and knowledge from different areas need to be drawn together to provide students with a reliable tool kit with which to fully engage in authentic learning. We will share some examples of such interaction between the curriculum areas later in this session.

6. What is the EC & why teach it?
have a look at some of the key words here - some of these are quite powerful messages
think about what kind of people you want our students and children to be - today and in the future.

7. What is Ethics about? Ethical issues are those issues that relate to how we ought to live and which have an outcome which affects others (many would include the environment here) indirectly or directly.
So, let us establish an understanding of what ethics is and why we need to build student skills and knowledge around it.
Read slide.
Ultimately, it is concerned with issues relating to the kind of society we want to live in. We know we want students to become functional, contributing, happy members of society, but what skills and knowledge do we need to support them to develop, in order to attain this end? This is where the Ethical Capability comes in.

8. Aims of the EC
The Ethical Capability curriculum aims to develop knowledge, understandings and skills to enable students to analyse and evaluate ethical issues, recognising areas of contestability
We begin here because this gives you an insight into the intended curriculum. The curriculum is held accountable to these aims; with this one before you being the overarching aim that the following ones support.
In order to foster open mindedness and reasonableness, students need to be able to tackle challenging issues with the necessary conceptual knowledge and have developed a capacity for rational and analytical thinking. This not only helps them articulate their own point of view to others, but helps them to gain an understanding of the points of view of others, contributing towards an emphatic understanding.

9. Aims of the EC
To be able to analyse and evaluate ethical issues, students need to learn how to:
Identify the bases of ethical principles and ethical reasoning
Engage with the challenges of managing ethical decision making and action for individuals and groups
Cultivate open-mindedness and reasonableness
These subsequent aims really serve the first aim, as we mentioned.
This capability is, at its heart, intended to support students in better analysing and evaluating ethical issues.
Students already engage with ethical issues across different learning areas and have done so for years, but as we shall see, this curriculum can support them to do it more effectively.
If an ethical issue is worth paying attention to, then it is worth doing well.

10. Navigating the resources
Before we delve further into understanding the Ethical Capability, we need to know where to find the resources that will support our planning. (web tour takes place at this point)
Whilst time poor, we found that taking the time to engage with these areas of the web-site proved to be immensely useful, and actually saved a great deal of time in the long run, enabling us to gain a far deeper understanding of what the EC are asking of teachers and students.

11. The Structure The strands act as content organisers.
We will return to the strands shortly

12. Scope and Sequence
Ethical capability will be reported against at levels 4, 6, 8 and 10
Can you see any connections within the bands/levels? or across the continuum? For example, concepts, language/verbs, ideas, content etc

13. Key messages
The Content Descriptions covering ethical concepts and decision making need to be purposefully planned for, explicitly taught and accurately assessed to progress student learning
The Achievement Standards help us to gauge the difficulty of the tasks we plan
Whole school planning is essential for schools to determine how and when the curriculum is taught
The curriculum describes a continuum in learning
Key messages within the Victorian Curriculum as a whole, including our EC:
There is a distinction between explicitly teaching and covering something.
Merely asking students to read a media article and identify the ethical issues is not explicit teaching – it is just checking that they can do this, and covering a step needed to then go on and talk about the issue. Pausing to teach them how to identify the issue would be explicit teaching, as the students are learning something new and can then have a go at finding the issue in the article.
Becoming familiar with the ideas of ethics will improve student engagement with issues. Part of this involves learning the language of ethics, just like any other discipline. This will help students to come to grips with the ideas and also to frame their own thinking as they argue for or against some of these ideas or come up with their own or work to understand the ideas of others.
The key to working with the capabilities is planning. Thinking carefully about where that first introduction to how to identify an ethical issue will be taught which can then be practised going forward as a necessary step for the study of any ethical issue.

14. Ethical issues
An ability to analyse and evaluate an ethical issue requires knowledge and skills drawn from:
Ethical Capability
Critical and Creative Thinking Capability
Other curriculum areas as appropriate
All of these elements are needed in order to engage with ethical issues.
The next slide will show an example of what we mean.

15. Example knowledge and skills
Picture book as stimulus:
Was Goldilocks & the 3 Bears behaviour fair?
Explore the contested meaning of concepts including fairness and harm and how they can seem to differ in different situations (VCECU004)
(Ethical Capability)
Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning and begin to evaluate texts by drawing on a growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (VCELY257)
(English - Reading & Viewing)
(known strategies)
Construct and use open and closed questions for different purposes (VCCCTQ010) (Questions & Possibilities)
Identify and use ‘If, then…’ and ‘what if…’ reasoning (VCCCTR016)
(Reasoning)
(Critical and creative thinking)
(known skills)
Here it can be seen how all three of these elements will contribute to the analysis and evaluation of an ethical issue.
You could then build on this for CD2 “Explore the extent to which particular acts might be regarded by different people as good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, and explain why (VCECU005)”

16. Example knowledge and skills
Was Goldilocks & the 3 Bears behaviour fair?
Can we come to a consensus about the meaning of fair?
How might we define “fair”? Is having the same/equal fair? Is fair having what you need? Always? What about if…? Is fair having the same (or different) if it means taking from others?
(Ethical Capability)
I may make connections, inferences, predictions & use questions to understand texts.
What might the outcome be? What might the characters’ reasons, thinking, & feelings be?
(English - Reading & Viewing)
(known strategies)
What questions can I use to clarify mine & other’s thoughts? How can I challenge that assumption?
What reason was given?
(Critical and creative thinking)
(known skills)
Once the clarification around the meaning of the concept is made, use the curriculum to work out how you could build on this. You may then build on this explicit knowledge of fairness to delve deeper into the concept by asking questions such as:
to what extent should we care about fairness? Does it depend on the situation (VCECU004/005) ? If we valued fairness, how might this affect the way we behave (VCECD008)?

17. Structure Strands - There are 2 strands in the Ethical Capability:
Understanding Concepts
Decision Making and Actions
Achievement standards
The achievement standards are placed in 2 year bands, beginning with Foundation to Level 2, then at Levels 4, 6, 8 and 10
The first achievement standard is at Foundation to Level 2 and then at Levels 4, 6, 8 and 10
It consists of 2 strands and these two strands are related. Our understanding of concepts informs how we make decisions, and this will become clearer when we look at some examples later in the session.

18. The 2 Strands Ethical capability Strands Understanding Concepts
Decision Making and Actions
key concepts and ideas important to identifying ethical problems and their relative importance
concepts concerned with ethical outcomes, such as good, bad, right, wrong, just and unjust
concepts that have ethical significance such as tolerance, greed, freedom and courage
the nature and justifications of ethical principles
ways to respond to ethical problems
factors that influence ethical decision making and action
challenges in managing ethical decision making and action
As you can see, there are clear connections between the two strands, for example we can see that (read first points)
We must point out here again, that EC needs to be connected to other curriculum areas which will act as vehicles for exploring ethical issues, likewise it can be viewed as looking at other curriculum areas through an ethical lens.

19. The Understanding Concepts Strand
Students progressively learn to analyse:
key concepts and ideas necessary to identify ethical problems
concepts that have ethical significance such as good, wrong, tolerance, greed, freedom and courage
the nature and justifications of ethical principles
Let’s focus on the first strand
Remember the aims of the curriculum and link to the ethical issues.
How concepts are understood and valued will influence how an issue is analysed and evaluated.
Ethical principles are statements about what is thought to be desirable or good and are designed to help in determining the rightness or wrongness of actions. They often contain concepts that are valued. An example of a principle is ‘always act to maximise happiness and minimise pain’. Or ‘never tell lies’.
To make sense of these, it helps to know what is meant by the concepts of happiness, pain or lying. Is refusing to say something lying?
It can readily be seen that these principles can be used to help select and justify a response to an issue, or evaluate a response.
Should I tell on my friend? The response to this will be influenced by how you consider the principle ‘never tell lies’.
Each of the three elements here progresses in a continuum across F-10: (next slide)

20. Understanding concepts: progression Line 1
F-2: VCECU001
Explore the meaning of right and wrong, good and bad, as concepts concerned with the outcomes of acts
3-4: VCECU004
Explore the contested meaning of concepts including fairness and harm and how they can seem to differ in different situations
5-6: VCECU009
Examine the contested meaning of concepts including truth and happiness and the extent to which these concepts are and should be valued
9-10: VCECU019
Investigate the connections and distinctions between and the relative value of concepts including fairness and equality, and respect and tolerance
7-8: VCECU014
Explore the contested meaning of concepts including freedom, justice, rights and responsibilities and the extent they are and should be valued by different individuals and groups
Let’s look at this carefully. We have kept the secondary levels within this progression, as it is important we remember this is part of a learning continuum. Depending on where students are, we can move above or below levels to increase or decrease levels of complexity to cater for different needs of students in our class. This fluid continuum allows us to clearly view and differentiate learning tasks in our classrooms.
This shows the first horizontal line of the curriculum running across from F-10.
We are approaching it this way because it will enable you to see how learning progresses across a similar part of the curriculum.
We will work our way through each of these content descriptions.
F-2: this CD introduces students to ethics as being fundamentally concerned with the question ‘how ought I or we, to live?’ A key concern are outcomes and whether these are of ethical concern. One way to tell is if we think about them in terms of good, bad, right or wrong.
3-4: this CD introduces students to the idea that the meaning of some concepts is not fixed in stone. This is drawn out by noticing that, for example, thinking of fairness as equal treatment of everyone works in some cases but not in others. Compare for example handing out party favours at the end of a party, which might require equal treatment to be fair, with providing a special parking spot for cars with prams or disabled passengers.
5-6: Here students begin to think about the distinction between something that might be valued and whether it should be valued. Someone might value telling the truth very highly, but are they times when it has a lesser value than say harm?
7-8: We can readily see that a natural progression from 5-6 is to ask ‘valued by whom?’ In exploring the contested meaning, students can test proposed criteria for something to count as just or consider whether human rights are a means to an end or an end in themselves – do we want them for their own sake or to try to achieve some other good? This is useful to do as it will help us work out what to do if rights conflict.
9-10: Students will have encountered connections and distinctions before, for example between fair and equal, but here they are asked to think about which one is more important or if they are equally important. Does this depend on context? You can see how this might matter for decision-making about what to do, or in judging actions and outcomes.

21. Linking to the Achievement Standards
Band
Relevant achievement standard extract
F-2: Explore the meaning of right and wrong, good and bad as concepts concerned with the outcomes of acts
Identify and describe ethical concepts using illustrative examples from familiar situations and a basic vocabulary about ethical problems and their outcomes
3-4: Explore the contested meaning of concepts including fairness and harm and how they can seem to differ in different situations
Use concrete examples from a range of contexts to explain the contested meaning of concepts
5-6: … and the extent to which these concepts are and should be valued
Evaluate the meaning of ethical concepts and analyse their value, identifying areas of contestability
7-8: …by different individuals and groups
Explain different ways ethical concepts are represented and analyse their value to society, identifying areas of contestability
9-10: Investigate the connections and distinctions between and the relative value of concepts…
Explain connections and distinctions between ethical concepts, identifying areas of contestability in their meanings and relative value.
You can see here each of the content descriptions that we have looked at just now matched with its part of the achievement standards.
Up to the end of Level 4, students are able to explain what they mean by using examples that demonstrate understanding.
At Levels 5-6 students are able to demonstrate thinking about criteria used for the meaning of a concept. For example if pleasure is suggested as a criterion for happiness, do you agree? Analysing their value can involve looking at an example to see what someone says about its value, for example a character’s attitude to pleasure or lying in a story. They are taken one step further to identify the main areas of disagreement about the value of the concept. For example there is a lot of disagreement about whether happiness is the ultimate goal in life.
7-8: Here students can be looking at more than one example, and explaining how the meaning of concepts might differ. They are also prompted to think more broadly about the value of the concept to society.
9-10: Here students are able to explain connections and distinctions. Areas of contestability here might concern the concept itself, such as ‘what kind of equality are people owed?’ Income? Respect? when thinking about the value of equality; or contestability when comparing concepts: for example do both fairness and equality involve thinking about what someone deserves?

22. Exploring the Content Descriptors & Elaborations
Level 3-4
Understanding Concepts Strand
“Discuss the ways to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems (VCECU006)”
Explicit teaching points need to be introduced to students before they can move on to practising, deploying and demonstrating
In order to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems, students need to be introduced to the ways this can be done through explicit teaching.
We need to learn to use “self talk” to ask questions about situations we encounter, to find out if there are
ethical considerations we need to take into account. The questions we should ask ourselves Could be
along the lines of, “Will this result in a fair/harmful/right/wrong outcome?” “Who is involved and how
will they be affected?” “Does this involve breaking a rule or a commitment?”
If we can identify ethical considerations in problems, then we are more likely to be able to act in a way
that is right/fair/good for those impacted by the outcome.

23. Exploring the Content Descriptors & Elaborations
Level 5-6
Understanding Concepts Strand
“Discuss how ethical principles can be used as the basis for action, considering the influence of cultural norms, religion, world views and philosophical thought on these principles (VCECU010)”
Brainstorm!
Record what you think some ethical principles from the Goldilocks story may be.
Let’s first understand what the explicit teaching points for this CD would be.
Ethical principles are, in essence, rules that guide our decision-making and actions in everyday life; they help us to analyse rightness and wrongness of actions.
There are some ethical principles that are common to many groups of people around the world; aligning with religious and nonreligious worldviews.
One example of a commonly-held ethical principle is ‘Treat others as you would want to be treated’. This is also known as the ‘Golden Rule’. What does this particular principle mean? How could this principle influence the decisions and actions of individuals to abide by it?
Cultural norms relating to certain things, such as the role individuals are expected to fulfil within their families and wider communities, vary across different cultural contexts. These cultural norms influence the values and ethical principles individuals and groups hold and act upon. Similarly those holding religious beliefs might be influenced to hold particular principles and some principles have been offered or justified through philosophical thought – for example to always act to maximise happiness and minimise harm was argued for by 19th century philosophers such as John Stuart Mill.
Activity
Responses

24. Activity Time!
You could do this with a huge range of texts including the 3 little pigs
Discuss other teaching strategies and resources

25. Goldilocks Lesson Plan: level 3-4
Lesson - Questioning to find ethical considerations
Learning Intention/s: Students will Construct open and closed questions (CCT), explore the contested meaning of concepts including fairness and harm and how they can seem to differ in different situations (EC) and discuss ways to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems (EC).
Success criteria: students will be able to articulate the steps they took to identify the ethical considerations in this and how they might apply this to future scenarios.
Learning sequence:
read a text such as Goldilocks (which has issues of stealing, fairness, and harm) - note questions that arise (from the students or those you model).
share questions and identify if it can be answered by the text, by asking an expert, by hypothesising, or if it is a question that may have multiple answers and will need to be discussed and debated.
students will place their questions in the relevant section of the quadrant (move through this in steps and as quickly or slowly as needed by the group)
students pull out the questions in the 4th quadrant that are related to the idea of ‘how we ought to live’
work as a group to create your own definition of fairness and harm (this discussion should be given the time it needs for students to come to a deep understanding
students now select the questions related to the concepts of fairness and harm (was it fair that… if… then… would it have been fair if…, did Goldilocks harm the bears? does her intention matter? But if Goldilocks was poor and homeless would it be okay then?)
reflect on how we were able to uncover the ethical considerations in this scenario, how might we apply this in the future? (we asked rich, open questions; we used questions related to ‘how we ought to live; we picked out questions related to being fair or harming others; the questions we chose can have different answers from different people).
Students use a familiar text to engage in the explicit learning of ethical conceptual understandings.
They then use use questioning strategies to uncover rich philosophical questions, that highlight the ethical considerations within this text.
new and unknown…

26. No content description for this line
Understanding concepts: progression Line 2
F-2:
No content description for this line
3-4: VCECU005
Explore the extent to which particular acts might be regarded by different people as good, bad, right or wrong and explain why
5-6: VCECU010
Discuss how ethical principles can be used as the basis for action, considering the influence of cultural norms, religion, world views and philosophical thought on these principles
9-10: VCECU20
Explore a range of ethical problems and examine the extent to which different positions are related to commonly held ethical concepts and principles, considering the influence of cultural norms, religion, world views and philosophical thought
7-8: VCECU015
Investigate why ethical principles may differ between people and groups, considering the influence of cultural norms, world views and philosophical thought
This shows the second horizontal line of the curriculum running across from F-10.
It follows through learning about ethical principles. These are norms or rules designed to help guide decisions about what to do, for example ‘always tell the truth’. You can see in this case how valuing truth may lead to it becoming a principle.
Students begin in 3 -4 by learning that some acts are regarded by many people as good or bad and it is these kinds of acts that tend to become principles or are informed by principles. Explanations about ‘why’ this act is good, prompts students to think about what we value.
They go on in 5-6 to consider how ethical principles might be used to guide us. The ‘why’ is unpacked further by thinking about how particular ideas about right and wrong from philosophy or world views or culture might result in a principle. So the principle of ‘treat others as you would want to be treated’ has fundamental ideas underlying it about the equality of humans that can be traced back to these things.
In 7-8 students think about why people may not necessarily share the same set of principles, or why an individual might not adopt all the principles of a particular group. They can think about for example whether differing contexts, experiences, goals or cultures might influence this.
In 9-10 there is a subtle difference. Here students learn that sharing the same principle might lead to different positions on an issue. For example people could all agree that animal suffering should be minimised but disagree on whether it is okay to kill them or not. Alternatively people might agree that we should respect the dead but differ in their treatment of them.

27. Linking to the Achievement Standards
Band
Relevant achievement standard extract
F-2: Not applicable
3-4:Explore the extent to which particular acts might be regarded by different people as good, bad, right or wrong and explain why
Use examples to evaluate ethical actions in relation to their outcomes
5-6: Discuss how ethical principles can be used as the basis for action, considering the influence of cultural norms, religion, worldviews and philosophical thought on these principles
Explain different ways to respond to ethical problems
Identify the basis of a range of ethical principles
7-8:Investigate why ethical principles may differ between people and groups, considering the influence of….
Analyse the differences in principles between people and groups
9-10: Explore a range of ethical problems and examine the extent to which different positions are related to commonly held ethical concepts and principles, considering the influence of…
Analyse commonality and difference between different positions (in complex issues)
At 3-4 students are able to use examples to explain their evaluations of acts, for example to show how an act might cause unnecessary suffering and therefore be wrong
At 5-6 students are able to explain that using ethical principles can be a way to respond to an issue. They are able to identify links back to cultural norms, religion, world views or philosophical thought.
At 7-8 students are able to look at an example, say a case study, and explain why principles might be differing, using evidence from the example.
At 9-10 students are able to do the same kind of analysis as for 7-8 but for more complex issues and in cases where there are definitely different positions on an issue.
Across the bands it is easy to see how a student could be in Year 6 but be achieving at Levels 7-8 say if their work were sophisticated enough and they were given the opportunity in the learning activity to reach that higher band.

28. Understanding concepts: progression Line 3
F-2:
No content description for this line
3-4: VCECU006
Discuss the ways to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems
5-6: VCECU011
Examine how problems may contain more than one ethical issue
9-10: VCECU21
Distinguish between the ethical and non-ethical dimensions of complex issues, including the distinction between ethical and legal issues
7-8: VCECU016
Investigate criteria for determining the relative importance of matters of ethical concern
This shows the third horizontal line of the curriculum running across from F-10.
It concerns the nature of ethical issues.
While there is no content description for F-2, students do begin to think about this when they learn about right and wrong and good and bad and how they are connected to actions. This points the way to ethical issues, which is a situation where there are competing alternatives about what is the right thing to do or what a good outcome might be.
So Levels 3-4 begins with learning how to identify which matters concern ethics. One of the key questions is in fact to ask whether this does involve something where the outcome can be judged in terms of good or bad in relation to how we want to live or the kind of world we want to have.
Levels 5-6 is about students learning that there is often more than one ethical issue in a problem. This is a good chance to introduce ethical dilemmas, where it can be seen that doing what might be thought to be the right thing might actually result in something that may be undesirable, such as convicts facing a decision on whether to steal to stop their families from starving.
Levels 7-8 nuances this by asking how to sort out what is the most important once we have identified what the ethical problems are. For example we could use extent of harm to help work this out.
Levels 9-10 draws particular attention to the distinction between the ethical and the legal, in particular the question ‘if it is not illegal, does this mean it is ethically acceptable?’

29. Linking to the Achievement Standards
Band
Relevant achievement standard extract
F-2: Not applicable
3-4: Discuss the ways to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems
Explain how to identify ethical considerations in problems.
5-6: Examine how problems may contain more than one ethical issue.
Identify different ethical issues associated with a particular problem.
7-8: Investigate criteria for determining the relative importance of matters of ethical concern
Articulate how criteria can be applied to determine the importance of ethical concerns.
9-10: Distinguish between the ethical and non-ethical dimensions of complex issues, including the distinction between ethical and legal issues.
Examine complex issues (and) identify the ethical dimensions
It can be seen easily here how the curriculum works across the horizontal lines as a continuum. One way to think about the curriculum is that within a band are different things to think about when analysing and evaluating an ethical issue, and going horizontally across, we see how these things become gradually more complex.
This means that you can easily see how to extend students or how to assess them at a more basic level.
In this case, we can see here how the gradual increase in complexity of knowledge is expressed in the achievement standards. To take the example of the convict and stealing to feed a starving family from before at 5-6, it can be seen that it is not possible to identify different ethical issues unless you first know how to do this, which is at 3-4. On the other hand once you have identified them, the next step is working out what is the most important, which is at 7-8.
Teachers can design learning opportunities to enable students in Year 5 to demonstrate achievement across at these three points. It may be the case that some will not progress beyond 3-4, but the activities can be designed to give opportunities to do so. If you are teaching Year 5 you can look up to the next achievement standard and down to the one below to help you design what you have to teach to get students there. This process happens anywhere you are teaching in the school although the context might change. Later on in Year 7 you might have shifted to ancient history rather than Australian colonial history but you can still look at achievement standards either side for whatever historical ethical issues you are now looking at. If students are raw beginners you may need to go right back to 3-4 and teach them from there, gradually introducing more complex teaching points informed by the upcoming curriculum, with difficulty of the learning activities shaped by the achievement standards.
We will now turn to the next strand of Ethical Capability – Decision making and actions.

30. Decision-making and action strand
Students progressively learn to analyse and evaluate:
ways to respond to ethical problems
factors that influence ethical decision- making and action
Note the tight connection once again to ethical issues.
We have already spoken briefly about principles and how they can help to analyse and evaluate ethical issues.
Often underpinning these principles are ethical ideas. If these are considered important by someone they may become a principle for action.
But this does not get us all the way there. Principles help us to see what we could do, but not necessarily what we should do. To make the final decision, we might need to take into account foreseeable consequences, the kind of duties/commitments we think are very strong, or what kind of people are involved (their character and whether this influences the situation).
We will now see how this strand progresses.

31. Decision-making and action: progression line 1
F-2
Explore the type of acts often considered right and those often considered wrong and the reasons why they are considered so
3-4
Explore how apparently wrong actions can sometimes lead to good outcomes and the reverse
5-6
Explore the significance of ‘means versus ends’ by considering two ways to act when presented with a problem: one that privileges means and one ends
9-10
Discuss issues raised by thinking about consequences and duties, in approaches to decision-making and action, and arguments for and against these approaches
7-8
Explore the extent of ethical obligation and the implications for thinking about consequences and duties in decision-making and action
This strand concentrates on two main ideas in the field of ethics – that consequences matter, and also that there are certain kinds of important duties.
The foundation for this is laid in F-6 through an approach that considers means and ends. It then progresses to consider consequentialism and duty-based approaches to decision-making more fully and the issues associated with these. You can see that contestabilities are introduced from 3-4 when students consider that sometimes doing what they normally would consider the right thing might in fact lead to an undesirable outcome. This then is developed in 5-6 by zooming out and thinking about decision- making in terms of means (how) and ends. Do the ends justify the means?
There are two key points that might help you to distinguish between these approaches:
If you put means first as more important than ends, then you will know in advance what the right thing to do is. You will know in advance that stealing is wrong and should not be done in order to achieve any goal.
If you put ends as more important then you won’t know what is the right thing to do until you have thought about what a good outcome might be and then you want to go back and do whatever it takes to achieve it.
Of course in reality we often do a bit of each – we weigh choices about ends against means and make an overall decision.
In 7-8, students begin a bit of this nuancing by considering what we might owe ourselves and others, if anything and that is one thing that might temper what think are legitimate means or ends. So for example one reason we don’t in fact steal even if we could get away with it is a decision that depriving other people of their property without their permission as a means to our own happiness is not ethical. We owe people respect for their property.
In 9-10 students go more deeply into issues that are raised when we focus heavily on consequences as the overriding guide to decision-making, or what we think our duty is.

32. Link to Achievement Standards:
Band
Relevant achievement standard extract:
F-2: Explore the type of acts often considered right and those often considered wrong and the reasons why they are considered so
identify and explain acts and situations that have ethical dimensions, using illustrative examples. 
3-4: Explore how apparently wrong actions can sometimes lead to good outcomes and the reverse
use examples to evaluate ethical actions in relation to their outcomes.
5-6: Explore the significance of ‘means versus ends’ by considering two ways to act when presented with a problem: one that privileges means and one ends
explain different ways to respond to ethical problems and identify issues related to these.
7-8:Explore the extent of ethical obligation and the implications for thinking about consequences and duties in decision-making and action
explain different views on the extent of ethical obligation and analyse their implications for the consequences of and duties involved in ethical decision-making and action
9-10: Discuss issues raised by thinking about consequences and duties, in approaches to decision-making and action, and arguments for and against these approaches
analyse and evaluate contested approaches to thinking about consequences and duties in relation to ethical issues.
Here it can be seen how the increasing complexity is reflected in the achievement standards.
Once again, students need to be able to walk before they run. So even if students are in Year 9 you might want to assess whether they can first explain different ways to respond to ethical problems as seen in 5-6 before you progress to assessing whether they can discuss contestabilities as shown in 7-8 and This could be formative or summative assessment but it should be obvious that all students at some point will need to start here no matter which year level they are in. Otherwise they are thrown in the deep end.
Of course the examples or issues you look at may different for Year 9s compared to Year 5s but it is still teaching the same ethical ideas.

33. Decision-making and action: progression line 2
F-2
Explore the effects that personal feelings can have on how people behave in situations where ethical issues are involved
3-4
Discuss the role of personal values and dispositions in ethical decision- making and actions
5-6
Discuss the role and significance of conscience and reasoning in ethical decision-making
9-10
Investigate how different factors involved in ethical decision-making can be managed by people and groups
7-8
Discuss the role of context and experience in ethical decision-making and actions
This line in the curriculum is a little different to the others in that it gradually builds up a picture of all the different factors that might be involved in ethical decision-making.
It culminates in 9-10 with considering the complexity of managing all of these but to build up to this students press the pause button as it were to consider just a one or two at a time.
Notice here that the emphasis is not only on the idea that these things do play a role but also on how they play a role. So for example, looking at 7-8, past experience can help to predict what consequences might be while context might affect how we judge the significance of social relationships for example. They can both affect whether we apply an ethical principle or not and might of course be inter-related.

34. Link to Achievement Standards:
Band
Relevant achievement standard extract:
F-2: Explore the effects that personal feelings can have on how people behave in situations where ethical issues are involved
explain that personal feelings may influence the way people behave in situations where ethical issues are involved.
3-4: Discuss the role of personal values and dispositions in ethical decision-making and actions
explain the role of personal values and dispositions in ethical decision-making and actions, recognising areas of contestability.
5-6: Discuss the role and significance of conscience and reasoning in ethical decision-making
explain the role and significance of conscience and reasoning in ethical decision-making. 
7-8: Discuss the role of context and experience in ethical decision-making and actions
analyse the role of context and experience in ethical decision-making and action.
9-10: Investigate how different factors involved in ethical decision-making can be managed by people and groups
explain how different factors involved in ethical decision-making can be managed.
Again, it is worth repeating that students might focus on different parts of this line depending on what they are studying. If they are studying an English text in Year 7 for example and one theme is that someone’s character, that is, the sort of person they are, might make a difference to how they respond to ethical issues, then they might benefit from some explicit teaching on this, even though this is at Levels 3-4.

35. HOW DO WE EFFECTIVELY PLAN FOR LEARNING IN THE ETHICAL CAPABILITY?

36. HOW AND WHERE
Introduced / Developed
Practised
Deployed
Demonstrated
English
Maths
The Arts - Dance
The Arts - Drama
The Arts - Music
The Arts – Media Arts
The Arts – Visual Arts
The Arts – Visual Communication and Design
History
Geography
Civics and Citizenship
Economics and Business
Languages
Health
Physical Education
Science
Digital Technologies
Design and Technologies
We have found an effective approach is to introduce the content to students for the first time using familiar but rich examples such as the Goldilocks story. This allows them to concentrate on one thing at a time – in this case the ethical issues involved. They do not have to also grapple with the narrative of the story, making it unnecessarily complicated.
Once they have worked with the new content using these familiar examples, they can practise with further simple examples and then apply/deploy their learning once some confidence is reached, to more complex contexts such as from the Humanities. In this case they could for example apply learning from their practise with Goldilocks and other examples to consider issues of fairness of treatment of convicts for stealing in colonial Australia.
Demonstrating their learning could happen together with practising or deploying.

37. Awareness Test
It can be seen that if we are not focusing on things, they may go unnoticed.

38. Goldilocks Lesson Plan 3-4
Lesson - Questioning to find ethical considerations
Learning Intention/s: Students will Construct open and closed questions (CCT), explore the contested meaning of concepts including fairness and harm and how they can seem to differ in different situations (EC) and discuss ways to identify ethical considerations in a range of problems (EC).
Success criteria: students will be able to articulate the steps they took to identify the ethical considerations in this and how they might apply this to future scenarios.
Learning sequence:
read a text such as Goldilocks (which has issues of stealing, fairness, and harm) - note questions that arise (from the students or those you model).
share questions and identify if it can be answered by the text, by asking an expert, by hypothesising, or if it is a question that may have multiple answers and will need to be discussed and debated.
students will place their questions in the relevant section of the quadrant (move through this in steps and as quickly or slowly as needed by the group)
students pull out the questions in the 4th quadrant that are related to the idea of ‘how we ought to live’
work as a group to create your own definition of fairness and harm (this discussion should be given the time it needs for students to come to a deep understanding
students now select the questions related to the concepts of fairness and harm (was it fair that… if… then… would it have been fair if…, did Goldilocks harm the bears? does her intention matter? But if Goldilocks was poor and homeless would it be okay then?)
reflect on how we were able to uncover the ethical considerations in this scenario, how might we apply this in the future? (we asked rich, open questions; we used questions related to ‘how we ought to live; we picked out questions related to being fair or harming others; the questions we chose can have different answers from different people).
Students use a familiar text to engage in the explicit learning of ethical conceptual understandings.
They then use use questioning strategies to uncover rich philosophical questions, that highlight the ethical considerations within this text.

39. HOW AND WHERE say that Goldilocks is about introducing and practising.
Introduced / Developed
Practised
Deployed
Demonstrated
English
Maths
The Arts - Dance
The Arts - Drama
The Arts - Music
The Arts – Media Arts
The Arts – Visual Arts
The Arts – Visual Communication and Design
History
Geography
Civics and Citizenship
Economics and Business
Languages
Health
Physical Education
Science
Digital Technologies
Design and Technologies
say that Goldilocks is about introducing and practising.
This learning can then be deployed, for example to issues related to Colonial Australia, for example convict behaviour and punishment.

40. HOW DO WE ASSESS LEARNING IN THE ETHICAL CAPABILITY?
Read slide

41. Assessment
Different students will be working towards achievement standards at different levels
Teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks can be differentiated to suit learning needs, including complexity of issues or contexts
To sum up, assessment can be modified to suit the needs of students and the achievement standards can be used for both formative and summative assessment.
As a general principle, become familiar with the achievement standards either side of your target levels and work back from there to help design the cognitive demand of teaching and learning activities. All students should be given the opportunity to achieve at the highest standard you think they are capable of.
The content descriptions use words like ‘explore’ or ‘investigate’ and the achievement standards tell you the expected cognitive demand.
Remember that the ethical capability curriculum goes hand in hand with critical and creative thinking. You should look across to this curriculum and make sure that this learning is in place so that students can deploy those skills as they work with the knowledge gained from the ethical capability curriculum.

42. Curriculum by band Knowledge and skills to: F-2 3-4 5-6
approach ethical problems and evaluate outcomes
engage with ethical problems and an understand that personal feelings can effect decision-making and actions.
evaluate particular acts and
identify and critically respond to ethical problems
reflect on means and ends.
understand that particular acts and their outcomes can be valued differently by different people
extend their understanding of factors that may affect decision-making and actions.
evaluate the significance of ethical matters.
understand the basis of a range of ethical principles and reflect on means and ends.
understand decision-making approaches based on thinking about the consequences and duties.
understand that a range of factors play a role in ethical decision-making.
This is a good way to sum up the overview that we have just completed. It picks out the main understandings that students are working towards within each band.

43. Curriculum by band Knowledge and skills to: 7-8 9-10
understand the tensions related to ethical concepts and decision making.
understand two major ways to approach ethical deliberation – thinking about consequences and thinking about duties, including the extent of ethical obligation.
understand that ethical problems may not be resolved in a straightforward way.
analyse and evaluate ethical problems and their resolution
identify and manage contestability in ethical matters.
reflect on whether there are ethical concepts and principles common across people, groups and cultures.
Remember that the idea of the curriculum is to support analysis and evaluation of ethical issues.
Students are expected to engage with ethical issues across a range of other learning areas and this curriculum will support students to do this better.
Remember that the curriculum must be explicitly taught and assessed. There is a distinction between covering something and teaching it.
Students may be able to identify an ethical issue very well and this is of course necessary to get going. So you would be covering it but not teaching it as they already know how to do it. But there might be other gaps in their learning that is holding them back from doing a high quality response and this is where it will be necessary to explicitly teach ethical capability.
Content descriptions at different levels can be contextualised to suit the issue that is being studied, just as we briefly did with the convict and stealing example here.

44. Questions
If you have any questions that were not answered today please see the FAQs, the educators section on the VCAA website
or please contact us using the details on the next slide.

45. Contact and resources Contact
Curriculum Planning, Assessment and Reporting resources
Contact
Monica Bini
VCAA Curriculum Manager, Ethical Capability and Humanities
Laura Barton
VCAA Specialist Teacher, Ethical Capability
Danielle Ey
The Victorian curriculum demands careful planning and there are resources available to you to assist with this.
This link will take you to three key resources:
Victorian Curriculum F-10: Revised curriculum planning and reporting guidelines
Curriculum Planning resource website link to a range of resources to support planning and documentation of the curriculum across or between year levels.
Curriculum mapping templates which drill down to the unit level, with templates to support learning here.
We will now turn to the web and then the planning tool and a specific issue in action but in the meantime, here are my details.
If you have questions please continue to type them in and I will do my best to answer them as we go.