Breaking Bad: The Efficacy of Ethics Education in Air Force Officer PME
Abstract
Ethics education cannot guarantee the eradication of all unethical conduct. Nevertheless, the Department of Defense requires professional military education (PME) institutions to teach ethics, in part, to improve officers ability to make ethical decisions based on the shared values of the Profession of Arms. To this end, the true utility of ethics education lies in its ability to help students develop the requisite skills for ethical reasoning, which in turn offers reasonable hope for curbing misconduct. To determine the efficacy of Air Force efforts to teach ethics in officer PME, the author gleaned five components of effective ethics programs from published studies and then analyzed the curricula of seven Air Force Officer PME programs to determine the degree to which these components were present. Overall, Air Force Officer PME contains each component in varying degrees, but lacks efficacy in (a) convincing students of their risk for unethical behavior and (b) achieving unity of effort in ethics education throughout the PME continuum. The paper concludes with specific improvement recommendations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 12, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA618886
Entities
People
- David L. Stanfield
Organizations
- Air War College