Programme objectives, learning goals, and prospective careers

The interdisciplinary Master’s programme in Ethics for Teachers and Professionals aims to provide degree students with the necessary subject-specific and didactic competencies required for approaching, reflecting, and resolving ethical issues or conflicts in work, school, and societal contexts.

Today, questions concerning ethics and morality seem to be ever-present. Societal and communal life is continuously affected by rapid technological advances and increasingly diverse religious and cultural traditions. As these developments bring about novel cultural dynamics shaped by social plurality and disruption, ethical considerations become a matter of prime importance.
Ethics is no longer only a subject of debate in scientific disciplines like philosophy, theology, or law. Non-university institutions and corporate organisations, too, are increasingly concerned with ethical matters, and initiating ethic committees or boards has become common practice. Ethical debates concerning human and animal life, technological advances and “smart” machines, as well as developments like climate change or economic crises, raise questions concerning individual, institutional, societal, or even global responsibility. Issues regarding economic and social equity, religious tolerance, and tensions between morals and value systems grounded in either secular or religious beliefs have become pressing matters of ethical discourse, and affect global debates, politics, organisations, and the life of individuals alike.
Current circumstances demand a systematic and scientific enquiry into ethics, and require an adequate implementation of ethics as a school subject. The interdisciplinary Master’s programme in Ethics for Teachers and Professionals means to respond to these events by providing students with the subject-specific and didactic means required to address ethical questions in work, school, and societal contexts. The programme offers degree students a university education that qualifies them to approach and critically reflect on ethical issues in areas such as healthcare, politics, or economics, and ethics as a school subject in secondary education.