Learning to be teachers in this field proved to be a challenge above and beyond learning about the field
of research ethics. After a year and a half of working together we offered our graduate course for the first
time. Our plan in the first year was to present a small portion of the material in lecture format and to
then move on to case analysis in the second half of each class session. We found the faculty resistance to
this to be quite intense. Science faculty clung to the more familiar framework of lecturing the students.
Cases were presented in lecture format. Regulations were laboriously described. “Discussions” were, in
many instances, less discussions than presentations by sage scientists telling war stories and informing
novices of how it should be. It was interesting that although we had worked together to use interactive
approaches for a year and a half, it was still difficult for each of us to shed the familiar role of lecturers
and to take on the role of discussion leaders. What we found was a marked distinction between the
development of the skills in ourselves and the use of those skills in our teaching.
In the second year we were more successful. With a bit more prodding and a clear message from the
students that they too would prefer more discussion, we pushed ourselves to use the skills in case
analysis that we had developed. We insisted that faculty plan their presentations without a defined
lecture component. We developed additional strategies, such as breaking into small groups, to ensure that
we would not lapse into lectures.
Those of us who learned the ethics of scientific research as graduate students learning from a mentor or
series of mentors did not have the opportunity to combine the skills of the scientist with the skills of the
ethicist. When confronted with ethical problems, this leaves us searching for answers for each case as
though it is isolated from all other cases. In this sense we have not been trained to teach a course in ethics
to graduate students. The process that we undertook to develop our skills in this area was a difficult but
a valuable one. We recommend it both for the benefit of the faculty and for that of the students they plan
to teach.