Resumen de Ethical Reasoning of U.S. High School Seniors Exploring Just Versus Unjust Laws
Because a pluralistic democracy is inherently conflictual, public deliberation of issues holds the potential to expand the thinking of participants by revealing new insights, perspectives, information, or logics into the participants� consideration. These are ethical questions that ask citizens to decide whether policies, actions, and decisions are �right� or �wrong.� The Persistent Issues in History (PIH) Network (www.pihnet.org) is a decade-long professional development community of practice encouraging, modeling, and supporting teachers in increasing inquiry-based social studies teaching. For this qualitative study, we created a professional community of practice including 4 U.S. government teachers, a university researcher, and a political science professor. This team created lessons enabling high school seniors to dissect and apply Martin Luther King Jr.�s Letter from Birmingham Jail to 3 specific scenarios to explore the students� moral reasoning on just versus unjust laws.
