Seminar: Bifocal Ethics in Educational Leadership and Policy

Bifocal Ethics in Educational Leadership and Policy
 

Date: December 3rd, 2025, 3:30-5:00pm

Mode: Hybrid

Venue: Room RMS206, Runme Shaw Building, HKU
Chair: Professor Liz Jackson
 

Zoom registration:https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/rubM3ij2TtiEfvbvyJLMQg
 

Abstract:

The presentation will propose for educational leaders a “bifocal” ethical framework that asks leaders to see situations both up close and from a distance, though not at the same time and without being able to reduce one perspective to the other. It asks of leaders that, in each situation, they remain sensitive and alert to the view they are not using, even if it is out of focus at that time. Recognizing similarities to discussions about care and justice (e.g., Held, 2015), or Western and Asian approaches (e.g., Kupperman, 1999), the framework presented will be informed more directly by Standish’s (2005) work on economies of “exchange” and “excess.” A bifocal ethics in educational leadership, then, asks educational leaders to be able to operate both in an ethical economy of exchange and in an ethical economy of excess. The former is a closed ethical economy in which we can gain certainty about fulfilling our obligations and having done enough. The latter is an open ethical economy in which such certainty is impossible.

Speaker: 

Claudia Ruitenberg is Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Currently, she is Chair of the Doctor of Education Program in Educational Leadership and Policy in this department. She has served as President of the Philosophy of Education Society (2024-2025) and the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society (2016-2019). She is the author of Unlocking the World: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality (2015), and co-editor of (among other titles), Ethics in Professional Education (2018).