Ben et al.,
I find that when the students start by examining their values (which are fairly tangible), with a little coaching, they can come up with the moral principles underlying them. Those same principles drive one's ethical "instincts." In other words, I teach ethics by connecting it with foundational moral principles through the notion that each of us is--inevitably, since we are social beings--a moral agent.
Interestingly, in my MBA ethics class last night, analyzing two cases about on-the-job "perks," a silent poll at the end of the evening (via 3x5 cards) showed that the students were "all over the map" in their responses as to what the principal actors should do, or should have done. I certainly disagreed with some of their answers but, in a classroom setting, all that I can hope for is to teach them to think things through in a structured, rational way. (We talk a lot about defence mechanisms like rationalization and dissociation.) I can't hope to change values that were embedded early in life. I believe in social learning theory but I think that it would take a traumatic life event to trigger such a radical change in personality structure.
Ruth
Ruth H. Axelrod