Moral

Moral character

Assets | Fairness

Man and child looking at computer.

The equitable, just and reasonable treatment of others according to their needs.

1. Highlights

Making decisions and taking actions that value fairness can be very complicated, given the diversity of lived experiences represented in our learning communities. Understanding both our own values and those of others through reflection and inclusive perspective-taking can help us navigate difficult moral dilemmas.

Create solutions that result in equitable and just outcomes

Consider how our decisions and actions will affect a wide variety of people

Seek to understand our community's values around what fairness looks like

From a young age, children have an innate sense of what is fair and what is not. This basic human sense of fairness provides the foundation for our understanding of justice and equity. The PI practice of moral and ethical decision-making is deeply concerned with fairness. When we practice Principled Innovation, we have to consider how our decisions and approaches will affect a wide variety of people. Will our innovations result in equitable treatment of these groups? Will the benefits be distributed in a fair way? What would we want our society to look like if we could not predict the family and community into which we would be born? If one group would benefit in that society more than another, might this still be fair, given that group’s context and history?

Understanding the values of our community around what constitutes fairness in systems change involves engaging our PI character assets of inclusivity, perspective-taking and empathy, to bring to light the perspectives of students, fellow educators, families and caregivers on what a just community should look like. In this way, inclusivity, perspective-taking, and empathy are closely tied to the important educator disposition of fairness: each of these assets is necessary to help us to enact this asset in our personal and professional lives.

Man and child playing video games.
When we practice Principled Innovation, we have to consider how our decisions and approaches will affect a wide variety of people.
Two children looking at computer.
In team relationships, fairness leads us to recognize when other team members might need extra support.

2. Context

Two children looking at computer.
In team relationships, fairness leads us to recognize when other team members might need extra support.

Understanding the role that fairness plays in our individual lives takes time, curiosity, and resilience. We can explore fairness by developing reflective practices which probe our internal beliefs and which help us see how fairness shows up in life’s experiences and in relationships. Journaling about times you or someone you know were treated unfairly and about what could have been done differently to create a more equitable outcome can help develop an understanding of fairness while fostering positive perspective-taking and deepening our relationships with others.

Fairness plays into the relationships of educators with the families they serve — in assessment, classroom management, and parental interaction. Fairness requires perspective-taking and an effort to understand the contextual and systemic factors that may make learning particularly challenging for some students and easier for others (Practices C1 and I1). It seeks solutions that help to resolve the problems that hold some groups of students back. In team relationships, fairness leads us to take our proper share of the team’s workload and recognizes when other team members might need extra support.

Building on the character asset of fairness, educators seek to understand how the social systems that surround an educational system interact with school practices to create greater challenges for some students than others. By adopting an open mind toward new school practices — such as enacting flexible parent-teacher meeting schedules, reconsidering the role of health practitioners in schools, or expanding the learning mission of the school to directly support immigrant parents — educators enact the character asset of fairness in reimagining school operations at the building and district levels to give learners and their families the additional support needed to ensure equitable opportunities for success.

3. Resources

Select one of our featured resources or visit the PI toolkit library for more tools.

Equitable and inclusive teaching

  Article

  10 minutes

  By: Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

Open

Justice and fairness

  Article

  10 minutes

  By: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University

Open

Solving the achievement gap through equity, not equality

  Video

  9 minutes

  By: Lindsey Ott, TEDx

Open

Teaching equity vs equality in K-2 classrooms

  Tool

  20 minutes

  By: Teachers Network

Open

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