© Copyright 2015 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 41, No.docx

© Copyright 2015 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 41, No. 4
(October 2015): 579-598
DOI: 10.5840/soctheorpract201541432
Looking for a Psychology for the Inner Rational Agent
Robert Sugden
Abstract: Research in psychology and behavioral economics
shows that individuals’
choices often depend on “irrelevant” contextual factors. This
presents problems for nor-
mative economics, which has traditionally used preference-
satisfaction as its criterion. A
common response is to claim that individuals have context-
independent latent preferences
which are “distorted” by psychological factors, and that latent
preferences should be re-
spected. This response implicitly uses a model of human action
in which each human be-
ing has an “inner rational agent.” I argue that this model is
psychologically ungrounded.
Although references to latent preferences appear in
psychologically based explanations of
context-dependent choice, latent preferences serve no
explanatory purpose.
Keywords: inner rational agent; behavioral welfare economics;

preference purification;
attention; true self
A recurring finding of behavioral economics is that individuals’
choices
between what might naturally be thought of as given outcomes
can vary
according to apparently irrelevant features of the context in
which those
choices are made. For example, faced with a choice between a
specific
amount of money and a specific consumer good, people are less
likely to
choose the money if the decision is framed in terms of selling
something
that they own than if it is framed as a straight choice.1 When
choosing
between alternative snacks to be delivered at a fixed time a
week in the
future, people are more likely to choose unhealthy but hunger-
satisfying
items if they are hungrier at the time they make the decision.2
In calling
such contextual features “irrelevant,” I mean that they have no
obvious
relevance to the decision-maker’s well-being, interests, or
goals; changes
in these features seem therefore not to provide good reasons for
a person
to change her preferences. Nevertheless, there are well-
grounded psycho-
logical explanations of why revealed preferences are context-
dependent.
1Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler,

“Experimental Tests of
the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem,” Journal of
Political Economy 98 (1990):
1325-48.
2Daniel Read and Barbara van Leeuwen, “Predicting Hunger:
The Effects of Appetite
and Delay on Choice,” Organizational Behavior and Human
Decision Processes 76
(1998): 189-205.
580 Robert Sugden
These findings present a problem for normative economics,
because
there is a long tradition in economics of using preference-
satisfaction as
the criterion for evaluating alternative policy options. That
public decision-
makers should respect individuals’ preferences has long been an
impor-
tant idea in liberal political philosophy. But should we—indeed,
can
we—respect context-dependent preferences?
Many economists and philosophers find the idea of respecting
context-
dependent preferences problematic, either because there seems
to be no
good reason for thinking that such preferences are indicators of
individ-
ual well-being, or more fundamentally, because the concept of
respecting
a person’s preferences is thought to be ill-defined unless those
prefer-

ences satisfy minimal properties of internal consistency.3
However, the
same writers are often reluctant to conclude that there is no
need to re-
spect preferences at all, and that public decision-makers should
simply
use their own best judgments about the effects of policies on
individuals’
well-being—a conclusion that seems unacceptably paternalistic.
A com-
mon escape route from this impasse is to argue that individuals
whose
choices are context-dependent are not revealing the preferences
that in
some meaningful sense they actually hold, and that their “true,”
“under-
lying,” or “latent” preferences are context-independent. The
disparity be-
tween latent preference and choice is attributed to psychological
mecha-
nisms that induce systematic biases or errors in reasoning. If
these latent
preferences could be recovered, it would be possible to use the
traditional
methods of welfare economics to work out how best to satisfy
them. Fol-
lowing Daniel Hausman, 4 I will call the process of recovering
latent
preferences preference purification. I will call the broader
strategy of us-
ing such preferences in welfare economics behavioral welfare
economics.
By using this strategy, it is thought, the principle of respect for
individu-
als’ preferences can be retained.
In another paper, Gerardo Infante, Guilhem Lecouteux, and I

have
3I have argued for an approach to normative economics that
attaches value to indi-
viduals’ opportunities rather than to the satisfaction of their
preferences. This approach
does not depend on any assumptions about the coherence of
individuals’ preferences
while, in a certain sense, respecting whatever preferences
individuals act on. See Robert
Sugden, “The Opportunity Criterion: Consumer Sovereignty
Without the Assumption of
Coherent Preferences,” American Economic Review 94 (2004):
1014-33, and “The Value
of Opportunities Over Time When Preferences are Unstable,”
Social Choice and Welfare
29 (2007): 665-82; and Ben McQuillin and Robert Sugden,
“How the Market Responds
to Dynamically Inconsistent Preferences,” Social Choice and
Welfare 38 (2012): 617-34.
The approach is therefore not vulnerable to the problems that
are the topic of the current
paper. However, this approach has not yet found much favor in
economics or philosophy.
4Daniel Hausman, Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), p. 102.
Looking for a Psychology for the Inner Rational Agent 581

examined how this strategy has been used by behavioral
economists.5 We
present a critique of behavioral welfare economics from the
perspective
of philosophy of mind. We argue that the strategy understands
human
agency as if each individual human being has a “rational true
self” or
“inner rational agent” that has access to some mode of valid
reasoning
that can generate context-independent preferences.
Psychological expla-
nations of context-dependent preferences are then interpreted as
if the in-
dividual’s psychology were an external force subverting the will
of the
true self. The inner rational agent is not endowed with any
psychology of
its own, and no description is given of the mode of reasoning it
is sup-
posed to use. We argue that this model of agency is ungrounded
and im-
plausible. In section 1 of the current paper, I summarize that
argument.
However, my main aim in the present paper is to consider
behavioral
welfare economics from a different perspective, that of
cognitive psy-
chology. One reason for suspicion about the model of the inner
rational
agent is that its capacity for correct reasoning is not given any
psycho-
logical explanation. So one way of trying to make sense of the
model is
to understand decision-making, both rational and irrational, in
terms of

psychological mechanisms of mental processing, and to try to
isolate
some component or aspect of this mental processing that
corresponds
with rational deliberation and that is capable of generating
context-
independent preferences. If such a component could be isolated,
and if
actual behavior could be represented as the result of interaction
between
it and other psychological mechanisms, the isolated component
might be
interpreted as the psychological substrate of the inner rational
agent and
the other mechanisms as potential causes of error.
In section 2, I consider this isolation strategy in general terms,
and ar-
gue that it is unlikely to succeed. A psychological explanation
of context-
dependent choices does not need a concept of “true” preference.
In the
most credible of such explanations, responses to contextual cues
are an
integral part of the mental processes of decision-making. The
idea of re-
covering latent preferences by removing the influence of these
cues
seems incoherent.
In sections 3 and 4, I support this general claim by examining
two
specific models—one from behavioral economics, the other
from cogni-
tive psychology—which at first sight might seem to provide
clues about
how latent preferences can be isolated. Both models represent
the role of

attention in the mental processes that underlie decision-making.
The first
model is typical of much current work in behavioral economics
in its use
5Gerardo Infante, Guilhem Lecouteux, and Robert Sugden,
“Preference Purification
and the Inner Rational Agent: A Critique of the Conventional
Wisdom of Behavioural
Welfare Economics,” Journal of Economic Methodology,
forthcoming.
582 Robert Sugden
of concepts of correct reasoning and latent preferences in
relation to what
are supposed to be models of mental processing, understood
empirically.
The second model has a much richer representation of mental
processes
and is presented with much less—but, interestingly, still with
some—
reference to correctness of reasoning. I will argue that in both
models,
concepts of correctness play no explanatory role. Thus, however
success-
ful these models may be in explaining decision-making, they do
not pro-
vide any empirical grounding for the concept of latent
preferences.
1. The Model of the Inner Rational Agent6

Preference purification is at the core of “behavioral welfare
economics”
—a method of normative analysis that has been used by many
prominent
behavioral economists.7 Taking a more philosophical
perspective, Haus-
man gives a qualified endorsement to preference purification as
a means
of making judgments about individual well-being.8 In the
present paper, I
will focus on the particularly influential work of Cass Sunstein
and Rich-
ard Thaler.
Sunstein and Thaler claim that the findings of behavioral
economics
make paternalism unavoidable. This claim is developed in
relation to the
now-familiar example of a cafeteria director choosing how to
display
food items when she knows that her customers’ choices are
influenced
by the prominence with which different items are displayed.
Characteriz-
ing their antipaternalist opponents as advocating that the
director should
6This section is based on Infante, Lecouteux, and Sugden,
ibid., and “‘On the Econ
Within’: A Reply to Daniel Hausman,” Journal of Economic
Methodology, forthcoming.
7Infante, Lecouteux, and I (ibid.) document the use or
advocacy of this method by,
among others, Bleichrodt et al. (Han Bleichrodt, Jose-Luis
Pinto-Prades, and Peter Wak-
ker, “Making Descriptive Use of Prospect Theory to Improve

the Prescriptive Use of Ex-
pected Utility,” Management Science 47 (2001): 1498-514);
Camerer et al. (Colin
Camerer, Samuel Issacharoff, George Loewenstein, Ted
O’Donaghue, and Matthew
Rabin, “Regulation for Conservatives: Behavioral Economics
and the Case for ‘Asym-
metric Paternalism’,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review
151 (2003): 1211-54);
Sunstein and Thaler (Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler,
“Libertarian Paternalism Is
Not an Oxymoron,” University of Chicago Law Review 70
(2003): 1159-202; henceforth
“ST”); Kőszegi and Rabin (Botond Kőszegi and Matthew Rabin,
“Mistakes in Choice-
Based Welfare Analysis,” American Economic Review 97
(2007): 477-81); Salant and
Rubinstein (Yuval Salant and Ariel Rubinstein, “(A, f): Choice
with Frames,” Review of
Economic Studies 75 (2008): 1287-96); Thaler and Sunstein
(Richard H. Thaler and Cass
R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth,
and Happiness (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); henceforth “TS”); and
Bernheim and Rangel
(Douglas Bernheim and Antonio Rangel, “Beyond Revealed
Preference: Choice-
Theoretic Foundations for Behavioral Welfare Economics,”
Quarterly Journal of Eco-
nomics 124 (2009): 51-104.
8Hausman, Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare, pp. 100-
102.

“give consumers what she thinks they would choose on their
own,” Sun-
stein and Thaler claim that the antipaternalist position is
“incoherent,”
because the customers lack “well-formed” (that is, context-
independent)
preferences. In their 2003 paper, Sunstein and Thaler conclude
that the
only reasonable decision criterion for the cafeteria director is to
“make
the choices that she thinks would make the customers best off,
all things
considered.”9 In their 2008 book, they make a significant
revision to this
criterion, declaring that their recommendations are designed to
“make
choosers better off, as judged by themselves.”10 The
implication is that
the addressee of Sunstein and Thaler’s work—originally called
the
“planner,” but restyled in 2008 as the “choice architect”—tries
to respect
each individual’s subjective judgments about what makes him
better off.
But how are these judgments to be defined, and how can they
be re-
constructed? Sunstein and Thaler are coy about this, but they
provide
some clues about their thinking when, immediately after
presenting the
principle of trying to make choosers “better off, as judged by
themselves,”

they undertake to show that
in many cases, individuals make pretty bad decisions—decisions
that they would not
have made if they had paid full attention and possessed
complete information, unlimited
cognitive abilities, and complete self-control.11
The implication is that what makes an individual better off “as
judged by
himself” is defined by the preferences he would have revealed,
had his
decision-making not been affected by limitations of attention,
informa-
tion, cognitive ability or self-control. So Sunstein and Thaler’s
approach
to normative economics treats context-dependent choices as the
result of
errors of reasoning. It requires the reconstruction of
individuals’ latent
preferences by simulating what they would have chosen, had
their rea-
soning not been subject to these errors. This is preference
purification.
Clearly, this approach can overcome the problem of context-
dependence
in actual choices only if, as Sunstein and Thaler implicitly
assume is the
case, the corresponding latent preferences are context-
independent.
Behavioral welfare economics can be characterized more
precisely as
having the following four properties: (1) behavioral welfare
economics is
intended to apply to cases in which individuals’ revealed
preferences de-

pend on contextual factors that have little or no apparent
relevance to
those individuals’ interests or well-being; (2) the normative
criterion is
the satisfaction of each individual’s latent preferences, defined
as the
9ST, pp. 1164-65, 1182.
10 TS, p. 5 (italics in original; the italicized clause recurs with
minor variations
throughout TS: e.g., pp. 10, 12, 80).
11TS, p. 5.
584 Robert Sugden
preferences he would reveal in the absence of any errors that
might be
caused by limitations of attention, information, cognitive ability
or self-
control; (3) latent preferences are interpreted as expressing
individuals’
subjective judgments about their interests or well-being; they do
not nec-
essarily track objective properties of the external world (such as
an indi-
vidual’s monetary wealth or health status) or properties of
passive ex-
perience (such as happiness in the hedonic sense); (4) in the
cases to
which behavioral welfare economics is to be applied, latent
preferences
are assumed to be context-independent.

Infante, Lecouteux, and I argue that this approach implicitly
uses a
model of an inner rational agent. By this, we mean that it treats
human
agency as if each human being were made up of a neoclassically
rational
entity encased in, and able to interact with the world only
through, an
error-prone psychological shell. Of course, we do not claim that
behav-
ioral economists think that human beings are really made up of
these
components. The idea of the inner rational agent is merely a
way of mak-
ing vivid an implication of properties (1) to (4). To be more
specific,
these properties imply that the human individual has a latent
capacity,
constant across decision environments, to form context-
independent sub-
jective judgments on the basis of error-free reasoning. This
capacity is
not always revealed in the individual’s actual decision-making
behavior,
but its effects can be isolated by identifying what the individual
would
have chosen in the absence of errors. “The inner rational agent”
is our
name for that capacity.
In arguing that this model is problematic, Infante, Lecouteux,
and I
direct most of our criticism at the assumption that latent
preferences, as
defined by the preference purification method, are complete and
context-
independent. By treating context-dependent choices as revealing

errors
of reasoning, the preference purification approach implicitly
assumes
that for each individual there is some mode of latent reasoning
that, if
carried out correctly, would generate complete and context-
independent
preferences. If one interprets preferences as subjective
propositions that
the relevant individual holds to be true, decision theory imposes
consis-
tency restrictions on the set of preference propositions that an
individual
simultaneously holds to be true, but it provides no explanation
of how
she arrives at those propositions.12 The advocates of preference
purifica-
12Decision theory and game theory are not theories of
reasoning (that is, theories
about the processes by which new propositions are inferred
from existing ones); their
concepts of “rationality” are consistency conditions that restrict
the sets of propositions
that an unmodeled process of reasoning is allowed to generate.
For more on this, see John
Broome, Rationality Through Reasoning (Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2013); and Robin
Cubitt and Robert Sugden, “Common Reasoning in Games: A
Lewisian Analysis of
Common Knowledge of Rationality,” Economics and Philosophy
30 (2014): 285-329.

tion invoke a concept of “correct” or “undistorted” reasoning,
latent in
the real individual, that can somehow create complete and
context-
independent preferences; but they provide no account of what
this rea-
soning actually is. We accept that a defensible account of
correct reason-
ing might show that the set of preference propositions that can
be de-
rived by that reasoning must satisfy certain consistency
conditions, per-
haps including some condition of independence of “irrelevant”
contex-
tual features. But we challenge the implicit assumption that, for
every
pair of choice objects x and y, correct reasoning can lead to one
of the
conclusions “x is preferable to y,” “y is preferable to x,” or “x
and y are
equally preferable.” If one accepts that the preference relation
that an in-
dividual can derive by correct reasoning may be incomplete, one
cannot
infer errors of reasoning from context-dependent choices. Thus,
contrary
to a crucial implicit assumption of the preference purification
approach,
context-dependency in actual choice may recur in the
hypothetical
choices that are supposed to reveal latent preferences.

2. Trying to Make Psychological Sense of Latent Preferences
Given that behavioral economists usually characterize their
subdiscipline
as economics with psychological foundations, it is surprising
how little
work has been done to explain latent preferences in
psychological terms.
In the remainder of the paper, I consider whether the concept of
latent
preference might be given empirical content by interpreting it as
a com-
ponent of a psychological model of mental processing.
Some idea of the difficulties involved in this task can be gained
by
considering an example I mentioned at the beginning of the
paper—
people’s choices between alternative snacks to be delivered a
week after
that choice was made. What has been found is that a typical
individual’s
choices between specific food items (for example, Mars bars
and apples)
are influenced by his current degree of hunger, even though the
date and
time of delivery of the snack (and hence, the presumably
predictable de-
gree of hunger at the time of delivery) is held constant. This is a
para-
digm case in which choice is influenced by a contextual cue that
seems
to have no relevance for the individual’s welfare. In broad-
brush terms,
the psychological mechanism behind this effect is easy to
understand.

Mars bars and apples are goods with different mixes of
attributes: the
Mars bar is more energy-giving and perhaps (as viewed by the
individual)
tastier, the apple is more refreshing and (as an addition to the
individual’s
typical diet) healthier. In deliberating about which of the two
snacks to
choose, the individual has to bring these various attributes to
mind and
strike a balance between them. The hungrier he is, the more
attention he
586 Robert Sugden
gives to those attributes on which the Mars bar is superior, and
so the
more likely it is that his deliberation will end in the choice of
that option.
Viewed in this way, what might seem to be irrational context-
dependence is evidence about the underlying structure of the
decision-
making mechanism. If one thinks in terms of the evolutionary
origins of
human psychology, the role played by attention in decision-
making can
be understood as an integral part of a general-purpose
mechanism for
choosing between multi-attribute options—a mechanism that is
(as if)
efficiently designed to make use of other mental processes that
tend to
distribute attention towards what is currently important. (For

example,
the hungrier one is, the more important it is to be alert to
possible sources
of nutrition.)
But how, then, are we to separate the decision-making
mechanism
into components of “rationality” and “error,” and to be able to
claim that
the rational component retains the subjectivity of the real
human individ-
ual? The only possible way forward that I can see is to try to
identify
some particular distribution of attention as “correct.” But how
are we to
do this? Recall that it is fundamental to the preference
purification ap-
proach that the individual’s latent preferences represent his own
subjec-
tive judgments. Thus, we cannot define the correct distribution
of atten-
tion in terms of some objective standard of the individual’s
interest,
analogous with fitness in an evolutionary model. In the absence
of such a
standard, the idea of a “neutral” distribution of attention
between differ-
ent attributes of choice options is ill-defined. (To mention just
one prob-
lem, suppose we define neutrality as equal attention to every
attribute. In
the case of the snacks, is the effect of diet on weight a single
attribute, or
are health and slimness two separate attributes?) It would be
circular to
define the correct distribution of attention as that which would
generate

“true” latent preferences, since latent preference have already
been de-
fined in terms of correct reasoning.
The core of the problem is that the attention-based mechanisms
that
explain the individual’s decisions also explain what, given the
relevant
choice context, he actually prefers or desires to do: he feels the
desires
that prompt him to choose as he does. Viewed in the perspective
of em-
pirical psychology, the idea that he might have “true”
preferences that
are different from the actual ones seems free-floating and
redundant.
So far, I have been arguing in very general terms. I will now
try to
give further support for my skeptical conclusions by looking at
two con-
crete examples of the use of the concept of latent preference in
behav-
ioral economics and psychology.
3. A Behavioral Economic Model of Attention
My first case study is chosen as a characteristic example of how

the con-
cept of latent preference is used in behavioral economic models.
It is the
analysis in a recent paper by Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli,
and An-
drei Shleifer (hereafter “BGS”) published in the prestigious
Journal of
Political Economy.13 BGS develop a model that is motivated by
experi-
mental findings from psychology, economics, and marketing.
The core
idea is expressed in a quotation from a psychological paper by
Shelley
Taylor and Suzanne Thompson:
Salience refers to the phenomenon that when one’s attention is
differentially directed to
one portion of the environment rather than to others, the
information contained in that
portion will receive disproportionate weighting in subsequent
judgments.14
BGS’s core model is of a decision problem in which a
consumer faces
a choice set containing two or more goods, one and only one of
which is
to be chosen. Each good k is characterized by the pair ⟨ qk,
pk⟩ , where qk
and pk are non-negative magnitudes, respectively representing
the quality
and price of that good. The consumer knows the value of qk and
pk for
each good in the choice set. Higher-quality goods are assumed
to have
higher prices. In effect, BGS assume that quality is measured in
its own

units on a ratio scale (i.e., a scale on which the zero point is
fixed but the
unit of measurement is arbitrary).15 In BGS’s leading example,
the reader
is asked to imagine choosing between a bottle of French wine
priced at
$20 and a bottle of Austrian wine priced at $10 when the reader
thinks
the French wine “is perhaps 50 percent better.”16 I take it that
in this ex-
ample, the consumer is thinking of units of quality as
categorically dif-
ferent from units of price, and is trying to decide how to make
trade-offs
between the two attributes. (For example, he might be thinking
of the
quality scale in terms of the answer he would give to a question
asking
him to rate the quality of the wine on a scale from 0 to 10; he
rates the
Austrian wine as 6 and the French wine as 9.)
The crucial assumption of the model is stated as follows:
13Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, and Andrei Shleifer,
“Salience and Consumer
Choice,” Journal of Political Economy 121 (2013): 803-43.
14Shelley E. Taylor and Suzanne C. Thompson, “Stalking the
Elusive ‘Vividness’
Effect,” Psychological Review 89 (1982): 155-81, p. 175.
15BGS actually say: “Quality and price are measured in dollars
and known to the con-
sumer” (p. 807). Despite the literal meaning of this sentence, I
think my interpretation is
faithful to BGS’s intentions. It is only because quality and price

are measured in different
units that the consumer faces a nontrivial choice problem.
16BGS, pp. 803-4.
588 Robert Sugden
Without salience distortions, a consumer values good k with a
linear utility function, uk =
qk – pk, which attaches equal weights to quality and price. A
salient thinker departs from
[this utility function] by inflating the relative weights attached
to the attributes that he
perceives to be more salient … [W]e say that an attribute
(quality or price) is salient for
good k in the choice set … if this attribute “stands out” relative
to the good’s other attrib-
utes.17
I take the first sentence to mean that BGS are assuming a
weighted linear
utility function uk = αQ qk – αP pk, and are defining the unit in
which
quality is measured so that αP = αQ = 1. This utility function
represents
the consumer’s latent preference ordering over ⟨ quality, price⟩
pairs;
these preferences can be described by a family of what BGS call
“ra-
tional indifference curves,” which are linear and parallel. That
the mar-
ginal rate of substitution between units of price and quality is
constant is
a substantive modeling assumption; that each unit of quality is

worth $1
to the “rational consumer” is merely a convenient
normalization. Unless
the consumer is known to be “rational,” these indifference
curves are not
directly revealed in choices. Notice that so far, the concepts of
rationality
and distortion have been given no independent definition or
interpreta-
tion. BGS have simply stipulated that in their model, a
particular family
of linear indifference curve is to be called “rational.”
BGS then specify “how salience distorts the valuation of a
good.”18
The first step is to define a salience function, which, for any
choice set,
for any good k in that set, and for any attribute j, measures the
degree to
which the amount of attribute j “stands out” (either as
particularly high or
particularly low—both are treated as sources of salience)
relative to the
average amount of that attribute in all goods in the choice set.
The sec-
ond step is to identify, for each good, which of the two
attributes stands
out more (as measured by the salience function). Thus, unless
there is a
tie, each good has a salient attribute—the attribute on which it
stands out
more.
For my purposes, it is sufficient to consider what BGS’s
assumptions
imply about salience when the choice set contains only two
goods, with
p1 > p2 and q1 > q2. These assumptions imply that if q1/q2 >

p1/p2, quality
is the salient attribute for both goods; if that inequality is
reversed, price
is the salient attribute for both goods. To get an intuitive feel
for this
property, think of the wine example. Good 1 is the French wine,
with p1
= 20 and q1 = 9. Good 2 is the Austrian wine, with p1 = 10 and
q2 = 6.
Notice that q1/q2 < p1/p2. BGS’s assumptions imply that in this
case, the
most salient feature of the French wine is its high price relative
to the av-
erage price of the two wines; correspondingly, the most salient
feature of
17Ibid., p. 807.
18Ibid., p. 810.
the Austrian wine is its low price. But now suppose that the
qualities of
the wines are the same as before, but the prices are p1 = 50 and
p2 = 40;
now q1/q2 > p1/p2 (Suppose the choice is being made in a
restaurant rather
than a supermarket.) In this case, the most salient feature of the
French
wine is its high quality and the most salient feature of the
Austrian wine

is its low quality.
BGS’s third step is to model the behavior of a “salient thinker”
(i.e., a
nonrational consumer) by “distort[ing] the utility weights” that
the con-
sumer applies when evaluating goods. For the rational
consumer, both
attributes have a weight of 1 in the evaluation of every good. In
contrast,
when valuing any given good, the salient thinker uses a weight
greater
than 1 for its salient attribute and a weight less than 1 for its
nonsalient
attribute (with the sum of the weights always equal to 2).
BGS apply this model to a wide range of consumer behavior
prob-
lems, using the general strategy of “introducing salience-based
valuation
into a ‘rational’ economic model.”19 In these applications, they
describe
the effects of salience as “distortions” of what would otherwise
be “ra-
tional” choices. All of this exemplifies the dualistic modeling
strategy I
described in section 1. The behavior of BGS’s “salient thinker”
is deter-
mined by the interaction of two systems or processes—a set of
context-
independent latent preferences that are deemed to be rational,
and a psy-
chological mechanism that distorts these preferences. The
choices of the
salient thinker are determined by the distorted preferences, but
the hypo-
thetical choices of the rational consumer—that is, the consumer
who acts

on undistorted preferences—provide the normative benchmark.
This is a
model with an inner rational agent.
But what is the function of this benchmark in BGS’s model?
The es-
sence of the model is that the relative weights of the two
attributes differ
according to which attribute is salient. But which attribute is
salient for
any given good in any given choice set depends only on the
qualities and
prices of the goods in that choice set, and these are defined
independ-
ently of the consumer’s latent preferences. Thus, any results
that come
about because of changes in relative attribute weights are
independent of
latent preferences. The concept of latent preference serves no
explana-
tory purpose.
BGS’s example of the two wines illustrates this point. In the
story, the
consumer chooses the lower-quality Austrian wine when the two
wines
are priced at $10 and $20, but the higher-quality French wine
when the
prices are $40 and $50. Leaving aside the possibility of perverse
income
effects, this pattern of choice is inconsistent with standard
economic
theory; but it has long been recognized as a common feature of
human
19Ibid., p. 813.

590 Robert Sugden
decision-making.20 It can be explained in various ways, for
example, by
assuming diminishing sensitivity to changes in each attribute,21
or by as-
suming that expected prices act as reference points;22 BGS
provide a new
explanation in terms of salience. In the example, adding $30 to
the price
of each wine switches the salient attribute from price to quality.
(In gen-
eral, adding any constant to the prices of each of two goods
while keep-
ing the qualities constant can cause a switch in the salient
attribute; if
there is a switch, it must be from price to quality. Thus any
switch in
choice must be from the lower-quality good to the higher-
quality good.)
But notice that all of this is true (in the model) irrespective of
which
good the consumer rationally prefers.
This does not mean that in the world of the model, rational
prefer-
ences are unobservable. Consider a decision problem in which
there is
only one good in the everyday sense of the word, but the
consumer can
choose whether or not to buy it. BGS represent this as a choice
between
⟨ p1, q1⟩ and ⟨ p2, q2⟩ , with ⟨ p2, q2⟩ = ⟨ 0, 0⟩ representing
“not buying.” In
this special case, BGS’s preferred assumptions about the

salience func-
tion imply that the two attributes are equally salient, and hence
that the
salient thinker’s choices coincide with those of the rational
consumer.
Thus, rational preferences are revealed in the consumer’s
willingness to
pay for individual goods in situations in which only one good is
on offer.
Remember, however, that up to this point, the concept of
rationality has
not been given any interpretation, except as the benchmark
relative to
which distortion is defined. So the only interpretation that can
be given
to the proposition that willingness to pay reveals rational
preferences is
that rational preferences are defined by willingness to pay.
To put this another way, the empirical content of the model is
con-
tained in the idea that choices between goods are influenced by
the rela-
tive attention given to their attributes, and that more salient
attributes are
given more attention. A rational consumer is someone who
always gives
each attribute the right amount of attention. But what is the
right amount
of attention? In effect, BGS tell us that the right amount of
attention to
give each attribute is the attention that it is given in
willingness-to-pay
problems. But they do not explain what this statement means.
One possible reconstruction of the missing argument runs as
follows.
BGS are presupposing that the consumer has well-defined latent

prefer-
20See, for example, Leonard Savage, The Foundations of
Statistics (New York: Wiley,
1954), p. 103.
21Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Loss Aversion in
Riskless Choice: A Refer-
ence-Dependent Model,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106
(1991): 1039-61.
22Richard H. Thaler, “Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer
Choice,” Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization 1 (1980): 39-60.
ences between goods, defined as ⟨ quality, price⟩ pairs, and
that the latent
utility of any good is independent of which other goods are in
the choice
set. This presupposition is essential for the rest of the
reconstructed ar-
gument. For the cases that BGS’s model is intended to
represent, it is
deemed an acceptable simplification to assume a weighted
linear utility
function, with the implication that the consumer has a context-
independent utility weight αQ /αP for quality relative to price.
Thus if (as
in the wine example) his choices reveal implicit weights that are
context-

dependent, there must be some cases in which he chooses
contrary to his
latent preferences. If the qualitative pattern of context-
dependence is
consistent with a psychological theory of salience and attention,
it is rea-
sonable to infer that these are cases in which his rational
judgment of the
utility of the chosen good is distorted by salience effects
deriving from
comparisons between this good and other goods in the choice
set. Thus,
the best way to recover the consumer’s latent preferences is to
observe
his choices in situations in which there is as little scope as
possible for
cross-good comparisons. Willingness-to-pay problems meet this
re-
quirement—at least in principle.
The “in principle” qualification is needed because BGS extend
their
basic model to allow the salience of an attribute to depend not
only on
the content of the choice set, but also on “alternatives that the
decision
maker expects to find in the current choice setting,” and hence
on the
consumer’s expectations about prices.23 Thus, this method of
eliciting la-
tent preferences requires a setting in which “a good is evaluated
in isola-
tion and without price expectations.” BGS suggest that such
settings can
be created in “lab experiments.”24 In the light of decades of
attempts to
elicit willingness-to-pay valuations in experiments and surveys,

this sug-
gestion seems extraordinarily optimistic. Responses to
willingness-to-
pay and willingness-to-accept questions are known to be
influenced by
many kinds of irrelevant cues that draw attention to particular
answers.25
For example, if the elicitation exercise begins with a question
of the form
“Would you be willing to pay $x?” final responses are pulled
towards $x;
if respondents are asked to pick a point on a scale of possible
values, re-
sponses are pulled towards the middle of the scale. These
“anchoring”
23BGS, p. 820.
24Ibid., p. 828.
25Allen Parducci, “Category Judgment: A Range-Frequency
Model,” Psychological
Review 72 (1965): 407-18; Paul Slovic and Sarah Lichtenstein,
“Relative Importance of
Probabilities and Payoffs in Risk Taking,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology 78 (1968):
1-18; Eric Johnson and David Schkade, “Bias in Utility
Assessments: Further Evidence
and Explanations,” Management Science 35 (1989): 406-24;
Dan Ariely, George
Loewenstein, and Drazen Prelec, “Coherent Arbitrariness:
Stable Demand Curves With-
out Stable Preferences,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118
(2003): 73-105.
592 Robert Sugden

and “range/frequency” effects are particularly strong when (as
in stated
preference studies that try to elicit valuations for nonmarketed
goods,
such as changes in environmental quality) there is no customary
price
that the respondent can use as a benchmark. A natural
interpretation of
this evidence is that people find it very difficult to give a
monetary
valuation of any good in isolation, and that when required to do
so, they
unconsciously search for comparators and reference points.
So it is far from self-evident that individuals have well-defined
context-
independent latent preferences, ready to be elicited by
economists. Since
latent preferences play no role in BGS’s explanation of actual
choices,
we have been given no reason to think that the mental processes
that lie
behind these choices make use of any such construct. But it is
only by
assuming the existence of latent preferences that the concepts of
“ration-
ality” and “distortion” can be given any independent meaning.
4. A Psychological Model of Attention
My second example is a seminal contribution to the psychology
of
decision-making under uncertainty—decision field theory, as
proposed by

Jerome Busemeyer and James Townsend (hereafter “BT”).26
BT’s aim is
“to understand the motivational and cognitive mechanisms that
guide the
deliberation process involved in decisions under uncertainty.”
They are
particularly concerned with explaining two “unavoidable facts
about hu-
man decision making”—that the preferences of a given
individual over
given pairs of alternatives are subject to stochastic variation,
and that the
amount of time spent making a decision influences the final
choice.27
Thus, they need a model in which deliberation about what to
choose is a
process that occurs over time and includes some random
element.
BT’s basic model is of an individual who has to choose
between two
actions in a situation of uncertainty. Uncertainty is represented
by a set
of alternative events, one and only one of which will occur. An
action is
defined by the payoff that will occur in each event if that action
is chosen.
Payoffs are implicitly assumed to be measured on a ratio scale
and can
be positive, zero, or negative. BT assume the existence of a
utility func-
tion that assigns a real value u(x) to every payoff x. However,
the indi-
vidual is not assumed to attach objective probabilities to events.
BT say
that they are dealing with decisions under uncertainty (as
opposed to

risk), defined as problems in which “the decision maker must
learn and
26 Jerome R. Busemeyer and James T. Townsend, “Decision
Field Theory: A
Dynamic–Cognitive Approach to Decision Making in an
Uncertain Environment,”
Psychological Review 100 (1993): 432-59.
27Ibid., pp. 432-35.
infer the event probabilities from past experience.”28
Notice the formal similarities between this problem and the
one stud-
ied by BGS. BT’s “actions” and “events” are respectively
analogous with
BGS’s “goods” and “attributes.” The “payoffs” of actions in
events are
analogous with the “amounts” of attributes that goods possess.
BGS’s
model does not have an explicit analogue of BT’s utility
function for
payoffs, but that is only because BGS assume that utility is
linear in
amounts of attributes.29 In BT’s model, the individual’s
problem is to
make trade-offs between payoffs that occur in different events;
in BGS’s
model, it is to make trade-offs between amounts of different
attributes.

It may help to keep in mind a concrete example of a decision
problem
to which BT’s model might be applied. Consider Jane, who will
be work-
ing in some city for a fixed period and has to decide whether to
buy a
house or to rent one. She knows the current purchase and rental
prices of
property but is uncertain about how these prices will change
over the pe-
riod. If property prices rise, she will gain by buying rather than
renting; if
they fall, she will lose. She cannot assign objective
probabilities to these
events. (In fact, no one can: if she consults supposed experts,
she will find
that their judgments differ.) In this problem, the actions are
“buy” and
“rent” and the events are alternative rates of change in property
prices.
BT present decision field theory as a succession of amendments
to de-
terministic subjective expected utility theory, interpreted as a
decision
rule that assigns a weight to every event (normalized so that the
weights
sum to 1) and chooses whichever action has the higher weighted
average
utility. Expected utility theorists normally interpret each of
these weights
as a subjective probability, but BT offer a different
interpretation, saying:
“From a cognitive view, this weight reflects the amount of
attention
given to [the relevant event] on each presentation of the choice
prob-

lem.”30 Thus, BT’s model, like BGS’s, is one in which
decisions depend
on the distribution of the decision-maker’s attention (between
events or
between attributes).
In decision field theory, deliberation is a process that occurs
over time.
At any given moment during this process, there is a preference
state
measured on a real-valued scale; positive values represent
strength of
preference in favor of one of the actions, negative values
represent
strength of preference in favor of the other. Deliberation begins
with an
28Ibid., p. 436.
29One disanalogy between the problems should be pointed out.
BT’s utility function
is defined on payoffs, independently of the events in which they
occur, and so event-
independent utility measures are treated as inputs to the
deliberation process. On my
reading, BGS implicitly assume attribute-specific utilities as the
analogous inputs.
30Ibid., p. 436 (italics in original).
594 Robert Sugden
initial preference state. In “neutral” versions of the theory, the
initial
state is zero, but BT allow the possibility that the initial state is

“biased
by past experience” in the direction of the individual’s
decisions in simi-
lar previous problems.31 This mechanism has the effect of
reducing deci-
sion times and increasing the stability of choice in familiar
problems.
Deliberation is represented as sequential sampling of events.
Each
time an event is sampled, the utility difference between the two
actions
in that event is registered, and the preference state is updated in
the direc-
tion of the action with the higher utility. Deliberation ends
when the
preference state crosses a pre-determined upper or lower
threshold; the
action that is preferred in this state is then chosen. Sampling an
event is
interpreted as attending to its payoffs: “The basic idea is that
attention
may switch from one event to another within a single choice
trial.”32
Clearly, the probability that a given action is chosen depends
on
(among other things) the probabilities with which the different
events are
sampled. Under certain neutral assumptions (including that the
sampling
probability for each event remains constant during the process,
that the
initial preference state is zero, and that the upper and lower
thresholds
have the same absolute value), the action that is more likely to
be chosen
is the one with the higher weighted average utility when each

event is
weighted by the probability that it is sampled at each stage of
the process.
In other words, under these assumptions it is as if the individual
has a
subjective probability for each event and is more likely to
choose the ac-
tion with the higher subjective expected utility; but the as-if
probability
of any event is actually a measure of the individual’s propensity
to attend
to it in the deliberation process. On a strict reading of BT,
whether this
as-if probability can be interpreted as the individual’s
subjective judg-
ment of the likelihood of the event itself is left open. One might
say that
in leaving this question open, BT are working in the spirit of
Leonard
Savage’s subjectivist interpretation of probability as a property
of an in-
dividual’s preferences over actions, as revealed in her
decisions.33
In its most general form, decision field theory does not impose
these
neutral assumptions, and so does not necessarily generate
decisions that
can be rationalized by a stochastic form of subjective expected
utility
theory. But, given the utility function, the initial preference
state, the de-
cision thresholds, and a full specification of the mechanism that
deter-
mines the distribution of the individual’s attention, BT’s model
generates
stochastic decisions and associated decision times. With one

exception, it
does so without using any concept of “correctness” in decisions.
31Ibid., p. 441.
32Ibid., p. 438.
33Savage, The Foundations of Statistics.
The exception appears in BT’s discussion of the implications of
alter-
native values of the threshold, on the simplifying assumption
that the up-
per and lower thresholds have the same absolute value θ. In this
discus-
sion, BT define the correct action as the action that produces
the higher
subjective expected utility. They then say:
[T]he threshold criterion θ controls speed–accuracy or cost–
benefit trade-offs in decision
making. On the one hand, if the cost of prolonging the decision
is low or the cost of mak-
ing an incorrect decision is high, then a high threshold is
selected. On the other hand, if
the cost of prolonging the decision is high or the cost of making
an incorrect decision is
low, then a low threshold is selected.34
In a footnote to this passage, BT discuss a possible amendment
to their

model, according to which the value of θ decreases over the
deliberation
period. Since the fact that the threshold has not been crossed
after a long
time is evidence that the difference in attention-weighted utility
between
the actions is relatively low, this amendment would implement
what
might be called a speed–accuracy trade-off by means of a
simple and
well-defined psychological mechanism. If this is all that BT
have in mind
in the quoted passage, nothing much hangs on their definition of
“cor-
rectness.” Nevertheless, that definition is question-begging. For
BT, sub-
jective expected utility is merely a construct that, under certain
assump-
tions, can be read off from the decisions produced by the
sequential sam-
pling process; the as-if probabilities used in the definition of
this con-
struct are determined by the distribution of attention. It is not
clear why
the individual’s propensities to attend to the different events
should de-
termine which action is deemed to be the correct choice.
Think about Jane choosing between buying a house and renting
one.
If she deliberates in the way described by BT’s model, her
attention will
switch in a random fashion between thinking about a rising
property
market (and about the corresponding benefits of buying) and
thinking
about a falling property market (and about the corresponding

benefits of
renting). Suppose that if she deliberates for a long time and
with many
switches of attention, she can be expected to spend 60 per cent
of the de-
liberation period thinking about a rising market and 40 per cent
of the pe-
riod thinking about a falling market. How can that fact make the
correct
choice for Jane be the one that has the higher expected utility
when the
probabilities of the two events are set at 0.6 and 0.4?
One possible answer is that BT’s concept of “correct” choice is
not
intended to be normative, in the sense of saying what the
individual
ought to choose; rather, it is an empirical concept, referring to
the long-
run tendency of deliberation. (It would not sound so odd to say
that Jane
34BT, p. 440.
596 Robert Sugden
has a latent preference for the action that she would be more
likely to
choose after long deliberation.)
BT may also be thinking of possible extensions of their theory
that
could close the gap between the normative and empirical
concepts of
correctness. Recall that in their definition of “uncertainty,” they

refer to
the event probabilities that the decision-maker has to learn from
experi-
ence. It would not be inconsistent with this definition to assume
the exis-
tence of event probabilities, perhaps defined as relative
frequencies in a
(possibly hypothetical) series of exactly repeated trials. Perhaps
BT are
entertaining the hypothesis that if an individual faces exactly
the same
decision problem many times, the distribution of her attention
between
events converges to the corresponding distribution of event
probabilities,
irrespective of contextual factors. If this attention hypothesis
were true
(and given other neutral assumptions), the long-run tendency of
repeated
decision-making would be towards a state in which the action
that was
more likely to be chosen was the one with the higher weighted
average
utility when each event is weighted by its “objective”
probability. One
might call this action “latently preferred” (or the “correct”
choice) in an
empirical sense. If one believed that expected utility theory was
grounded on compelling principles of rationality, one might also
call that
action “correct” in a normative sense. And so, if the attention
hypothesis
were confirmed, one might claim that decision field theory
isolates the
psychological substrate of context-independent latent
preferences of just

the kind that behavioral welfare economics needs.
But there are some very big “if”s here. Notice in particular that
the
argument sketched in the previous paragraph depends on
assumptions
that imply that if the same decision problem is repeated many
times, any
systematic context-dependence effects gradually disappear. If it
really
were the case that the choices of experienced decision-makers
reliably
revealed context-independent preferences, most behavioral
economists
would probably agree that the preferences to be used in
normative analy-
sis should be those that individuals reveal after having
sufficient experi-
ence of relevant choice problems. But the truth is that after a
quarter of a
century of experimental investigation of the influence of
experience on
decision “anomalies,” the only general conclusion that can be
drawn is
that some but not all anomalies seem to decay with some but not
all
kinds of experience.35 I think we have to accept that context-
dependent
35This literature is too large and diverse to be usefully
reviewed in a philosophically
oriented paper. Graham Loomes, Chris Starmer, and Robert
Sugden, “Preference Rever-
sals and Disparities Between Willingness to Pay and
Willingness to Accept in Repeated
Markets,” Journal of Economic Psychology 31 (2010): 374-87,

report one experiment
that found mixed results, and refer to other relevant papers.
choice is not just a symptom of inexperience.
Indeed, one might think that the fundamental principles of
decision
field theory provide reasons for expecting context-dependence
to be a
pervasive and persistent feature of human decision-making. If
the distri-
bution of an individual’s attention between alternative events or
different
attributes is a crucial determinant of her decisions, any
“irrelevant” factor
that influences the distribution of attention will be capable of
inducing
context-dependent choices. It does not seem at all self-evident
that these
influences will become less powerful or less effective as a
decision-
maker gains experience.
If context-dependence is a systematic and persistent
consequence of
psychological mechanisms that control the distribution of
attention, be-
havioral welfare economics has to face the question to which
BGS’s
model provided no satisfactory answer: How can we identify
context-

independent latent preferences? As an explanation of how
attention in-
fluences choice, decision field theory is much deeper and more
convinc-
ing than BGS’s economic model; but it does not answer that
question.
What it does do is to help us understand why the presupposition
of the
question is mistaken. If context-independent latent preferences
play no
role in psychological explanations of actual deliberation or
actual choice,
we should not expect psychology to tell us how to identify
them.
5. Discussion
The aim of behavioral welfare economics, as I understand it, is
to show
how welfare judgments or public policy decisions can respect
each indi-
vidual’s own subjective preferences, as revealed in her choices
after the
effects of psychologically induced errors have been controlled
for. My
purpose in discussing these two models of attention was to
explore
whether a psychological analysis of decision-making as mental
process-
ing might allow an empirical distinction to be made between
latent pref-
erences and error. These models are interesting because they
represent
attention-based mental processes that can induce context-
dependent

choices, and because their authors—particularly the authors of
the model
that belongs to behavioral economics—make use of concepts of
“rational”
or “correct” latent preference.
I have argued that these concepts serve no explanatory purpose.
In
these models, individuals’ decisions depend on the relative
attention
given to different attributes or events, allowing context-
dependent
choices to be explained by causal factors that impact on the
mental proc-
esses that control the distribution of attention. Of course, if one
chooses
to define any particular preference as “correct,” there is a
correspond-
598 Robert Sugden
ingly “correct” distribution of attention. And given any such
definition of
correctness, there is a corresponding definition of “error,”
namely, that
an error occurs when an incorrect choice is made; the cause of
the error
is an incorrect distribution of attention. One might choose to
call this
causal mechanism a “bias” or “distortion” of correct reasoning.
But none
of this is any help in determining which preferences are latent
in the in-
dividual and which are not.

If behavioral welfare economics is to succeed in its aim, it has
to be
able to identify some mode of reasoning or mental processing
that, in
some well-defined hypothetical situation, would lead the
individual to
reveal context-independent latent preferences; it must have
some defen-
sible criterion for defining errors in reasoning; and it must
provide good
reasons for thinking that this situation is one in which such
errors are
particularly unlikely to occur. I submit that it has not found any
way of
doing this, and that the prospects of success are poor. The root
of the
problem, I believe, is that when economists (and indeed many
philoso-
phers, and perhaps even some psychologists) think about human
agency,
they find it hard to avoid using a mental model in which humans
are ul-
timately rational beings. This model may recognize that humans
can hold
irrational beliefs and make irrational decisions, but at some
deep level,
irrationality is understood as the product of mistakes. These
mistakes
must be defined relative to some “true” preferences—the
preferences of
the human individual’s “true self.” This is the model of the
inner rational
agent. We need to recognize that this model is pre-scientific. To
ques-
tions about the role of latent preferences, the best answer is the
one that,

in another context, Laplace gave to Napoleon: I had no need of
that hy-
pothesis.36
Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science, and
School of Economics, University of East Anglia
[email protected]
36A previous version of this paper was presented at a workshop
on the topic “Re-
specting Context-Dependent Preferences” at Umeå University in
2014. I thank partici-
pants at that workshop, Sudeep Bhatia, Kalle Grill, Graham
Loomes, Danny Scoccia, and
an anonymous referee for valuable comments. My work was
supported by the Economic
and Social Research Council through the Network for Integrated
Behavioural Science
(grant reference ES/K002201/1).
Copyright of Social Theory & Practice is the property of Florida
State University, Dept. of
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EDUCATION AND TREATMENT OF CHILDREN Vol. 38, No.
3, 2015

Pages 329–344
Seven Basic Steps to Solving Ethical
Dilemmas in Special Education:
A Decision-Making Framework
Nancy Stockall
Sam Houston State University
Lindsay R. Dennis
Florida State University
Abstract
This article presents a seven-step framework for decision
making to solve
ethical issues in special education. The authors developed the
framework
from the existing literature and theoretical frameworks of
justice, critique,
care, and professionalism. The authors briefly discuss each
theoretical frame-
work and then describe the decision-making framework and
guide the reader
through the framework using an illustrative case approach.
Ms. Emma is a special education teacher working with students
identified as having learning disabilities (LD). Now that it is
the end of the year, Ms. Emma is thinking about which students
on
her class roster will be taking the state-mandated benchmark
tests.
During a brief informal meeting with the principal, Ms. Emma
is

surprised to hear that the principal wants several of the students
with learning disabilities to take alternate assessments, rather
than
the standard benchmark test. Ms. Emma knows the law
stipulates
that alternate assessments are only administered to children
with
disabilities who are unable to take the benchmark tests, even
when
they are provided with accommodations. When Ms. Emma
inquires
as to why the principal wants the students to take alternate
assess-
ments rather than the curriculum-based measures, the principal
replies, “They will never pass the benchmarks and that will
bring
down our scores. We can’t risk not meeting the state’s annual
yearly
progress targets. Our school barely met the state averages last
year.”
Ms. Emma left the meeting feeling very uneasy. Going against
the
principal in the upcoming individual education plan (IEP)
meeting
could jeopardize her job, but she also didn’t want to be
pressured
Contact: Nancy Stockall, Sam Houston State University,
Language, Literacy and Spe-
cial Populations, Teacher Education Center, Box 2119,
Huntsville, TX 77341–2119; email
[email protected]
etc_38.3_03_Stockall.indd 329 8/13/15 2:35 PM

330 STOCKALL et al.
into doing something illegal. How can she and the IEP team
resolve
this ethical dilemma?
Ms. Emma is certainly not the first nor the last special educa-
tion teacher to be faced with an ethical dilemma. An ethical
dilemma
is a situation in which an individual or team is faced with a
difficult
choice while fully aware of the nature of that choice and the
affect-
ing outcomes for good or ill (Paul, French, & Cranston-Gingras,
2001).
How teachers, like Ms. Emma, resolve this dilemma will affect
the
lives of many people, including the student and family, the
principal,
society in general, and the teachers. Professional organizations,
such
as the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), provide teachers
with
a professional code of ethics that guide their practice. For
example, the
CEC code of ethics emphasizes the need for special education
profes-
sionals to “work with the standards and policies of their
profession”
(CEC, 2009, p. 1). While the professional code of ethics seeks
to guide
educators toward ethical practice by explaining the standards,
know-
ing how and when to enact these standards within differing
contexts
remains up to the individual to explore and define (Bigbee,

2012).
The situation outlined in the vignette calls for a disciplined
reflective
stance, one that requires a team to stand back from everyday
practices
and their own embedded values to make an informed decision.
To
act in such a manner requires not only a set of principles but
also a
decision-making framework that guides the team through a
process
that culminates in a well-reasoned decision.
While there exist several decision-making models in the lit-
erature, most are specifically geared toward a particular
discipline,
such as medicine, counseling, educational leadership, or psy-
chology. Cottone and Claus (2000) reviewed nine decision-
making
models from the counseling literature and found that the effects
of
decision-making models continue to be uncertain, and many
prac-
tice-based models fail to integrate theoretical tenets. Vergés
(2010)
proposed that ethical models should include contextual factors
and
some researchers have developed models that are particular to
spe-
cialty areas such as psychology (e.g., Knapp & VandeCreek,
2007).
However, decision-making models specifically designed for
special
education teachers dealing with ethical situations are clearly
lack-
ing in the current special education literature. The purpose of

this
article is to provide teachers and school-based teams with
practical
suggestions on how to resolve ethical dilemmas using a seven-
step
decision-making framework, or set of assumptions, that can
guide
the team toward resolving ethical issues. The framework is
gleaned
from the existing literature that integrates four theoretical
perspec-
tives: justice, critique, care, and professionalism. This
particular
331SEVEN BASIC STEPS TO SOLVING ETHICAL
DILEMMAS
conceptual framework is suggested as a means for education
teams
to gain a disciplined reflective stance. First, we provide
background
on the theories that inform the framework and we then describe
the
decision-making framework in more detail.
Theoretical Background
The theoretical perspectives integrated within the decision-
making framework proposed in this article can assist teachers in
appraising and balancing conflicting values in specific contexts.
The
framework is constructed from the theories of justice, critique,

care,
and professionalism (Foucault, Kritzman, & Sheridan, 1988;
Gilli-
gan, 1982; Noddings, 1982; Rawls, 1971; Shapiro & Stefkovich,
2005).
Each of these represents a perspective or way of seeing a
particular
problem or dilemma. Examining issues from multiple theoretical
per-
spectives can reveal a team’s propensity to view issues from a
domi-
nant perspective and also allows the team to consciously
redefine an
issue from an alternative perspective. The decision framework
here
accomplishes this goal by presenting questions that shift the
thinking
of team members to consider varying perspectives before
coming to
a decision. The complexity of situations and diversity of
cultures in
today’s schools require that educators examine issues broadly to
bet-
ter understand those issues. While a rich and thorough
discussion of
each theory is not within the scope of this article, a brief
overview is
provided in Table 1. It should be noted that we have arbitrarily
teased
apart the perspectives of justice, critique, care, and
professionalism to
simplify the perspectives presented while still recognizing the
com-
plex intersections that occur among them.
A Decision-Making Process Framework

A decision-making process framework as proposed in this
article
has several advantages over using a single professional code of
con-
duct to resolve ethical dilemmas. First, a framework allows the
team
to uncover the details and nuances that create a professional
dilemma
in a specific context. Second, a framework helps organize and
create
automaticity in metacognition. That is, the team will need to
monitor
and control its thinking process to solve ethical problems and
do it
frequently enough to make the process routine and at a level of
auto-
maticity (Martinez, 2006). Thus, a decision-making framework
allows
the team to enhance its own metacognitive skills and invites
proactive
332 STOCKALL et al.
T
ab
le
1
.

T
h
eo
ry
O
v
er
v
ie
w
T
h
eo
re
ti
ca
l
P
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e

D
es
cr
ip
ti
o
n
Ju
st
ic
e
T
h
e
ju
st
ic
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v

e
h
o
ld
s
th
at
a
ll
p
er
so
n
s
sh
o
u
ld
b
e
tr
ea
te
d

e
q
u
al
ly
a
n
d
f
ai
rl
y.
M
o
re
o
v
er
, t
h
e
ju
st
ic

e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
en
ta
il
s
th
e
co
n
ce
p
t
o
f
fa
ir
n
es

s
in
t
h
at
in
d
iv
id
u
al
s
sh
o
u
ld
c
o
u
n
t
as
e
q

u
al
s
an
d
t
h
at
t
h
ey
a
re
f
re
e
an
d
m
o
ra
l (
R
aw

ls
,
19
71
).
H
er
e,
t
h
e
th
eo
ry
o
f
ju
st
ic
e
is
o
n
e

th
at
v
ie
w
s
ri
g
h
ts
a
s
co
m
in
g
f
ro
m
s
o
ci
et
y

t
h
at
a
re
e
st
ab
li
sh
ed
in
la
w
. T
o
v
ie
w
an
e
th
ic

al
d
il
em
m
a
fr
o
m
a
ju
st
ic
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
m
ea
n

s
th
at
o
n
e
is
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
p
ri
m
ar
il
y
w
it
h
g
o

v
er
n
in
g
la
w
s
th
at
a
re
b
as
ed
o
n
u
n
iv
er
sa
l p

ri
n
ci
p
le
s
th
at
c
an
b
e
im
p
ar
ti
al
a
n
d
v
er
ifi
ab

le
. S
o
w
it
h
in
t
h
e
co
n
te
xt
o
f
sp
ec
ia
l e
d
u
ca
ti

o
n
, t
h
e
te
am
w
o
u
ld
w
an
t
to
p
o
se
q
u
es
ti
o

n
s
su
ch
a
s:
“
W
h
at
a
re
t
h
e
la
w
s
th
at
g
o
v
er

n
s
ta
te
-m
an
d
at
ed
t
es
ts
f
o
r
ch
il
d
re
n
w
it
h
d

is
ab
il
-
it
ie
s?
”
T
h
e
ju
st
ic
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
a
ss
u
m

es
t
h
at
la
w
s
ca
n
b
e
cr
ea
te
d
t
o
e
q
u
al
iz
e
th

e
d
is
tr
ib
u
ti
o
n
o
f
g
o
o
d
s
an
d
s
er
v
ic
es
t

o
ea
ch
p
er
so
n
in
a
f
ai
r
an
d
e
q
u
it
ab
le
w
ay
, a

n
a
ss
u
m
p
ti
o
n
t
h
at
is
v
eh
em
en
tl
y
a
rg
u
ed
b

y
c
ri
ti
ca
l t
h
eo
ri
st
s.
C
ri
ti
q
u
e
L
ik
e
th
e
ju
st

ic
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e,
t
h
e
cr
it
iq
u
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e

at
te
n
d
s
to
t
h
e
n
at
u
re
o
f
la
w
s,
b
u
t
th
is
v

ie
w
is
m
o
re
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
w
it
h
d
et
er
m
in
in
g
w

h
et
h
er
a
la
w
o
r
th
e
le
g
al
p
ro
ce
ss
is
ju
st
. T
h
e

cr
it
iq
u
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
is
in
fo
rm
ed
b
y
p
o
st
m
o
d
er

n
c
ri
ti
-
ca
l t
h
eo
ry
a
n
d
c
en
te
rs
o
n
t
h
e
ex
am

in
at
io
n
o
f
so
ci
al
p
ro
b
le
m
s
in
h
is
to
ri
ca
l a
n
d

c
u
lt
u
ra
l c
o
n
te
xt
s.
F
o
r
ex
am
p
le
, c
ri
ti
ca
l
ra

ce
t
h
eo
ry
p
u
rp
o
rt
s
th
at
r
ac
e
is
v
ie
w
ed
a
s
n

o
rm
al
in
A
m
er
ic
an
s
o
ci
et
y
b
ec
au
se
it
is
s
o
e
n

ta
n
g
le
d
in
o
u
r
ev
er
y
d
ay
li
v
es
t
h
at
it
s
ee

m
s
a
n
at
u
ra
l c
o
n
d
it
io
n
(
St
ef
an
ci
c
&
D
el
g

ad
o
, 1
99
9)
. T
h
u
s,
c
ri
ti
ca
l t
h
eo
ry
s
ee
k
s
to
m
ak

e
th
e
“i
n
v
is
ib
le
”
v
is
ib
le
. W
h
en
e
xa
m
in
in
g
a

n
is
su
e
fr
o
m
t
h
e
cr
it
iq
u
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
, o
n
e
ch

al
le
n
g
es
t
h
e
is
su
es
t
h
ro
u
g
h
d
eb
at
e
an
d
s

ee
k
s
to
re
d
efi
n
e
o
r
re
fr
am
e
th
e
co
n
ce
p
ts
o

f
p
o
w
er
, p
ri
v
il
eg
e,
c
u
lt
u
re
, l
an
g
u
ag
e,
a
n

d
e
v
en
ju
st
ic
e
(S
h
ap
ir
o
&
S
te
fk
o
v
ic
h
, 2
00
5)

.
E
ss
en
ti
al
ly
, t
h
e
cr
it
ic
al
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
se
ek
s

to
c
h
al
le
n
g
e
th
e
p
as
si
v
e
ac
ce
p
ta
n
ce
o
f
th

e
“w
ay
t
h
in
g
s
ar
e”
a
n
d
q
u
es
ti
o
n
s
th
e
in
ju

st
ic
es
a
n
d
in
eq
u
al
it
ie
s
in
s
o
ci
et
al
s
y
st
em
s.

C
ar
e
W
h
il
e
th
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
o
f
ju
st
ic
e
an
d

c
ri
ti
q
u
e
b
o
th
e
n
co
m
p
as
s
th
e
id
ea
li
ze
d
n

o
ti
o
n
o
f
th
e
“i
so
la
te
d
in
d
iv
id
u
al
,”
t
h
e
et

h
ic
o
f
ca
re
f
o
cu
se
s
o
n
t
h
e
fu
n
d
am
en
ta
l e
le

m
en
ts
o
f
re
la
ti
o
n
sh
ip
s.
I
t
is
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
w
it

h
m
ee
ti
n
g
t
h
e
n
ee
d
s
o
f
o
u
r-
se
lv
es
a
n
d

o
th
er
s
an
d
b
u
il
d
s
o
n
t
h
e
se
n
se
o
f
o
b
li

g
at
io
n
w
e
h
av
e
to
c
ar
e
fo
r
th
o
se
w
h
o
a
re
d

ep
en
d
en
t
o
r
v
u
ln
er
ab
le
.
T
h
e
et
h
ic
o
f
ca
re

c
an
b
e
d
es
cr
ib
ed
a
s
o
n
e
in
w
h
ic
h
t
h
e
ac
ti

v
it
y
o
f
ca
ri
n
g
is
a
m
o
ra
l o
n
e,
r
at
h
er
t
h
an

a
s
et
o
f
p
ri
n
ci
p
le
s
to
b
e
fo
ll
o
w
ed
. T
h
is
p

er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
em
p
h
as
iz
es
r
es
p
o
n
si
b
il
it
ie
s
an

d
r
el
at
io
n
sh
ip
s
ra
th
er
t
h
an
r
u
le
s
an
d
r
ig
h

ts
. I
t
is
a
ls
o
b
o
u
n
d
t
o
c
o
n
cr
et
e
si
tu
at

io
n
s
ra
th
er
t
h
an
a
b
st
ra
ct
a
n
d
f
o
rm
al
o
n
es

(
Tr
o
n
to
, 1
99
3)
.
DILEMMAS
T
ab
le
1
.
T
h
eo
ry

O
v
er
v
ie
w
T
h
eo
re
ti
ca
l
P
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
D
es
cr
ip

ti
o
n
Ju
st
ic
e
T
h
e
ju
st
ic
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
h
o
ld

s
th
at
a
ll
p
er
so
n
s
sh
o
u
ld
b
e
tr
ea
te
d
e
q
u
al

ly
a
n
d
f
ai
rl
y.
M
o
re
o
v
er
, t
h
e
ju
st
ic
e
fr
am
ew

o
rk
en
ta
il
s
th
e
co
n
ce
p
t
o
f
fa
ir
n
es
s
in
t
h

at
in
d
iv
id
u
al
s
sh
o
u
ld
c
o
u
n
t
as
e
q
u
al
s
an

d
t
h
at
t
h
ey
a
re
f
re
e
an
d
m
o
ra
l (
R
aw
ls
,
19
71

).
H
er
e,
t
h
e
th
eo
ry
o
f
ju
st
ic
e
is
o
n
e
th
at
v
ie

w
s
ri
g
h
ts
a
s
co
m
in
g
f
ro
m
s
o
ci
et
y
t
h
at
a

re
e
st
ab
li
sh
ed
in
la
w
. T
o
v
ie
w
an
e
th
ic
al
d
il
em

m
a
fr
o
m
a
ju
st
ic
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
m
ea
n
s
th
at
o

n
e
is
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
p
ri
m
ar
il
y
w
it
h
g
o
v
er
n
in

g
la
w
s
th
at
a
re
b
as
ed
o
n
u
n
iv
er
sa
l p
ri
n
ci
p

le
s
th
at
c
an
b
e
im
p
ar
ti
al
a
n
d
v
er
ifi
ab
le
. S
o
w

it
h
in
t
h
e
co
n
te
xt
o
f
sp
ec
ia
l e
d
u
ca
ti
o
n
, t
h

e
te
am
w
o
u
ld
w
an
t
to
p
o
se
q
u
es
ti
o
n
s
su
ch

a
s:
“
W
h
at
a
re
t
h
e
la
w
s
th
at
g
o
v
er
n
s
ta
te

-m
an
d
at
ed
t
es
ts
f
o
r
ch
il
d
re
n
w
it
h
d
is
ab
il
-

it
ie
s?
”
T
h
e
ju
st
ic
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
a
ss
u
m
es
t
h
at

la
w
s
ca
n
b
e
cr
ea
te
d
t
o
e
q
u
al
iz
e
th
e
d
is
tr

ib
u
ti
o
n
o
f
g
o
o
d
s
an
d
s
er
v
ic
es
t
o
ea
ch

p
er
so
n
in
a
f
ai
r
an
d
e
q
u
it
ab
le
w
ay
, a
n
a
ss
u

m
p
ti
o
n
t
h
at
is
v
eh
em
en
tl
y
a
rg
u
ed
b
y
c
ri
ti

ca
l t
h
eo
ri
st
s.
C
ri
ti
q
u
e
L
ik
e
th
e
ju
st
ic
e
p
er

sp
ec
ti
v
e,
t
h
e
cr
it
iq
u
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
at
te
n
d

s
to
t
h
e
n
at
u
re
o
f
la
w
s,
b
u
t
th
is
v
ie
w
is
m

o
re
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
w
it
h
d
et
er
m
in
in
g
w
h
et
h
er

a
la
w
o
r
th
e
le
g
al
p
ro
ce
ss
is
ju
st
. T
h
e
cr
it
iq
u

e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
is
in
fo
rm
ed
b
y
p
o
st
m
o
d
er
n
c
ri
ti

-
ca
l t
h
eo
ry
a
n
d
c
en
te
rs
o
n
t
h
e
ex
am
in
at
io
n

o
f
so
ci
al
p
ro
b
le
m
s
in
h
is
to
ri
ca
l a
n
d
c
u
lt
u

ra
l c
o
n
te
xt
s.
F
o
r
ex
am
p
le
, c
ri
ti
ca
l
ra
ce
t
h
eo

ry
p
u
rp
o
rt
s
th
at
r
ac
e
is
v
ie
w
ed
a
s
n
o
rm
al
in

A
m
er
ic
an
s
o
ci
et
y
b
ec
au
se
it
is
s
o
e
n
ta
n
g
le

d
in
o
u
r
ev
er
y
d
ay
li
v
es
t
h
at
it
s
ee
m
s
a
n

at
u
ra
l c
o
n
d
it
io
n
(
St
ef
an
ci
c
&
D
el
g
ad
o
, 1
99

9)
. T
h
u
s,
c
ri
ti
ca
l t
h
eo
ry
s
ee
k
s
to
m
ak
e
th
e
“i

n
v
is
ib
le
”
v
is
ib
le
. W
h
en
e
xa
m
in
in
g
a
n
is
su
e

fr
o
m
t
h
e
cr
it
iq
u
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
, o
n
e
ch
al
le
n
g

es
t
h
e
is
su
es
t
h
ro
u
g
h
d
eb
at
e
an
d
s
ee
k
s
to

re
d
efi
n
e
o
r
re
fr
am
e
th
e
co
n
ce
p
ts
o
f
p
o
w

er
, p
ri
v
il
eg
e,
c
u
lt
u
re
, l
an
g
u
ag
e,
a
n
d
e
v
en

ju
st
ic
e
(S
h
ap
ir
o
&
S
te
fk
o
v
ic
h
, 2
00
5)
.
E
ss
en

ti
al
ly
, t
h
e
cr
it
ic
al
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
se
ek
s
to
c
h
al

le
n
g
e
th
e
p
as
si
v
e
ac
ce
p
ta
n
ce
o
f
th
e
“w
ay
t

h
in
g
s
ar
e”
a
n
d
q
u
es
ti
o
n
s
th
e
in
ju
st
ic
es
a

n
d
in
eq
u
al
it
ie
s
in
s
o
ci
et
al
s
y
st
em
s.
C
ar
e
W

h
il
e
th
e
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
o
f
ju
st
ic
e
an
d
c
ri
ti
q

u
e
b
o
th
e
n
co
m
p
as
s
th
e
id
ea
li
ze
d
n
o
ti
o
n

o
f
th
e
“i
so
la
te
d
in
d
iv
id
u
al
,”
t
h
e
et
h
ic
o
f

ca
re
f
o
cu
se
s
o
n
t
h
e
fu
n
d
am
en
ta
l e
le
m
en
ts
o

f
re
la
ti
o
n
sh
ip
s.
I
t
is
c
o
n
ce
rn
ed
w
it
h
m
ee
ti

n
g
t
h
e
n
ee
d
s
o
f
o
u
r-
se
lv
es
a
n
d
o
th
er
s

an
d
b
u
il
d
s
o
n
t
h
e
se
n
se
o
f
o
b
li
g
at
io
n

w
e
h
av
e
to
c
ar
e
fo
r
th
o
se
w
h
o
a
re
d
ep
en
d
en

t
o
r
v
u
ln
er
ab
le
.
T
h
e
et
h
ic
o
f
ca
re
c
an
b
e

d
es
cr
ib
ed
a
s
o
n
e
in
w
h
ic
h
t
h
e
ac
ti
v
it
y
o

f
ca
ri
n
g
is
a
m
o
ra
l o
n
e,
r
at
h
er
t
h
an
a
s
et
o

f
p
ri
n
ci
p
le
s
to
b
e
fo
ll
o
w
ed
. T
h
is
p
er
sp
ec
ti

v
e
em
p
h
as
iz
es
r
es
p
o
n
si
b
il
it
ie
s
an
d
r
el
at

io
n
sh
ip
s
ra
th
er
t
h
an
r
u
le
s
an
d
r
ig
h
ts
. I
t
is

a
ls
o
b
o
u
n
d
t
o
c
o
n
cr
et
e
si
tu
at
io
n
s
ra

th
er
t
h
an
a
b
st
ra
ct
a
n
d
f
o
rm
al
o
n
es
(
Tr
o
n

to
, 1
99
3)
.
P
ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
is
m
T
h
e
id
ea
o
f
a
p

ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
p
er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
is
o
n
e
in
w
h
ic
h
t
h

e
m
o
ra
l i
m
p
er
at
iv
e
is
t
o
s
er
v
e
th
e
b
es
t
in

te
re
st
o
f
th
e
st
u
d
en
t.
B
y
p
ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
, w
e

m
ea
n
t
h
at
t
h
e
ed
u
ca
to
r
is
r
eg
ar
d
ed
a
s
h
ig

h
ly
q
u
al
ifi
ed
a
n
d
e
d
u
ca
te
d
f
ro
m
a
n
in
st
it

u
ti
o
n
t
h
at
is
r
ec
-
o
g
n
iz
ed
b
y
a
n
a
cc
re
d

it
in
g
o
rg
an
iz
at
io
n
(
e.
g
.,
th
e
C
o
u
n
ci
l f
o
r

E
xc
ep
ti
o
n
al
C
h
il
d
re
n
)
an
d
w
h
o
p
o
ss
es
se

s
th
e
k
n
o
w
le
d
g
e
an
d
s
k
il
ls
t
o
t
ea
ch
in
e

d
u
ca
ti
o
n
. T
h
e
C
E
C
c
o
d
e
o
f
et
h
ic
s
is
c

o
n
st
ru
ct
ed
f
ro
m
e
ig
h
t
fu
n
d
am
en
ta
l p
ri
n
ci
p

le
s
th
at
g
u
id
e
a
sp
ec
ia
l e
d
u
ca
to
r’
s
p
ra
ct
ic
e,

a
n
d
m
em
b
er
s
o
f
th
e
sp
ec
ia
l e
d
u
ca
ti
o
n
p
ro

fe
ss
io
n
a
re
r
es
p
o
n
si
b
le
f
o
r
u
p
h
o
ld
in
g

e
ac
h
o
f
th
e
p
ri
n
ci
p
le
s
(C
E
C
, 2
00
9)
. W
h
il
e

re
la
te
d
t
o
t
h
e
fr
am
ew
o
rk
o
f
ju
st
ic
e,
t
h
is
p

er
sp
ec
ti
v
e
in
cl
u
d
es
o
n
e’
s
o
w
n
v
al
u
es
a
n

d
b
el
ie
fs
n
ec
es
sa
ry
f
o
r
d
ea
li
n
g
w
it
h
c
o

m
p
le
x
is
su
es
in
w
h
ic
h
t
h
e
p
ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
c
o

d
e
co
n
fl
ic
ts
w
it
h
o
n
e’
s
p
er
so
n
al
c
o
d
e
o

f
et
h
ic
s.
F
o
r
in
st
an
ce
, o
n
e
p
ri
n
ci
p
le
in
t
h

e
C
E
C
c
o
d
e
o
f
et
h
ic
s
st
at
es
t
h
at
“
sp
ec
ia

l e
d
u
ca
ti
o
n
p
ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
s
se
ek
t
o
u
p
h
o
ld

an
d
im
p
ro
v
e
w
h
er
e
n
ec
es
sa
ry
t
h
e
la
w
s,
r

eg
u
la
ti
o
n
s,
a
n
d
p
o
li
ci
es
g
o
v
er
n
in
g
t
h

e
d
el
iv
er
y
o
f
sp
ec
ia
l e
d
u
ca
ti
o
n
a
n
d
re
la

te
d
s
er
v
ic
es
a
n
d
t
h
e
p
ra
ct
ic
e
o
f
th
ei
r
p

ro
fe
ss
io
n
”
(C
E
C
, 2
00
9)
. H
o
w
ev
er
, i
f
th
e
an
in
d

iv
id
u
al
o
r
te
am
’s
m
o
ra
l v
al
u
es
co
n
fl
ic
t
w
it

h
t
h
e
n
at
u
re
o
f
th
e
p
o
li
ci
es
in
st
at
ed
, t
h
e

et
h
ic
o
f
p
ro
fe
ss
io
n
al
is
m
m
ak
es
t
h
e
w
el
l-
b

ei
n
g
o
f
st
u
d
en
ts
t
h
e
p
ri
-
m
ar
y
v
al
u
e
o

f
al
l d
ec
is
io
n
m
ak
in
g
a
n
d
a
ct
io
n
s
(S
h
ap
ir
o

&
S
te
fk
o
v
ic
h
, 2
00
5)
.
334 STOCKALL et al.
Table 2.
Additional Ethical Dilemma Example
Scenario:
Twelve-year-old Maria is Latina and has autism. Maria is able
to read at grade level, but
has difficulty with reading comprehension. She is included in
the language arts gen-
eral education class at her middle school, and comes to the
resource room for direct

instruction on reading comprehension and math. One of Maria’s
IEP goals is to partici-
pate in academic discussions with same-age peers in the general
education classroom.
When the special education teacher visited the seventh-grade
language arts class, she
saw Maria working on word searches in the back of the room
while the other students
were engaged in a whole-class discussion. When asked why
Maria was in the back of the
room, the general education teacher explained that Maria got
very anxious during their
discussions, but calmed down quickly when completing the
worksheets. The general
education teacher indicated that the new inclusion policy was
working, and that Maria
was doing very well the class. The teacher continued on
enthusiastically saying that she
was happy to have Maria in class because she was so well
behaved and quiet.
Step 1: Describe the context of the situation
General education classroom with 17 students: 9 Latino (4
female and 5 male), 8 Cauca-
sian (6 females and 2 males); during large-group language arts
discussion; one female
Latina with autism.
Step 2: Describe the issues involved
No access to the general education curriculum; socially isolated
from peer group; IEP
goals not addressed; gender issues; cultural codes of conduct.
Step 3: Guiding questions

What are the beliefs of the teachers regarding the behavior of
female Latina students?
What is the value of education for students with disabilities?
What does the law say
about following the IEP? What is appropriate behavior for
students with disabilities,
Latinos, females? Who benefits from this situation? What are
the short- and long-term
consequences of being excluded from the class general
education curriculum for Maria
and her family?
Step 4: Identify alternative decisions
Conference with the general education teacher explaining the
legal requirements related
to following the IEP; suggest that Maria be included in small-
group discussions in the
classroom, gradually working toward time in the large-group
instruction; co-teach in
the language arts class and model how to prompt and reinforce
Maria for volunteering
during discussions.
Step 5: Identify consequences for each alternative
Classroom teacher may ignore IEP; the general education
teacher may include Maria
in small-group work; Maria may volunteer during discussions if
the teachers co-teach
several lessons together.
Step 6: Rank order alternatives
Conferencing, co-teaching, small-group work

Step 7: Monitor and modify the decision
Classroom teacher collects observational data on Maria’s
performance during discus-
sions; special education teacher to model then coach the general
educator as Maria is
taught to volunteer in class; IEP team reviews Maria’s goals and
objectives.
DILEMMAS
practices rather than reactive ones. Third, the framework
presented
here is unique in that it drives the team to examine the context
of
an ethical dilemma through the lens of four theoretical
perspectives:
justice, critique, care, and professionalism. The team can
acknowl-
edge and identify its individual intuitive level of justification,
but the
framework compels it to move forward in its thinking as it
considers
particular questions and evaluates potential alternatives within
the
school and community context. Finally, with the rise and
frequency of
change within our technological world, it is likely that the
context in
which teachers are trained will be different from the context in

which
they work. This framework can offer guidance to school teams
that
can be faced with ethical situations that may not have even been
con-
sidered by those who wrote the professional code of ethics for
teach-
ing children and families with disabilities (Vergés, 2010).
In the next section we identify and discuss each of the seven
steps
of the decision-making framework and apply them to the
illustrative
ethical dilemma faced by Ms. Emma. Table 2 presents an
additional
ethical dilemma in which the decision-making framework is
used.
Step 1: Describe the Context of the Situation
The first step in the decision-making framework is to iden-
tify the situation and all of its elements. The dilemma is
situated in
a public-school setting where the teacher is employed to provide
special education services to children with and without
disabilities.
The immediate supervisor, the principal, is responsible for the
direct
administration of services for all children and is accountable to
the
superintendent and school board. While the law stipulates that
all
students must participate in the state-mandated tests, there are
excep-
tions to the rule. These exceptions specifically address students
with

disabilities who are unable to take the test even when provided
with
accommodations. For these students, an alternate assessment is
pro-
vided. The determination of who can and cannot take the
standard
assessment is determined by the members of the individualized
edu-
cation program (IEP) team.
Step 2: Describe the Issues Involved
The next step is to identify the issues inherent within the ethical
dilemma, which, for the purposes of this article, is the dilemma
pre-
sented in the vignette. The teacher recognizes that all students,
by law,
must take the state-mandated benchmark test. Children who are
unable
to take the test are provided with an alternate assessment system
that
requires the use of a modified assessment. The modified
assessment,
while loosely based on the core curriculum, essentially tests a
more
336 STOCKALL et al.
functional curriculum, such as life skills (Stockall & Smith,
2013). Life
skills may include dressing oneself, using a vending machine,
identi-

fying environmental print (i.e., exit, enter, toilet), and
demonstrating
basic social skills (i.e., using polite forms of address, taking
turns in
conversation, asking and answering questions). If a student is
part
of the alternate assessment program that student will not be able
to
demonstrate knowledge of the standard core curriculum,
including
reading, mathematics, and other core content areas. An
inaccurate
assessment of the student’s abilities may lead other
professionals to
underestimate the student and potentially limit their rights to an
equi-
table education. The principal is invested in demonstrating that
the
school has met its obligation of adequate yearly progress (AYP)
for
all students. Sanctions for not meeting AYP may include teacher
and
administrative layoffs, reduced funding, and/or limited
community
control over the school’s operations. Finally, if the teacher goes
against
the principal’s recommendation for alternate assessment, the
teacher
may be reprimanded or even fired. After defining the issues, the
team
moves to the next step in the decision-making process.
Step 3: Pose Questions From Each Ethical Perspective
That Might Affect Each Issue
Step 3 is the pivotal point of the framework, because it consists

of specific questions that initially reveal the team’s personal
beliefs
and values. Once these assumptions are fully recognized they
can be
set aside as new perspectives are uncovered and examined.
Examin-
ing each set of questions in the framework compels the team to
shift
from one viewpoint to another, each time uncovering the
nuances of
the situation and then provoking another paradigmatic shift
from that
perspective to another. For example, the team’s first response is
to take
into account their own beliefs and values by asking questions
such as:
What are our beliefs about the role of assessment in the
education
of children with disabilities and those without? What are our
beliefs
about the assessment and alternate assessment processes? Does
the
way in which students are assessed matter? If so, why or why
not?
What is the value of education for children with disabilities?
And on
a more personal level, individual team members might wonder:
How
important is this job to me? What consequences am I willing to
take to
uphold my beliefs and values on this matter? Table 3 provides
further
guiding questions that educators may consider.
It is important for educators to be aware of the impact of their
own values and beliefs because they will certainly influence the

decision-making process. However, if the team can stand
somewhat
outside of the situation, where they can make judgments about
its
DILEMMAS
demands while being aware of their own assumptions, they can
begin
to appreciate other perspectives. The ethical imperative is to
identify
and clarify the multiple values and beliefs that are related to the
issue
at hand. Next, the team considers questions related to the ethic
of jus-
tice.
The ethic of justice. Questions that can guide the team’s
reflection
within the ethic of justice include: What does the law say
regarding
the assessment of children with disabilities? What are the
specific
criteria for using an alternate assessment with children
identified as
having a disability? Should this law be enforced? What are the
conse-
quences for not upholding this law? Is there a district policy
regarding
the assessment of children with disabilities? If so, what is it?

To address these questions, it is important that educators have
access to the most recent legal information regarding the rules
and
regulations for assessing children with disabilities. One
resource that
the team may reference is the Web site www.wrightslaw.com,
which
offers current information on legal issues in special education.
For
more information, the team can also search the U.S. State
Department’s
Table 3.
Guiding Questions to Evoke Different Ethical Perspectives
• What are the team’s beliefs about the role of ___________ in
the education of
students with disabilities?
• What is the value of education for students with disabilities?
• Why does this issue matter?
• What consequences are the members willing to take to
uphold their own values
or beliefs?
• What are the laws related to this issue?
• What is the district’s policy regarding this issue?
• Who benefits from the district’s policy on this issue?
• Who has the authority and power to make this decision?
• How will our decision maintain or challenge the status quo?

• Who will benefit from the decision we make in this
situation?
• What will be the short- and long-term consequences of our
decision for the stu-
dent and other stakeholders?
• What effects will this have on other students in the same or
other marginalized
groups?
• How does the student feel about the issue?
• How do the parents and family of the student feel about this
issue?
• What does our professional code of ethics direct us to do?
338 STOCKALL et al.
special education Web site that provides regulations related to
alter-
nate assessments for students with significant disabilities. In
addition,
the team may refer to the special education policy handbook
obtained
from the school district’s special education director.
Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) stipulates
that states can establish alternate achievement standards for
students

with significant cognitive disabilities and use alternate
standards in
determining proficiency for up to 1% of the total population of
stu-
dents tested when calculating AYP. This means that one
possible
explanation for including a student in the alternate testing might
be
to fill the 1% population group. The principal might have
interpreted
this regulation to mean that if 1% of the students with
disabilities in
the school took the alternative assessment, it would guarantee
that the
school would meet its AYP. Increasing the probability of
meeting AYP
would help to safeguard the school’s reputation, as well as the
prin-
cipal. Thus, seeking answers to these pivotal questions from a
justice
perspective can uncover misinterpretations and misjudgments.
The ethic of critique. Examining the situation from an ethic of
cri-
tique, the team reflects on the status quo and the inconsistencies
that
pervade the educational system in American schools. Questions
that
deal with social class, race, gender, and other differences are
difficult
to answer but must be considered when making a well-informed
and
rational decision.
From a critical perspective, the team considers questions such
as: What are the cultural assumptions that undergird the special

edu-
cation laws and policies? How are students with disabilities
regarded
within the school, community, state, and national levels? Who
makes
the school policy? Who benefits from the school policy or state
law?
Who has the power at the local, state, and national level and
how is it
enforced? How will our decision maintain or challenge the
status quo?
The team will want to consider how language or discourses
work to form the identity of the student as one who has a
disability.
Our Western culture has historically held particular
psychological
assumptions about the nature of disability; for example,
disability can
be viewed as an inherent characteristic of an individual, thus
plac-
ing the disability within the individual (Rogers, 2003). If
disability is
viewed as within the person then teams’ assumptions may
include:
(a) disability is a weakness; (b) disability is biological and
therefore
permanent; (c) disability cannot be remediated, only
compensated
for; and/or (d) disability is abnormal. Each of these assumptions
will
then drive the decision making of the team and policy makers,
lead-
ing to policy that disempowers and marginalizes those with
disabili-
ties. Some disability advocates are currently working to

reposition the
DILEMMAS
location of disability from inside the child to within the
instructional
context (Lewis, Ketter, & Fabox, 2001; Rogers, 2003). Thus, if
disability
is a function of the environment or contexts of interaction,
assump-
tions that are based on the social construction of disability tend
to
empower those with disabilities by shifting the focus on
changing the
contexts rather than the individual. Therefore, teams that hold
these
assumptions might consider a decision to make testing
accommo-
dations for a child with a disability. Such a recommendation
would
imply that the child has the ability to achieve satisfactory
results on
the curriculum-based measures and that the disability resides
outside
of the child and within the environment.
The ethic of care. The ethic of care is an ethic of relation.
Decisions
based on the ethic of care focus on the relationship between the
per-
son who provides care and the cared for. It is in the context of

relation
that the attention of the caregiver is directed to the express
needs of
the cared for (Noddings & Kentel, 2011). In considering the
needs of
others the team will want to ask the following questions: Who
will
benefit from the decision made in this situation? Who will be
hurt from
the decision? What will be the short- and long-term
consequences of
the decision for the student, the student’s family, the principal,
the
teacher, and the teacher’s family? What will the student need to
feel
a sense of belonging within the school? What effects might this
deci-
sion have on other children with disabilities who take the
alternate
assessment?
In contrast to the ethic of justice, the ethic of care is oriented
toward
the needs rather than the rights of an individual. From an ethic
of care,
team members will want to recall conversations with the student
in
regard to their feelings about participating in the general
education test-
ing process. The team will also want to consider how the
parents and
family feel about the assessment process for the student. From
an ethic of
care, Noddings and Kentel (2011) remind us that “in every
situation, care-
givers must be attentive, exercise their empathic abilities,

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