Synopsis
This workshop introduces Attentive Teaching to address the challenges of teaching Business Ethics, CSR, and Sustainable Development in culturally diverse classrooms. Students create and explain visual representations of key concepts by which differing moral assumptions and cross‑cultural perspectives surface. Through structured discussion and mediated interaction, participants observe how conceptual change and deeper ethical understanding emerge. The session offers a hands‑on demonstration and practical guidance for implementing this approach in small‑group settings.
Key Questions
How can visual representations help students articulate eir understanding of Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Sustainable Development concepts?
How can structured, dialogic discussion reveal differences in moral assumptions across cultural backgrounds?
How can Attentive Teaching support conceptual change and deeper ethical reflection over time?
How can instructors use mediated interactions to foster more inclusive and engaged conversations about ethics and sustainability?
Keywords
Attentive Teaching, Business Ethics pedagogy, Cross‑cultural moral perspectives, Conceptual change
Overview
This workshop presents a pedagogical approach called "Attentive Teaching" designed to address the challenges of teaching Business Ethics (BE), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Sustainable Development (SD) in increasingly diverse global educational settings. The method, developed as part of an ongoing multi-national Erasmus-funded project, responds to the growing complexity of teaching moral and ethical business concepts to students from varied cultural backgrounds who may hold differing moral beliefs and values. Attentive Teaching employs a dialogic approach where students create visual representations—through drawings, AI-generated images, or internet sources—to express their conceptualizations of key concepts. These representations serve as the basis for mediated class discussions, enabling students to articulate their understanding while gaining insight into their peers` perspectives, facilitating conceptual change through intensive classroom discourse while bridging cross-cultural gaps in understanding moral assumptions and preferences.
Rationale
Background
The contemporary global business reality has both possibilities for the advancement of society as well as for its demise. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce a pedagogical method called “Attentive Teaching” that serves as a central method of a multi-national Erasmus-funded project aimed at assessing and addressing cross-cultural differences of students and faculty from different cultures and backgrounds may view BE, CSR and SD.
Workshop Plan For Introductory Class in which concepts of BE, CSR and SD are introduced
Ideal Group Size
• Ideal group size is between 8-15. If need be, larger groups can be divided into smaller groups.
Time
The total time to complete exercise is 75 minutes.
Resources/Set-Up
• It is preferable to have a space in which desks/tables can be arranged so students can see one another.
• Students are offered crayons/paper. Those who decide to not do their own drawings will make use of IT to do so.
Debriefing
1. The leader wraps-up the exercise first by presenting their own thoughts and feelings related to the questions asked in the Discussion segment and then more fully explaining the concept of the Attentive Teaching method.
2. The leader also notes that it will be used again within the framework of the course to both address new concepts and issues related to the course content as well as to allow students to occasionally ‘revisit’ concepts and issues previously addressed – thus allowing them to gauge any changes/development in their own thinking and feelings about the matters presented within the framework of the course.
Leader’s Qualifications
The leader (Avi Kay) is a trained Organizational Psychologist with over thirty years of experience in running groups. He has utilized the Attentive Teaching method in a variety of courses over the last five years.
Relevant Possible Background Sources
De Los Reyes, G. Jr., Kim, T. W., & Weaver, G. R. (2017). Teaching ethics in business schools: A conversation on disciplinary differences, academic provincialism, and the case for integrated pedagogy. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 16(2), 314–336.
Holland, D., & Albrecht, C. (2013). The worldwide academic field of business ethics: Scholars’ perceptions of the most important issues. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(4), 777–788.
Medeiros, K. E., Watts, L. L., Mulhearn, T. J., Steele, L. M., Mumford, M. D., & Connelly, S. (2017). What is working, what is not, and what we need to know: A meta-analytic review of business ethics instruction. Journal of Academic Ethics, 15(3), 245–275.
Schur, Y., & Guberman, A. (2024). Conceptual Change of ‘Teaching’ among Experienced Teachers after Studying Attentive Teaching. Education Sciences, 14(3), 231.