Chapter 10 brings the different chapters together and responds to the question: ‘How might a public education system become more ethical?’ In other words, it asks how an education system itself can be conducive to and embody ethical living in relationships, and assumes that such ethical living will require concern for the well-being of persons and will constitute a vital aspect of one’s own well-being. It clarifies that educational system isn’t a collection of schools, but instead, it is the way in which various institutions are interrelated according to the principles that define the way they work together. These institutions include schools, examination boards, teacher training colleges, local authorities, the national curriculum authority, the ministry, national school inspection offices, various institutional employers, a framework of laws, and from there, the wider global economy. To propose ethically oriented systemic transformation, the chapter outlines the nature of an educational system that is centred around the well-being of persons in the four principles, including non-instrumentalisation, whole-person development, well-being and learning as human becoming. It then explores how these principles can be applied to the design of the system, and to key aspects of schooling, such as curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation and learning communities.

Chapter 9 draws on a case study of a pilot project in two secondary schools, one in the United Kingdom and one in Colombia, to illustrate how ethical education spaces can be co-created, sustained and enriched. It regards ethical education practice to consist of at least three aspects: (1) exploring students’ self-awareness which is intimately connected to relationships with others; (2) experiencing one’s feelings, emotions and relations, and (3) inquiring into one’s own and others’ lived realities, and things in the world. These respond to the particular needs and challenges of adolescence and contribute to enriching students’ relationships with self and others, learning and goodness in the world. To present the case study, this chapter begins by considering the needs for relational development during adolescence. It then articulates the conceptual framework underpinning the above ethical education practices. Following a detailed description of each ethical space, the pedagogical intentions underlying it, and the learning processes that the students embarked on within each space, the case study discusses how the participating students have experienced these spaces, and reflects on teaching and learning practices that have enabled these experiences. Finally, this chapter makes suggestions on how ethical spaces might be integrated in secondary education.

Chapter 4 draws on a series of interrelated ideas including those of Emmanuel Levinas and phenomenological and Buddhist thought concerning ethics as a non-violent relation to the Other; a relation that is marked by one’s response to an other’s singularity. The aim is to outline a key element for creating institutional change that recognises this singularity, appreciating the complexity involved in living with others and the challenges this places on educational institutions. In particular, it argues that changes in educational institutions must encompass both the people who exist in them and the practices that constitute these spaces as institutions in the first place. In this light, while institutions are governed by rules, regulations, policies, legal frameworks and organisational structures, they institute themselves as institutions through cultures, which are composed of relationships, practices, experiences and shared imaginaries. These practices are not only cognitive or intellectual but also embodied, sensate and phenomenal. Thus in order for institutional change to have any real purchase, it is necessary that the transformation of cultures qua embodied practices, and the imaginaries that support them become the focus of our efforts, towards promoting new forms of relationality and new modes of sensibility in pluralistic contexts.