Applying an ethical theory to a local issue guide

The three headed sections are the structure and each one is separately assessable, so use those headings. Notice what the framing sets up: the course has been moving between abstract principles and concrete judgements, and this board asks you to demonstrate that movement in a case small enough to be real. That is why the scope is specified so narrowly — a neighbourhood, town, county, school district or religious community. A national or global issue will pull you back into generalities and defeat the exercise, so resist the instinct to choose the largest problem you can think of. A zoning dispute, a school board decision, a local policing practice, a landlord or housing issue, a proposed closure, or a conflict over a shared public space will all serve better than a national debate, because each has identifiable parties whose interests you can actually enumerate.

The engage-the-community section has a requirement students often treat as a formality and should not: the link is there so classmates can respond substantively, which means it has to actually document the issue rather than mention it. Summarise briefly and factually, and separate what is agreed from what is contested, because the ethical question usually lives in the contested part. Then in the apply-the-theory section, be careful to apply the theory's reasoning rather than its conclusion. Utilitarianism means actually identifying who is affected, what the consequences are for each, and how they aggregate; deontology means naming the duty, right, or maxim at stake and testing it; virtue ethics means asking what a person of good character would do here and which traits the situation calls for. Doing the reasoning is the assignment; naming a theory and asserting an answer is not. If the theory leads somewhere you did not expect, follow it and say so.

The evaluation section is where the marks concentrate and where most posts stop early. The prompt offers five questions and you should take two or three rather than all of them, then answer them with genuine criticism. The most productive is usually whether the theory leaves significant aspects unresolved: utilitarian aggregation notoriously struggles when a small group bears a concentrated cost for a diffuse benefit, which is exactly the shape of most local disputes; deontology can produce a firm answer that satisfies no one and offers no way of adjudicating conflicting duties; virtue ethics gives good guidance about character while under-determining the specific decision. Comparing your chosen theory against how the issue is actually being handled now is the other strong move, since it makes the abstract-concrete relation the course cares about visible on the page rather than merely claimed.