Reflective and reflexive practice/ Personal and cultural values (500w)

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Week 3 – The impact of personal and cultural

values in educational contexts

TOPIC GOALS

 Explore personal and cultural values in education for educators and

students

1. Introduction

“Great people have great values and great ethics.”

(Jeffrey Gitomer, 1993)

2. Educators Personal and Cultural Values

Our values as educators play a significant role to how we portray ourselves

in action, what we do and what we say. Most of the times you find educators

asking themselves the same question. What kind of an educator am I? Educators

always need to justify themselves through their teaching practices and that can

only be done when we reflect on what we do and why we teach in a particular

way. That involves the values of any educator to be questioned.

‘Throughout our teaching careers we think and behave in certain ways and

believe in certain things, such as how far our teaching can be called ‘educational’,

about what we can offer children and what our capabilities are. What we do, think,

and feel about teaching constitute our sense of professional identity. We can

reveal and communicate this identity when we address and articulate an answer

to the question’ (Ghaye, 2011).

If we reflect on these descriptions of practice, we give

ourselves the chance to learn from our experiences of

teaching. This can help to move our practice forward.

(Ghaye, 2011)

‘While a case could be made that there are some universally accepted

values, values in education are culturally bound. No aspect of curriculum is taught

in a cultural void, and the relationship of values education to cultural context

throws up particular challenges in attempting an international study’ (Stephenson,

1998).

Educators usually do not stay in an unchanged set of values as they develop

more practice and experience the reflection on these shifts and changes happen

depending on the setting and context they work in. To be called a professional

implies that educators need to reflect on their teaching constantly and be

responsive to what is happening around them. ‘A teacher’s values should be

derived from the nature of what constitutes effective and ethical practice. To

reach this position, we have to understand and question the purposes of education’

(Ghaye, 2011)

Cultural values on the other hand are the particular concepts of interest of

each individual when asked about their beliefs, personality, values and identity.

That way you can distinguish their cultural views and behaviours in their personal

lives which then reflect in their practices as well. This also reflects specific

characteristics and certain practices on a larger nationwide scale that constitutes

each educational context. However, ‘Individuals are expected to cultivate and

express their own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities. Schwartz (1994)

distinguishes two types of autonomy: intellectual autonomy encourages

individuals to pursue their own ideas and intellectual directions independently,

and affective autonomy entails a pursuit of affectively positive experience by

individuals for themselves. In cultures with an emphasis on embeddedness,

people are viewed as entities embedded in the larger group. Meaning in life is

provided largely through social relationships, group identification, participation

in the group’s shared way of life, and striving toward shared goals of the group’

(Fischer, 2006).

As Higgins (2011) argues, that ethical reflection is ‘Such reflection will

often touch on moral considerations—impartial deliberations about duty, right

action, and the needs of others—but it begins and ends with first-personal

questioning, in thick evaluative terms, about the shape of one’s life as a whole.

Ethics is rooted in the perpetual practical question ‘What should I do next?’ and

flowers, in our more contemplative moments, into questions like ‘what do I want

to become?’, ‘what does it mean to be fully human?’, and ‘what would make my

life meaningful, excellent, or rich?’

Professional ethics, then, should be distinguished from what I call ‘moral

professionalism’, which deals with codes of professional conduct and our role-

specific obligations to others. In contrast, the ethics of teaching, as I propose it

here, will probe the relation between the teaching life and the good life,

connecting the question ‘why teach?’ with the question ‘how should I live?’ It

considers what draws us to the practice of teaching and what sustains us there in

the face of difficulty’.

‘At meso-level, disciplinary differences and academic cultures are highly

influential in academic practices (Fanghanel 2009; Becher 2001; Trowler et

al. 2012). Epistemological differences are evident in varying academic cultures.

They result in divergent disciplinary teaching and learning norms and practices,

where different conceptions of teaching and learning become apparent

(Becher 2001; Neumann et al. 2010; Lee 2007) (…) At macro-level, teachers

operate within structural conditions that can include institutional policies,

regulations, the requirements of external evaluation bodies and the external

political environment (Henkel 2000; Deem and Lucas 2007). These structures

determine the physical and organisational context and can constrain or enable the

choices and opportunities available to individuals and communities within the

organisation (Mathieson 2011; Kaatrakoski et al. 2016)’ (Englund, Olofsson and

Price, 2018).

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR23

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR4

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR57

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR4

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR41

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR36

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR25

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR15

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR39

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-018-0254-1#ref-CR28

I wish to raise the question, ‘In what ways can reflective practices enhance human

flourishing?’ Underpinning this question is my assumption that enhancing human

flourishing is important work. So in what ways is it important? How does it

matter? And what do we actually mean by the term human flourishing? In a very

pragmatic sense would reflective practices that enhance human flourishing help

us bounce-back from adverse events in our lives? Would they help us be more

open-minded, have more creative thoughts, enjoy better relationships with

others? Be more resilient?

These, I suggest, are big questions that deserve some serious attention from those

who regard themselves as reflective practitioners, who learn through reflection

and who use various reflective practices for some positive purposes. For those

who believe in practical action for positive purposes, I frame a challenge as a

positive question namely, ‘What would we need to do to (re)cast reflective

practices in the role of enhancing human flourishing?’ I wonder what kind of

uncommon wisdom we would discover if we embraced a question of this kind?

(Ghaye, 2010)

Meso-Level

Disciplinary Differences

Academic Cultures

Macro-Level

Institutional Policies

Regulations

External Evaluation Bodies

External Political Environment

Critical Theory / Critical Social Theory

 Based on the principles of empowerment and the theories of Paulo Freire

(1970, 1972)

 Transformative learning (Mezirow, 1978, 1981, 1990 and 1997)

Transformational Learning (Mezirow, 1978, 1981, 1990, 1997, 2000)

 ‘A process in which adults change their views and habits – which they have

gained as a result of their experience – according to the current situations

and changes they have encountered’ (Kabakci, Odabasi and Kilicer,

2010:263).

 It involves personal awareness and understanding, through true

emancipation from sometimes unquestioning acceptance of life

experience, to active engagement or questioning of how we know what we

know. (Mezirow, 1997)

As Moon (2008) notes, one person cannot make another person reflect,

they can only facilitate or foster a critically reflective approach through

appropriate conditions in relation to the habits already formed by teachers.

Only then, perhaps, can the internalisation and application of the attitudes

(Dewey, 1933), the lenses (Brookfield, 1995) and the competencies (Pollard et

al., 2008) at the heart of critical reflection transform learning in the way that

Mezirow (1997) refers to.

 Leitch (2006, p. 551) acknowledges that “many emotional, sensory and

embodied dimensions of experience lie below the threshold of

consciousnesses” and are difficult to tap into or to access.

 “embodied knowledge” (p. 552)

Personal Reflection

 New Learning?

 Challenged your thinking about own ‘position’ and philosophy as an

educator?

3. Student’s Personal and Cultural Values

PUPILS’ MORAL AND CULTURAL EXPERIENCE (Halstead and Taylor, 1996, pp.119)

Educators have the responsibility through their sayings and actions to

transfer the values and morals of any educational system to their students through

teaching them the qualities needed to survive the outside world. They need to

possess a set of socially acceptable values and principles to blend in society to be

considered as morally educated people. This should be formed in students by the

educator’s own values through their ability to become competent moral agents.

Any belief, perception or attitude needs to be addressed and cultivated

through the unwritten rules and regulations of any school setting. Family values

and culture play a significant role in the social behaviour of the students and a

more important role in the development of morally appropriate societies. Social

and cultural values in class can shape the personalities of student’s behaviour.

4. John Dewey’s Theory on Personal and Cultural Values

For John Dewey the sense of values was especially important as most of

his writings and theories involved around reflection in regard to setting one’s

beliefs and morals. Kompf & Denicolo, (2005) argue in their book Connecting

Policy and Practice: Challenges for Teaching and Learning in Schools and

Universities that ‘One reason why Dewey’s classic contribution to democratic

education is still relevant today, is because of his analysis of the interdependence

between human competence, social organisation, moral agency, education and

democracy understood as a way of life. For Dewey, democracy was education in

a broad sense, and for him schools played an essential role in developing morality

and democracy’ (pp. 222)

‘Dewey denied insurmountable barriers between the descriptive sciences

and the normative sciences, what is and what ought to be, and between rationality

and emotions. In viewing the world from a transactional standpoint, Dewey

rejected all philosophical traditions which held the fundamental world order as

fixed and stable. For Dewey, all talk about eternal truth or absolutistic and

universal theoretical claims was misguiding. In a world constantly changing, all

theories and practices are context dependent with regard to their justification,

interpretation and application. At the same time, not all things were relative to

context. Dewey trusted that human rationality had universal potential but it was

not yet well developed, and the best example so far of systematic and impartial

rationality was to be found in science. Therefore, Dewey was careful not to

confuse universal procedures with the outcome of such procedures. Outcomes

were more context dependent than the rational procedures producing the

outcomes and the distinction between outcome and rational procedure can be

recognised in Dewey’s two-level concept of experience (Dewey, 1925a; Hickman

and Alexander, 1998)’ (Kompf & Denicolo, 2005).

‘Values refer to intersubjectively accessible states of affairs, in the real

world, and that opens the possibility for moral knowledge (Dewey, 1925b). The

moral answers cannot be of universal or absolute character, but it is possible to

construct objective values in relation to a specific context, action or society

(Dewey, 1932)’ (Kompf et al., 2005)

For Dewey, occupation or vocation is simply ‘a concrete term for

continuity’ or in another formulation, ‘a continuous activity having a purpose’

(Dewey, 1916, p. 307)’ (Higgins, 2011).

5. Conclusion

Values are central to both the theory of education and the practical

activities of schools in two ways. First, schools and individual teachers within

schools are a major influence, alongside the family, the media and the peer group,

on the developing values of children and young people, and thus of society at

large. Secondly, schools reflect and embody the values of society; indeed, they

owe their existence to the fact that society values education and seeks to exert

influence on the pattern of its own future development through education.

(Halstead and Taylor, 1996)