The values and beliefs behind teachers’ reflection of ...



Negotiating the shared educational beliefs and values of a school’s social curriculum

Jukka Husu

University of Helsinki

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Crete, 22-25 September 2004

Abstract This study aims to investigate the content and structure of teachers’ pedagogical values that aim to guide their everyday school work. School values concern teachers’ judgements of approval towards abilities, qualities and behaviours teachers think worthy of striving for. To speak of school’s values implies that the holding of those values is definitive of membership of the community in question. We cannot successfully teach values if our schooling institutions are not committed to anchor their values in real school life situations. The case study method and design, including two phases of investigation were used as the major approach of inquiry to explore teachers’ pedagogical values. A group of 24 teachers from public urban secondary school took part in the research. The analysis produced three meta school values and six applied school values. With the aid of these value conceptualizations, the study develops a preliminary spectrum of teachers’ school consciousness.

Introduction

Nowadays, schools are under a pressure to create safe, orderly, and effective learning environments where students can acquire social as well as academic skills that will allow them to succeed in school and beyond. Over the last two decades, student populations – but also teachers – have become increasingly diverse. Students and teachers sharing the same school can come from a broad rage of cultures and socio-economical backgrounds. Schools face the challenge of creating pedagogical environments that are sensitive to numerous individual backgrounds in order to support students’ social and academic success. Schools can no longer afford to focus solely on delivering academic curricula; they are also responsible for establishing and maintaining school-cultures that empower students - and teachers alike – to negotiate the diverse values and social norms of our communities. The aim is to improve social competence among all pedagogical participants. This is because social curricula are crucial for mutually productive interactions and durable interpersonal relationships. However, students benefit not only socially, but also academically, when they are supported by caring classroom and school environment (Noddings, 1992; Wentzel, 2003).

This paper investigates the content and structure of teachers’ pedagogical values that should guide their everyday work at school. According to earlier empirical studies, teachers are noticeably unaware and even unconscious of the ethical ramifications of their own actions and overall practice (Jackson et al. 1993; Husu, 2001, 2003a). The current discussion on teacher knowledge also has a tendency to neglect the value dimensions of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, classroom knowledge, and curriculum. Therefore, we need more clarification and discussion on teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and the values and beliefs underlying that knowing (Husu, 2002). A more transparent sense of this value knowledge could provide teachers a renewed sense of professionalism and it could open up new possibilities for teacher development (see Evans, 2002). Value clarification can be used as a vehicle for a renewed school culture in which teacher learning is embedded in a larger process of a school community.

This study presents the process and the content of value clarification with 24 Finnish secondary school teachers in an urban school. The challenge was to create a teacher learning experience that would prepare teachers to create, sustain, and educate in a ‘community of learners’ (Shulman & Shulman, 2004). Teachers were encouraged to recognize, articulate and express their own values and beliefs related to their professional practices within their school community. The study focused on the process in which teachers transformed their individual experiences into more generalizable conceptions via individual and collective reflection. The main goal of the project was to increase the reflection of school ethos among teachers. In order to understand the process and the products of teacher reflection, we need to frame a more comprehensive conception of school values and teacher learning within communities and contexts.

Theoretical Background

School values and social curriculum

Value education is a direct and indirect intervention by the schooling institution that aims to affect the moral development of a person including one’s behaviour, one’s ability to think about and perceive issues of right ands wrong, and the actual opinions of right and wrong one holds (Lipe, 2004, p. 2). The definition is broad in two ways. First, the definition encompasses not only deliberate, acknowledged efforts and effects of a school institution on the moral development a pupil, but also accidental, unplanned effects on a pupil’s development. Second, according to the school’s pedagogical functions, the aim of the value education is to take account: “(1) actual behaviour of a person in a situation involving right and wrong; (2) the person’s ability to think critically about moral problems; and (3) the actual moral opinions held by an individual” (ibid.). Without these preconditions, value education could easily turn into indoctrination, i.e., teaching a given set of values without considering other views and the evidence for or against such views.

Many educational scholars have recognized the school’s role in value education and in moral development. Already Dewey (1934) viewed value education as crucial to the basic purpose of a school. According to him, “the child’s moral character must develop in a natural, just, and social atmosphere. The school should provide this environment for its part in the child’s development” (p. 85). The statement reflects the general notion that the school should help to develop pupils’ values. Later, i.e. Jackson et al. (1993), Goodman & Lesnick (2001), Campbell (2003), and Slattery & Rapp (2003) have emphasized the ethos of the school in the pupils’ value construction. They all deliver the message that schools simply cannot avoid being involved in the (moral) values of pupils. This is because pupils absorb in and are affected both by the formal instruction and its unintentional side effects. All and all, the ethos of the school makes pupils’ pedagogical practice.

Clark (1995) argues that the most effective moral lessons are the virtuous responses to students’ needs or the failures to provide these responses. He lists ten basic needs of students/children: i.e., to be led, to be vulnerable, to make sense, to have hope, to be known, and to be safe. Clark has also suggested virtuous responses to each of those needs that every student/child deserves. He claims that these responses, or the negative manifestation of them, are the value-laden educational events that carry moral messages and can change and shape students’ lives (Clark, 1995, 25-28).

As presented, in the value domain students have important learning challenges in school, in addition to those explicit and formal goals in the cognitive, affective and social domains. Some of these learning goals are explicitly expressed in the National Curriculum (Framework Curriculum for the Comprehensive School, 1994). Such basic values as student welfare and the importance of schools in helping students grow into active citizens are emphasised. In order to achieve these ends, the responsibility of all members of the school community is highlighted within the framework of the operation culture of schools. It is believed that these basic values operate as principles that help define the professional practices taken place in schools. These fundamental values and tasks of the school include i.e. personal growth, individual freedom and integrity, and participatory citizenship. They must be taken into consideration in all pedagogical activities of schools.

The national framework curriculum forms the basis for drawing up local curricula in schools. Within this process, the basic values of national curriculum must be seen as instruments of orientation and interpretation. Teachers are not free to choose whatever they personally regard as valuable. The task of teachers is to make already given – and abstract - value prescriptions to work in practice. In addition to these broad guidelines, schools establish their own, and often more specific, rules that the students should learn to follow.

School values and teacher reflection

Teacher reflection is considered as an important means for developing teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. As research has shown, a common perception of teaching is the tendency to work in isolation from colleagues (Jackson, 1968; Lieberman & Miller, 1992; Lortie, 1975; Waller, 1961). However, because teachers work in increasingly diverse schools where multiple (and often contra dictionary) reforms are implemented, reflection defined as a technical and isolated skill is insufficient to support meaningful teacher learning (Ladson-Billings, 1999).

Among others, Dewey (1933) and Schön (1983) have argued for a proactive and learner centred form of reflection in which the teacher becomes the subject and the owner of her/his own reflection. According to this vision of reflection, it is vitally important that teacher reflection focuses on the socio-historical and institutional contexts in which students are educated. How teachers use reflection must be understood as situated in the activity systems of schools, classrooms, and professional development events (cf. Engeström et al., 1999).

A key premise of this starting point is the social origin of teacher learning. Professional learning emerges first in a social plane in relations with people and is subsequently appropriated as psychological and pedagogical categories. As Hoffman-Kipp et al. (2003) formulate it: “Reflection without participation is as impossible as thought without language” (p. 251). Teacher reflection in social context occurs as teachers engage in and share their reflection in many ways. Whether through writing, speaking, or simply listening teachers are participating in a construction of their pedagogical knowledge as well as their professional identities. In professional communities, teachers can function as resources for one another, providing each other with assistance on which to build new ideas.

An accomplished teacher understands what must be taught, as well as how to teach it. Therefore, teacher reflection must be framed both as a meta cognitive effort and a social practice (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003). According to the former, to teach in a compatible way, a teacher must understand “both the first principles of the problems, topics, and issues of the curriculum … their rationale, [and] their relationships to one another (Shulman & Shulman, 2004, p. 262). In addition to that knowing, s/he must be capable of performing those activities that are necessary to transform the goals and visions into pedagogical action. The category of this kind of understanding and reflection is large. It hosts many elements that are commonly included in the knowledge base of teaching. The domain includes:

▪ Disciplinary and content knowledge;

▪ Curriculum understanding;

▪ Pedagogical content knowledge and case-based knowledge of multiple instances;

▪ Knowledge and skills of classroom management and organization;

▪ Capability to understanding and act simultaneously on many levels of school community (classroom, department, school, local community, and larger socio-political contexts);

▪ Understanding learners (students and teachers) intellectually, socially, culturally, and personally in a developmental perspective. (Shulman & Shulman, 2004, p. 262)

The analysis of teacher reflection and learning of this kind moves away from a concern with individual teachers and their learning to a conception of teacher learning within a broader context of school institution, politics, and profession. It is important to note that a failure to ensure this kind of professional reflection easily leaves the field open to common sense and often superficial considerations as the sole guides of pedagogical action: “These are the values of our society, and that’s that, so we’ll better fit the line” – type of argument. In turn, teacher reflection and learning should lay the foundations for thinking about the goals of learning more generally, for students in a variety of settings, and for teachers as well.

School values and teacher community

School values concern teachers’ judgments of approval towards abilities, qualities and behaviors teachers think worthy of striving for. To speak of school’s values implies that the holding of those values is definitive of membership of the particular school in question. As Aristotle (1955) argues, the essential cement of solidarity among group members is a shared conception of the good. On the more practical level, we find Bellah & colleagues’ (1985) definition of community to be useful. According to them, community is

a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it (p. 333).

Schools can be regarded as such communities. In them, teachers and students ‘share many pedagogical practices’ that ‘define the school as educative community.’ All participants in educational undertakings are ‘socially interdependent’ and, to a certain extent, should ‘participate together in discussion and decision making.’ Regarding teachers, members of the same profession share a sense of identity and relatively common (professional) values. They also share the same (formal) role definitions and professional language. Ultimately, teachers control the reproduction of their professional community through socialization process as well.

As Grossman et al., (2001) report, such communities are not quickly and easily formed. It is crucial how the formation of group norms occurs and how they come to define school community. Norms represent the shared moral life of a school community – that element which encourages participants to discipline their desires for the sake of membership in the group (Carter, 1998). Since so much more than rational beliefs are involved in the values teachers hold (attachment, emotions, identity, and so on), mutual reflection is vital in the process of value clarification and change in school communities. Also, if the process of value clarification is to be educational and not mere social engineering, it needs to be undertaken with degree of understanding the process on the part of the teachers involved (Wringe, 1998). The aim is to change behavior by clarifying and changing values, and this is a social process. Teachers cannot successfully teach and transmit values if their institutions are not committed to their applications in real school life situations.

This study regards values as a legitimate mode of community discourse and reflection. Therefore, critical reasoning should be a crucial element in the process of value clarification taking place in schools. If values are understood as something generated by members of a school community - rather than received by some distant authority - then shared experience of a positive kind is the principal way in which they are to be acquired. Therefore, this study regards values as essentially social and positive, not prohibitions and prescriptions. The concern is not just with a good behaviour in schools (i.e. school discipline), but with influencing he pupils’ long-standing value commitments and in consequence their whole future way of life. Those relevant experiences need to be enjoyed in a pedagogically supportive atmosphere and subject to appropriate guidance and supervision.

A key rationale for teacher community is that it provides an ongoing venue for teacher learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). Reflective discussions with colleagues are a crucial aspect of the teachers’ professional development. Also, teachers’ perceptions of their level of empowerment are significantly related to their feelings of commitment to the school organization they are working at (Bogler & Somech, 2004). It is a question of “a process whereby school participants develop competence to take charge of their own growth and resolve their own problems” (Short et al., 1994, p. 38). If such a condition prevails, teachers believe that they have the capability and knowledge to improve a situation in which teachers operate.

The importance of visions and ideals

Professions are usually described as a complex set of role characteristics and skills in matters of importance to society. Also, and more often implied, is the normative aspect of a profession that is set as a standard of responsible behavior. Teachers are expected to be persons of integrity whom students and parents and trust and who can contribute to the good of a society and advance the quality of human life. This study presents these normative aspects of pedagogical professionalism as ideals defining the standard of good professional conduct within schools.

However, the emphasis on prescriptive rules should not give an impression that being a competent professional means no more than following a variety of rules governing the conduct of teachers. As Flores (1988, p. 2) argues, while this approach has its value in giving teachers general guidance as to how they ought to act, it also has its limits and can distort our understanding of the normative aspects of teaching profession.

This paper examines both the normative and descriptive foundations of pedagogical values. The emphasis is not how teachers and students should act given a catalogue of value prescriptions, but on what kind of ethos/value structure could prevail in schools in order they can be considered true educative institutions – and professional communities. In accordance with Flores (1988), we emphasize the claim that teaching profession should be understood as a complex of virtues and ideals that are essential to success in a teacher role. Hence, teaching as a normative concept can be defined as an idealized way of being (in a certain role) that contributes to the realization of the goods central to the profession.

Hammerness (2003) proposes that understanding teachers’ vision – teachers’ images of their ideal school practices – may provide a means to for us to better appreciate what decisions teachers make and what experiences they have in their classrooms. According to Feiman-Nemser & Floden (1984), the visions and images that teachers create can provide good means of studying teachers’ knowledge, especially its tacit and implicit dimensions. This is because “images mediate between thought and action … and show how different kinds of knowledge and values come together in teaching” (p. 33). Visions and images express the teachers’ purposes. Because they are loose and open, visions largely guide teachers intuitively. According to Duffy (1988), vision is a concept and a vehicle that makes intuitive sense to teachers and can provide access to teachers’ ‘sense of purpose.’

Vision can provide a sense of reach that inspires and motivates teachers, and also invites them to reflect on their work. Darling-Hammond (1990) argues that one of the most powerful predictors of teachers’ commitment to teaching is a “sense of efficacy – the teachers’ sense that he or she is making a positive difference in the lives of students” (p. 9). Here, visions are helpful in three ways: First, they provided a means to surface and examine teachers’ beliefs. Making visions explicit may also help provide a foundation for the development of teachers’ professional knowledge. Second, vision may offer possibilities to ‘dig deeper’ teachers’ beliefs and goals by examining, challenging, and further articulating their beliefs through the sharing of visions. Finally, examining visions may provide teachers possibilities to deal with the gap between their hopes and their practice. Learning to navigate the gap between vision and practice may be helpful in developing the contextual understanding of teaching. With the aid of visions, teachers can select and create contexts in which they can sustain their feelings of agency.

However, it is not very helpful to talk about visions and the role they can play in teachers’ professional development without considering the contexts in which teachers actually work. Whether teachers feel that their contexts provide support – or not – is focal to their ability to carry out their visions. A supportive or unsupportive school context refers to a teacher’s perception of degree to which such aspects as classroom resources, collegial environment, and school leadership are consistent with her/his professional vision. As Shulman & Shulman (2004) argue, a developed and articulated vision can serve as a goal toward which teacher development is directed. Also, it can set a standard against which teachers’ thoughts and actions can be evaluated.

3. Method - how teachers attain a set of school values

Values clarification

Of the various approaches to values education in the schools today, perhaps the most influential approach is the values clarification approach advocated by Raths et al. (1966) in their book, Values and Teaching. Values clarification was introduced as a new alternative in the 1970’s to teach moral education, and since its success has been phenomenal. According to Purpel & Ryan (1976), this is because value clarification contains techniques that are easy to learn and easily accessible to teachers. Teachers are eager to consider openly and honestly issues that they regard as important to themselves. Also, many teachers report that ‘value clarification works’ and that it is ‘pro-kids’ in otherwise often too formal professional development.

In approaching value education this way, Raths and his colleagues were concerned not with the content of respondents’ values, but with a process approach to values - i.e., they were concerned with the process of valuing rather than the nature of values themselves. According to their agenda, values are based on three processes: (1) choosing; (2) prizing; and (3) acting. Value is defined when the seven of the criteria given below are satisfied:

Choosing: (1) freely

(2) from alternatives

(3) after thoughtful consideration of the consequences

Prizing: (4) appreciating, being happy with the choice

(5) willing to affirm the choice publicly

Acting: (6) doing something with the choice

(7) repeatedly, in some pattern of life (Raths et al., 1966, p. 30)

These processes collectively define valuing. Regarding school curriculum, we must have certain reservations concerning some of the criteria. On the topic of choosing, teachers and students are not free to do whatever they personally want; there are certain responsibilities and duties that come along with the educational context. Teachers’ work is carried out within schools, and with these institutions come certain aims and goals to direct the process. The criteria for decisions to be taken are determined by the aims and goals of the curriculum. The term ‘pedagogical’ refers to this bounded system, and it is accompanied with certain values. Teachers and students are expected to act according with these predetermined values.

Concerning prizing, making pedagogical decisions can never be restricted to descriptive side; taking a stand requires normative thinking. Pedagogical also means taking stands. Within pedagogical decision-making, formal professional knowledge is not the only component that counts - other parts of the personal belief system come into operation as well. However, teachers should publicly commit themselves to working on the values of the curriculum.

Acting is also a complex issue. In educational contexts acting means making decisions continuously, and it also means choosing between competing alternatives in order to arrive at a certain result. As mentioned, educational values need some criteria. However, it is important to note that not all criteria can be stated explicitly. In fact, the pervasiveness of pedagogical situations (Husu, 2002) implies that a great deal of pedagogical decisions depend on teachers’ personal presence and their perceptiveness of what to do in various contingent situations. This means that the values teachers hold, are not tested. Rather, they are constantly under test. According to Smith (1988, p. 173), to claim that a teacher’s act is right and virtuous is to make a threefold claim: the teacher regularly and easily performs acts of a sort that make her/his students in some way morally better. As presented, a closer examination of each of these three points will provide further insight into the nature of pedagogical acting. The provision of teaching as the standard by which we should judge a teacher can not be contractual. Instead, it is grounded in the very nature of the whole school organization being evaluated.

Remembering these reservations, the goals of recognizing, articulating and expressing their values are relevant for teachers and school communities. We can assume that the process of clarifying one’s values is a prerequisite for making responsible judgments in the everyday moral dilemmas faced. A values clarification approach has the potential to promote refection, interpersonal skills and courage that are needed in pedagogical decision-making.

4. The case

Description of research

In our project we conceived teachers’ pedagogical values as their implicit social and individual characteristics concerning pedagogy. We assumed that these values might become explicit through a dialectical process of mutual discussions and discourses. Our aim was to make explicit the school values the teachers were willing to commit themselves to. Inspired by the work of Chin & Lin (2001), we used Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of “inner speech” and “social speech” to help teachers explicitly express their pedagogical values and to be aware of such values.

We planned a collaborative action research project in which school teachers and university educators aimed toward a process of working together. According to the idea of collaborative action research (Oja, 1989), we aimed to foster teachers’ democratic participation within their school community. In collaborative action research teachers could explore their social, cultural, and political/power experiences in the school as well as the pedagogical intentions and expectations of their classrooms. Our main research task was to experiment how or in what ways could we (as researchers) assist teachers to concisely explicate their pedagogical values (to outsiders), i.e., how can we help teachers develop their spontaneous concepts (implicit values) into more specific/action oriented pedagogical concepts (explicit values)? Here, we were driven by the fact that particular terms are popular and widely use. However, what is meant by their use is often both various and underspecified. The central purpose of this study was to investigate and reconsider foundational concepts of school values and teacher reflection.

We worked with a group of 24 Finnish teachers from a public urban secondary school. The project was located in the context of their workplace and their professional development. Also, the project hoped to effect a change not only in individuals but also in the culture of the workplace. This involved contributing to group discussions, pressing others to clarify their thoughts, engaging in the processes of developing new ideas of others, and providing resources for others’ learning.

The study consisted of two phases. In the first phase, all the 24 teachers attended to two meetings each lasting six hours during the spring term of 2003. Within these meetings, the task was to create a list of school values that the teachers were willing to commit to. Teachers’ reflective dialogue and theses writing were used as major tools for initiating the clarification of their pedagogical values. The two researchers also took part in these meetings. Their role was to set the initial frame for the meetings and provide opportunities and guidance for mutual professional learning and interactions around the subject of school values. The researchers saw themselves as something of a cross between ‘project organizers’ and ‘project leaders.’ During the meetings they took detailed field notes and interviewed some of the teachers.

In the second phase of the project, the researchers investigated and interpreted the teachers’ expressed pedagogical values in their statements by using three-step interpretation procedure. On this interpretative level, in looking for evidence for major conceptualizations the researchers were not interested primary in statements having an outward form of a principle, but rather in the way such statements operated in structuring school values. Table 1 presents the research setting and the processes of data analysis:

Table 1. The value clarification process of the study.

|Research phase |The conceptual phase of teachers’ value |The process of value clarification in |

| |knowing |relation to teachers’ pedagogical thinking|

| | | |

| |Teachers as value carriers of spontaneous |Teacher reflection ‘practical’ |

| |and implicit pedagogical values |Dialogue |

| | |Mutual support |

|FOREGROUND | | |

| | | |

|Phase I: At school | | |

| | | |

| | | |

| | |Teacher reflection ‘formal’/’practical’ |

| | |Critique |

| | |Feedback |

| | |Formation pedagogical value statements |

| |Teachers as value communicators of | |

| |explicit pedagogical values | |

| | | |

| | | |

| | | |

| | | |

|BACKGROUND | |Teacher reflection ‘formal’/’abstract’ |

| | |Analysis of the value statements |

|Phase II: At the analysis | | |

| | | |

| | | |

At the school phase, pressing teacher colleagues for clarification in a formal setting required a lot: skilful orchestration of multiple social skills and intellectual capacities, careful negotiation to prevent possible shutdowns, etc. The list is demanding. However, we should remember, that they are very much the kind of qualities and characteristics that teachers require of their students if classrooms are to become ‘communities of learners’ (cf. Grossman et al., 2001).Also, the experience of writing theses seemed helpful because teachers had to think through how and in what forms to present their ideas. In addition, reflection in discussions seemed to be an effective way of stimulating and re-structuring teachers’ thoughts. Based on their reflection, teachers re-organized their ideas and verbal descriptions of school values.

Results

The process of value clarification

The teachers of a case school worked in a suburban school near Tampere. All 24 teachers attended to two weekend meetings each lasting six hours. Seven of the participants were male, 17 were female; all qualified teachers. Their ages ranged from 27 to 52. The teaching experience among teachers ranged from 1 year to 21 years, the average being 11 years. They taught different subjects in their school and their students were mainly between 13 and 16 years of age. Overall, the teachers were quite satisfied with their school. They liked their students and regarded their colleagues as professionals in their own field. Each of them expressed their belief in the importance of school values in education. The following characteristics described the collaboration within these meetings:

▪ Dialogue One reason that members of the group appreciated these collegial meetings was that there were teachers from different perspectives contributing to the dialogue. According to their own reports, teachers felt ‘safe’ within these meetings. This was apparent because teachers were eager to utter ‘half-baked’ truths and often asked others to nurture them. They all knew each other and told their visions and ideas of how they liked their school to become. The group of teachers engaged in ‘real talk,’ which involved careful listening and sharing ideas. This kind of conversation implied a mutually shared agreement that together the teachers were creating a setting in which emergent ideas could grow. Teachers felt the meetings as democratic in intent and had a feeling that all members of the group had the access to its decision-making. In their reflection, teachers considered how the local conditions influenced their work and thereby shaped their actions. Teachers felt connected with each other and with their school, and community at large.

▪ Support One reason that the members of the group appreciated these gatherings was that there were different perspectives contributing to the conversation. But simultaneously, the like-mindedness between certain members of the group was also an important factor. The meetings gave teachers a chance to ‘unload’ that, which was weighing on them. Apparently, this was felt as a form of support in itself. In addition to reinforcing the personal connections, this kind of support seemed to increase teachers’ mutual confidence against internal pressures: Teachers got empowered from realizing that while they can’t stop outside pressures coming in, there are some ways of handling these compelling demands by mutual support. The support was an essential component of teachers’ interaction, without feeling supported, it would have been difficult to share anything with the colleagues. Important, what made the meetings different from those other forms of support (family, other teachers) was that the support and dialogue lead to reflection and critique, which could, in turn, change thinking and practice.

Within this phase, the main feature of teacher discourse was its focus on the teachers’ practical school experiences as the source of reflection. For example, dealing with the issues of classroom management, student behavior, and teaching obstacles of various sorts, teachers crafted their pedagogical knowledge through reflection upon their teaching experiences. Even if the content of teacher reflection was often mundane, together the group of teachers could incorporate an aspect of consideration in which teachers retuned to their own experience with new eyes garnered through the teacher collective.

During the second meeting teachers moved from practical reflection towards more formal and specific pedagogical reasoning. As presented, their task was to create a list of school values that the community of teachers was willing to commit to. The task presupposed that teachers could conceive their work in broader terms that incorporated curricular contexts to their pedagogical concerns. It led teachers to consider the means and objectives of education and the need for respective pedagogical actions. This latter section of the school phase utilized both the teachers’ personal knowledge as well as the construction of the formal list of common rules and prescriptions to modify teachers’ pedagogical knowing. This kind of situated learning among teachers emphasized reflection that was embedded both in the everyday activities of their school and in the respective curricular goals. It required communication and exchange of ideas where reflection itself is not contained wholly in the mind of individual teachers but is embedded in the social activity of the school community. The construction of social curriculum required teachers’ collaborative planning and discussions of beliefs and practices within the routines of their daily work. The following characteristics described the teacher collaboration within this second meeting:

▪ Critique As the teachers got closer to the formation of the collective rules and prescriptions, a critical consciousness about one’s own actions and the contexts which surrounded them became more apparent.

▪ Feedback This led teachers articulating and seeking feedback on their beliefs and proposed actions in order to improve them. In many ways, teachers expressed their need to use their colleagues as a method of reflection. Also, some teachers showed their need for collegial stimulation in order to provoke their own action.

The process produced a list of 42 descriptive statements. Most of these listed school values were school-wide behavioral expectations typically addressing the most frequently observed problem behaviors taking place in school. Most of the values were condensed into short statements and they were positively stated. Together, they formed a school-wide culture of social competence. Next, a brief overview of their analysis is provided.

Basic values of a school’s social curriculum

The analysis of the value statements

The process of value clarification calls for a synthesis of statements made in order to see possible commonalities among them. Table 2 shows a list of school-based value statements the teachers produced during their two conferences. The components are not new ideas and goals. Rather, they are mainly focusing on what the teachers saw as characteristics of a good and effective school – or community at large. All and all, they identify and promote skills that both teachers and students need if they are to be able to navigate successfully through the complex institutional life taking place in schools. Perhaps their main message is that the teachers recognized their school not only as an intellectual, but also as a social and emotional place (cf. Norris, 2003).

Table 2. Summary of the school values statements

Teachers of this school

▪ respect each other’s physical and psychological intimacy

▪ emphasize the interests of our community more than individuality and selfishness

▪ educate to tolerate differences

▪ respect and follow the common rules we have agreed on

▪ aim to create a peaceful and caring atmosphere

▪ try to concentrate on our work and maintain a peaceful working environment

▪ behave the way we would like the others to behave

▪ create co-operative methods that support learning

▪ take responsibility of our own work and learning

▪ are learning to accept our mistakes and failures and learn from them

▪ take care of our belongings we need at school

▪ are self-directed and active

▪ think with our own brains

▪ are consistent in our efforts

▪ justify the decision we make to each other

▪ practice to live in peace with each other and work together

▪ work and we try hard

▪ are responsive to each other’s needs

▪ respect ourselves and others

▪ help and encourage each other

▪ take responsibility of ourselves, each other and our environment

▪ are learning to discern between right and wrong

▪ act according to our roles

▪ aim learning to learn

▪ are trying to reach the best possible individual standards in knowledge and skills

▪ are open and honest to all

▪ are democratic in co-operation

▪ are flexible and ready to change

▪ try to reach the goals we have established

▪ are here for students

▪ take care of the good spirit in our school

▪ co-operate with people outside our school

▪ co-operate with parents

▪ give each other peace to work

▪ listen/are attentive to each other

▪ trust ourselves and try our best

▪ take responsibility of ourselves and our assignments

▪ aim to complete our tasks

▪ take a positive attitude to work

▪ transfer values to each other/We respect tradition

▪ have a positive attitude toward nature and environment

▪ are learning to evaluate our work honestly

A closer look at the value statements reveals that the notion of school values among teachers is diverse and vague. Confusion surrounding the concept of value is evident. Depending on the issue, teachers see values as norms: As a standard or pattern of social behaviour that is accepted in or expected is a school. Also, school values are seen as cultural ideals (“We are open and honest;” “We respect ourselves and the others”) that are common to all people in a society. The statements are not, and nor they should or could, knowledge based: Instead, they are goal-directed beliefs with good intentions. In many cases they present (at least implicit) behavior probabilities and expectations: Statements like “We are flexible and ready to change;” or “We take positive attitude to our work.” are optimistic in their tone. Most of them can be used as assessments of action: The statements define values as moral judgments without clarifying the procedures that they presuppose. As such, they can be used as an occupational reward structure and/or system. Finally, they can be seen as a set of generalized attitudes that stress on conformity.

The list of school values concerns those norms, ideals, and attitudes that are supposed to govern the conduct of teachers. It emphasizes the inherent normative meanings that determine the appropriateness of teachers’ professional practices. The normative core of school values, therefore, provides ways to appraise the merits and to judge the significance of educational practices taken place in schools. In analyzing the statements and their internal structure, one could identify that the data mainly echoed “straight” reasoning. The list of school values could be read as a list of “rules of practice” (Elbaz, 1983, Husu, 2000). The rules of practice are brief, clearly formulated statements of what to do in particular situation frequently encountered in practice (Elbaz, 1983, p. 132). According to their nature, they can be applied to broader situations.

Perspectives behind the value statements

Next, the list of 42 statements was further analyzed. The data could also be interpreted through more inclusive concepts. In search for justifying evidence for these larger concepts, the focus was not primarily in statements having an external form. Rather, the analysis was expended to concentrate on determining how the statements operated in structuring teachers’ pedagogical reasoning. For example, the statements concerning of recognizing and respecting one’s emotions, controlling impulses, and focusing on strengths of positive feelings about self and others were interpreted under the value concept of “self esteem”. The statements related to the issues of managing relationships, showing sensitive to social clues, and exercising social decision-making and problem-solving skills formed became part of the value concept of “co-operation.” Altogether, the analysis produced six applied school values: Service and inclusion, justice and care; co-operation, autonomy and consideration; excellence, and self-esteem.

Finally, we tried to uncover some basic values behind the applied value statements. According to Brown et al., (1991), within the domain of moral and value judgement, a global assessment comes before more specific practical actions. Therefore, we aimed to construct certain basic concepts, meta values, that could relate both the individual value statements and the applied school values. The analysis produced three value frames embedded in teachers’ professional practice: Social and communal values, relational values, and individual values. Table 3 presents the results of the analysis:

Table 3. Summary of school values: their kinds and relationships

Value structure Number of value Examples of the included value

statements out of statements

total 42

Social &

communal values 13

Service & inclusion (7) - We emphasize the interests of our

community more than individuality and

selfishness

- We co-operate with people outside our

school

- We have a positive attitude toward

nature and environment

Justice & Care (6) - We aim to create a peaceful and caring

atmosphere

- We acknowledge each other’s needs

- We are here for students

Relational values 12

Co-operation (5) - We help and encourage each other

- We respect and follow the common

rules we have agreed

- We justify the decisions we make to

each other

Autonomy & consideration (7) - We respect each other’s physical and

psychological intimacy

- We listen/are attentive to each other

- We educate to tolerate differences

individual values 17

excellence (10) - We work and we try hard

- We are learning to accept our mistakes

and failures and learn from them

- We try to reach the goals we have

established

Self-esteem (7) - We respect ourselves and others

- We take responsibility of ourselves

and our assignments

- We think with our own brains

According to the analysis and interpretation, social and community values address for societal and local community awareness and involvement. They emphasize the right of self and others, and address for injustice in school community and in society in general. Increasing empathy and sensitivity to others and understanding others’ perspectives are in a key focus in these value prescriptions. Overall, they strive for learning how to increase and develop active and democratic participation for the use of everyday life both inside and outside school institution.

Relational values focused more on the process and practice of interpersonal relationships. In their views, teachers stressed that it is vital for all participants – both teachers and students alike - to keep in mind the needs of other people, and relate them with kindness and tolerance. Working and willing to assist each other to achieve these curricular goals demands collegiality and co-operation. Social skills in handling relationships require that teachers are motivated to recognize strengths in and are able to mobilize positive feelings about students, school, and themselves as skillful professionals.

In their statements, teachers expressed their will to constantly challenge each student to achieve the best of his/her potential. This is done by focusing tasks at hand, setting short and long-term goals, working toward optimal performance states, and activating hope and optimism among students – but also among colleagues. These individual values aim to develop a sense of self-worth and self-discipline with the hope and belief for betterment and positive future.

With the aid of these value conceptions, Figure 1 presents a preliminary spectrum of teachers’ school values.

Figure 1. A framework for teacher reflection of school values

DISCUSSION

A critical note

As presented, teachers are about searching for ways to make education a positive and productive experience for all partners of the pedagogical process. Their professional strivings for better solutions also urge teachers to stay professionally awake. For this purpose, it is important that communities of colleagues want to study and support each other and change together. As a result, the more teachers understand about their own value positions, the more flexible they will be in their thinking about, and practice of, the complexities of school life. A crucial element in for empowering the teachers’ daily work is their awareness of the values – both ideal and real – that guide their pedagogical actions. Therefore, the more we understand about the processes of value construction and its changes the better position we will be in to develop school communities towards learning communities.

However, it would be naïve to think that just by investigating and sharing values the actual pedagogical practice in schools would change. So far, the tone of this paper has been hopeful and optimistic – and simultaneously, also valid. Nevertheless, the picture must be balanced. As one of our teachers told us in his interview:

We were told that what we needed was to share our values and beliefs so that we could better understand each other in our school work, and we could develop ‘held-in-common’ set of values and beliefs about what and how we should do our work. Ok, we did the sessions, completed the values clarification tasks, and listed a number of values that we regarded as vital for our profession. After we had completed the thing, we went at the round table to discuss what we valued. One teacher valued this, the other that … we had real problems, and here we were talking about things so abstract that they had no relevance to our everyday work …

Here, the teacher had made an important notion. Namely, that we tend to have erroneous ideas about the role that values, beliefs and principles play in influencing human behavior. Our eagerness to posit normative judgements has a tendency to make values programmatic in their orientation to education: “A set of duties or obligations that if well-enough defined and well-enough followed will produce the [ethical] behaviour desired” (Todd, 2001, p. 436). According to the stance, education is seen as a fulfilment or failure of prior principles of goodness and rightness - prior actual encounters between teachers and students. What it tends to forget is the uncertainty and unpredictability of the pedagogical encounter itself (Reid, 1979; Husu, 2002). Both teachers and students bring a host of idiosyncrasies and unconscious associations in pedagogical situations which cannot be predicted or controlled. Therefore, instead of asking what ought to be, we should also ask what makes values possible in pedagogical settings.

Therefore, we should not oversell the process of value clarification. Also, it should be anchored to real values expressed in real world school problems (Husu, 2003b). If a teacher says s/he values honesty, we should ask her/him to explain what that would mean to her/him in terms of real-world classroom or school behaviour. Consequently, we should encourage teachers to identify practical examples where there is a gap between values and their behaviour, either on an individual level, or an organizational level. We should develop ways of doing things that bring behaviour in-line with our values. This is vital because we are not going to alter a teacher’s values by talking about them. At best, value clarification provides an opportunity to take the first step on the road of getting to know them – and finally, live with them.

The values and beliefs identified in this first phase of the project will guide the project to uncover the content and the structure of teachers’ values. In the second phase of the project the teachers will be brought to discuss the practical implications of their reported values to their school work.

So far (so good!), we have started discussing the same issue as was current here in the ancient Greece: The vision of the good society – and school. The point is that school must be a school based an awareness of the importance of values, bring them fore and give students and teachers time to reflect on and discuss such issues.

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Individual & institutionalized VALUE reflection

Self-esteem

Developing a sense of self-worth and self-discipline with the hope and belief for betterment and positive future

Excellence:

Constant challenging of each student/person to achieve the best of his/her potential

Service & inclusion:

Addressing for societal and local community awareness and involvement

R E L A T I O N A L V A L U E S

SOCIAL

VALUES

Justice & care:

Addressing the right of self and others, and addressing injustice in school community and in society in general

Co-operation:

Working and willing to assist each other to achieve the curricular goals

Autonomy & Consideration:

Keeping in mind the needs of other people, with kindness and tolerance; being true and respect for self and others

I D I V I D U A L

VALUES

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