Ethics, professionalism and school development



Session 3

Thursday morning 24th August

Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri

Autumn seminar 2000

Responsibility and reflection

in school development

M. Allyson Macdonald

Iceland University of Education

Session 3

Ethics and professional development:

their role in school development

Lecture

Introduction to Activity 3

Coffee break

Groupwork: Activity 3

Closing words

Ethics and professional development:

their role in school development

M. Allyson Macdonald

Verkmenntaskólinn á Akureyri

23-24 August 2000

In this paper I wish to discuss briefly the role of ethics in education, in particularly the ethics of care. Then I will consider how a commitment to these ethics can guide the professional development of teachers as they reflect on their own teaching. Finally I will consider ways in which this approach to professional development can be used as a means to school development.

Ethical principles and the ethic of care

( (

Professional development of teachers

and reflection on teaching

( (

School development

Ethical principles

Strike and Ternasky (1993) have suggested that ethics might be applied to education in three ways.

1. When reflecting on educational policy, ethical considerations should be a part of that process.

2. Schools could be expected to engage students in some form of moral education.

3. Professional ethics should govern the conduct of teachers, administrators and other educational professionals.

Interest in professional ethics is increasing. Strike and Ternasky have pointed out that cases of misconduct increase demands for instruction in ethics, there is increased interest in conceptualising education as a profession and there is a growing appeal to consider teaching as a moral pursuit rather than a technical enterprise.

Ethical conduct depends on character as well as cognition (Strike and Ternasky) and it is not obvious that teaching professional ethics will necessarily make better people. Perhaps there is need to consider an implicit rather than an explicit role for professional ethics. It could also be that the elaboration of an ethics code could make teaching more rule-bound and less caring.

Strike and Ternasky say (p. 7):

…we stand in need of wisdom about how we should treat one another and about how we may become the kinds of person we want to be.

Noddings (1993) has spoken about education as the making of “acceptable people” and argues for an ethic of care, built on a study of relationships, which is concerned with how human beings meet and treat one another. Earlier others have emphasised “attention”, naming it as essential to moral life (Murdoch 1970, Weil 1951, quoted in Noddings 1993). By attention is meant the ability to recognise that others are beings like ourselves. One cannot consider the concept of care with considering the contribution of the recipient both to sustain the contribution of the carer but also to monitor the quality and effect of caring, in continuous cycles of attention and response. The contribution of the recipient need not be explicit; instead growth, curiosity, interest, passion, honesty are all responses which can prevent teacher burnout (Noddings 1993). The ethics of caring does not assume that all students should be treated by some impartial standard of faired; indeed some students will need much more attention that others, and will respond differently to different teachers. An ethic of care does not imply simply that care is a matter of attitude, it is also a matter of competence. As Noddings says (p. 49-50):

Caring teachers have an obligation to become competent at whatever they teach and to reflect on their own competence with an eye toward continuous improvement.

We can use an ethic of care to analyse, criticise and improve the structures in which teaching is conducted and to guide the individual attempts of teachers. Teachers who adopt an ethic of care are as deeply concerned with intellectual development as they are with moral and social development (Noddings 1993). But, we must not simply convert caring into a manageable, formal, professional set of behaviours; instead we must transform the conditions of schooling so that teachers and students can adequately care for one another.

Consider school rules concerning being late or missing a lesson. Are they always in the best interests of students? Do they encourage the students to master material that is the common responsibility of the teacher and the student? Do they allow us to care for each student in each situation? (Noddings 1993, Grant 1993).

Professional development

Teachers as members of a profession will look for ways to improve themselves, perhaps be going to courses or by reading articles or by discussing ideas with others. Here I would like to consider how to make use of learning opportunities within the school.

Good and Brophy (2000) have suggested that we use theory and research to consider new ideas and then go beyond them by reflecting

• on our own earlier experience,

• on our beliefs about what appropriate teaching is,

• on our actual teaching experience, and

• by learning to use other teachers to gain insights into ourselves.

They point out however that there are several obstacles to our self-improvement. One is the way we have been socialised; we have not been trained to examine past and present performances. Another is that we are more used to analysis than synthesis and looking for weaknesses rather than constructive solutions. A third obstacle is that we are not used to learning about ourselves from others.

Yesterday we considered two important aspects of teaching:

• motivation and student achievement, and

• the role of interactions in learning.

Ideas that have emerged and been tested over the last 20 years or so were presented and discussed. But there is a bridge to be built from those new ideas to changed practice, and the bridge is built on inquiry, reflection and action.

At the end of this lecture there will be a bridging activity (Activity 3.1) which will follow the advice of Good and Brophy. It is expected that some of the ideas behind motivation, interactions and learning will be used in the activity as well as your own beliefs and experiences.

We saw yesterday that social interactions and collaborative learning are considered increasingly important in education. What types of professional collaboration can teachers engage in to promote their own learning, teaching and practice?

We can engage in professional discussion as presented by Glatthorn (1987) in Good and Brophy. He argues for a process in which a group

• looks first at external knowledge on an issue, explores it and tries to understand it,

• looks then at the personal knowledge of the members and uses the tensions between external and personal knowledge to form an integrated view, and

• finally explores further actions.

We could also use peer observation where we invite a colleague to watch us teaching in such a way that the observer looks at aspects which the teacher has identified himself as needing attention. An alternative approach is that described by Allen (2000) the 2+2 method where teachers observe each other and identify two aspects of the lesson that went particularly well and two that could be improved. Hjálmur Árnason (199 ) has also presented a variety of methods for teachers to work together professionally in his book on observations.

A third type of professional collaboration can be found in peer coaching as described by Joyce (1981) in Good and Brophy. The process is as follows:

• The theory or description of teaching skills or strategies is presented by the coach

• These are modelled or demonstrated by the coach

• The learner (teacher) then practices in simulated and real classrooms

• This is followed by structured and open-ended feedback by the coach

• Finally there is coaching or hands-on assistance for application of the new knowledge and skills.

School development

Rosenholz (1989, quoted in Good and Brophy 2000) says that commitment to the workplace depends on three conditions:

• teachers should enjoy task autonomy so that they can adapt instruction to their own contexts

• there should be continuous opportunities for learning

• there are psychic rewards such as opinions being requested and opportunities for interactions being available.

Rosenholz has categorised the social structure of the school according to whether these is a high or low level of consensus among staff. This can depend on the

• frequency and nature of contact between teachers,

• the level of leadership among teachers, and

• whether the sources of new ideas include other teachers.

I would like to end this presentation by looking at school development from the point of view of opinions, opportunities for the interactions, the sources of new ideas and the ethics of running a school. How can these be usefully employed within our school structure? Grant (1993) has written about ways to engage staff in inquiry, reflection and action and has made three suggestions.

Grant’s first suggestion is seminaring, and his ideas are not unlike those we discussed a few minutes ago regarding professional discussion and peer coaching, though he adds that teachers and schools need the time such analysis and exploration in order to strengthen consensus within the school. He suggests that the ideal seminar is a group of ten teachers with one leader.

Grant calls his second suggestion shadowing, an idea which developed out of the work of the Coalition of Essential Schools which bases its work on nine principles, which argue that schools should strive to cover less materials but engage students more deeply in what is studied. Classes should emphasise student initiative and teacher should act as coaches. No school can join the Coalition unless two-thirds of the teachers are willing to adhere to the principles. What is interesting is that teachers are encouraged to shadow pupils in their school before discussing the principles. This means that each teacher follows a student in their own school for a whole school day. Later the principles and their implications for teaching are discussed, perhaps at summer courses, when visiting other schools in the Coalition or when exemplary teachers are invited to visit.

His final suggestion is what he calls researching, which developed out an idea he had in which he hoped to place an anthropologist as a student in a school for several months in order to report on the moral life of the school community. This idea was not feasible so he decided instead to teach the students to be anthropologists. the students received training in observation, taking notes, taking interviews and analysing data. A committee was set up to work with the students and assess their research. Fifteen committee meetings were held during the course of the project all of which were transcribed. The transcripts showed that their had been five clear phases during the project:

1. Testing the need for change

2. Doubt and resistance

3. Emergence of beliefs that common actions was possible

4. Development of shared meanings about desirable policies and practices

5. Proposal of a strategy for schoolwide change.

Before we disperse into working groups for Activity 3, let us look briefly at what the law of secondary schooling has to say (Lög 80/1996, 2. gr.)

• The role of the secondary school is to support the allround development of all students so that they have optimal preparation to take an active part in a democracy. The secondary school prepares students for participation in the world of work and for further study.

• The secondary school should seek to encourage a sense of responsibility, vision, initiative, self-trust and tolerance in students, train them in disciplined and independent methods and critical thinking, teach them to appreciate cultural treasures and encourage a steady search for knowledge.

References

Alderman, M.K. 1999. Motivation for achievement. Possibilities for teaching and learning. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Allen, D. 2000. TVEIR + TVEIR. Ný aðferð við að meta frammistöðu kennara og koma í veg fyrir einangrun þeirra í skólastofunni. Erindi sem flutt var á vegum Rannsóknarstofnunar KHÍ, 2. mars 2000.

Becker, H.J. og Riel, M.M. 1999. Teacher professionalism and the emergence of constructivist-compatible pedagogies. Revised version of a paper presented at the 1999 meeting of the American Educational Research Association.



Benedict, F. (Ed.). 1991. Environmental Education for Our Common Future. Norwegian University Press. Kafli 7, 18 og 25.

Dodge, B. 1998. Schools, Skills and Scaffolding on the Web. Ed Tech Department, San Diego State University



Felder, R. 1992 “How About a Quick One?” Chem. Engr. Education, 26(1), 18-19 (Winter 1992).

Good, T.L. and Brophy, J.E. Looking in classrooms. (8th edition). New York, Longman.

Grant, G. 1993. Discovering how you really teach. Í Strike, K.A. og Ternasky, P.L. (ritstj.). 1993. Ethics for professionals in education, New York, Teachers College Press, bls. 135-147.

Gross Davis, B. 1999. Collaborative learning: group work and study teams. Tools for teaching.



Gross Davis, B. 1999. Motivating students. Tools for Teaching.



Hassard, J. 1990. Cooperating Classroom. Science Scope, March 1990, bls. 36-39, 45.

Hjálmar Árnason. 1993. Vettvangsaðstoð: stuðningur við kennara í starfi. Reykjavík, Iðnu.

Lee, V.E., Smith, J.B. and Croninger, R.G. 1996 Restructuring high schools can improve student achievement.



Noddings, N. 1993. Caring: A feminist perspective. Í Strike, K.A. og Ternasky, P.L. (ritstj.). 1993. Ethics for professionals in education, New York, Teachers College Press. bls. 43-53.

Pitt, T.J. 2000. Instructor’s manual/Test Bank. To accompany Good and Brophy, Looking in Classrooms, Eighth Edition. New York. Longman.

Slavin, J. 1988.

Stahl, R.J. 1994. The essential elements of cooperative learning in the classroom. ERIC digest ED370881, ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education, Bloomington, Indiana.

Strike, K.A. og Ternasky, P.L. 1993. Ethics for professionals in education. New York, Teachers College Press

Activity 3.1 The Five Propositions of Accomplished Teaching

Purpose:

The purpose of this activity is to engage teachers in a structured discussion of what it actually means to be a “professional” teacher and to consider the responsibilities and actions which must follow.

It is hoped that from the discussion a guide to professional practice in VMA could emerge.

Procedure:

The Jigsaw method for collaborative learning will be used, with home groups and specialist groups, as follows:

1. Teachers divide into home groups of 10 (5 pairs of 2), if possible according to the line of study which they teach (námsbraut). Home groups are labelled A, B, C, and so on.

2. The group divides itself into five pairs. Each pair takes one of the five propositions and joins the specialist group (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) which will consider the proposition of the same number.

3. Each specialist group discusses its proposition and what it might mean for teachers at VMA. Each specialist group then prepares a list of practices (indicators) which a teacher would have to show in order to meet that standard, keeping in mind the discussion and activities in Sessions 1 and 2. Each pair writes the list on an OHT.

4. Pairs leave the specialist groups and return to their home groups where they each present the set of practices from the specialist group to the home group. The home group then makes suggestions and amendments according to their area of expertise and the courses which they teach. For example, it is likely that sometimes the same indicator has appeared under more than one heading.

5. A final set of OHTs and the names of the group members are handed to ………. who will have them typed and re-distributed.

Activity:

Here are the five propositions of accomplished teaching as proposed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the USA. Your task is to identify examples which might indicate that a teacher is acting in a professional manner. Discuss these examples and list them.

1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning.

2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.

3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.

4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.

5. Teachers are members of learning communities.

1. Teachers are committed to students and their

learning.

Indicators:

2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.

Indicators:

3. Teachers are responsible for managing and

monitoring student learning.

Indicators:

4. Teachers think systematically about their

practice and learn from experience.

Indicators:

5. Teachers are members of learning communities.

Indicators:

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