Abstract

Abstract: This review study focuses on ethical and moral aspects of school education in the Czech Republic after 1989, when change occurred not only in the political regime but also in all spheres of social life, including education. The study is based on publications by Czech authors and is structured into six parts. The fi rst part describes the broader context of the chosen issue: it describes the basic philosophical concepts of ethics and morality and reminds offi cial materials (starting with the International Teachers’ Charter, through materials created by the Ministry of Education, to the school rules of individual schools). The second part provides an overview of publications dealing with the ethical and moral education of children and adolescents from the perspective of various scientific disciplines: philosophy, theology, sociology, and psychology. The third part presents the organizational form of ethical and moral education at Czech basic and secondary schools. In terms of its content and conception, ethics education as a subject taught in Czech schools is based on the concept of prosocial education (Roche-Olivar, 1992), adapted by the Slovak author Ladislav Lencz (1995). The fourth part is devoted to a specifi c genre, review studies which provide information about Czech and foreign research studies, and evaluates them. The fifth and most extensive part reports on selected Czech empirical studies that deal with the ethical and moral aspects of education. It presents research on cyberbullying addressed to both pupils and teachers and mobbing and bossing in schools, examines the course and outcomes of teaching ethical topics, researches the power relations between teachers and their pupils, and examines the tendencies for teachers and pupils to be manipulated at school, cheating by pupils at school, and pupils helping one another. The sixth and last part of the study describes assessment tools with the help of which the ethical and moral aspects of school education are determined. The study concludes that one-off transversal research studies predominate in the studies, while longitudinal research studies are not conducted at all; mainstream research focuses on real-life research and no intervention studies are undertaken; researchers’ attention is focused mainly on negative ethical and moral situations, while research into positive phenomena is neglected.
 Keywords: ethics education, moral education, school, teachers, pupils, research, Czech Republic

Highlights

  • The human values that underpin the work of the school form part of the educational endeavours of teachers and educators; either implicitly or explicitly, these enter the daily work of teachers and pupils

  • In addition to larger research projects on this topic, we find partial research probes dedicated to the unethical behaviour of pupils, teachers, and school heads

  • The results show that secondary school teachers most often face the following negative phenomena during their careers: gross verbal abuse or insults by a pupil in class (21.9% of the teachers), gross verbal abuse by a parent or other relative (12.3%), and threats made by parents or other relatives to misuse influential connections (10.7%). 4.7% of the teachers had experienced serious cases of physical assault during their careers, either by a pupil or by a parent

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The human values that underpin the work of the school form part of the educational endeavours of teachers and educators; either implicitly or explicitly, these enter the daily work of teachers and pupils. The selection of publications for our review study covering the years 19902019 originated in two steps. The first step included a Google search for publications by Czech authors only, using keywords such as: ethics, ethical, morality, moral, school, education, teaching, teacher, pupil, and pupils. The second step was more difficult because it did not follow the formal features of the published works but their factual content. We were interested both in negative topics (e.g. the exercise of power at school, inappropriate behaviour of teachers towards pupils, inappropriate behaviour of pupils towards teachers and classmates, mobbing and bossing in schools, and the moral distress of teachers), and positive topics (helping others, social support, and positive education). The objectives of our study are fourfold: to give an overview of: 1. official school materials in the Czech Republic which mention the ethical and moral aspects of school education and pedagogical situations in which these aspects can be observed; 2. philosophical, theological, sociological, and psychological publications dealing with ethical and moral aspects of the work of schools; 3. the conception and implementation of formal ethics and moral education in Czech basic school and secondary schools, and 4. the Czech research on ethical and moral education

OF THE CHOSEN ISSUE
ON ETHICAL AND MORAL ISSUES
Psychological publications
ETHICS AND MORAL EDUCATION IN CZECH SCHOOLS
AND FOREIGN RESEARCHERS
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Teaching focused on ethical and moral problems
Power relations between teachers and pupils at school
Pupils cheating at school
WITH DIAGNOSTIC ISSUES
Findings
CONCLUSIONS
Full Text
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