Teaching Ethos Research Articles

ETHOS OF CALLING IN EDUCATION: TEACHING AND LEARNING

The main conditions of the ethics of E. Levinas in their interpretation concerning the practice of educational process presented in the paper of C. Joldersma “A Levinasian Ethics for Education’s Commonplaces: Between Calling and Inspiration” are following: education presumes ethical responsibility, personal involvement of a teacher into caring about the good and wellbeing of a student, education is based on confidence, openness and understanding of ethical asymmetry of the relations of a teacher and a learner. Those principles and values define the contemporary ethos of teaching and learning. On the basis of own research the author analyzes the opinions of Ukrainian teachers about the essence and importance of calling in education. The study also defines the determinative ethical directions of the ethos of learners.

Êthos Docente de Professores Referenciais

Resumo: Este artigo discute o êthos docente de professores formadores referenciais de prática, buscando analisar as influências na sua constituição profissional e os saberes explícitos e/ou tácitos presentes e mobilizados em sua docência. Com base em Shulman, Gauthier, Tardif, e Polanyi, foram realizadas entrevistas e observação de aulas de três professores indicados como referenciais pelos seus alunos, no contexto de um curso de Pedagogia de uma universidade pública. Os dados revelam convergências entre as práticas dos investigados e gravitam em torno de uma didática de prerrogativas intelectivas, morais, afetivas e comportamentais.

The Quality of Educational Institutions: Well-Trained and Virtuous Educational Directors and Teachers

In this article, I attempt to present the relationship between high quality of educational processes and well-trained educational directors and teachers. To obtain this virtuous circle we assumed that educational directors and teachers must be open-minded teachers and own a deep commitment to high quality education, sustained on the conviction and ability to help students to path in the way of searching truth and promote a clear interest in the real formative schedule of new generations. Subsequently, the issue of well-trained and virtuous educational directors and teachers is discussed, highlighting the importance of being good examples insofar as humility, intelligence, love, faith, and reason are concerned while critically being interested in others and being open to different ideas and perspectives. Finally, I present the importance of a humanistic education as a reference guide line of an educational model with quality, which is reflected in the teaching ethos, helping students grow appropriately, while the management ethos reaffirms the importance of service and dedication within the overall context of a proper education. In sum, I conclude that to achieve a quality education, both educational directors and teachers should evidence a number of conditions and virtues that enable them to better themselves and help others grow both through example and a coherently balanced and healthy lifestyle.

Catholic Schools and Sectarianism in Scotland: Educational Places and the Production and Negotiation of Urban Space

This article explores the role of state-funded Catholic schools in debates about the causes and manifestations of sectarianism in Scotland. It suggests that debates between proponents and opponents of state-funded Catholic schools (and indeed faith schools more generally) have been largely aspatial, focusing on the teaching ethos within schools - empirically weak conceptions of the impacts of segregated schooling on social networks, and abstract national-level accounts of religion, ethnicity, identity and belonging. The article argues for a focus upon the productive power of schools as place nodes within a network of urban spaces and the agency of pupils in identity and friendship construction. It suggests the need to recognise the specifics of the social, spatial and political national and local contexts within which faith schools are situated. It concludes with an examination of educational policy responses to sectarianism in Scotland, arguing that they have focused on disrupting the spatial ordering of faith schools in an attempt to realign the physical boundaries of segregation and the visibility of difference in urban space.

Ethical qualities of professional development of the educator a humanistic perspective needed to manage a new way to see the quality of education

Human progress shows a scientific and technical breakthrough and calls for an ethical interaction among men and the peoples to ensure a genuine human development and a new society. The quality of education has been understood and developed from paradigms dominated by efficiency, focusing their attention on the resources and results. The new way to assume an education of quality revolves around the educator and in fact, on education itself. What inspires this new way is based on the principle of solidarity and on the ethos of teaching, understanding it, as the way of being by the exercise of teaching. Five ethical qualities shape that ethos: competence, initiative, responsibility, commitment and dedication. It is necessary to propose to educators and executives of educational institutions the ethical qualities inherent to their professional development and help them to discover and incorporate these ethical qualities.

Social model and educational ethos: A possible conflict in education for citizenship

This article endeavours to approach education for citizenship from a social perspective. This requires, firstly, reference to the civilization in question, to the kind of society dealt with and its foundations. Next, attention is paid to the educator. Could one count with a teaching ethos that could offer a response to the teachings needs of an education for citizenship? With regard to the educand, the attitudes that should be encouraged for such an education to be effective are emphasized. Both proposals establish guidelines for the development of a curriculum in education for citizenship. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2009 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

Critical Thinking about Truth in Teaching: The epistemic ethos

This paper discusses the most persistent controversial issue that occurred in Western educational philosophy ever since Socrates questioned the Sophists: the role of truth in teaching. Ways of teaching these kinds of controversy issues are briefly considered to isolate their epistemic characteristics, which will enable the interpretation of Plato and Dewey as exemplars of rationalism and empiricism regarding the role of knowledge in the curriculum and thus include their partial truths in the epistemic ethos of teaching. The consideration of pedagogy will then include the partial truths of rationalism and empiricism in the epistemic ethos of teaching by following Kant's ‘Concepts without percepts are empty; perceptions without conceptions are blind’. This claim, however, is narrowed down in two ways compatible with postmodernism and the heavy emphasis on constructionism in faculties of education. After quoting Harry Broudy's statement that the educational epistemic ethos should be domain‐specific, guided by the experts’ inquiry protocols in each curricular area, it is narrowed down further with Maxine Greene's explication that it should be pluralistic and lesson‐specific. This epistemic ethos is not argued as a synthesis but as an aggregate of the partial truths of various epistemologies in the spirit of the postmodern doubt in any one theory of knowledge without throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water. Finally, the streams of consciousness involved in teaching and learning good knowledge are described phenomenologically to disclose how truth can be disclosed in teaching, thereby grounding propositional knowledge, for example, ontologically in the being of the student and in the being of the world.

Personality, Behavior, and Academic Achievement: Principles for Educators to Inculcate and Students to Model

Undergraduate psychology students completed self-reports on a range of personality measures that were previously identified as significantly associated with academic performance. Their responses were analyzed in relation to their prior and subsequent performance on two indices of academic achievement (course work marks and test results). Correlation analyses demonstrated significant associations between a range of measures and both indices of performance. Regression analysis demonstrated that academic conscientiousness, test anxiety, and previous achievement accounted for unique and shared variance on test performance. A similar pattern emerged in a regression analysis for course work performance. It is advocated that future research should incorporate measures that embody the various major orientations within psychology and that cover the range of beliefs, behaviors, anxieties, cognitions, and expectancies that are likely to be implicated in achievement. Moreover, the operational definitions of the specific measures used encapsulate the principles that would be useful for educators to inculcate in their teaching ethos and for students to pursue in order to optimize performance.

Developing a New Approach to the Assessment of Project Work

ABSTRACT Despite the inevitable constraints inherent in effecting a major change of policy and practice, a new approach to the assessment of undergraduate honours research projects in two science‐based teaching units was achieved through an evolutionary active research‐based process. The implications of a transition from a subjective assessment of honours projects to a more objective, criterion‐referenced strategy were investigated through implementation and feedback. A pilot study was undertaken in which project assessors were asked to use a criterion‐referenced scheme in parallel with the existing scheme. Statistical analyses of data obtained using both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ schemes confirmed the reliability of the new criterion‐referenced assessment strategy. In addition, the new scheme offered a number of important advantages over the old system: (1) increased objectivity through reference to a number of clearly defined explicit criteria, (2) opportunity for the provision of valuable feedback to the students, (3) flexibility with regard to the weightings and collation of marks, and (4) ease of use. Devising the perfect assessment strategy is an elusive pursuit, but implementing a scheme which contributes to a more student‐centred ethos of teaching, learning and assessment is surely a step in the right direction.