Moral Thought in Educational Practice

The Primacy of Moral Matters for Teaching and Learning

Hugh Sockett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138580855
• eBook ISBN: 9780429892967
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book demonstrates how pervasive moral thought can be in educational thought and practice. By analyzing research on the moral and intellectual qualities in curriculum, as well as the integration of personhood and citizenship development in classroom work, this book demonstrates the primacy of the moral in various educational settings. With an additional emphasis on morality as it pertains to teaching as a vocation, Moral Thought in Educational Practice examines the objectives of teacher education and offers an account of moral purposes within the knowledge base for teaching.

Part I
The Moral Framework of Educational Thought and Practice

1 The Primacy of Moral Thought in Educational Practice

The British philosopher Richard M. Hare was a prisoner of war in Japanese custody from 1942 through 1945, where he worked out a view of moral thought based on universal principles that appeared in his 1952 book The Language of Morals. Of interest to educators is his comment that “Many of the dark places of ethics become clearer when we consider (the) dilemma in which parents are likely to find themselves: ‘How shall I bring up my children?’ ” (Hare, 1952, pp. 74–75). How far and in what ways is such upbringing also the province of the teacher? For we usually think of upbringing as a long process of parenting in its various manifestations: of providing what Hare then quaintly called principles, example and precept “backed up by chastisement and other more up-to-date psychological methods,” a clear realization that human frailties often account for failures in this quest (op. cit., p. 75).

In Part III of this book, I will return to the question of parent-teacher relationships. But teachers of children, I hold, work in a moral universe of teaching: that is, teachers worldwide understand their job or their role is to ‘do good’ to children, contributory to the development of the child as a person, either through the teaching of beliefs, skills or precepts. Of course, cultural and other differences yield differences of understanding on what teaching precisely demands, and a challenge in many Western countries is handling the ethnic, religious and cultural diversity of the families sending children to a nation’s schools (see Chapter 6). However, the idea of a moral universe of teaching does not get us very far, but it does imply that teaching has a moral purpose which defines and influences empirical perspectives and methods of teaching children, such as Hare’s “other more up-to-date psychological methods.” Such methods are also necessarily governed by moral considerations, witness the controversies on physical chastisement. Empirical methods have to meet moral criteria.

For a complex of reasons, moral discourse, thought and language about education and the role and the conduct of the teacher are background noise in the brouhaha of the contemporary public square. There is thus a missing language in classrooms (Sockett & LePage, 2002), and in public discussions, debate or research about teaching. Of course, philosophers of education and other enthusiasts talk a moral language, but it is not embedded in public or professional discourse, now contemporarily awash in language derived from management theory or behavioral psychology. There are at least four difficulties, simply expressed. First, even among the educational cognoscenti, moral language is thought only to refer to aims, ends or purposes of education. Second, moral language is seen as only appropriate for moral or character education, which lags far behind the curriculum in the conversation. Third, teachers in their professional education have not been engaged in any systematic attempt at moral thought and analysis, except either as a history of ideas or as a mild form of indoctrination into a specific philosophical position, e.g. that of John Dewey. Finally, moral discussion is too often regarded as somewhat of an embarrassment, understood only by those with a religious commitment, and for everyone else, it is all a matter of opinion. The challenge addressed in this book is to indicate the breadth that moral discourse can give educational thought and practice, and thereby to illustrate not merely the utility of moral language in educational discussion but its centrality.

I. Articulating the Knowledge Base

This ambition can best be first addressed through two descriptions of teaching, drawn from a widely influential and important movement in teacher education. Lee Shulman, then of Stanford University, led the Knowledge Base for Teacher Education Project that laid out a strategy for reform in teacher education that has been continued by the Carnegie Foundation of which he became President in 1996, and the Project’s work formed the basis for teacher assessment incorporated in the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The Project strategy was set out in the Harvard Educational Review (HER) (Shulman, 1987) and was followed by my reply on which the analysis here draws (Sockett, 1988a).

There are at least two objections to this approach to the primacy of the moral. First, it leaves to later chapters matters of diversity on schooling, for example, as expressed in James Banks’s (Banks, 2002) articulation of transformative knowledge. Second, however, it is an anachronism, dealing with a paper written 30 years ago and putting to one side the various forms of sophistication of the ideas since then (see for example, Grossman, 2010). Yet these fundamental ideas have taken root in most teacher education institutions in the U.S. and form the intellectual framework within which most American teacher education is practiced. The movement, like its predecessors in curriculum reform and in teacher accountability, sought the elusive key to professionalization and the improvement of the quality of education and teaching in public schools. It was both an intellectual and a political strategy, for the ‘knowledge base’ was seen as setting national standards for teacher education. Indeed, as the 2009–2015 tenure of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration indicated, there was a strong, critical and sustained political attack on the quality of teacher education, which Shulman’s Project, though fashioned earlier in the late 1980s, was designed to pre-empt.

Like most good research Shulman’s idea was a simple one. First, study teachers in actions, analyze what they know and thus construct a knowledge base common to all teachers. Second, from that base of knowledge promulgate a core curriculum to impact the professional community of researchers, teacher educators, practitioners and, especially, students learning to be teachers. Third, use the knowledge base as standards for professional work. This avowedly political direction was then widely promulgated by the Holmes Partnership (1987–1997), an organization of education deans who had committed their institutions to promoting reform specifically through the use of the Knowledge Base in teacher education curricula. Today, the mission of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education is to “lead the field in advocating for and building capacity for high-quality educator preparation programs in a dynamic landscape” (AACTE, 2017), suggesting that the political ambitions of the Knowledge Base Project have not yet been realized.

The intellectual background to this endeavor was Shulman’s experience in medical education. His work contains various arguments for teacher education to follow the example of the Flexner Report (1910) that transformed medical education, specifically by demanding that medical schools adhere to the work of mainstream science in their teaching. What worked in medicine should, in principle, work in teaching. The legacy of this approach is most obvious in the use of the term ‘clinical experience,’ widely referenced in Carnegie Foundation (2006) documents, their presentations to Congress and in contemporary usage to describe students practicing learning to teach in schools (see for instance, Grossman, op. cit., 2010). However, one central difficulty lies in comparing the underpinning purposes of medicine and education. The purpose of medicine is curative: it promotes health, through preventative or interventionist methods and therapies, such as surgery. Therapy is curative, not developmental. A health problem in an individual is a deficit state from a norm of good health and thus an individual can be ‘restored’ to good health. Educational practice cannot be described as ‘restoring’ a person to knowledge or personal development, without some special explanation, for education is focused on individual growth not a remedy from a deficit state, even though a term like ‘freedom from ignorance’ might suggest it (but see Chapter 6). Awareness of this difficulty, of course, does not undermine the approach to the occupation of medicine present in the Flexner Report, but makes the medicine-teaching analogy uncertain as a paradigm.

What sort of research then was this work on the Knowledge Base? It is relatively straightforward with medicine to demarcate the constituent scientific disciplines, and to see the different ethical matters in their application to medical practice. References to educational research or research in education suggest that there is a distinctive discipline called ‘education theory.’ Much empirical research in education, however, is rooted in scientific paradigms present in psychology or sociology each of which has distinct core approaches (e.g. developmental psychology, or positive psychology) and their extensions (e.g. case study or critical theory). Most empirical research (including qualitative methods) is observational; teachers, schools, administrations are objects of study, and these groups are only occasionally partners in research, unlike the ‘teacher-as-researcher’ movement which seeks both to democratize educational research and to promote teacher autonomy (see for instance Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). As with science as a multi-faceted discipline, the task in this version of educational research is to produce applicable generalizations with a theoretical base. But, educational research as understood presently has no distinctive concepts or methodology, except those of common sense discourse on teaching and learning, so it draws more or less well on social science disciplines, e.g. ‘feedback’ from behaviorism, ‘stages’ from developmental psychology and so on. Books and articles in this idiom argue about quantitative or qualitative methods but attach research conclusions as ‘implications for practice.’ Decisions about practice, on this account, are to be made by practitioners drawing from the research conclusions of the theorists. However, the Knowledge Base Project promoted a different dimension to research: it is both observational in the traditional sense, but it sought through those observations to promote and advocate solutions to the practical problems of teacher education, and thence teaching practice in general, with a developed case-study methodology.

II. Context and Teaching Knowledge

The researchers in the Knowledge Base Project noted the “outrageous complexity” in the activity of teaching where the unique, variable and unpredictable elements in hugely varying social contexts make the Knowledge Base strategy a ferocious challenge. Presented in the HER article are two teachers, Colleen and Nancy (Shulman, 1987, op. cit.). The research team sought to keep the collection of descriptions and analyses “highly contextualized with respect to the content-specificity of the pedagogical strategies employed” (op. cit., p. 11). Colleen’s teaching style is characterized by such descriptors as “student-centered, discussion-based, occasionally Socratic or otherwise highly interactive.” The account goes on:

Several weeks later, however, we observed Colleen teaching a unit on grammar. Although she had completed two university degrees in English, Colleen has received almost no preparation in prescriptive grammar. However, since a typical high school English class includes some grammar in addition to the literature and writing, it was impossible to avoid teaching the subject.

Colleen looked like a different teacher during that lesson. Her interactive style evaporated. In its place was a highly didactic, teacher-directed, swiftly paced combination of lecture and tightly controlled recitation, Socrates replaced by DISTAR. After the session, she confessed to the observer that she had actively avoided making eye-contact with one particular student in the front row because that youngster always had good questions or ideas and in this particular lesson Colleen didn’t want to encourage either, because she was not sure of the answers. She was uncertain about the content and adapted her instructional style to allay her anxiety.

(op. cit., p. 18)

Two matters from this description are significant in characterizing the importance of the moral. First, teachers are not simply engaged in an activity: they are members of an occupation whose moral norms, values and expectations pervade practice. ‘Context’ is therefore not simply some ideal classroom or seminar room, but this one. The researcher’s description, useful for the specific Project purposes, is focused on the knowledge base and the activity of teaching in Colleen’s classroom only. Colleen is well aware of her inadequacies as a teacher of grammar—witness her anxiety—a state that anyone who has taught children can identify with, and one she needs to disguise. The moral norms of the occupation make it impossible for her, as a young teacher, to say “Sorry, guys, I don’t know much about grammar but let’s learn it together.” Uncertainty about content must be protected or disguised. The source of her anxiety is only partly explained by anxiety about content: it is anxiety about the potential threat to classroom order as prescribed by these moral norms. Indeed, the authority of the teacher is predicated, on this description, on the maintenance of a certain kind of order: Colleen thus regards the bright youngster as a hostile participant, even though he has “good questions and ideas.” He may well upset the order she is imposing.

Colleen thus has apparently little understanding of the teacher’s contractual, epistemological and ultimately moral authority (see Chapter 6). For the knowledge base of teaching as an occupation involves complex judgments of balance between ideal and possible practice, not merely in matters of pure pedagogical reasoning—for practice is rooted in a socio-economic context. That context is not a set of abstractions. Within the moral norms of the occupation are not merely matters of authority but how that authority interacts with the moral, social and indeed political bases for practical day-to-day, hour-to-hour judgments and decisions made by teachers. Once we see the opportunities and constraints of teaching as necessary to understanding what individuals do in classrooms as an activity within an occupation, we only have moral language to describe these and other complexities of the role.

It is also important to note that teaching is not coherent as a concept without a reciprocal notion of learning. Equally teachers and students/children are a necessary part of understanding teaching. The “youngster” makes an appearance here, but the description suggests a transaction in which the learners are not willing partners, merely objects to be manipulated, for they are absent from thisdescription. If we cast teaching (activity and occupation) as a partnership of those who teach and those who learn, the moral status of the relationship and how we describe it becomes apparent—and important. Indeed that children voluntarily cooperate in learning is an assumption about teaching, and while some teachers may see children as pawns, the moral significance of partnership in the enterprise is partly revealed by those who resist it and drop out.

The second matter of moral importance both to Colleen and to the research team is whether she can be judged against some ideal of teaching, not against the possible—in other words, “what is best in the circumstances?” (Of course, Colleen is being treated here respectfully, but in the end as an object for research.) What is she to do in her situation, her actual context? She does what is best, not, as she clearly understands, what is ideal. What is best always is a matter of practical judgment (see Chapter 2). At the root of teaching in practice, therefore, are not items of knowledge as discrete measurable techniques, but moral judgment, which is a form of knowledge. Tempered by growing practical understanding, that judgment emerges as practical wisdom, which the Project emphasizes. To do something that is best in teaching is primarily a moral matter judged in terms of the variable acts or options open to the actors, especially the teacher. Although the researchers presumably had a number of observations on Colleen, this extract is selected as illustrative. Its “highly contextualized” character is limited to pedagogy only. This can mislead not merely in terms of understanding teaching in a context, but evaluating it in terms of an ideal rather than the parochial circumstances.

Teaching is, to repeat, an activity within an occupation. To extract teaching as an activity from its location glosses over the differences between teaching in Westchester County, Palo Alto, rural Alabama, East Los Angeles or Chicago’s South Side. To examine a classroom is not to undertake a laboratory experiment. It is an implicit assumption of much educational research that findings are in principle generalizable, even though these immensely diverse situations make radically different demands on teachers’ skills, knowledge, attitudes, sensitivity and judgment. The description of Colleen assumes a stable background and compliant children, given “that youngster,” she thinks, will be a challenge. What a teacher ought to do, qua the activity of teaching, will mean quite different things and emerge as differing practices in varying contexts. The danger for any strategy that ignores the crucial place of context (the parochial location of a teacher) in which practical judgments are made, is threefold. First, research may end up with an account of teaching knowledge that is vacuous (because it will have to apply to all teachers, whatever their circumstances), or redundant (because it is determined only by those particular contexts in which the researchers are working) or limited (because it discounts the detail of contextual judgment). Or, of course, all three.

However, the context is also the composition of the agents within a school or a classroom, and their moral stances are manifest in their actions. In particular, this kind of research is incomplete without a moral understanding of how the teacher is to work within it, its moral tensions, opportunities, obstacles and dilemmas (see, for instance Levinson & Fay, 2016, chapter 1; Jackson et al., 1998). Colleen’s apprehensions about “that youngster” could be entirely correct, morally and otherwise. That is, the youngster actually isseeking ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Moral Framework of Educational Thought and Practice
• Part II Teaching and Educational Purposes
• Part III Moral Matters in Education Policy: Parents and the Upbringing of Children
• Bibliography
• Index