Teaching Character and Virtue in Schools

James Arthur, Kristján Kristjánsson, Tom Harrison, Wouter Sanderse, Daniel Wright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138907614
• eBook ISBN: 9781317441304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching Character and Virtue in Schools addresses the contemporary issues of quantification and measurement in educational settings. The authors draw on the research of the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham in order to investigate the concern that the conventional wisdom, sound judgement and professional discretion of teachers is being diminished and control mistakenly given over to administrators, policymakers and inspectors which in turn is negatively effecting pupils' character development.

The books calls for subject competence to be complemented by practical wisdom and good character in teaching staff. It posits that the constituent virtues of good character can be learned and taught, that education is an intrinsically moral enterprise and that character education should be intentional, organised and reflective. The book draws on the Jubilee Centre's expertise in support of its claims and successfully integrates the fields of educational studies, psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology in its examination of contemporary educational practices and their wider effect on society as a whole. It offers sample lessons as well as a framework for character education in schools.

The book encourages the view that character education is about helping students grasp what is ethically important and how to act for the right reasons so that they can become more autonomous and reflective individuals within the framework of a democratic society. Particularly interested readers will be educational leaders, teachers, those undertaking research in the field of education as well as policy analysts with a keen interest in developing the character and good sense of learners today.

1Wisdom in the craft of teaching

For do teachers profess that it is their thoughts which are perceived and grasped by the students, and not the sciences themselves which they convey through thinking? For who is so stupidly curious as to send his son to school that he may learn what the teacher thinks? … Those who are pupils consider within themselves whether what has been explained has been said truly; looking of course to that interior truth, according to the measure of which each of us is able. Thus they learn, and when the interior truth makes known to them that true things have been said, they applaud.

St. Augustine, De Magistro, 389AD

Now this is what some great men are very slow to allow; they insist that Education should be confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can be weighed and measured. They argue as if everything, as well as every person, had its price; and that where there has been great outlay, they have a right to expect a return in kind.

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University

Summary

This chapter argues that education and teaching are intrinsically moral enterprises. The moral dimensions of teaching are often hidden or ignored, but they can never be avoided and must be made more transparent. Society takes an interest in the character of people who become teachers. Teachers are expected to exhibit a high level of moral responsibility and are held to a high standard of conduct. We are concerned that quantification and measurement have replaced wisdom in teaching and that the discretion and wise judgement of teachers have been replaced by the judgement of administrators, policymakers and inspectors. Subject competence should be supplemented by practical wisdom and good character. Professionally, teachers need relational as well as contractual incentives. We explain the four types of virtues – moral, intellectual, civic and performative – and the ways in which teachers can convey these by example. Accepting that teaching has a moral purpose therefore highlights a need to include character education as an integral part of teacher education. Teachers provide support for classroom learning that goes beyond the mere mechanics of teaching. They must have a moral commitment to serve the interests of their pupils, as they contribute to their moral development.

The nature of teaching and learning

The basic premise of this chapter, and indeed of the book as whole, is that all teaching is a moral enterprise, as is education itself. Parents entrust their children to the care of teachers for the purposes of education, so it is not surprising that they are concerned about the kinds of people who are employed to teach. Schools are therefore sites of moral interaction, and teachers are moral agents. The teacher–student relationship is an inherently moral one and the teacher, like the parent, assumes a moral responsibility for pupils. Teachers also seek to influence pupils, and this influence is woven into the personal development of their pupils. Consequently, society and schools are also naturally concerned about the kinds of people who should teach. In addition, because schooling is compulsory and pupils are susceptible to influence, the qualities of the would-be teacher are worthy of careful consideration. What kind of person must he or she be? What is required of the teacher?

We are also concerned about the conduct of teachers, because such conduct carries moral significance in the classroom. The importance of a teacher’s role lies not only in what they teach directly, but also in what they model in practice as ethical exemplars. This is why many national governments retain the power to deny or withdraw teacher certification from those they consider not to be of good character. In addition, since all teachers engage in some tacit form of moral education, even when there is no discrete class in moral education on the curriculum, we are clearly interested in the character of the teacher. This chapter attempts to conceptualise teaching as a moral activity: it argues that criteria beyond efficiency and competence are needed to understand the real nature of teaching.

Good teaching should challenge our minds and shape our characters, but it is sometimes argued that there are no teachers as such, only different degrees of learners; that children ought not to be passive in learning and that learning is not always the result of teaching, since learning involves thinking and understanding on the part of pupils. So a good teacher is someone who supports their students’ learning. For learning can happen without teaching, but teaching cannot happen without learning. Teachers are of course learners too, and their students will eventually become independent of teachers, even to the point of forgetting their names. After all, schooling does not complete the education of a person, but is a preparatory stage in a life-long process.

A wise teacher knows that teaching is not confined to educational institutions such as schools. As Mark Twain famously quipped: ‘I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.’ Some of the most important teaching in life happens outside schools. As we move through life, we are all by turns both teachers and learners – in the many different roles we assume –, whether as parents or teachers, doctors or bricklayers. Nevertheless, while teaching is not confined to the professional teacher, the trained teacher does have enormous responsibilities since it is a serious moral matter to intervene professionally in a child’s upbringing. Teachers are therefore naturally and rightly held accountable for their actions and decisions.

The teacher’s conduct in the classroom is always a moral matter. As Halstead and Taylor (2000: 178) conclude:

It is through relationships that children learn the importance of qualities such as honesty, respect and sensitivity to others. Children are most likely to be influenced by teachers whose qualities they admire. Such qualities include tolerance, firmness and fairness, acting in a reasonable manner and a willingness to explain things and, for older pupils, respect, and freedom from prejudice, gentleness and courtesy, and sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of pupils.

The act of teaching therefore reveals the centrality of a teacher’s moral and intellectual character. Since the teaching role implies a high degree of public trust, the general expectations of society are greater than for many other professions. The teacher is expected to exhibit a higher level of moral responsibility and is held to a higher standard of conduct. The greater the degree of public trust, the higher the corresponding level of teachers’ moral responsibility.

Who the teacher is matters

When we presume to teach others about complex things in life, there is a great danger of getting it wrong, so teaching is not something to be entered into lightly. Subject area expertise, knowledge and concern for children and their needs, combined with practical wisdom are essential. The attempt to improve the quality of teaching through standards, inspections, incentives, performance management, competency criteria and tests – in fact, anything that is quantifiable and easily measurable – has resulted in quantification replacing wisdom in teaching. The value of teaching is nowadays largely seen in terms of the economic value of qualifications. Little attention is paid officially to purpose, to questions of meaning, and to the ends to which pupils can put their acquired knowledge, skills and understanding. The teacher is portrayed as a technician, charged with specific tasks leading to measurable outcomes rather than emphasising the teacher’s personal qualities and potential. It is simply not possible to encapsulate the full range of human abilities and qualities of a good teacher within the concept of competence. Teaching is above all else a self-giving vocation that is concerned with the welfare and development of pupils. It is fundamentally a moral enterprise and cannot be entirely neutral: pupils need the example of those who care for them. However, we cannot simply assume that all new teachers will have the requisite qualities.

At this point it is worth saying that many societal expectations of schools and teachers are clearly unreasonable. Teachers are expected to help eradicate crime among the young through teaching good behaviour, to contribute to the elimination of the gap between rich and poor through equal opportunity policies and to produce citizens who participate in elections through citizenship lessons. Policymakers often see schools as a cure-all but schools are not equipped to cure society’s woes. At the same time, teachers are often held responsible for these woes. More recently, teachers are even being asked to eradicate ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalisation’ in students. It is true that many schools include the promotion of social justice and human rights among their stated aims, but in reality they are forced to deliver a curriculum that is largely test-driven and imposed by central government.

The discretion and wise judgement of teachers is no longer trusted by politicians and has been replaced with the judgement of administrators, policymakers and inspectors. Ironically, the more professionalised teaching has become, the less attractive it is as a vocation. As Barry Schwartz (2010: 176) notes:

the de-skilling of teachers produces a kind of ‘de-willing’ – it risks taking the fight out of some good teachers and takes other good teachers out of the fight. The danger here is a downward spiral. Good, experienced teachers leave, and idealistic and talented prospective teachers are discouraged from entering the classroom. Administrators interpret the lack of experience as evidence that more stringent procedures and rules are needed and they ratchet up the standardisation, demoralising and turning away more promising teachers. Forcing teachers to do right by rote risks driving the wisdom out of the practice and driving out the wise practitioners.

Schwartz is right to maintain that these kinds of policies are counterproductive for both teaching and teachers. They reduce teaching to skill, efficiency and instrumental purposes, in which explicit values disappear. Such developments have limited the scope of the debate about the nature of teaching by an overemphasis on the behavioural aspects of teacher competency. Wisdom is subverted by bureaucratic measures that focus on compliance with instrumental ends. Unfortunately, teacher training has suffered also and is increasingly lacking any clear moral compass.

The competency agenda

Teaching is embedded within a set of beliefs, values, habits, traditions and ways of thinking that are shared and understood by teachers already in the profession, but which are seldom articulated. Pring (1992: 17) commenting on the competence agenda for teaching says:

These conditions make little mention of theory. They require no philosophical insights. They demand no understanding of how children are motivated; they attach little importance to the social context in which the school functions – unless it be that of the local business and the world of work; they attach no significance to historical insight into the present; they have no place for the ethical formulation of those who are to embark on this, the most important of all moral undertakings.

Pring is making the point that the ethical intuition of good teachers is just as important as their subject knowledge and teaching skill. Reducing teaching to a set of discrete competencies fails to capture its richness.

Wilson (1993: 113) believes that teaching is in a sense the formation of ‘moral dispositions’:

Moral qualities are directly relevant to any kind of classroom practice: care for the pupil, enthusiasm for the subject, conscientiousness, determination, willingness to co-operate with colleagues and a host of others. Nobody, at least on reflection, really believes that effective teaching – let alone effective education – can be reduced to a set of skills; it requires certain dispositions of character.

Teachers are major influences on pupils since they clearly require pupils to change in directions they specify in the classroom – this is reflected in what they choose to permit or encourage. Indeed, it goes deeper, since all the while teachers are engaged in teaching, they are under the close examination of pupils, who see and hear in teachers’ eyes, voice and body language what they are really saying.

Moreover, a view of teaching grounded primarily in a subject knowledge base – in terms of expertise, skill and competence – does not capture the essential meaning of the occupation. Good teaching will enrich and expand the minds of pupils by encouraging reflection, self-evaluation and the practice of virtues. Schools intentionally build and promote positive moral atmospheres and encourage their teachers to exemplify the virtues that constitute their ethos. The challenge facing teachers and teacher educators in ...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Wisdom in the craft of teaching
• 2 What is ‘character education’?
• 3 Digging deeper into the purpose and meaning of character and character education
• 4 How does children’s moral character develop?
• 5 Classroom-based approaches to character education
• 6 Whole school approaches to character education
• 7 How can we measure virtue and evaluate programmes of character education?
• 8 Character education books, papers and resources
• 9 Primary and secondary sample lessons
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• References
• Index