Children′s Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development

Primary and Early Years

Tony Eaude

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781844451456
• eBook ISBN: 9780857252104
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

The second edition of this popular text has been revised and updated to include the new Professional Standards needed to achieve Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Tackling these elusive but fundamental aspects of children?s development, this text places the importance of spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding in a cross-curricular context. It directly links between children?s attainment and the wider aspects of personal development, beliefs and values, explaining the environment in which learning flourishes and demonstrating how trainees can promote this in their teaching. In addition, it helps enrich the trainee teacher?s experience, laying firm foundations for their continuing professional development.

1
Why is spiritual, moral, social and
cultural development important?

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By the end of this chapter you should:

• realise the significance of the Professional Standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status and the place of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (SMSC) in them;
• know about the place of SMSC and other facets of personal development in recent Education Acts, the National Curriculum and the Ofsted Framework;
• have been introduced to how SMSC is linked to children’s learning and attainment;
• realise that good provision for SMSC cannot be dissociated from your own values and what you believe the aims of education to be.

This will help you to meet Professional Standards: Q1, Q2, Q3a, Q3b, Q4, Q7a, Q7b, Q8, Q18.

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You will have all sorts of reasons for becoming a primary school teacher. Other people on your course will share some of these and also have their own. You are all starting on a challenging, fascinating and worthwhile journey. These reasons probably do not relate to becoming rich or powerful in the conventional sense. But you can enrich young children’s lives and be influential in one of the most important tasks imaginable – how the next generation grows up and the sort of people they become.

How do you become a primary school
teacher?

The formal requirements for you to achieve Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) are set by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) and available on www.tda.gov.uk (TDA, 2007). You have to meet all of the Professional Standards relevant to your own subject and phase to be awarded QTS. I highlight which Standards each chapter will help you to meet.

Your course will provide a range of experiences, depending on your own background, qualifications and skills, but these are likely to include:

• opportunities through lectures and discussion to develop your understanding of how young children learn;
• specific teaching to extend your subject knowledge and skills;
• advice on the practicalities of how to teach, such as planning appropriate activities, managing classroom behaviour and assessing what children have learnt;
• teaching practice, under the supervision of an experienced teacher and with advice and support from your tutors.

Inevitably, you bring to your teaching a theory – or set of underlying beliefs – about how children learn, which, in turn, affects how you teach. It is changing, or elaborating, or refining these beliefs that helps you to become a better teacher, especially in relation to SMSC. Many of these beliefs are unconscious. Polanyi (cited in Schon, 1987, p22) coined the term ‘tacit knowledge’ to describe what makes a good teacher (or plumber or scientist). Much of this – how to include a reticent child, or ask a question that draws on, and extends, a group’s understanding – is hard to spot and even harder to learn. Making your tacit knowledge explicit can help you to think about, and so change, your beliefs and your approach to teaching. The first part of this book is intended to help you to uncover, and think about, the underlying beliefs that you, and others, hold, and to reflect on how these affect, and can be affected by, your experience in the classroom.

You may think that, once you have gained QTS and secured your first job, you have done all that you need to be a teacher. In one sense, this is true and expectations of you will be high – from colleagues, parents and children. But a good teacher never stops developing. This is recognised in the support that your school should offer – through courses, mentoring and chances to take on new responsibilities, for instance – when you are newly qualified. But, once this specific programme comes to an end, your development as a teacher is far from over. You wouldn’t want your teeth filled by a dentist, or travel over a bridge built by an engineer, who didn’t update his or her skills. Good teachers are always doing so by becoming, increasingly, ‘reflective practitioners’.

Pollard and Tann (1994, pp9–10) identify six main features of reflective teaching:

• an active concern with aims and consequences;
• a process in which teachers monitor, evaluate and revise their own practice continuously;
• competence in methods of classroom enquiry;
• attitudes of open-mindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness;
• teacher judgment, informed both by self-reflection and insights from educational disciplines; and
• collaboration and dialogue with colleagues.

Learning to be a teacher involves, initially, a concentration on the mechanics of teaching. However, good pedagogy involves more than simply becoming proficient in these. You will become a more reflective and a better teacher, if you can relate your teaching to the messages in your course, and in this book, so that practice, informed by theory and theoretical knowledge, is brought to life by the reality you face in the classroom.

How does spiritual, moral, social and cultural
development fit into the Professional
Standards to achieve QTS?

The Professional Standards to achieve QTS are organised in three interrelated sections: a) professional attributes; b) professional knowledge and understanding; and c) professional skills. The first two Standards highlight relationships with children and young people:

• (Q1) Have high expectations of children and young people including a commitment to ensuring that they can achieve their full educational potential and to establishing fair, respectful, trusting, supportive and constructive relationships with them.
• (Q2) Demonstrate the positive values, attitudes and behaviour they expect from children and young people.

It is no accident that professional attributes come at the start of the Professional Standards or that these are the first two. The (longer) sections that follow on professional knowledge, understanding and skills are underpinned by these. These less measurable, more intangible aspects, and your own personal attitudes and commitment, are fundamental to becoming a good teacher.

However, the wording of the Standards makes little mention of SMSC. Neither ‘spiritual’ nor ‘moral’ appear at all. The words ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ do, only once each, in Q18. This might be regarded as extraordinary, not least because, as we shall see, SMSC is very prominent both in the 1988 Education Act and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) Framework for Inspection.

What does this tell us? All teachers care about how children develop both intellectually and personally. But how we teach involves decisions on priorities. The emphasis of the Standards seems to take for granted that:

• the aims of education are not contested, but mainly concerned with higher measurable outcomes in the core subjects;
• learning is mainly about acquiring information and skills, rather than developing attitudes, values and beliefs; and
• teaching should focus mainly on transmitting knowledge and skills, rather than drawing on children’s capacity for learning and enriching their wider personal development.

This can be regarded as a simple example of what is meant by uncovering the underlying beliefs, the tacit assumptions implied in a particular action, or a document.

The specific competencies highlighted in the Standards and reflected in your course structure will, rightly, be your most immediate concern. But the aims of education have been, and always will be, matters for debate and there is a danger of concentrating too much on what can be measured. The evidence (which we shall consider) about how children learn best reveals how little we really know about this. Teaching is a complex process, involving much more than the delivery of information or what can be achieved by meeting only short-term objectives.

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POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION AND DISCUSSION

What made you decide to become a teacher?

Which of your values and beliefs do you most wish your pupils to share?

To what extent is it right to pass on your values and beliefs to young children?

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Why is SMSC important in your development as a teacher?

Apart from the Professional Standards, there are at least three other main reasons why you should take SMSC seriously:

• personal development (of which SMSC is a vital part) matters at least as much as academic attainment in the development of ‘the whole child’;
• what, and how, children learn is more significant than what they are taught (though, hopefully, these are linked); and
• this will, probably, make you more fulfilled in relation to why you became a teacher and a better motivated teacher.

I am reluctant to draw too sharp a distinction between academic learning and personal development, because children’s emotional well-being and how well they learn are closely linked. For instance, children who are frightened of singing or of mathematics are unlikely to do well until they overcome this fear. Skills such as gymnastics or creating a website require confidence as well as technique. Working in a team involves self-awareness, empathy with other people, knowing when to step forward and when to hold back and other similar, intangible qualities. Theoretical training can enhance these, but greater proficiency is achieved mainly in doing the activity – just as in teaching.

It is tempting to think of what happens in the classroom as being mainly about what you, as a teacher, do. Your course will, rightly, emphasise the content of what you teach and the techniques of classroom management. If lessons are not well-planned, or behaviour is out of control, children’s learning will be impeded. But, ultimately, education is about enabling children to learn. The National Curriculum tends to stress the content of what should be taught, with a strong emphasis on the core subjects of English, mathematics and science, and information and communications technology (ICT). This must be balanced with learning about the really important lessons for life – whom we can trust, how best to relate to each other, or whether those who love us continue to do so when we let them down. These aspects of SMSC are all crucial to personal development, mostly learnt implicitly rather than by direct instruction.

Most teachers in primary schools find enabling children’s personal development to be one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling aspects of teaching. Part of your motivation in deciding to become a teacher may have been to improve the lives of young children and to extend the range of experiences and opportunities open to them. This is a wonderful aspect of the job. However, reality will soon kick in (if it hasn’t already). Teaching is very demanding. Most classes are challenging in a variety of ways. Children offer a great deal, but also draw heavily on the teacher’s emotional resources. Teachers work long hours, often at a cost to their own health. As you become more experienced, this will become (a bit) easier, but many teachers give up after a few years, often with their idealism squashed under a mountain of planning, assessment and recording. Recognising that there is more to teaching and to learning than what can be measured, and that young children need spiritual, moral, social and cultural, as well as intellectual, development, will help you become a better, and a more fulfilled, teacher.

What does the law say?

The 1944 Education Act stated that it shall be the duty of the local education authority for every area, so far as their powers extend, to contribute towards the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community. . . The 1988 Education Act, introducing the National Curriculum, required schools to provide for children’s spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development. The 1992 Education (Schools) Act, which led to the creation of Ofsted and the Framework for Inspection, revised this list to spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, separating, to some extent, personal from intellectual development. The Children Act (2004), based on the Gre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Why is spiritual, moral, social and cultural development important?
• 2 What does spiritual development involve?
• 3 What does moral development involve?
• 4 What does social development involve?
• 5 What does cultural development involve?
• 6 How does spiritual, moral, social and cultural development fit in with the rest of children’s learning?
• 7 Creating environments to encourage spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
• 8 Approaching spiritual, moral, social and cultural development in the classroom
• 9 Integrating spiritual, moral, social and cultural development throughout the curriculum
• 10 Linking spiritual, moral, social and cultural development with your own professional development
• Bibliography: some children’s books especially useful for SMSC
• Index