Notes for Discussion to Assist in Educating the Social Formation of the Department of Education
What are educational standards of judgement?
What educational standards of judgement mark the transition from:
- Novice Teacher to Teacher?
- Teacher to Master Educator?
- Master Educator to Doctor Educator?
Answering the question 'what are educational standards of judgement', in a way that communicates with others, involves the use of words which have some shared meanings. So, I will begin by saying how I am using the words education and educational in relation to my practice, enquiry, experience, relations, influence and educational standards.
I experience education as a value-laden practical activity. I can articulate my meanings of educational practice and theory through the language I learnt while studying educational theory (Peters, 1966) with a team of philosophers at the Institute of Education of the University of between 1968-1970. It is important for me to acknowledge their educative influence.
My starting point is my experience of my embodied values in my: Educational Practice; Educational Enquiry; Educative Experience; Educative Relations; Educative Influence; Educational Standards of Practice and Judgement in transitions from:
- novice teacher to teacher,
- teacher to master educator,
- master educator to doctor educator.
I am wondering if clarifying the meanings of the values in my work as an educator and educational researcher will influence the education of the social formation of the Department of Education. Because of my interest in national and international forums of educators and educational researchers, I am also hoping that such clarifications will make a contribution to the enhancement of the teaching profession and to the growth of a global community of educators. I do see a global interest in defining educational standards of practice and judgement. I also see a growth in the use of the word 'educator'. I like this term because it is closer to the meanings I give to the word 'education' than to those I give to 'teacher'. I am thinking of my educative influence in terms of a process of transforming the experience of embodied values into living educational standards of judgement. I see this process of transformation, from experience to standard, in terms of clarifying the meanings of embodied values in the course of their emergence in educational practice.
In my own life in education I can see three phases in the movement from novice teacher to teacher, from teacher to master educator and from master educator to doctor educator. Each phase is characterised by different educational standards of practice and judgement.
All I am doing here is to offer some preliminary thoughts to begin the process of clarifying the meanings of these embodied concepts and educational standards of practice and judgement.
Because of the literature on 'paradigm wars' it might be helpful if I say that I wish to avoid participating in such language, unless it becomes necessary in confronting abuses of power. When I say abuses I have in mind what Lyotard calls intellectual terrorism and Foucault refers to as a conflict between the truth of power and the power of truth. In what I say below about the educational standards of judgement used in the Department of Education to mark transitions in a teacher's professional knowledge, you will see that I do not believe that our present standards used on our Masters and Ed.D. programmes are appropriate for marking the transitions from teacher to master educator and from master educator to doctor education. I believe that those who are supporting the retention of these standards are acting with integrity on their own set of beliefs about the nature of educational knowledge. Rather than saying that I think the beliefs are mistaken I want to engage in a dialogic process of educational enquiry through which I hope to persuade colleagues that the present standards could be improved in a way that acknowledges the values-base of educational practices and a scholarship of educational enquiry. I make proposals about such improvements below.
I will start the process of clarification of educational standards of judgement from the ground of what I do as a professional educator and educational researcher.
EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE
By educational practice I mean what I do in my educative relations as I supervise the research programmes of practitioner-researchers. In my view of my educational practice, I cannot claim to have educated anyone other than myself. I can claim to have influenced the education of those I teach and supervise in my educative relations as I support their educational enquiries. So, what I do in my educative relations includes my educative influence in supporting educational enquiries.
- Educational Enquiry
When I use the term educational enquiry, I am thinking of enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'. I include within this kind of enquiry, questions such as 'How do I live my values more fully in my practice?', 'How can I help you with your learning?', 'How can I enhance my contribution to the management of my organisation?'. I am thinking of such enquiries in the context of working with individuals who are committed to improving their practice, to improving their understanding of their practice and to contributing to the education of the social formation in which the practice is located.
- Educative Relations
In my educative relations as a doctor educator the professionals whose learning and education I influence already possess an infinitude of embodied knowledge that has nothing to do with deduction and whose mediated connections of intentional implication are resistant to representation by every methodologically devised mode of constructive symbolism (Husserl, 1931). Thus part of my work is to enable practitioner-researchers to explicate their embodied knowledge in ways that contribute to the public knowledge-base of education. I do this by focusing on their critical judgements and capacities as knowledge-creators as well as on the extent and merit of their work. When I say 'critical judgement' I am referring to the processes of clarifying the meanings of the embodied values which form their educational standards of judgement and which can be used to test the validity of their claims to educational knowledge. Hence I see my educative relations as intimately connected to helping learners to express their originality of mind and critical judgement.
My view of educative relations has also been influenced by the view of Martin Buber (1953) where he writes of the special humility of the educator in subordinating their own hierarchical view of the world to the particular needs of the student. I have been influenced by a view of human relations which holds sacred the I-You relation in the sense of relating to the other in a way that values the integrity and identity of the other and in a way that struggles against their violation. At the same time I experience in my educative relation what I think Bataille refers to as assenting to life up to the point of death. I am thinking of the experience of a life-affirming energy that communicates value to the other in who they are, the values and knowledge they embody and their knowledge-creating capacities.
- Educative Influence
There is a difference between the claim that I have educated someone and the claim that I have influenced the education of someone. The difference is related to causality, intention and imagination. I hold a view of education similar to Richard Pring (p.20, 2000) in that it is concerned with the gradual defining of identity. I agree with Pring (pp.13-16) that education refers to activities which bring about learning.
As he says, education picks out learning activities which are, from some point of view, regarded as worthwhile. What is worthwhile depends on its contribution to the development of someone as a person. Education points to a distinctively human mode of acquiring the understandings, beliefs, attitudes and skills which we would want to identify with the educated person. I also agree with Pring that it makes sense, too, to talk of educating oneself. He believes that teaching is required to mediate the public knowledge and the traditions of thought and criticism to the personal questions of the 'young' person trying to enter into that public world. Where the emphasis on my own educational research and practices differs from this view is that I am influencing the education, not of 'young' people in school or university, but of practitioner researchers who are already well established in their professional lives and who are engaged in education as a process of life-long learning.
I see my educative influence in terms of my influence on the learning of those whose research programmes I supervise. I am thinking of this influence in relation to the learning through which they give a form to their own lives in their educational enquiries. Part of this influence, as I have said, is to stress the importance, in my educative relations, of expressing originality of mind and critical judgement in the construction of descriptions and explanations of the learning as they give form to their own lives through education.
I now want to turn to the importance of educational standards of practice and judgement . Global interest in such standards can be seen in the work of The Teacher Training Agency in England, the Ontario College of Teachers in Ontario and in the work of the Carnegie Foundation in America.
WHAT EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS OF JUDGEMENT MARK THE TRANSITIONS FROM:
- Novice Teacher to Teacher?
- Teacher to Master Educator?
- Master Educator to Doctor Educator?
I want to focus on the movement between a number of different standards that I think might provide a basis for judging the transitions from novice teacher to teacher, from teacher to master educator and from master educator to doctor educator.
- TRANSITION FROM NOVICE TEACHER TO TEACHER
If I were a novice teacher of 11-18 year olds in England I would have to be judged as competent in some 63 standards of practice in making the transition from novice teacher to teacher. There are over 500 standards associated with becoming a teaching of 5-11 year olds. These standards are in the process of being revised by our Teacher Training Agency into standards of 1) Professional Values and Practice, 2) Knowledge and Understanding 3 a)Teaching - Planning Expectations and Targets, b) Teaching Strategies, Monitoring and Assessment, c) Class Management and Inclusion.
The Standards of Professional Values and Practice are expressed in terms such as: demonstrating high expectations of all pupils, value and respect their diverse cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds, and are committed to raising their educational achievement.
The Standards of Knowledge and Understanding are expressed in terms such as: demonstrating that they must know, understand and are able to use the current and relevant national statutory requirements and published national frameworks, guidance, syllabuses or schemes of work for the curriculum.
The Standards of Teaching are expressed in terms such as:
- Planning, Expectations and Targets
They must demonstrate that they:
have high expectations of pupils based on knowledge of: the pupils, evidence of their past and current achievement, the expected standards for pupils of the relevant age range, the range and content of work relevant to pupils in that age range
- Teaching Strategies
They must demonstrate that they can:
build successful relationships with pupils centred on teaching, learning and the curriculum, which set high expectations, and establish a purposeful learning environment in which pupils feel secure and confident.
- Monitoring and Assessment
They must demonstrate that they:
can use, and where necessary devise, a range of monitoring and assessment strategies to evaluate pupils' progress towards planned learning targets, and use this information to improve their own teaching.
- Class Management and Inclusion
They must demonstrate that they:
can establish an ethos with the classes or groups they teach which values diversity, acknowledges pupils' strengths and promotes success.
I want to support this national move to amend the present standards so that in future the standards explicitly address the issue of demonstrating professional values in action. I like the language in which the value-words are used. My main reservation is that educational standards of practice are being issued as a 'list of statements'. Such lists, by their nature, cannot communicate the nature of the embodied spiritual, aesthetic and ethical values that constitute a practice as 'educational'. Another reservations is that there are still too many standards and that many of the statements of standards contain multiple standards. In my view, multi-media explanations of the professional learning of teachers and educators are needed to communicate the meanings of standards of educational practice. This is because the meanings of educational standards, due their value-laden nature, can only be clarified in the course of their emergence through practice. I have shown what I mean by this process of clarification in the multi-media presentations in the multi-media section of actionresearch.net
The learning resources on this webpage contain some of my own contributions to the education of the social formation of the department. I am thinking of the contributions that are focused on the curriculum implications of the knowledge generated by myself and my research students. I am thinking in particular of the living theory Ph.D. and other research degrees in the living theory section of actionresearch.net . The purpose of this discussion paper is to contribute to the educative process in which we keep our educational standards of practice and judgement under review. Perhaps I should also say that this paper is also part of my self-study research as I enquiry into the processes of improving my educative influence on the social formation of the department. It think that part of this influence is felt through external relations as my ideas can be seen to be having an influence in wider forums that the department.
Many people have contributed to my own education and I hope that I can carry some of their values and ideas into my own educative influences. The purpose of this brief paper is to contribute to the continuous regeneration of our educational standards of judgement.
What I've been trying to demonstrate in my educational research into my professional practice as an educator is a scholarship of educational enquiry. I am thinking of a form of scholarship that can show how to transform the experience of embodied values in educative relations into educational standards of judgement. I am thinking of standards that can be used to test the validity of claims to educational knowledge. In developing this scholarship I have been influenced by three philosophical traditions that have focused on exploring the nature of knowledge. These are the traditions of linguistic, dialectical and phenomenological philosophy. The assumptions in each tradition have influenced my educational evaluation of the lists of criteria we use to judge assignments, dissertations and theses on our initial, masters and doctoral programmes.
TRANSITION FROM TEACHER TO MASTER EDUCATOR
I can see that there will be discussions in the department in the near future on the possibility of producing one list of criteria for judging master's assignments. The concerns I'm bringing to the discussion are focused on what I understand as the integrity of my subject, education. For me, as for many others, education is a value-laden practical activity. It is fundamentally concerned with learning and intimately connect edwith the ways individuals create their own forms of life. I believe that there is a scholarship of educational enquiry that can be usefully distinguished from the scholarships of discovery, application, integration and teaching in defining educational theory. Educational theory has a history of being defined in terms of disciplines other than the discipline of educational practice. I think such definitions are mistaken. For me educational theory constitutes explanations for the educational development of individuals and the educative influences of individuals with each other. It can also explain the educational influence of individuals and groups on social formations.
I am now going to risk antagonising those colleagues who support the present set of criteria used for judging masters assignments (by the non-portfolio route), for judging masters dissertations and for judging the assignments on the Ed.D. programme. With such a value-laden and contested discipline as education conflict is perhaps unavoidable in a struggle to define and control the criteria used to define what counts as educational knowledge. I would say that one of the characteristics of an educated community of scholars is the quality of the way they manage such conflicts. I like McIntyre's advocacy of the idea that universities should establish forums for 'constrained disagreement'. That's why I keep supporting the departmental seminars with external examiners on our educational standards of judgement.
Having had some success in influencing the educational standards used to judge the portfolios of educators on our masters programme (see the italicised statements below) I want to advocate amendments to the standards we use to judge masters dissertations and Ed.D. assignments. I think my advocacy will fail initially because I will fail to persuade you of the legitimacy of my point of view. However, I'm going to try. All I want to do at this point is to put side by side the two sets of criteria we use to judge masters assignments. The first set in italics we use to judge portfolios. The second set in bold we use to judge some 4000 words of continuous prose. In my view the second set relies too much on deduction. The first set in italics is consistent with my own scholarship of educational enquiry. You will see that some of the criteria are identical. I have left out, as a given, the criteria concerning presentation.
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Researched a good quality educational question related to their own or their school's/college's professional practice?
Made critical use of appropriate literature and professional experience to inform the focus of the study?
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Explained their professional learning in a way which has appropriately integrated knowledge from other sources?
Made critical use of the literature in the development of the study and its conclusions?
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Demonstrated an ability to identify, plan, undertake and evaluate educational developments involving students and/or colleagues in an appropriately critical and balanced fashion?
Demonstrated an ability to identify and categorise issues and concepts in an appropriately balanced fashion?
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Considered the implications of how their enquiry could improve educational practices?
Demonstrated an ability to analyse, interpret and critique findings and arguments?
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I mentioned above how my educational evaluation of educational standards of judgement had been influence by linguistic, dialectical and phenomenological philosophy. For example, from Husserl's phenomenology I developed the insight that in what I do as an educator I, 'have an infinitude of knowledge previous to all deduction, knowledge whose mediated connections (those of intentional implication) have nothing to do with deduction, and being entirely intuitive prove refractory to every methodologically devised scheme of constructive symbolism' (Husserl, Ideas, p.12, 1931. London; George Allen & Unwin).