Loading...

Towards an Architecture for the Teaching of Virtues, Values and Ethics

by Berise Therese Heasly (Author)
©2015 Monographs XX, 314 Pages

Summary

This book, based on extensive qualitative research carried out among teachers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, explores a new approach to teaching virtues, values and ethics in the twenty-first century. Drawing on both education studies and philosophy, the author uses inductive methods of analysis and synthesis to construct a renewed theory of education founded on teaching thinking skills. This theory, based on Donald E. Ingber’s work on tensegrity, is complemented by practical pedagogical tools which can enhance students’ thinking skills and support both personal and professional decision-making in a democratic classroom setting.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • Preface by Roger Sutcliffe
  • Chapter 1: Finding the Questions
  • Introduction
  • The teaching of virtues, values and ethics
  • Constructing an integrative schema
  • Chapter 2: Answering the Questions: Listening to Many Voices
  • Introduction
  • Teachers’ voices
  • My practitioner voice
  • Voices from the literature
  • Hesitations, confusions, concerns and silences
  • Chapter 3: Voices in the Literature: A Multi-Disciplinary Search
  • Introduction
  • Ontological considerations
  • Epistemological concerns and consequences
  • Technical strategies
  • Chapter 4: Practitioner Voices: My Voice, Teachers’ Voices, and Experts’ Voices
  • Introduction
  • Questions and questioning
  • Curriculum frameworks
  • The use of discussion
  • Focussing on students
  • Sequential processes
  • Thinking skills
  • Teaching the process of decision-making
  • Practices that promote consensus and democracy
  • Formal and informal leadership
  • Virtues, values, ethics
  • Compilation of teachers’ hesitations, confusions, concerns and silences
  • Teachers’ voices
  • My researcher’s voice
  • Need for a new architecture
  • Chapter 5: Auto-Ethnographical Retrospective
  • Introduction
  • Stages of development: An auto-ethnographic account
  • Chapter 6: From Twelve ‘Categories of Influence’ to the Concept of Edu-tensegrity
  • Introduction
  • What is tensegrity?
  • Tensegrity as a concept for education
  • Explaining the twelve ‘Categories of Influence’
  • Chapter 7: A new architecture for teaching virtues and values
  • Introduction
  • Category of Influence 1: Dimensions of daily life
  • Category of Influence 2: Dimensions of thinking
  • Category of Influence 3: Dimensions of education
  • Category of Influence 4: Curriculum theorists and shaping the curriculum
  • Category of Influence 5: Constructs about knowledge and the thinking curriculum
  • Category of Influence 6: Historical and philosophical theorists
  • Category of Influence 7: Meaning, reasoning and choice – blending and synthesising reflection and resilience
  • Category of Influence 8: Teachers and teaching
  • Category of Influence 9: My contributions
  • Category of Influence 10: Outcomes, issues of dependency, rich and deep learning
  • Category of Influence 11: The construction of a personal belief system, a good life and a career
  • Category of Influence 12: The integration of student, teacher and the curriculum expert to form the nexus of pedagogical delivery
  • Chapter 8: Reshaping Curriculum: Linking Applied Thinking Skills to Ethics
  • Ethics, ethical leadership, edu-tensegrity and education
  • Category of Influence 1: Dimensions of daily life
  • Category of Influence 2: Dimensions of thinking
  • Category of Influence 3: Dimensions of education
  • Category of Influence 4: Curriculum theorists and shaping the curriculum
  • Category of Influence 5: Constructs about knowledge and the thinking curriculum
  • Category of Influence 6: Historical and philosophical theorists
  • Category of Influence 7: Meaning, reasoning and choice – blending and synthesising reflection and resilience
  • Category of Influence 8: Teachers and teaching
  • Category of Influence 9: My contributions
  • Category of Influence 10: Outcomes, issues of dependency, rich and deep learning
  • Category of Influence 11: The construction of a personal belief system, a good life and a career
  • Category of Influence 12: The integration of student, teacher and the curriculum expert to form the nexus of pedagogical delivery
  • Chapter 9: Reshaping the Values, Virtues, and Ethics (VVE) Future: Responses, response-abilities and responsibilities
  • Introduction
  • Responses: Reshaping the future
  • Response-abilities: Improving teaching about VVE
  • Responsibilities: Creating a future for VVE
  • ‘Categories of Influence’ in action
  • My final reflections on the experience of being a researcher
  • References
  • Appendix: Questionnaire
  • Index

| ix →

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the following people, who have assisted me in this journey of discovery:

 Professor Brenda Cherednichenko, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Arts and Education) Deakin University, for her support, understanding and early mentoring in my candidature;

 Dr Anne Davies, Victoria University, for her patient and precise supervision and technical support;

 Professor Constant Mews, Monash University, for his academic support at crucial points of my academic journey;

 Roger Sutcliffe, SAPERE, UK, for his timely mentoring and direction in my progress over a long career of study in understanding the breadth of thinking skills and the teaching skills to accomplish this aim;

 The late John Wilson, University of Oxford and Director of the Farmington Trust, whose mentoring and academic insights directed my learning in the Oxford University Department of Educational Studies in 1990–1991 and beyond;

 The late Professor Matthew Lipman, USA (and his Australian associates), for personal direction, and whose Philosophy for Children movement informed so much of my subsequent studies;

 Dr Peter Vardy, late of Heythrop College, London (and his UK and Australian associates), for the provision of so much for the teaching of senior classes via the DialogueAustraliaNetwork (DAN) and a feature of this project;

 Dr Rosalie Holian, then at RMIT Victoria, for academic consultation in the 1990s about direction in the compilation of the Heasly Behaviour Uncertainty Grid;

 Dr Adrian Hubbard, for timely academic intervention in the construction of my theory of edu-tensegrity; ← ix | x →

 Adjunct Professor Ian Ling, Victoria University, for his erudite and knowledgeable interventions and generous academic support towards the close of this academic journey;

 Rev. Fr. Michael Elligate, University of Melbourne, for his life-long friendship and insightful support in all theological, psychological, literary and philosophical matters, over the span of this academic journey and beyond;

 Mrs Margaret Ling, for timely insertion of insightful comment and skills in proof-reading;

 My son, Denis Heasly, for lengthy technical and academic support during this long journey;

 My late husband Bernard and my three daughters, Jane, Clare and Sara, whose patience and forbearance I can never adequately compensate, over such a long academic journey.

| xi →

Figures

| Xiii →

Tables

| xv →

Preface

Matthew Lipman – a thinker who profoundly influenced Berise Heasly – wrote in his book Philosophy in the Classroom that ‘young people today are growing up in an information-rich but wisdom-poor society’.

The first half of his claim is surely indisputable; the second half perhaps a little tendentious, not least in its highlighting of a concept, wisdom, that is problematical. But the implication behind the claim – that wisdom, however conceived, is a ‘good thing’, and especially valuable for young people as they find their way into adult and wider society – is surely, again, hard to dispute.

(One could, of course, render it virtually indisputable by defining it narrowly as ‘knowing how to make your way in the world’ – though not so narrowly as to confine the meaning of ‘making your way’ to simply making money! But Berise would not play such a linguistic trick, and nor should I. The point can be made more simply: that wisdom, like happiness, has always seemed worth pursuing – and not just to philosophers or ‘lovers’ of wisdom. For a human life lacking in wisdom would, by default if not by definition, be a life of lacking in happiness and fulfilment.)

Details

Pages
XX, 314
Year
2015
ISBN (PDF)
9783035307160
ISBN (ePUB)
9783035396584
ISBN (MOBI)
9783035396577
ISBN (Softcover)
9783034318914
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0353-0716-0
Language
English
Publication date
2015 (July)
Keywords
education teaching thinking skills VVE
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2015. XX, 314 pp., 2 coloured ill., 6 b/w ill.

Biographical notes

Berise Therese Heasly (Author)

Berise Therese Heasly spent thirty-six years as a secondary school teacher, teaching Music, English, History, Social Studies, Business Studies, Religious Studies and Ethics. She holds a PhD from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.

Previous

Title: Towards an Architecture for the Teaching of Virtues, Values and Ethics
book preview page numper 1
book preview page numper 2
book preview page numper 3
book preview page numper 4
book preview page numper 5
book preview page numper 6
book preview page numper 7
book preview page numper 8
book preview page numper 9
book preview page numper 10
book preview page numper 11
book preview page numper 12
book preview page numper 13
book preview page numper 14
book preview page numper 15
book preview page numper 16
book preview page numper 17
book preview page numper 18
book preview page numper 19
book preview page numper 20
book preview page numper 21
book preview page numper 22
book preview page numper 23
book preview page numper 24
book preview page numper 25
book preview page numper 26
book preview page numper 27
book preview page numper 28
book preview page numper 29
book preview page numper 30
book preview page numper 31
book preview page numper 32
book preview page numper 33
book preview page numper 34
book preview page numper 35
book preview page numper 36
book preview page numper 37
book preview page numper 38
book preview page numper 39
book preview page numper 40
336 pages