What May be Learnt in Ethics? Varieties of Conceptions of Ethical Competence to be Taught in Compulsory School
Author(s):
Olof Franck (presenting / submitting) Annika Lilja (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching
Format:
Paper

Session Information

27 SES 09 A, Teaching and Learning Ethics, Literature and Rhymes

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-10
11:00-12:30
Room:
201.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Ilmi Willbergh

Contribution

  • The research project to be presented has received a grant from the Swedish Research Council and will run for three years from 2015 – 2017. The purpose of the project is to identify and elucidate varieties of conceptions of ethical competence and critically analyse and discuss them in relation to each other and in relation to ethical theory as potential educational content in compulsory school.

     

    The empirical starting point of the project is material from the test round of the national assessment of ethics within RE. The project critically examines how ethical competence is operationalised therein – what kind of competence which pupils in Swedish compulsory school are differentiated in relation to – and how this competence is spread among the pupils. The character of the ethical competence of the test is then paid attention to in relation to other ethical competences related to different curricula levels such as the institutional, the instructional and the experiential level (e.g. Goodlad & Su, 1992; Bråten, 2009).

            The research questions in focus are:

  • 1. What conceptions of ethical competence can be identified in pupils’ utterances  in national tests and  concerning experienced needs of ethical competence as expressed in interviews?

  • 2. What conceptions of ethical competence can be identified in teachers' utterances in interviews regarding their commission and the goals of their teaching of national tests?

  • 3. What conceptions of ethical competence can be identified in supranational policies and in a sample of national curricula?

  • 4. What can be said about the identified varieties of conceptions of ethical competence in the light of each other as well as ethical theory, and as potential content in contemporary compulsory school?

 

               The framework through which the analyses of the qualitative material is carried out is based on abductive processes where the inductively identified set of conceptions is theoretically elaborated with help of the ethical theorists Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Seyla Benhabib and Knud E. Løgstrup. Together with the findings of the quantitative analyses the overarching issue of varieties of conceptions of ethical competence will be examined and elucidated.

Method

The base to start from consists of an empirical material which the project members at Gothenburg University have at their disposal; material from the test round of the national assessment in RE of which ethics is one area. Concerning the material of the national test three main types of analyses will be conducted: First, a critical examination of the way to operationalise and measure ethical competence in the national test will be conducted. What conceptions of ethical competence are asked for and what conceptions are absent? Second, a qualitative content analysis of three tasks answered by 100 pupils in grade 6 and 100 pupils in grade 9 will be conducted. Here two questions are central: 1) What conceptions of ethical competence do the answers express? 2) Do the answers express other conceptions of ethical competence than the ones measured in the tests? Third, quantitative analyses will be conducted focusing pupils’ expressed ethical competences given the tasks of the tests. These competences will be supplemented in the project; first by focus interviews aiming at grasping pupils’ experiences of what has been taught and learnt concerning ethics in school, and second by what kinds of ethical competences they express that young people need. Conceptions of ethical competence will also be identified among teachers. Focus interviews will be conducted. Important questions of the interviews concern both what the teachers regard as important objectives of their teaching in ethics and what they actually do when they teach ethics. For the latter purpose the teachers will be asked to bring their teaching material to the interviews in order to make the discussions as concrete as possible. Further, conceptions of ethical competence are brought to the project through analyses of policy documents such as curricula. Here, first, the Swedish curricula and examples of syllabuses, mainly RE, will be analysed. But also some other national curricula, as well as a couple of supranational policies, will be analysed. In the analyses an abductive approach, starting in inductive qualitative content analyses of each group of empirical material, is conducted. In relation to empirically identified, named and described conceptions of ethical competence strategically chosen examples of ethical theory are used in order to understand and explain the character of the identified conceptions of ethical competence. In that way theoretical qualifications of the empirically identified conceptions of ethical competence are used as tools for renewed systematical analyses of the empirical material.

Expected Outcomes

In an ongoing small scale study related to the National Tests of RE (Franck, Lilja, Lindskog & Osbeck 2015), two teachers in grade 6 and four in grade 9 have been recording themselves while they assessed their pupils’ responses at two tasks in ethics at the national test. The findings indicate that some teachers have other ideas of what constitutes ethical competence than the assessment instruction of the test. For instance, the question about how formal, analytical and argumentative skills relate to values is addressed. The idea that e.g. an emphasised universal and altruistic perspective is better than an egocentrical one is launched. The findings show a variety of conceptions of ethical competence and underline a lack of clarity concerning the relation between ethics education and the normative fundamental values task (e.g. Vestøl, 2005). In a first comparative reading of some national curricula of ethics an identification of two lines of differences has been made; first if ethics is placed in relation to RE or not, and second if the ethical competence advocated concerns both an analytical and an action centred competence or only an analytical competence. These preliminary results will through the analyses within the research project be developed and elaborated with regard to a rich empirical material including pupils´as well as teachers´ conceptions of ethical competence, and with reference to a variety of policy documents and four approaches within ethical theory: “the capability approach” (Nussbaum), “the utilitarian approach” (Singer), “the ethical demand approach” (Løgstrup) and “the foundational moral respect approach” (Benhabib).

References

Benhabib, S. (1992) Situating the Self. Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge. Benhabib, S. (2006) Another Cosmopolitanism/Seyla Benhabib with commentaries by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka. Ed. R. Post. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bråten, Oddrun M. H. (2009). A comparative study of religious education in state schools in England and Norway. Warwick: University of Warwick. (PhD thesis) Franck, O., Lilja, A., Lindskog, A. & Osbeck, C. (2015). Challenges of Assessment in Ethics – Teachers’ reflections while assessing National Tests. Educare. In Press. Løgstrup, K.E. (1994). Det etiska kravet. Göteborg: Daidalos. Goodlad, J., & Su, Z. (1992). Organization of the Curriculum. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Curriculum: A project of the American Educational Research Association (p. 327Ͳ344). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Host, K., Brugman, D., Tavecchio, L., & Beem, L. (1998). Students' Perception of the Moral Atmosphere in Secondary School and the Relationship between Moral Competence and Moral Atmosphere. Journal of Moral Education, 27(1), 47Ͳ70 Martin, B., Bright, A., Cafaro, P., Mittelstaedt, R., & Bruyere, B. (2009). Assessing the Development of Environmental Virtue in 7th and 8th Grade Students in an Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound School. Journal Of Experiential Education, 31(3), 341Ͳ358. Nussbaum, M. (1995). Känslans skärpa, tankens inlevelse: essäer om etik och politik. Stockholm: B. Östlings bokförl. Symposion. Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit : why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, N.J. ; Princeton University Press. OSCE/ ODIHR. (2007). Toledo guiding principles on teaching about religions and beliefs in public schools. Warsaw: OSCE/ ODIHR. Singer, P. (1993). Practical ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press Sigurdson, O. (1995). Det rätta eller det goda?: om liberalism, kommunitarism, postmodernism och demokratisk fostran i Lpo 94. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet. Skolverket. (2011a). Curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and the leisureͲtime centre 2011. Stockholm: Fritzes. Skolverket. (2011b). Curriculum for the upper secondary school 2011. Stockholm: Fritzes. Smith, S. (2000). Morality, Civics, and Citizenship: Values and Virtues in Modern Democracies. Educational Theory, 50(3), 405Ͳ18. Thornberg, R., & OŒuz, E. (2013). Teachers’ views on values education: A qualitative study in Sweden and Turkey. International Journal of Educational Research, 59, 49Ͳ56 Tirri, K., & Pehkonen, L. (2002). The Moral Reasoning and Scientific Argumentation of Gifted Adolescents. Journal Of Secondary Gifted Education, 13(3), 120Ͳ29. Vestøl, J. M. (2005). Relasjon og norm i etikkdidaktikken. Moralsk/etisk verktøybruk i spennet mellom elevtekster og fagdidaktiske framstillinger. Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo.

Author Information

Olof Franck (presenting / submitting)
University of Gothenburg
Department of Curricular, Pedagogical and Professional Studies
Gothenburg
Annika Lilja (presenting)
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg

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