Session Information
10 SES 04 B, The Educational Values Priority Game: A dialogue about good education
Research Workshop
Contribution
In contemporary society teachers all over Europe teachers (OECD, 2012) are faced with the challenge to provide education for all kinds of students with all kinds of backgrounds, (with caretakers) with all kinds of perspectives on what it means to be an educated person. As a consequence, teachers should not only be equipped in a technical sense, but also should have explicit values and ideas about what they consider to be good education (Biesta, 2009). The connection between abstract values and ideals and the everyday teaching practice should be encouraged by enabling teachers to reflect upon their educational values and ideals, make them explicit and discuss them with colleagues, school leaders and the public at large (Van Kan, 2013). In this workshop, the educational values priority game is presented that is based upon research that distinguishes six ways in which teachers legitimize their interactions with their pupils in terms of their educational values and ideals (van Kan, Ponte, Verloop, 2013). The legitimization types can be summarized as follows: (1) the caring legitimisation type focuses on pupils a as vulnerable and very dependent on grownups to survive in a demanding world, (2) the personal legitimisation type focuses on pupils as unique social beings that have a personal relationship with teachers, (3) the contextual legitimisation type focuses on pupils’ living conditions, life histories and practical lives, which need to be considered in teaching situations, (4) the critical legitimisation type focuses on pupils’ need to be freed from constraining ideas about themselves and living conditions that imprint these ideas, (5) the functional legitimisation type focuses on pupils’ need to be raised towards adulthood along the lines of preconceived favourable outcomes, (6) the psychological legitimisation type focuses on pupils' conduct, which needs to be labelled in mental or emotional terms in order for adequate teaching and learning to take place. In order to systematically describe the legitimization types an descriptive framework was used, based on the meta educational question, postulated by Imelman (1995, p. 60): ‘Who should be taught what, how, when, and why?’ The different aspects (‘who’, ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘when’, and ‘why’), completed with the additional ‘where’ aspect, of this question were used as the components of the descriptive framework. As a consequence, each legitimisation type is systematically described in terms of these components (Van kan, Ponte & Verloop, 2010). These legitimization types are ways of expressing pupils’ best interest, and thus form a typology of educational values and ideals, and not a typology of kinds of teachers. The question that drives the educational values priority game is in what way (prospect) teachers can be challenged to explore, articulate and discuss their educational values and ideals with colleagues and the public at large.
Method
The primary method of the educational values priority game resembles a Q-sort approach (Van Exel & De Graaf, 2005). The Q-sort methodology is used to investigate the perspectives of participants who represent different stances on an issue, by having participants rank and sort a series of statements. In this case a dialogue function is added to the methodology in order to stimulate (prospect) teachers to exchange their views. The game is played as follows: A number of envelopes are spread out on a table. Participants will be asked to make duo's and choose an envelope. Each envelope contains two identical sets of six cards. On each card a statement is formulated with regard to what the participants consider to be good education. The whole game consists of six envelopes, each envelope represents a component of a legitimisation type ('who', 'what', 'how', 'when', 'why', and where'). The six statements within an envelope each form an operationalisation of a particular legitimisation type ('caring', 'personal', 'contextual', 'critical', 'functional' and 'psychological'). Individually people will rank order the six statements (most important on top, least important at the bottom). They will we be asked to fill out the scores on a form (most important six points, least important one point). Subsequently, the duo's will compare their set of rank ordered cards with each other and start explaining and discussing communalities and differences in an explorative manner. Afterwards the participants will select a different envelope and search for a different partner (a maximum of six turns). The game results in an overview of the way the legitimisation types are distributed over the workshop participants. Commonalities and differences will be discussed, taking the different contexts of the participants into account. The workshop will start with a plenary introduction and end with a dialogue about the added value of the game. Additionally, preliminary findings will be presented on the way prospect teachers experienced the game in the context of exchange programs in Europe and beyond.
Expected Outcomes
This workshop may help infuse research that focuses on how the inherent moral significance of education can be made explicit and connected to teachers' everyday practices. The workshop can stimulate practice-based researchers to use the principles of the game for developing both qualitative and quantitative research methods (for example an q-sort questionnaire). Moreover, 'the educational values priority game' can potentially be used in teacher education programs. and teacher teams in primary, secondary, and secondary vocational education (for the latter a special version of the game is developed), for the purpose of reflecting and rethinking the educational values and ideals that form the foundation of the everyday teaching practice. The learning gains for the participants will focus on (1) challenging (prospect) teachers, teacher educators, school leaders, to make their educational values and ideals explicit and give their reasons why they think these values and ideals are important, (2) considering the importance of developing a language for giving expression to educational values and ideals, and, (3) understanding the theoretical underpinning of 'the educational values priority game'. The purpose of our workshop as a whole is to explore as a group what the added value of the game could be in the context of research, the teaching practice and/or teacher education.
References
Biesta, G. J. J. (2009). Values and ideals in teachers' professional judgement. In S. Gewirtz, P. Mahony, I. Hextall & A. Cribb (Eds.), Changing teacher professionalism: International trends, challenges and ways forward. New York: Routledge. Exel N. J. A. van, & Graaf, G. de. (2005). Q methodology: A sneak preview. [available from www.jobvanexel.nl] Imelman, J. D. (1995). Theoretische pedagogiek. [Theoretical Pedagogy]. Nijkerk: Intro. OECD (2012), Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264130852-en Van Kan, C. A., Ponte, P. & Verloop, N. (2010) Developing a descriptive framework for comprehending the inherent moral significance of teaching, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 18(3), 331-352. Van Kan, C. A., Ponte, P., & Verloop, N. (2013). How do teachers legitimize their classroom interactions in terms of educational values and ideals? Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(6).
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