Social Responsibility Expression in Beliefs and Professional Expectations of Future Social Pedagogues

Author(s):

Aldona Augustiniene(presenting / submitting)Laima Abromaitiene(presenting)Raimonda Minkute-Henrickson(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Poster

Session Information

07 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Exhibition

General Poster Session during Lunch

Time:

2012-09-19

12:30-14:00

Room:

FCEE - Poster Exhibition Area

Chair:

Contribution

The problem of social responsibility as component of the sustainable development is currently considered in social, cultural, science spheres (Human Development Report, 2011, Michelsen, Rieckmann, 2008, Stoltenberg, 2009, Michelsen, Siebert, Lije, 2011). According to Jonas (1995) responsibility, as the first principle of new ethics, encompasses not only human beings, but also science, technology, and nature.

University studies must train such future professionals, who would be able to solve global problems and understand them in the context of other sciences, as well as would be professional generalists actively participating and creating, successfully feel in multicultural communities (Visser, 2006, Nusbaum, 2003, 2004, 2009; Ollis, Neeley, Leugenbiehl, 2004; Crawley, Malmqvist, Ostlund, Brodeur, 2007; Narum, 2008).

The research questions: what the level (and the type) of social responsibility do future social pedagogues possess? How does the expression of social responsibility changes during study process?

Thus the research of social responsibility expression in beliefs and professional expectations of future social pedagogues will allow formulating the aims of social responsibility development in the context of contemporary learning paradigm, i.e. to consider students’ needs, the understanding of their social responsibility as well as perceived relevance in pursuing personal and professional career. The recommendations based on students’ needs for study subject teachers will allow ensuring the quality of the study process. students mostly regarded social responsibility as duty, task completion, and responsibility for the results of their actions.

Method

Open-ended questionnaire, association method, Social Responsibility Scale (SRS) (Kovalchuk, Augustiniene, 2011) and interviews were used as they tend to reflect the level of social responsibility. Tool to measure social responsibility of personality is grounded on theoretical propositions by Rotter (Locus of Control, 1966), Schwartz (the Concept of Awareness of Consequences, 1968), Muzdybaev (Psychology of Responsibility, 1983), Salkovskis et al. (RAS – Responsibility Attitudes Scale, 2000), Kohlberg (1958). Students were interviewed using an open-ended questionnaire and the SRS test. The participants (N=94) were asked to explain how they understand such notions as responsibility, social responsibility, and irresponsible attitude. The students were also asked to give examples of social pedagogues mistakes and their results as well as to write five associations for the term social responsibility.

Expected Outcomes

Factor analysis showed five components of social responsibility of personality: civil consciousness, law-abiding ability, reflection of the action results, moral consciousness and altruism. The dispersion sums up to 50.01%, and the distinguished factors consolidate to the well-defined structure and can be easily interpreted. Further we will use these factors as separate factors that show different aspects of social responsibility. Our results were proved the finding by Winter and Barenbaum (1985) who developed and validated a measure of individuals’ concern for responsibility based on the cording of running text. The researchers distinguished five elements of leader’s social responsibility, notably moral-legal standard of conduct, internal obligation, concern for others, concern about consequences, and self-judgment. For classification of collected data, we considered social responsibility at three levels: society, organization and personality. At the level of society the respondents connected social responsibility with government care, life conditions and environment; at the level of organization they linked it with work, relationships with other people, lifestyle; at the level of personality they associated it with level of education, self-improvement, development, family.

References

Crawley E., Malmqvist J., Ostlund S., Brodeur, D. Rethinking Engineering Education: The CDIO Approach. Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 2007. Hans Jonas. Le principe responsabilité. Traduit de l’allemand par J. Greisch. Paris: Flammarion, 1995. Kovalchuk, O., Augustiniene A. Social Responsibility in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Assessment of Future Ukrainian and Lithuanian Engineers (in press), 2011. Michelsen G., Siebert H., Lije J. Nachhaltigkeit lernen. Suedost Verlags Service, 2011. Miechelsen G., Rieckmann M. Internationaler Masterstudiengang „Sustainable Development and \Management“. Band 2: Einfuehrung in nachhhaltige Entwicklung. Verlag fuer akademische Schrifte, 2008. Narum J. Transforming Undergraduate Programs in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics: Looking Back and Looking Ahead. Liberal Education, 2008, Vol. 94, No. 2, p. 12–19. Nussbaum M. C. Cultivating Humanity. Harvard University Press, 2003. Nussbaum M. C. Education for Profit, Education for Freedom. Liberal Education, 2009, Vol. 95 Iss. 3, p. 6–13. Nussbaum M. C. Liberal Education & Global Community. Liberal Education, 2004. Vol. 90 Iss. 1, p. 42– 48. Ollis D. F., Neeley K. A., Luegenbiehl H. C. Liberal Education in Twenty-First Century Engineering. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York, 2004. Visser V. Revisiting Carroll’s CSR pyramid, in Huniche, M. and Rahbek Pedersen, E. (Eds.) Corporate citizenship in developing countries: new partnership perspectives, Copenhagen Business School Press, Copenhagen, 2006, p. 29–56.

Author Information

Aldona Augustiniene (presenting / submitting)

Kaunas University of Technology

Faculty of Social Sciences

Kaunas

Laima Abromaitiene (presenting)

Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania

Raimonda Minkute-Henrickson (presenting)