8-9th June: Hikurangi School
I worked with Hikurangi school over these two days as part of their ongoing process. So far we have revised the school vision and this is now a powerful aspect of the school that drives daily practice. The vision has been captured into a graphic that features obviously as you enter the school and in every classroom. Teachers now use the vision as a guideline for classroom acivities. We have also implemented inquiry learning using the SAUCE model. Friday was spent on reviewing progress to date, determining next steps, and carrying out initial planning for the next Inquiry unit. Part of Saturday was spent on discussing the practical issues of implementing Inquiry. One of the most powerful activities we went throuh on Saturday was to re-examine our learning beliefs, and determine from each belief what we value, what attitudes should be demonstrated as a result of those beliefs, and the related skills and behaviours. Up till now we have had real problems trying to determine our ‘values’, we had found that it has been very difficult to define what a ‘value’ is. This time we had a change of approach and started to define what we ‘value’ based on the specific belief. This made things much easier and we found that we could easily agree on a range of concepts, attitudes, behaviours and skills that we ‘value’.the other aspect was we found that when we stopped trying to talk about our ‘values’ and focus instead on what we value, we were now incorporating some very important aspects that we would otherwise not have listed otherwise. A simple example comes from our examination of our beliefs about the place and role of thinking in Learning. When we listed what we ‘value’ based on our defined beliefs we found that we value ‘questions’. Previously we would never have listed ‘questions’ as a value, but we do ‘value’ questions highly when we look at the outcomes of our beliefs on practice. As an aside, it is interesting to note that a major dictionary (Webster’s new 20th Century dictionary, Unabridged, 2nd edition, 1971) does not define ‘value’ as a noun. As soon as we changed tack and stopped trying to define our ‘values’ and started to treat the word as a verb and began defining what we ‘value’ the whole process became much easier and much more powerful as we move forward with implementing beliefs into daily classroom practice.
Having found my way to this thought I would let you know that. I feel comfortable with the notion of treating “Value” as a verb. Having done so, where then do we categorise things such as compassion (Which we also refer to here as a Virtue). Am also wondering where ethics fit into this in light of the conversation we had last week. Perhaps ethics, using your approach, are something that we value as would our Values/Virtues such as compassion. Perhaps it would help to explore compassion at a deeper level and ask “what does it look like?” For example compassion is about empathetic listening which is a skill.
Be interested in your thoughts on this.
Hi Peter, you asked a few interesting questions and I will attempt to answer them based on my current understanding, which is very much open to revision.
First you asked “Where do we categorise things such as compassion?”
Without referring to the concept of virtues, I would have defined compassion primarily as an attitude. If I have an attitude of compassion then I am likely to act with compassion.
Now if I look at The Virtues Programme I see that they define compassion as “understanding and caring when someone is hurt or troubled, even if you don’t know them”. This definition is attitudinal but also assumes that relevant behaviour and action will follow.
You mentioned ‘virtues’ which seem to be commonly classified as ‘a valued human characteristic’, ‘a good character trait’, ‘a valued human characteristic’ or ‘an operative habit essentially good’. To me one could easily get confused if we pursued a large collection of definitions. Augustine’s definition of an ‘operative habit’ speaks to me of behaviour, whereas the other three definitions allow me to comfortably hold the stance that a virtue can be either an attitude or behaviour that is commonly held to be ‘good’.
The Virtues project states that virtues are “the essence of the human spirit and the content of our character” ( http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html ). This still allows me to comfortably hold with the concept that virtues can be either attitudes or behaviours because these are the ‘content of our character’. Let us take compassion… I may be classified as a compassionate person because I have a compassionate attitude and generally act with compassion, however at times I may also act ‘out of character’.
I note that the Virtues programme lists 52 virtues and I think you have been kind by choosing compassion as an example. I would have more difficulty with some of the other virtues, for instance ‘idealism’. I would tend to classify this as a concept that would lead me to have an idealistic attitude that would then govern my behaviour in different situations.
Another question posed was “Where do ethics fit into this?”
Ethics seems to be generally defined in two main ways, firstly as ‘the study of values and customs of a person or group’ and secondly as a “code of professional standards” for any particular group of people. So in the context of schools we would then have a professional set of standards for teachers which would sit under the banner of our professional ethics, or we would categorise this discussion as being an ethical discussion because we are discoursing about what we value.
I think that discussions of our beliefs, the things those beliefs lead us to value, the attitudes that result form those beliefs and value statements and the resulting behaviours all fit under the broad label of ‘ethics’. However for most of us the term ethics is most strongly linked to the concept of acceptable standards of behaviour for a group of people. So it depends which definition of ethics you are using when you ask the question “Where do ethics fit in?” If you are holding the first definition then ‘ethics’ is a broad noun that encompasses this whole discussion, if you hold the second definition then ‘ethics’ sit most strongly in the area of behaviour.
I look forward to further discussion!
Thanks for your detailed response Trevor
I will follow up the virtues link
At present I am inclined to feel most comfortable with virtues being seen as varying degrees of combination of attitudes and behaviours that we value. I chose compassion as my example as that is our current virtue focus.
With reference to ethics, again, I am tending to see them as both a set of generally accepted behaviours or standards that we adhere to when operating in a given context.
I shall ponder further on these thoughts and yours.
bb king bar and grill…
Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts…..