Nataliya Chmylevska

08.04.2013

Personal Skill Assignment No: 3

My thesis topic is “Phenomenological investigation of safe and secure educational environment at schools: Expanding teachers’ awareness”. I am interested in the components that make up educational environment of any school, in factors influencing this educational environment and making it either safe and secure or unsafe and insecure with respect to child abuse in all its manifestations. Other aspects of safe and secure school environment (associated with school meals, hygiene standards, etc.) are not the subjects of my investigation. In other words, my work focuses on such a social phenomenon as child abuse and neglect. My personal and universal belief is that children should get education in comfortable surroundings without any threat to their physical, mental, and moral health.

In an article written in response to Savage Inequalities, Nel Noddings comments that all children must have adequate and attractive school facilities. “We demand this not because “children can’t learn” in horrid conditions but because it really is savage to allow children to live in unsafe, unhygienic, and unattractive places. Well-to-do parents provide decent environments for all their children – bright and dull, ambitious and lazy, good and bad. Surely the community is bound to grant all its children a decent living environment for at least during the school days” And then, she stressed the point that “we provide safe and attractive environments for our own children because we love and accept responsibility for them, not merely so that they can learn math and reading” (Nel Noddings, 1995).

I have collected data through on-line survey (students, their parents and teachers), interviews, observations, study of documents and texts. Due to many years of experience in education, in particular in the area of child protection and upbringing, I decided to use phenomenological approach for analysis of my qualitative data. The reasons for this choice are as follows:

- phenomenological research permits me to test assumptions anew with consideration of how the phenomena under investigation are consciously realized;

- phenomenology promotes and makes possible to give a new look at the old phenomena, eliminates presuppositions and traditionally held assumptions, enables to "see" a new, provides a more original "seeing", initiates previously unnoticed possibilities, allows to observe or describe new and different relationships;

- phenomenological method gives me a chance on the autobiographical statements confirming my experience, perspective and interest in the subject of study.

In 1970 I graduated from the Pedagogical Institute. My childhood dream came true and I became a teacher. I was happy within my profession for 38 years, though as any other human being I knew the days of doubt, despair, and the like in the frames of my profession. I was lucky enough to enjoy a rare opportunity from the first till the last working day to solve the problems of child protection and upbringing children.The content of my teaching activities was to work with children and their parents, with their subject teachers and class teachers, with the administration of schools and local authorities, with Ministry of Education. My duties, knowledge, creative approach to work, my beliefs and efforts were focused on searching out efficient directions, approaches and forms of work.

I am a child of the age I live in. My pedagogical activity began in the Soviet Union and finished in the independent Ukraine. I had a chance to witness advantages and disadvantages of two different political and economic systems: socialist and capitalist. Political and economic changes in the former Soviet Ukraine caused changes in social and cultural life of Ukrainian society as well. And, of course, there were important differences in the aims, purposes, conditions and values of education. To tell the truth, it was the most difficult period not only for me personally, but for all educators of Ukraine.

After the collapse of the USSR vast strata of population lost its job and means of subsistence. Our pupils’ parents did their best to earn money for their families. Very often they left children with grandparents or other relatives and went abroad. All their thoughts were focused on biological surviving, but not on the problems of children’s upbringing.

Teachers experienced the same hardships as the rest of the society, on the one hand, and lost educational orientation, on the other hand.

Assessment of children’s condition in Ukraine at that complicated period of time revealed the tendency for its progressive deterioration. The impoverishment of general population led to the increase in juvenile crime manifested in such brutal forms as premeditated murder, intentional grievous bodily harm, rape, robbery and hooliganism.

Thousands of children did not have permanent residence. They did not attend schools and begged with their peers or adults in the streets, which is, in most cases, associated with drugs, abuse, alcoholism, smoking, prostitution and consequently with the forced child labour and sexual exploitation.

Moral values of youngsters also considerably changed. Feelings and actions based on the principals of tolerance, mutual aid and respect lost their attraction, giving up their own place to selfish and pragmatic outlook at life.

Due to mass media a new striking phenomenon became known to general public. It depicted cases when children purposely inflicted injuries to domestic animals or their own class mates, vandalised public property while recording all these facts of cruelty and misconduct on their own cam-coders or mobile phones, and then distributed that material on the World Wide Web.

Prevention of child abuse and neglect became one of the questions central to education. It was educators’ moral duty to save younger generations of Ukrainians, focusing on the rights of children.

My interest in this study is caused by my experiences of an ordinary teacher, of school administrator, inspector of secondary schools, major manager of the City Educational Department, and the immense desire to give scientific grounding to my findings in the area of child protection and upbringing. Taking into account the significant role of educators in preventing these phenomena at schools, I clearly understand that teacher’s awareness, readiness, and capability to protect their students depend upon policy makers regulating education, upon the quality of teacher's training, upon methodological literature. I want my research to contribute to the development of safe and secure educational environments at schools.

Being a practitioner, I share the opinion that theoretical social science today (in the majority of cases) is a sterile academic activity, which is developing mostly for its own sake and in increasing isolation from a society. This point of view has the right for existence because social science has little effect on the latter and gets little appreciation from the society. Although scientists can transform social science to an activity done in public and for the public, make her serve as eyes and ears in ongoing efforts of people to understand the present and deliberate (about) the future, still the researchers, in the majority, don’t take up problems that matter to the local, national, and global communities in which they live, do not inform fellow citizens about the results of their study. I see the purpose of social science not only to develop theory, but to contribute to society’s practical rationality in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests.

It is a generally known truth that theoretical social sciences have often failed to satisfy educators and teachers because their materials have been too abstract and esoteric. My aims with my PHD are not simply, in a regular time, to call attention to one of the central problems in current education – preventing child abuse and neglect at home and at school – but also to outline a possible answer. I want to provide readers with some knowledge about components that make up educational environment of any school, in factors influencing this educational environment and making it safe and secure or unsafe and unsecure with respect to child abuse in all its manifestations.

One cannot expect anything like a full treatment of the problem, but my hope is to provide enough to enable readers to read my PHD research with some understanding and appreciation. Perhaps, by the end of my study, readers will see for themselves why child abuse and neglect take place not only in the developing countries or in the countries surviving after coup d’etat, war conflicts, etc., but also in perfectly safe, highly developed countries with a high degree of social protection, with a high level of education and culture, with rich traditions and moral values. A victim of child abuse and neglect can become a girl or a boy, children from poor and rich families as well as from families of emigrants and problem families. Violence against children becomes more cruel and refined.

As it was mentioned before, I want to contribute to the development of safe and secure educational environments at schools. I hope to present my findings in the form of recommendations in order to improve literature in the area of childhood protection.