Teaching the General Capability of Ethical Understanding in the Australian Curriculum: Classroom Teachers’Perspectives

Teaching the General Capability of Ethical Understanding in the Australian Curriculum: Classroom Teachers’Perspectives

Teaching the General Capability of Ethical understanding in the Australian Curriculum: Classroom teachers’ perspectives Julie Christine Mitchell Orcid ID: 0000-0001-6179-2193 Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne July 2018 1 Abstract This is a study of ethical understanding and secondary school curriculum. It investigates how ethical understanding, framed as a ‘general capability’ within the Australian Curriculum, is engaged with by teachers working in the curriculum areas of English, History, Mathematics and Science. It explores teachers’ views and experiences as they attempted to integrate ethical understanding into topics specific to their curriculum field. Its concern is with the aims and enactment of ethical understanding as a general capability across curriculum areas, rather than a study of ethics as a separate, specialised subject. The capability approach to ethics is critically situated within debates on moral, values and character education and wider considerations about the place and purpose of ethics in the classroom. The key research questions for the study were: What understandings of ethics and ethical understanding do teachers hold? What understandings of ethics and ethical understanding emerge when teachers explicitly teach Ethical understanding in their discipline areas? What are teachers’ views about the place of Ethical understanding in their subject? To address the research questions, a multi-site qualitative case study was designed wherein teachers were asked to prepare and teach a unit of work in their subject area explicitly incorporating Ethical understanding. The responses of participants were examined through reflective semi-structured interviews and journal writing undertaken as they developed and taught these units. The analysis was developed with reference to Jürgen Habermas’s three knowledge interests and a relational account of ethics as espoused by Emmanuel Levinas and developed by a number of philosophers of education. This thesis developed three main arguments. First, that ethical understanding is a broad and diverse concept which evolves dynamically in practice. It is inevitably shaped by contextual variants such as disciplinary epistemologies and personal beliefs and dispositions. In the study many participants drew on more than 2 traditional rationalist paradigms bringing relationality to the centre. They perceived ethical understanding to be a means of cultivating care, empathy and interpersonal relationships. This framing is connected with a contemporary turn in philosophical Ethics and educational philosophy. Second, this study argues that the Australian Curriculum’s new and distinctive approach of integrating the capability of Ethical understanding into the Learning areas offers affordances for student learning. The experience of participants suggested the infusion of an ethical element into subject content heightened student engagement and deepened disciplinary knowledge. This contributes to the wider debate about what knowledges should comprise the school curriculum. Some argue that the move to capabilities denies students access to powerful disciplinary knowledge. This thesis argues, from the perspective of teachers’ practice, that the two can be mutually complementary. Teachers, it is further argued are not simply curriculum implementers, they are curriculum makers. Third, the study found that the experience of teaching the ethical capability challenged teachers to explore their teacher selves as ethical identities, in ways that were transformative of their practice. Overall, this thesis argues that the teaching of an ethical capability can be a positively disruptive presence in the classroom for teachers and students alike. 3 Declaration I declare that: 1) The thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface; 2) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; 3) The thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length exclusive of tables, maps, references and appendices. Julie Christine Mitchell 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Julie McLeod and Professor Lyn Yates for their guidance, patience, good-humour, generosity and encouragement. They have shared their extensive experience, knowledge and wisdom about Education and the Academy in ways that have gently nurtured my progress and development. I have appreciated their sensitivity to my various needs. They have known when to press for more, and when to allow space. A PhD thesis begins, grows and comes to completion in the context of many years of ordinary life. Consequently, those connected to the writer are inescapably connected to the thesis. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues for the support, understanding, perspective and encouragement they have offered over these years as I have laboured to bring this work to completion. I would like to make special mention of support received from my colleagues Dr. Nicky Dulfer and Fransie Naude, Library Services at the University of Melbourne. I am also grateful to have been able to engage in thought-provoking conversation with Emeritus Professor Terry Lovat from the University of Newcastle. I extend deep gratitude to Dr. Marlene Marburg, my spiritual director of many years, who has accompanied me throughout my candidature. She has shared her insight, gentleness, loving commitment, steadiness and trust in the long view of all things. I know that without Marlene’s gifts to me, I would not have arrived at this moment. My neighbour of almost forty years, Lyn Harper, has listened to rants and raves about all manner of ‘things PhD’. She has provided cups of tea, glasses of sherry, meals and in recent years we have walked our dogs often in nearby parklands. Such friendship over decades is a remarkable blessing and it has enabled me to return over and over again to the computer screen unburdened, encouraged and refreshed. Above all, I am grateful to God, in whom I live, move and have my being. 5 Dedication I dedicate this work to my parents, Alma and Les, and my brother John. I also dedicate this work to Ellen Barns, friend and teacher. Ellen shared with me her love of poetry, her love of God and loved me without judgement from the time I sat in her classroom in 1972 until she died in 2007. Ellen inspired me to become an English teacher and if she were here, she would be very proud of the achievement this thesis represents and we would celebrate with gusto. 6 Explanatory notes In this thesis the words ethics and ethical understanding appear frequently. When the Australian Curriculum General Capability is being referenced, it appears capitalised and in italics, Ethical understanding. When the philosophical subject or discipline is referenced it is capitalised, Ethics. In all other usage, the terms are neither capitalised nor italicised. This represents usage in general discourse which is broad and varied and not as specific as the instances delineated above. All interviews were conducted in the same year, 2013. In the text of the thesis, I have referenced the day and month for substantive quotations. The interview schedule was as follows: Interview 1 Interview 2 School A July 25th November 13th School B April 18th August 15th School C April 3rd & 4th July 29th & 30th Participants were asked to date journal entries. Some did this occasionally, but most failed to do this. Some journals were organised according to activities, some used lesson numbers, some headed an entry with the focus topic. However, all journal entries by all participants were made at points between the first and second interviews, as per the dates in the table above. 7 Glossary ACARA Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority ATAR Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank. A rank showing a student’s achievement in relation to other students. ATC21S Assessment & Teaching of 21st Skills Project DET Department of Education and Training, Victoria, Australia DEEWR Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Australian Government ICSEA Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage. ICSEA provides an indication of the socio-educational backgrounds of students. This scale is used on the Australian Government ‘My School’ website: www.myschool.edu.au NAPLAN National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PCK Pedagogical Content Knowledge PCK&S Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Skill PLT Professional Learning Team PLC Professional Learning Community SES Socio Economic Status. Used in Australia, SES is a measure of people's access to material and social resources. SSI Socio-Scientific Issues UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees VaKE Values and Knowledge Education 8 VEGPSP Values Education Good Practice Schools Project, Australian Government VEP Values Education Project, Australian Government VCE Victorian Certificate of Education. The VCE is an accredited certificate for the final two years of secondary schooling in Victoria, Australia 9 List of Tables TABLE 1. SCHOOL CONTEXTUAL DATA ................................................................................... 90 TABLE 2. PARTICIPANT INFORMATION .................................................................................. 93 TABLE 3. KEY VOCABULARY FREQUENCY ..........................................................................

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