Christine Doddington

Critical Thinking as a Source of Respect for Persons: A critique

Critical thinking has come to be defined as and aligned with ‘good’ thinking. It connects to the value placed on rationality and agency and is woven into conceptions of what it means to become a person and hence deserve respect. Challenges to the supremacy of critical thinking have helped to provoke richer and fuller interpretations and critical thought is prevalent in talk of what it is to become a person and more fundamentally to educate. The capacity for critical thought may indeed be one significant aspect of developed personhood; however an emphasis on critical thought as the main source of respect for persons raises a number of issues about what might therefore be excluded or neglected. A number of alternative views that try to retrieve a more ‘humanised’ view of how we exist in the world are examined and are found to suggest that human consciousness as a mark of personhood should be seen as rooted in bodily senses and a more aesthetic orientation towards the world that moves us away from critical thought and rationality as the single indicators of ‘good’ thinking.

Professional learning during a schools–university partnership Master of Education course: teachers’ perspectives of their learning experiences

An extensive body of research has indicated the benefits of collaborative, contextualised and enquiry-based learning for teachers’ professional development and school improvement. Yet professional learning is also known to be constrained by a number of factors, including the organisational limitations of schools, conflicting cultural practices and wider political demands. Schools–university partnerships have been developed to overcome some of these difficulties by transcending particular school contexts and offering alternative theoretical and practical perspectives. The complex combination of motivations, backgrounds and working contexts in such partnership work calls for attention to the individual and collective learning experiences of those involved, including the ways in which school and university contexts are, or could be, effectively bridged. This paper focuses on understanding the learning experienced by a cohort of teachers and school leaders involved in a two-year schools–university partnership Master of Education (M.Ed.) course in England. A mixed group of 15 experienced primary and secondary teachers and school leaders reflected on their learning at five points of time during and shortly after completing their M.Ed. course. Qualitative analysis of the group’s interview responses and reflective writing led to the identification of six related aspects of personal and professional learning experience: being a learner; learning as part of professional practice; widening repertoire; changing as a learner; personal growth; and critically adaptive practice. The identification and visual representation of these aspects of experience emerging within the group offers useful insight into teachers’ perspectives on learning in school and university contexts and their experiences of progression over time. We conclude that more explicit and central attention to the professional and personal learning elements of schools–university partnerships can help to resolve some of the binary ‘theory–practice’ tensions that have been extensively discussed in relation to partnership programmes and teacher professional development. There is a need to acknowledge variation in teachers’ learning experiences within schools–university partnerships, bearing in mind the ongoing nature of this reflective process with each new group of school and university colleagues. Analysis of participants’ learning experiences in school and university contexts also draws attention to the wider structures, values and cultures that influence, and are influenced by, schools–university partnership work.

Entitled to Speak: Talk in the Classroom

For young children, learning begins in conversation contexts such as schools. The author of this paper contends that talk activities are fundamental to future knowledge and understanding. Implicit is critique of a current British model that values the practice of speaking through effective talk. This view is contrasted to one centered on expressive speech and authentic listening.

Are we in time? some comments arising from recent research into the initial training of primary teachers in the arts

This short paper is a response to Rick Rogers’ (2003) report entitled Time for the arts? The arts in the initial training of primary teachers: a survey of training providers in England, published by Wednesbury Education Action Zone (WEAZ) and the Schools, Teacher Training and the Arts Project (STAR). Time for the arts? is the written report of a survey undertaken in order to give a current picture of the provision of initial training for primary teachers in the arts in England. It is a timely and accessible report which analyses the pattern of arts provision in the training of primary teachers, and for anyone who values the arts in education, it highlights continuing drifts and erosions in that provision, linked in part to recent reforms and changes in Initial Teacher Training (ITT). As well as important statistics, the report is also able to indicate the highly problematic arena of issues that are faced by providers when they now make challenging decisions about the design of the curriculum for the initial training of primary teachers. In the report we are given a brief account of recent pressures on the arts both in schools and in ITT provision. The Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) circular 4/98, Teaching: high status, high standards, precipitated changes in ITT by giving emphasis to National Curriculum core subjects and national strategies in literacy and numeracy. The disappearing arts? (Rogers, 1998), published jointly by the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Royal Society of Arts, found, perhaps inevitably, that other aspects of training had to give way for this revised emphasis, and providers reported a squeeze on time and resources for the arts, along with other foundation areas.

Philosophy, Art or Pedagogy? How should children experience education?

Abstract There are various programmes currently advocated for ways in which children might encounter philosophy as an explicit part of their education. An analysis of these reveals the ways in which they are predicated on views of what constitutes philosophy. In the sense in which they are inquiry based, purport to encourage the pursuit of puzzlement and contribute towards creating democratic citizens, these programmes either implicitly rest on the work of John Dewey or explicitly use his work as the main warrant for their approach. This article explores what might count as educational in the practice of children ‘doing’ philosophy, by reconsidering Dewey’s notion of ‘experience’. The educational desire to generate inquiry, thought and democracy is not lost, but a view that philosophy takes its impetus from wonder is introduced to help re-evaluate what might count as educational experience in a Deweyan sense.

Individuals or persons—what ethics should help constitute the school as community?

This paper critically examines some assumptions involved in determining the nature of the relationships and work that constitute a school as a community dedicated to learning and knowledge. Rather than arguing from first principles, the paper assumes that respect for other people as ends is preferable to seeing individuals in terms of their function or status; and it argues, in particular, for the reinstatement of a sense of agency for teachers that seems to have been lost in recent education initiatives in the UK. Following Heideggers notion of authenticity and Gadamers emphasis on the process of interpretation to precipitate understanding, the paper argues that professional knowledge and understanding is best generated in relation to others, and thus the ethical basis for schools as communities should focus less on individuals and more on the value of persons in relationships of a distinctive kind.

New, improved formula! — Quality you can afford!

In the very last Education 3-13 journal 1 of the last century, we were given a timely analysis of recent change in primary education together with wellinformed speculation to take us forward into the future. As we settle into this first year of the new millennium, two articles in that edition seem particularly pertinent. Maurice Galton offered a chastening vision of little real change in primary education in near recent years and highlighted some important features of teaching and learning which deserve revisiting. Andrew Pollard set out a challenge for everyone concerned with primary education to collaborate in the construction of a better, more coherent vision of what it is to learn.

Democracy and Education Is it relevant now

The year 2016 was remarkable for many reasons, but one significant anniversary for the realm of education was that 2016 marked a hundred years since the influential publication of Democracy and Edu...

The global search for better teaching: how should teachers think for themselves?

Internationally, forms for teacher education (initial and continuing) are under the spotlight for change. This article briefly considers what is at issue and what opportunities might be available for moving towards ‘professionalisation’ in the provision of outstanding teachers. In particular, it suggests how we should characterise the thinking that becomes necessary if teachers gain increased autonomy. A brief examination of the concept of practical judgement, embedded in the Aristotelian idea of ‘phronesis’, is considered as one way to provide a rich articulation of the complexity of teaching and therefore shed light on how teachers might think for themselves to improve practice.