Lindsay Jordan and John O’Reilly
Today we explored Values and Ethics. Lindsay introduced the session asking us to consider ‘to what extent teaching is motivated, informed and structured by lived experience and/or acquired knowledge and/or professional and policy guidelines, and the inter-play between these three strands.’
In small groups we discussed – What do we need to know in order to teach well? – What values inform the way we teach? We generated mind-maps in response, using different coloured pens to respond to the two questions:
Within our tutor groups I worked with Matthew and we approached the questions by reflecting on our own teaching – what did we know and had experienced to inform our responses. We also looked to what we knew of the University’s ethos and included decolonisation https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute and decarbonisationhttps://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/climate-action-plan as sub-titles to the ‘values’, knowing that both of these are significant drivers in how we teach and the weight of both values on curriculum
Lindsay had asked us to consider how to differentiate the following: values, ethics, morals, beliefs, duties, principles or guiding principles and attitudes. We each took one to quickly research and had quite a robust discussion about how to order them – which we found to be quite a complex task in terms of considering their significance. Following this, Lindsay introduced us to the ‘UKPSF 2011’- ‘The UK Professional Standards Framework (2011) for teaching and supporting learning in higher education 2011 (UKPSF)’. Written by practitioners, it sets out a series of principles of good practice for HE that act as benchmarks; offering guidance to educators to develop and improve their quality of teaching, to enhance the learning experience for students. By setting out a series of values it asks us (professional educators) to stand think of ourselves as the learner and put ourselves in their shoes and by responding to students in this way – considering who they are? what do they think? we can shape the way we teach. We (educators) can become more flexible, delivering with transparency, compassion, bias and importantly, nurturing trust.
This then gives us rise to consider the term ‘professional’ and how it’s applied to academics. Lindsay spoke about how John Dewey, a significant American philosopher in the 20th Century, defined public – a group of people who, in facing a similar problem, recognize it and organize themselves to address it , stating the feasibility and formation of a purely democratic society. His theories help us consider what is professional (you are paid to do it) versus what is amateur (you do it for love). In the early 20th Century, general perception had been that the purpose of education was to instruct learners with a set of skills and knowledge to do a certain job, but Dewey notes, this limited view for vocational training also ‘applied to teacher training schools who attempt to quickly produce proficient and practical teachers with a limited set of instructional and discipline skills needed to meet the needs of the employer and demands of the workforce’ (Dewey, 1904)2
Lindsay discussed that professionalism really emerged within HE in the late 1990’s as a result of the Dearing Report3, which made ‘recommendations on how the purposes, shape, structure, size and funding of higher education, including support for students, should develop to meet the needs of the United Kingdom over the next 20 years’ (Dearing 1997:1), and the first publication of the UKPSF in 2006, bringing the rise of the academic citizen as opposed to the professional (MacFarlane, 2007)4. Here there sits a negative implication that there is a separation between academia & the professional world. Obviously, professional educators aim to reduce this, but this can be found to more complex with creative (art) education – with many specialisms never knowing or having the ‘right’ answer but having to know what the next question is. Lindsay explained that this has parallels with the ‘Overton Window’5 – a concept that surrounds the amount of things that are acceptable.
In our groups we then looked more closely at the UKPSF2011, looking more closely at the Core Knowledge and Professional Values,
Lindsay explained to that the policy hadn’t been reviewed in 11 years and neither she or Jon could give any reason as to why this framework wasn’t reviewed more regularly (especially given issues with pandemic/lockdowns and the impact on educating). We looked at the recently revised 2022 Framework and we had to identify what had actually changed.
At first glance I failed to see anything other than the ‘Dimensions of the Framework’ – I felt had obviously only gone through a ‘rebranding’ process, it looked more like a Persil Liquid-tab and with my ‘professional’ designer hat on felt a bit tokenistic & rebranding for the sake of it (very cynical I realise), but looking more closely we could see that in the Core Knowledge section K1 (The subject material) from the 2011 publication, had been removed. Obviously recognising that as academic citizens we were
We were asked then to consider the terms policy, strategy, framework, guide, code and principle; We each took one term to investigate and research an example. From that we would consider what the order of importance (hierachy) is. I looked into ‘UAL Code of Practice on Educational Ethics’6 – Policy and Guidance for Staff. UAL does crucial and meaningful updating of its policies and this document (found on link below) included mention to all the terms listed in our task (confusing? yes!) However, as a group we surmised that these terms were a series of instructions that we might turn to in times of crisis, to support our thinking or use as declaration of intent. We didn’t totally agree in our discussion and also get the order right! But what an enjoyable debate amongst my peers.
Sadly in the afternoon, I couldn’t attend. I am a governor at my daughter’s school and we had Ousted inspecting the school (they had arrived that day 22.02.2023) and I was asked to attend a meeting with one of the inspectors on 23.02.2023, which meant I had a lot of research (swotting) to do on the SDP and most recent data delivered to the Full Governing Board. It was a truly terrifying experience that I hope I never have to repeat!
Action Plan:
Review what happened in the afternoon for today’s session. Read up for next week’s session
References
2 Dewey, J. (1904). The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education. Teachers College Record, 5(6), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146810400500601
3 Dearing, R. (1997) Higher Education in the Learning Society. The National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education. http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/dearing1997/dearing1997.html
4 MacFarlane, B (2007). The Academic Citizen. The Virtue of Service in University Life.