The Value of a Moral Philosophy of Education for the Design of Primary School Curricula - Research Proposal Example

Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction: Topic Selection 2 Importance of Topic 2 Approach 3 Scope of the Study 3 Objectives of the Study 3 Research Hypothesis 4 Research Questions 4 Literature Review 4 Range of Philosophies of Education 5 Value Theory 6 Liberalism 6 Aristotelian Philosophy of Education 7 The Optimal Philosophy of Education 8 Methodology 8 Empirical Research 9 Conclusion 10 Bibliography 11 Introduction: Topic Selection Bilsky (1954) observes that the formulation of educational policies and curriculum without the a priori articulation of a framing philosophy represents the unnatural separation between knowledge/philosophy and education/communication and society/morality. Educational policy makers need to elucidate that philosophy of education which addresses society’s present and future expectations of the educational system. In light of the fact that the inculcation of ethical and moral precepts into generations of learners, from the earliest stages of primary education to the final stages of higher education, is an overwhelming concern, the articulation of a philosophy of education which addresses the defined imperatives is a valuable undertaking. It shall function as the primary concern and objective of the proposed dissertation. Importance of Topic The vale of the proposed topic derives from the very nature of global demands upon the educational system. Given the ever-increasing crime rate and the growing proliferation of professional practitioners’ violations of their espoused code of ethics, it is imperative to address the problem at its roots (Sarfatti-Larson, 1976; Hunter, 2003; Masschelein, 2003; Carr and Stuetel, 1999; Winch, 2004). These roots, as Carr and Stuetel (1999) contend, exist at the primary education level. Hence, resolving the problem of amorality inextricably linked to the implementation of a moral philosophy of education (Sarfatti-Larson, 1976; Hunter, 2003; Masschelein, 2003; Carr and Stuetel, 1999; Winch, 2004). As such, it is possible to express the importance of the topic as deriving from the problems of escalating crime rates and increased amorality across professions, practices and activities and the role that the educational system should play in its resolution, not to mention the responsibility that it has to do so. Approach The proposed dissertation’s objectives, hypothesis and research questions directly emanate from the earlier articulated problem. Scope of the Study The theoretical dimensions of the problem shall be discussed against the background of variant philosophies of education in an effort to assess which may be best suited for the design of a school curriculum which would contribute to the resolution of the mentioned problem. While the proposed study shall draw on various examples of countries/educational districts which have implemented a moral philosophy of education, the research shall limit itself to the study of the situation within the United Kingdom and shall concentrate on the primary level of education. Objectives of the Study The dissertation’s proposed objectives are: 1. To establish the existence of an ethics commitment problem, articulate its dimensions and establish the correlation between the defined problem and the educational system. 2. To clarify the extent to which the educational system, historically and theoretically, has a responsibility towards the fortification of a society’s moral base through the inculcation of ethical precepts into the curricula. 3. To outline the benefits of adopting a moral philosophy of education and explain how it may be integrated into school curricula. 4. To propose a philosophy of education which may fulfil the explicated function and which is fundamentally based on universal ethical precepts. Research Hypothesis The design and adoption of a philosophy of education which is fundamentally founded upon universal ethical precepts will lend to the inculcation of ethical behaviourism among generations of learners and, accordingly, contribute to the resolution of the growing problem of ethics breakdown across professions, activities and practices. Research Questions 1. What is the relationship between morality and philosophies of education and to what degree should a philosophy of education inform and frame school curricula? 2. Is there a correlation between the evident breakdown in ethics across professions, practices and activities and the nature of the dominant school curricula? 3. What are the criterion for selecting an appropriate philosophy of education? Literature Review Moore (1957) maintains that the selection of the optimal philosophy of education is predicated upon the prior acknowledgement of the interrelationship between society and education on the one hand, and the extent to which education is simultaneously shaped by and shapes society. This perspective substantially complicates the selection process insofar as its central contention is that education policy makers need first articulate society’s values, needs and expectations prior to the selection of a philosophy of education. Densford (1963) concurs adding that the value of an educational system derives from the degree to which it reflects existent social characteristics and values while, simultaneously mirroring societal and national aspirations. The above provides a rudimentary framework for the articulation of the criteria for the selection of the optimal moral educational philosophy. As per the stated, an appropriate educational philosophy needs to be well-grounded in current reality and flexible enough to address the mercurial or ephemeral nature of social and national reality. Winch (2004) asserts that through the implementation of though stated, educational policy makers can ensure that the selected philosophy of education will be relevant to the society/nation/era in question while accounting for the future. Range of Philosophies of Education According to Winch (2004) the preponderance of philosophies of education is due to the fact that, by definition, these philosophies articulate the ever-changing aims of life and work and provide the educational curriculum with a definition of the knowledge that needs to be embraced and educators with the teaching strategies by which to teach the identified knowledge. As knowledge is both expansive and almost impossible to contain, on the one hand, and as different eras ad societies focus on different types of knowledge on the other, novel philosophies of education are constantly being articulated and different philosophies of education, apart from the more general ones, address different areas of knowledge (Winch, 2004). Consequently, the variety philosophies of education are not necessarily competitive but often coexist, in a mutually dependant relationship. Value Theory Value theory constitutes one of the more pragmatic of the various philosophies of education. As defined and advocated by Densford (1963), value theory embraces moral, sociological and economic precepts. On the one hand, it is founded upon the ideas and values which any given society identifies as integral to, and representative of, its belief structures and value systems and, as such, contributes to the fortification of its moral base. On the other hand, value theory is, at its core, fundamentally derived from economic principles wherein it maintains that, insofar as an education system is supposed to promote the interests of a society and endow the citizenry with the knowledge tools integral to the fulfilment of specified national and societal aims, it is valuable only if it successfully achieves that (Densford, 1963; Saito and Imai, 2004). Liberalism Liberal Education Philosophy or the General Education Philosophy, is advocated by Bilsky (1954) because it exploits numerous areas of knowledge and their concomitant problem-solving and particularistic critical thinking methodologies as a strategy for the expansion and development of individual abilities. Moore (1957) similarly advocates general education and/or liberalism as the optimal philosophy of education insofar as it ensures that students are not trapped within the confines of highly specified and limited areas and fields of knowledge. Within the framework of the above explication of the constituent elements of the liberal or general education, philosophy of education, this particular approach ultimately emerges as multi-pronged. In making that argument, Horlacher (2004) explains that, as a philosophy of education, this approach is particularly useful for the informing of complex educational policies which are formulated for implementation in societies which have a wide range of needs, including, as Heyting and Winch (2004) assert, moral ones. In other words, this approach is all-encompassing and if employed for the informing of educational policy, influences the design of academic curricula which are geared towards providing students with a wide array of analytical and problem solving tools, within the confines of ethical parameters. Aristotelian Philosophy of Education While not detracting from the value of the Aristotelian, one of the oldest, philosophies of education, decisions regarding its implementation as a paradigm for the informing, and framing of, education policies, have to be approach with tremendous cautious. This, as Stuetel and Spiecker (2004) explain is directly due to the fact that this particular philosophy of education is an intrinsically moral and sentimental one. Its primary aim is the elucidation of the methodologies by which to judge, and critically evaluate, actions as moral or immoral, as ethical or otherwise. Its overriding concern is, thus, the `cultivation of feelings deemed appropriate for moral action, behaviour and judgement’ (pp. 531-532). While, within the context of the stated, this philosophy of education appears to be immediately suitable for the resolution of the defined research problem, the fact is that it is not. Education may have a duty towards the inculcation of moral precepts among learners, but that is hardly its sole aim. Therefore, while all educational policies must, in varying degrees, be informed by the Aristotelian approach and articulate the communication of morality and ethics as an integral componential element of education, educational curricula and aims have to be more expansive than that. The Optimal Philosophy of Education Masschelein (2004) maintains that the optimal philosophy of education is the one which is tailor-made to the needs of a specific society, reflects its values and aims towards the fulfilment of its aspirations. The customisation of a philosophy of education does not imply the development of a novel one but, rather, entails a careful analysis of existent philosophies of education, the identification of their respective strengths, followed by the selection of the relevant strengths of each (Masschelein, 2004). Upon the basis of the above reviewed literature, and in light of the research aims, hypothesis and questions, the selection of an amalgamated philosophy of education emerges from the recognition of the fact that fortification of society’s moral base through the integration of moral philosophy in the educational system, should not occur at the expense of the role that education plays in the fulfilment of society’s other needs. Methodology For the purposes of the current study, and as predetermined by the research questions, hypothesis and the nature of the investigated problem, the research shall adopted a mixed methodological approach. While primarily relying on secondary literature, primary data shall be collected as one approach to testing the research hypothesis. The secondary data will concentrate on the interrelationship between morality and education, the contributory value of a well-design philosophy of education to society and the exigencies of adopting such a philosophy in light of the widespread breakdown in ethics across the professions and practices. As regards primary data, structured and semi-structured interviews will be conducted with five school administrators and five child psychologists. The aim here is the determination of prevalent professional opinion on the aforementioned problem and proposed solution. Close-ended questionnaires will be distributed among 120 school children, through grades 1-12 in order to assess their opinions and attitudes regarding the values that they are exposed to within the school environment. The collected data will be both quantitatively and qualitatively analysed and the results discussed in light of the hypothesis. Empirical Research Empirical data shall be statistically analysed as a strategy for testing the research hypothesis. Five schools which are involved in the implementation of, or which have already implemented, a moral philosophy of education shall be identified and compared against five schools which have not. Following that, two sample population sizes and simples shall be mathematically calculated, one for the group which has implemented a moral philosophy of education and one for the group which has not. The below formula will be used for calculating the required sample size: n = x2NP (1-P) ÷ [d2 (N-1) +x2P (1-P)] Following the generation of the sample sizes, the main tools for the analysis questionnaire data will be the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel 2003 for descriptive data analysis. The results, which shall be presented in tabular ad graphical format, will provide a clear indication regarding the validity of the proposed hypothesis. Conclusion As evident throughout the proposal, the research shall seek to establish the correlation between societal morality and the educational curriculum on the one hand, and link the prevalent ethics breakdown to the structural parameters of prevalent school education curricula on the other. The ultimate aim is to propose a moral philosophy of education which would address and resolve the mentioned problem through the fortification of society’s moral base via the inculcation of ethics precepts and values among school children while, at the same time, addressing society’s numerous other demands from the educational system. Bibliography Balz, G.A. and H.A. Larrabee. (1942). Philosophy and the philosophy of education. The Journal of Philosophy. 39(8), 205-212. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from JSTOR database. Bilsky, M. (1954). Liberal education as philosophy. The Journal of Higher Education. 25(4), 191-196+226-227. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from JSTOR database. Carr, D. (2003) Philosophy and the meaning of Education. Theory and Research in Education. 1(2), 195–212. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Densford, J.P. (1963). Value theory as basic to the philosophy of education. History of Education Quarterly. 3(2), 102-106. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from JSTOR database. D’Innocenzo, M. (1999). Aims of education: Tolerance, understanding and inclusion. Vital Speeches of the Day. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Heyting, Frieda and Christopher Winch (2004). The role of critique in philosophy of education: Its subject matter and its ambiguities. Journal of the Philosophy of Education. 38(3), 311-323. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Honneth, A. (1991) Foucault’s Theory of Society: A Systems-Theoretic Dissolution of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, in: The Critique and Power: Reflective Stages in Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Horlacher, Horlacher. (2004) Bildung – A construction of a history of the philosophy of education. Studies in Philosophy and Education. 23, 409-426. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from Oxford Journals database. Hunter, I. (1996) Assembling the school, in: A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds) Foucault And Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism And Rationalities Of Government. London: UCL Press. Masschelein, J. (2003). How to conceive of critical educational theory today? Journal of Philosophy of Education. 38(3), 351-367. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. McMurrin, S.M. (1962). What about the philosophy of education? The Journal of Philosophy. 59(22), 629-637. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from JSTOR database. Moore, Asher (1957). The philosophy of general education. The Journal of Higher Education. 28(2), 65-69+115-116. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from JSTOR database. Papastephanou, M. (2004). Educational critique, critical thinking and the critical philosophical traditions. Journal of the Philosophy of Education. 38(3), 369-380. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Saito, N. and Y. Imai (2004). In search of the public and the private: The philosophy of education in post-war Japan. Comparative Education. 40(4), 583-595. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Carr, D. and J. Stuetel (1999) Virtue Ethics and Moral Education. London: Routledge. Sarfatti-Larson, M. (1976). The Rise Of Modern Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sekaran, U. (2003). Research Methods for Business. London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Stuetel, J. and B. Spiecker (2004). Cultivating sentimental dispositions through Aristotelian habituation. Journal of the Philosophy of Education. 38(4), 531-549. Retrieved November 10, 2006 from EBSCO database. Winch, Christopher. (2004) Work, the aims of life and the aims of education: a reply to Clark and Mearman. Journal of the Philosophy of Education. 38(4), 633-638. 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