Education

Moral Dimensions, Purpose of Education, and Levels of

Learning

Education

?Education is the development of

individuals' capacity to be

productive members of society, by teaching and learning specific knowledge, beliefs, and skills.

• Leaders of this Church have repeatedly emphasized the importance of education. It is a vital component of wisdom.

• Not long after the pioneers began construction of their temple in Illinois, they established the University of the City of Nauvoo.

• Scriptures teach that “the glory of God is intelligence.” (D&C 93:36.) They also teach that individual “intelligences … were organized before the world was.” (Abr. 3:22.) “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” (D&C 93:29.)

• “Where shall wisdom be found?” (Job 28:12.)

• In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level...the recall of information.

• Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Evaluation

Synthesis

Analysis

Application

Understanding

Knowledge

• 1. Knowledge: arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.

• 2. Comprehension: classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate,

• 3. Application: apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

• 4. Analysis: analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

• 5. Synthesis: arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write.

• 6. Evaluation: appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.

KCAASE

• Learning process:

Information > Knowledge > Understanding >Wisdom

• What can you give/provide?• What are the essential traits of the

process?

• Learning process:

Information > Knowledge > Understanding >Wisdom

• What can you give/provide?• What are the essential traits of the

process?

Moral Dimensions

• Education is a “moral endeavor,” a stand that places a unique responsibility for the development and learning of children, youth, and adults, on teachers.

• “A moral foundation for education is essential,”• “Teaching is a moral action because other

humans are involved and within teaching there are meaningful contributions to humans.”

– Richard Williams» http://education.byu.edu/moral_dimensions/richard_williams.html

Education is a “moral endeavor!”

• Agree?• Disagree?• Why?• How?

Education is the vehicle to pass moral values from

generation to generation.

• Agree? • Disagree?• What does this mean for teachers?

What type of responsibility and stewardship do they have re: this issue?

Faith is a necessary aspect of a moral education

because it gives answers to the why questions of

civility and “good” choices. • Agree?• Disagree?• How do you bring in faith - without

bringing in faith? (Ed. Code prohibits it?!)

“Moral foundations are not possible without

looking toward some good end to humans” - there

needs to be a goal/ a hope.

• How does the teacher do this? • What’s his/her responsibility?

“The modeling of virtues is necessary by teachers for students… We must

judge acts as good or bad, right or wrong.”

• Yikes; so… who determines and defines what right and wrong is?!

4 Moral Dimensions

• Enculturating the young in a social and political democracy– Foster in the nation’s young the skills, dispositions, and

knowledge necessary for effective participation in a social and political democracy

• Providing access to knowledge for all children and youth– Ensure that the young have access to those understandings and

skills required for satisfying and responsible lives

• Practicing a nurturing pedagogy (the art and science of teaching)– Develop educators who nurture the learning and well-being of

every student

• Ensuring responsible stewardship of schools– Ensure educators’ competence in and commitment to serving as

stewards of schools

PEEPPEEP• Providing access to knowledge for all children and youth

– Ensure that the young have access to those understandings and skills required for satisfying and responsible lives

• Enculturating the young in a social and political democracy– Foster in the nation’s young the skills, dispositions, and knowledge

necessary for effective participation in a social and political democracy

• Ensuring responsible stewardship of schools– Ensure educators’ competence in and commitment to serving as

stewards of schools

• Practicing a nurturing pedagogy (the art and science of teaching)– Develop educators who nurture the learning and well-being of

every student

Providing access to knowledge for all children and youth

Ensure that the young have access to those understandings and skills required for satisfying

and responsible lives • Students do not come to school with the same knowledge,

background and insight. • "Access to knowledge," he continued, "is a community

issue that is affected by policy and legislation, family issues, and even social ranking."

• Students become their test score, their athletic ability, etc. Dr. Bullough defined schools bestowing privilege to "titled" students as immoral.

• John Dewey, "Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning it is found in resolving that the supreme test of political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member of society."

• "What the best and wisest parents want for his own child, the community must want for all its children."

Enculturating the young in a social and political democracy

Foster in the nation’s young the skills, dispositions, and knowledge necessary for

effective participation in a social and political democracy

• Social democracy is a set of conditions that result when unrelated people put themselves in constant contact for reasons of mutual benefit. He differentiated political democracy as unrelated people who come together to make decisions about situations, which are in the intersections of their lives. He argued that social democracies are like neighborhoods, while political democracies are like networks of neighborhoods, and noted that these definitions also apply nicely to schools. “Classrooms are like neighborhoods and districts are like networks,” observed Dr. Daynes. “Learning takes place in a way that is analogous to neighborhoods and networks.”

• “Teachers must see and teach from the neighborhoods,” said Dr Daynes. “Attend to the creation of networks and look for the people who can make connections to the broader vision.”

Ensuring responsible stewardship of schools

Ensure educators’ competence in and commitment to serving as stewards of

schools• An educated citizen is a steward of the mind.• [They] see the world as a great book to be explored,

writing in the margin as [they] go.”• In contrast, the serious steward of the mind sees

the world and its events as interconnected, aware that local events are not encompassing, and that stereotyping or categorizing never produces accurate perceptions.

• Educational assimilation, or making similar, is not educational enculturation, but deculturation because it communicates a "dread of otherness." He argued that educators must embrace and celebrate diversity.

Practicing a nurturing pedagogy (the art and science of teaching) - Develop educators who nurture the learning and well-being of every

student• Nurturing pedagogy throughout her presentation:

teachers giving sustained intellectual and moral attention to all students regardless of the subject at hand, or the grade, or the age level.

• “How” a person is in the world can carry as much weight as “what” a person is.

• “The challenge of teaching children not like us is more complex than saying a few words in the student’s language or designing an activity related to a culture different from the majority.”

• “To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and actualize himself” (this has to do with teachers and learners.)

So what?

• What does this all have to do with you?

• How does it all tie together?

• Teach what you learned today