Learning about ‘Life’ or valuing ‘Life’?

Sonia Pieczenko and Thomas Feldges

Abstract

This paper focuses upon the education of future care professionals. The current ‘standard-approach’ to teaching practice entails that educational success is assessed following the paradigm of methodological behaviourism. Our aim was to explore as to whether this approach, with its content-orientated learning assessments may be prone to ignore the values held by the students and thus not able to reveal wrong-guided attitudes in terms of care-related values. We presented a sample (n=75) of Higher Education students with a collection of moral dilemmas as developed by Kohlberg. We assessed the students’ responses in relation to authority, trust and the value of life. Our research appears to indicate the prevalence of in-appropriate value-judgements within our sample. We utilise these results to bring an argument forward to challenge the standard-approach of learning-outcome orientated teaching as inherently inefficient to assess and monitor a sufficient ability to reach individual value-judgements.

Pieczenko, S. and Feldges, T. (2016) Learning about ‘Life’ or valuing ‘Life’?. Educationalfutures, [online] Vol. 7(2). Available at: https://educationstudies.org.uk/?p=5401 [Accessed 19 Apr, 2024].

Keywords

Care-professional, Higher Education, Kohlberg, Visible Pedagogy

Volume

Volume 7(2) 2016

Full Text

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