Current polity 1:

1

• Current polity 1
• International models holistic and liberal ideals

2

• the following features are damaging schools
  capability to improve
• shallowness definition of success as a narrow
  range of outputs which do not reflect the more
  complex and human purposes of schooling
• selectivity ignoring important aspects of
  childrens development, especially the social
  aspects and areas of knowledge outside the
  prescribed curriculum content
• this requires taking more account of
  students.
• Lodge Reed (2003)

3

• Our own learning experiences
• Good memorability is a good sign
• Often unusual learning experiences, not the
  commonplace
• An extension or opportunity?
• An exponential effect in learning (remember the
  initial personal narrative)

4

• Character may be manifested in the great
  moments, but it is made in the small ones.
• Phillips Brooks
• We are chameleons, taking our hue the hue of
  our moral character from those who are about
  us.
• Locke
• Ordinary conversation with students should not
  necessarily be considered time off-task or time
  wasted
• Noddings

5

• The multiple person
• Heart hand head
• Think act feel
• (Greek are do say)
• Dream it believe it achieve it
• Spiritual and aspirational?

6

• Character development takes place in all
  schools irrespective of whether the word
  character appears in official school
  documentation
• Arthur
• further research and practical application will
  continue to be needed because all schools are
  already heavily engaged in character education.
  The question is whether they are doing it well or
  not.
• Does this colour why / how we are / are not
  willing to discuss Character education in current
  UK educational discourse?

7

• The multiple person? (again)
• Head
• Heart
• Hand
• Hunger
• Hope

8

• teachers and pupils all caught in a wider
  system, over which they exert little or no
  influence, that is shaped by forces of
  competition and experienced as depersonalised and
  disciplinary (quotes head teacher memo to
  staff) the best thing that we can do for our
  pupils is to strive to get the greatest possible
  proportion achieving that five high-grade
  benchmark.
• Gillborn Youdel (2000)
• Does a particular school attended by a child
  make a difference?
• Mortimore et al (1988), opening words

9

• What other models of (non-desk-based) education
  are there? What do they aim at?
• PSHE? Process / X-curricular dimensions in
  Curr08? SEAL?
• Core-type alternatives IB, (Citizenship?),
  Diploma?
• Established alternatives Steiner, Montessori
• Physical / outdoor scouts, D of E, CCF, sports
  Academies, (Frontiers?)
• Do these perceive themselves as community or
  schooling endeavours? Vocational or academic?
  Learning or being?
• Asian traditionalism US empowering UK ?

10

• Tutorial Colleges catch-up or other model?
• CHECKPOINT
• Personalisation agenda...
• What are the aims and purposes? Are aspirations
  meaningful for this theme?
• What are its (dangerous) token forms?
• What can it learn from breadth of models?
• What reflections from your own experiences?

11

• The pastoral system has become a servant of the
  academic as schools seek to identify individual
  pupils who, with additional support and
  resources, might change one of more predicted
  grade Ds into actual grade Cs here the
  principles of educational triage are most clearly
  visible.
• Gillborn Youdel (2000)

12

• THE PLACEMENT GAME
• (Have a break during / after)

13

• No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may
  possess, and no matter how good ones sentiments
  may be, if one has not taken advantage of every
  concrete opportunity to act, ones character may
  remain entirely unaffected for the better. With
  mere good intentions, hell is proverbially
  paved.
• William James

14
Lodges 2005 quadrant model of student voice
Student voice is ACTIVE
quality control the customer providing feedback,
the purposes for institutional gains
dialogic young people are viewed as active
participants the building of shared
narrativemakes learning purposeful
self-directed
Purpose for the institution
Purpose for the community
source of information limited value in school
improvement as it does not engage the young
people
compliance control adults manipulate
childrens voices to carry their own message
tokenistic or decorative includes
target-setting
Student voice is PASSIVE
15

• The best index to a persons character is how he
  treats people who
• cant do him any good and
• cant fight back.
• Abigail van Buren

16

• People seem not to see that their opinion of the
  world is also a confession of their character.
• Emerson
• Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others?
  Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril
  of our existence.
• Elihu Burritt

17

• Homework
• Sit down with a group of students from your
  school, and place the school on the Lodge
  quadrant.
• You might want to read an example of this first
• How will you choose the students?
• How will the discussion occur?
• Report it onto the discussion board in some form.

18

• Young people are more hopeful at a certain age
  than adults, but I suspect thats glandular. As
  for children, I keep as far from them as
  possible. I dont like the sight of them. The
  scale is all wrong. The heads tend to be too big
  for their bodies, and the hands and feet are a
  disaster. They keep falling into things. The
  nakedness of their bad character! We adults have
  learned how to disguise our terrible character,
  but children, well, they are like grotesque
  drawings of us. They should be neither seen nor
  heard, and no-one must make another one.
• Gore Vidal