The Role of Personal Standards in Students’ Moral and Academic Engagement Theresa A. Thorkildsen

1. The Role of Personal Standards in Students’ Moral and Academic Engagement Theresa A. Thorkildsen University of Illinois at Chicago PAEPS10 Conference, 2005, Halle, Germany

2. Overview • This work is designed to strengthen knowledge of how children and adolescents understand and accept responsibility for their education. • The value of adopting a developmental approach is supported by addressing an important methodological issue and three key questions. • How can we best discern individuals’ practical knowledge about the nature and purposes of education? • Do children and adolescents understand the complexity of issues related to organizing an ideal school? • Are there common structural features apparent in students’ conceptions? • How much consistency is apparent in how children and adolescents utilize the various dimensions found in their answers?

3. Virtue is an aspect of character concerned with choice and is only learned though activity. • It is not enough to read about virtue or observe it in others. • There are two categories of virtue. • Intellectual • Moral

4. Virtue is acquired through perception, instruction, and habituationas individuals learn to coordinate their passions, functioning, and values. We learn virtues via formal education and interactions with the world. In so doing we invent personal standards that guide our experience.

5. Personal standards reflect practical knowledgesuch as that associated with ethics and politics. • They are habitual ways of interpreting new situations and evaluating past experiences—part of the force that drives individuals’ social participation (Bandura, 1999; Thorkildsen, 2004). • Personal standards contain state-like and trait-like properties. • They may be modified over time • They include enduring structural features • They help individuals coordinate emotional • reactions, attitudes, and beliefs.

6. Personal standards evolve from individuals’ semantic representations of their experience. • Semantic representations are mental structures used to • Extract information • Establish relations between informational units • Coordinate emotional reactions with particular patterns of thought and behavior (Thelen & Smith,1998). • Semantic representations help individuals achieve excellence in whatever endeavors they direct their energies toward because they allow individuals to formulate ends, means, and acts.

7. Mental models are most often inferred from looking at how individuals respond to practical problems. • We asked children and adolescents to consider two practical problems. • When do you feel successful in school? (competence orientations) • How should an ideal school be organized?

8. Personal standards and semantic representations are features ofengagement. • Academic Engagement—regulating the acquisition and use of new academic knowledge. • Moral Engagement—regulating humane behavior and inhibiting inhumane behavior.

9. Moral Engagement in School Identity Epistemology Moral Agency Fairness

10. Participants • 145 children and adolescents, ages 8 to 15 • 71 males • 74 females • Ethnicity proportional to the school • 67 Asian (eastern, southern, southeastern and • southwestern) • 40 European (eastern and western) • 29 Hispanic (Mexican or Puerto Rican) • 1 African American • 8 Dual ethnicity

11. Motivational Orientations for Females by Age

12. Motivational Orientations for Males by Age Group

13. Sample of Scale’s Restricted Range

14. Preliminary Conclusions Gender differences in the complexity of girls’ competence orientations relative to boys are also consistent with the idea that girls may be better able to describe the intrapersonal changes that they are experiencing and with findings that this emerges in early adolescence (Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 1998). The age-trends are consistent with those found in other studies of students’ motivation (Eccles et al., 1993), but we should be careful to remember that surveys of this nature are not designed to measure magnitude.

15. New Card Sorting Task Learning Situations Students explain things to one another. Students look for help when they need it. Students offer suggestions in class. Students gain understanding. Students explore topics in depth. Students discover how things work. Test Situations Students pass tests. Students choose the best answer. Students earn a grade. Students get answers right. Students’ knowledge is rated. Contest Situations Students strive to earn a title. Students try to win games. Students defeat their opponents. Students win debates. Students compete on teams.

16. Card Preferences by Age Group

17. Key Findings Fairness and effectiveness rankings showed similar patterns. Learning, test, and contest practices were ranked differently (η2=.79). Older students showed more variance in these decisions than younger students (η2=.15).

18. Preliminary Conclusions Students’ decisions on the card sorting task showed a restricted range similar to that found with their survey responses. While it is interesting to know that students place the highest value on practices that promote learning, it is difficult to discover why they made these choices or how these decisions might affect their engagement in school.

19. Student Generated Themes What constitutes a fair environment? What knowledge is most valuable? Who am I and what do I need?

20. Corrective Justice Distributive Justice Moral Engagement Fairness Procedural Justice Commutative Justice

22. Cluster Patterns Cluster 1: Corrective and distributive justice Cluster 2: Corrective and procedural justice Cluster 3: Corrective, distributive, and procedural justice Cluster 4: All four justice types

23. Intellectual Conventions Epistemology Moral Engagement Factual Knowledge Controversial Knowledge Learning Strategies

25. Cluster Patterns Cluster 1: Learning strategies only Cluster 2: Learning strategies, facts, logic, and intellectual conventions Cluster 3: All types of knowledge

26. Conduct Identity Moral Engagement Moral Systems of Thought Intentions and Goals

29. Personal Standards for School

32. R2=.56 R2=.53 R2=.48 R2=.47 R2=.29

33. Conclusions Researchers have much to learn by taking seriously the perspectives of children and adolescents. These findings are consistent with other forms of information on how children’s understanding of intentions and theories of mind evolve over time (Astington, 1993; Zelazo, Astington, & Olson, 1999). They are also consistent with the idea that functioning moves through cycles of simplicity to complexity and back to simplicity (Thelen & Smith, 1998). In childhood and early adolescence, the movement in personal standards seems to be toward greater complexity.

34. Students’ personal standards did not correspond with adolescents’ previously examined beliefs about the purposes of school (Nicholls et al., 1985; Thorkildsen, 1988). • Students did not choose between the ideas that school should… • Help everyone understand the world • Exhibit creative achievements • Attain wealth and status

35. Age trends in the standards for imagining an ideal school and connecting school and community include dimensions coincident with themes of separation and individuation found in the second decade of life (Eccles et al., 1993). • Older participants could describe the deep learning that comes with exploring the logic of academic problems, defending opinions, and examining controversial topics. • Older participants were less preoccupied with distributive justice, maintaining comfortable exchange relationships, and task mastery for its own sake.

36. Future Research • In a longitudinal study we can learn: • Common patterns in students’ beliefs • How these beliefs change over time • How moral standards are associated with other aspects of motivation • How moral engagement is associated with achievement

37. In large-scale studies we can discover: • Cultural and community variation in students’ beliefs • Pedagogical effects on students’ beliefs • How moral and academic engagement are fused in students’ minds • Whether students who cheat or otherwise take short-cuts hold problematic assumptions about school

38. Some Predictions Fairness themes are central when individuals consider authority, intentions, expediency, and equity issues while considering the welfare of all community members. Epistemological themes are central when individuals consider the task values, strategies, and incentives associated with particular activities. Identity themes are central when individuals are focused on their needs, intentions, and personal well-being.

39. Practical Advice When educators focus only on students’ character development, they overlook many of the features of schooling that can elicit high levels of intellectual and social commitment.

40. If educators are overly preoccupied with epistemological concerns, they can organize classroom that encourage students to see schooling as something independent of living.

41. If educators are not vigilant about creating fair classroom structures, they can encourage students to become morally-disengaged rather than committed to life-long learning.

42. Acknowledgements Thanks to Claudia Dalbert for this wonderful invitation and to you for listening to my intellectual curiosities. Former students Deborah Reese, Dale Richesin, and Amy Weaver offered assistance with the technical features of this project and the students and staff of Peterson Elementary School in Chicago. Albert Bandura was a willing participant in meaningful discussions about how moral engagement might differ from moral disengagement. For more information, please e-mail thork@uic.edu