| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國家發展研究所 === 92 === A class：analysis of moral education in the educational field.
Lin, chuan-huei
Abstract
What is the subjectivity of educational culture in Taiwan? We live in a plural and diverse world. How should education react to these democratic transformations? At present, the outer form of democracy has built up in Taiwan. How should education help Taiwanese to live a democratic life? Democracy should be compromising the dualism of individual freedom and social order. Educational reforms in Taiwan aim to foster both individuality and collectivity in schools. How are teachers supposed to face this challenge?
There are ten thousands of classes in elementary schools in Taiwan. A student starts his social life from his classroom interactions. He doesn’t only gain objective knowledge and subjective beliefs from books, but also learn about the value of democratic life through classroom interactions among teachers and classmates. A “class”, as a elementary educational unit, is the most important learning field to practice the democratic ideal.
This paper is a qualitative research. We have observed two classes in the fifth grade for one year. And we interviewed the two leading teachers of these two classes, “A” and “B”. We also collected document and opinions from the students. In terms of Durkheim’s theory of moral education, morality is constructed from the interactions in social life. From this theory, we can deem a class life as a basic social life, and observe how a student develops his individuality and collectivity in his class.
In a class field, the leading teacher plays the main role of guiding and developing students’ morality. The teacher manages his class in different ways, including choosing the leaders of the class, imposing sanctions on wrongdoing, giving appraisals for good behavior, devising the plural class activities, and particularly taking care of the inferior students. Different teachers manage theirs classes in different methods. External factors, such as the changing social environment, mass media, a child’s family background and the whole context of a school, also influence this teacher on his class management. This paper focuses on analyzing what kind of class management could help children foster appropriate individuality and collectivity.
In this paper, we find that the teacher “A” who overemphasized the individual freedom of democratic ideal expressed her respect for their personality and enabled them to positively develop their own creativity in diverse activities. But she doesn’t know how to discipline her students to obey group rules and respect others’ freedom. In contrast, the teacher “B” with the similar democratic ideal to “A” knew how to develop children’s duties and obligations in group life through classroom activities. His classroom management didn’t only enable children to learn self-identity and self-trust, but also constrained them to respect and tolerate each other.
In brief, successful classroom management has to provide enough space for individuality, and also has to foster collectivity directed to modern democratic life.
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