Character education and the 'priority of recognition' By Agnieszka Bates As part of a revival of interest in character education, English schools are required to teach the new 'three Rs': resilience, respect for 'fundamental British values' and responsibility for one's own well-being. School inspectors evaluate children's resilience, whilst the Department for Education has offered financial incentives to schools that 'instil' mental toughness and 'grit'. However, this approach may prove counterproductive because it relies on teaching about desirable character traits and neglects the interpersonal relations within which 'character' develops. This paper argues for an alternative 'fourth R' of character education, based on Honneth's theory of recognition. As an empathetic connection to others arising from their intrinsic worth, recognition precedes cognition and a detached, neutral stance. Recognition of others as a prerequisite for moral action provides a foundation for an approach to character education that takes account of intersubjective relationships in schools and the wider social context within which character is shaped.

The quest continues to standardise quality assurance systems throughout the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) under the auspices of the Bologna Process and led by the European Network for Quality Assurance (ENQA). Mirroring its member organisation in England, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), ENQA identifies, as one of its core aims, the development of quality assurance processes as instruments for both ‘accountability’ and ‘enhancement’. However, the recent history of QAA appears to indicate that the balance between these core aims has been lost and the discourse of accountability and efficiency prevails. This paper presents a case study of a Business Faculty (BF) in a post-1992 English university based on interviews with academics and documentary data. Findings suggest that the BF’s Quality Assurance Unit affirms the primacy of accountability and efficiency, resulting in, paradoxically, a distortion of academic professional practice. For example, undergraduate curriculum development is narrowly framed as an ‘administrative process’ from which most academics feel ‘dissociated’ and approaches to teaching appear to lack coherent organising principles beyond standardised learning outcomes expressed as ‘skills’. The paper concludes by briefly considering the implications of the case study findings for the future direction of ENQA Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance.

No abstract

Education policy-makers in the UK have repeatedly stated their central aim as transforming British education into a 'world-class system'. Over the last 20 years, several large-scale education reforms have brought radical changes to the school curriculum, teacher professionalism and educational leadership. Explicit in these reforms, is the deployment of measurable standards of pupil attainment as a lever for achieving school improvement. However, despite this proliferation of policies, the claims to educational improvement made by policy-makers have been contested. Concerns about the unpredicted and damaging long-term effects of these policies can be linked to the limitations of systems thinking which underpins much of this education reform. A significant flaw of systems thinking is the level of simplification at which policy-makers operate on abstract categories such as standards, as if they were reality. Based on case study research conducted in two primary schools, this paper suggests that the systemic approach adopted by policy-makers may be contributing to an erosion of educational quality and placing potentially damaging expectations on children.

No abstract