Manner in Teaching: Making It Explicit

• In Event: 64.075 - Moral and Ethical Teaching and Teachings: Revisiting and Recasting Our Own Research for New Audiences

Abstract

Purpose

The objective of this paper is to explore a reanalysis of my research study, whose purpose was to make manner explicit by examining the relationship between teaching morally and teaching morality.

Theoretical framework

The philosophical and empirical study of manner in teaching have made explicit the ways teachers express moral virtue and engender virtuous conduct among students. There are several ways teachers foster virtuous conduct in students (Fenstermacher, 2001). These ways fall into the categories of teaching morally and teaching morality (Fenstermacher, Sanger, and Osgusthorpe, 2009). To teach morally is to conduct oneself in a way expressive of moral virtue and has moral value (Fenstermacher, Sanger, and Osgusthorpe, 2009). Teachers teach morality through the construction of a classroom community, didactic instruction that enhances moral and intellectual virtue, calling out for students to conduct themselves in virtuous ways, and showcasing students who model virtue (Fenstermacher, 2001). The concepts of teaching morally and teaching morality make manner in teaching explicit.

Methods

A qualitative case study approach was used to examine the relationship between teaching morally and teaching morality.

Data sources

Interviews, a card sort, observations, video recordings, and email communication were used to gain an understanding of the manner of one grade 6-8 English language and literature teacher in the United States (pseudonym Mary), as she teaches morally and morality.

Results

Mary’s manner provides insight into how she teaches morally. Her dispositions reflect her virtues as a teacher. She is open-minded, truthful, caring, polite, just, and magnanimous. Mary develops students’ morality through explicit teaching units on character traits. She also calls on students to be caring, compassionate, nurturing, respectful, and responsive toward others. She also expects them to be honest in representing their work to others, to perform to their best ability, and to take pride in their work.

Conclusions

The case of Mary’s teaching illustrates what Fenstermacher and Osguthorpe (2000) call “a distinction between moral content and moral instruction” (p. 4). Mary’s manner of teaching morally may be regarded as a form of moral instruction. Although the content of many of the lessons she teaches may be void of didactic instruction on the virtues, moral virtues are expressed through her manner. Her ways of interacting with students foster quality relationships with students, and enable Mary to be a model of virtue. Mary’s role in teaching morality is more explicit. It is to teach lessons about the virtues through the use of moral content.

Scholarly significance

This study furthers our understanding of manner in teaching. Specifically, the case of Mary illustrates the distinctions between teaching morally and teaching morality and how the two co-exist to foster students’ moral development. As Mary suggests: “The most effective character education is taught by individual teachers in individual classrooms. … In the end it comes to this: one teacher in one classroom who is respectful of who her students are and where they are going, and who is willing to share who she is as well.”

Author

• Catherine Fallona, University of Southern Maine