Reading Between the Lines:

How Ethically Desirable are NCATE's Accreditation Ethics?

Alexander Makedon

Chicago State University

Paper presented at the Annual Conference of The American Philosophical Association-Central Division, Session of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education, April 21, 2007, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Copyright © 2007 by Alexander Makedon

Introduction

The author published a long essay a few years ago criticizing the National Council for the Advancement of Teacher Education, or NCATE, for its moralistic return to unverifiable psychological states, such as dispositions; its relative lack of emphasis on critical thinking; and its unrealistic expectation of evaluating education students and faculty on the basis of their presumably measurable “dispositions.”[1] The author’s  earlier essay on NCATE was a broadside critique that covered several aspects of NCATE’s Standards[2]. In this essay, the author focuses more narrowly on NCATE’s ethical assumptions.

NCATE's Definition

There are two passages on ethics in the NCATE Standards, one of which is quoted below, and clearly linked to dispositions; and the other inside a footnote on page 19 (see endnote #4, below). According to NCATE, dispositions include values and commitments. As NCATE put it, dispositions include …

The values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence behaviors toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator's own professional growth. (NCATE 2002 Standards, p. 53)

The question may be raised, what if someone is committed to teaching effectively but exhibits the wrong values? What if, in other words, one is professionally a good teacher, however one may wish to qualify being “good,” but personally holds certain presumably undesirable values? For example, what if one is critical of the emphasis on dispositions in teacher evaluation discourse? Should one evaluate a teacher or student on the basis mainly of performance, or on the basis of inner psychological states or “dispositions?” Where does one draw the line between one’s personal life, and his or her professional career? Which of these approaches is ethically more desirable? Are some values more abstractly non-dispositional, meaning, driven by principle, rather than by states of like or dislike, or "dispositions?" If by "commitment" in the statement quoted, above, NCATE meant having certain values, then why mention both terms in the definition? Are there levels of ethical desirability, as in distinguishing between how one is disposed toward effective teaching, and whether he or she is in fact teaching effectively? Should one reward effective teachers even if some such teachers are ill-disposed toward effective teaching? Finally, are "ethics" in the above definition the same as either values or commitments? If they are different, how so, and how should one resolve a possible conflict between commitments and values, as when a certain commitment may be in conflict with one's values; or between ethics and values, as when one's philosophy of right and wrong, which is what is usually associated with the term "ethics," dictates that one does not hold certain values, possibly even not those which NCATE considers desirable?

The rest of the definition offered by NCATE is as follows:

Dispositions are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice. For example, they might include a belief that all students can learn, a vision of high and challenging standards, or a commitment to a safe and supportive learning environment. (NCATE 2002 Standards, p. 53)

The above paragraph is laden with sufficient clouded fodder to make it more provocative than promotional, its authors’ probable intent notwithstanding. NCATE fails to not only distinguish between ethics and attitudes, but also between ethics and a number of other concepts, including belief, behavior, learning, motivation, development, vision, and commitment. It also fails to distinguish between ethics and such presumed “values” as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice.  They are all indiscriminately lumped together under the broad category of “dispositions,” as if we suddenly lost our speech or ran out of terms with which to delineate the differences among a variety of evaluative concepts. Such concepts are shoved indiscriminately together inside the same philosophical "prison cell."

Ethics

One could have all the right dispositions, which may or may not be in harmony with his or her values, but still act unethically. For example one may believe that rewarding friends is a desirable disposition, but act unethically by distributing rewards on the basis of friendship, as opposed to job-related skills. The point here is not whether any one ethical theory supports or does not support a particular disposition, but that dispositions are distinct from ethics. As discussed in the author’s longer paper on NCATE and dispositions, a blindly dispositional approach risks becoming unethical, particularly in an educational context, where we presumably teach students to think, rather than have mere "dispositions." This is so because dispositions lack the intellectual basis for distinguishing right from wrong acts. Furthermore, replacing reflection with disposition is from a variety of ethical perspectives undesirable, or “unethical,” because it treats humans as objects or means, rather than as ends-in-themselves capable of making their own decisions about what is right or wrong.  For example, such approach may be interpreted to be unethical from Aristotelian and Kantian perspectives: Aristotelian, because a dispositional approach denies humans their potential for development as thinking beings,  rather than as dispositional “objects” (as further developed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) ; Kantian, because a dispositional approach treats humans as means to dispositional ends imposed from outside (Metaphysics of Morals). Likewise with existentialist interpretations of ethics, several of which may be interpreted to undermine a dispositional emphasis in educational evaluation discourse, such as, Martin Buber’s respect for students as subjects (I-Thou); and phenomenological interpretations of ethics, such as, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of liberating humans through critical demystification of reality, including the "reality" of their present dispositions (Pedagogy of the Oppressed).

Dispositional Commitment versus Thinking Independently

If NCATE in its infinite wisdom had suggested that dispositions refer mainly to professional ethics, but said nothing about commitment, then perhaps NCATE could justify demanding that education colleges offer courses in ethics where students are asked to discuss a variety of ethical theories. But to also ask, as does NCATE, that education students develop a commitment to certain dispositional states, may make some students feel as though they are being asked to conform "emotionally" to NCATE’s views, which has a totalitarian tinge about it. They may feel that if their emotions are being monitored, how much more so their ideas, and therefore their freedom to engage in open-ended discussions. A dispositional approach to assessment may lead some students to impose a form of cognitive self-censorship to make sure they are not perceived as having undesirable "dispositions." Should educators be in the business of promulgating the pre-established dispositions of the status quo, as contrasted to developing their students' ability to think? Isn’t it more ethically desirable that schools treat students as ends, for example, by preparing them to think independently, than to conform to a preordained list of dispositional states?

Independence Training

To add insult to injury, research has shown that there exists a direct link between “independence training” and learning in school[3] If that is the case, then isn’t it more ethically desirable, because less inconsistent with our presumed educational goals, that in evaluating school or educational performance, NCATE should stay away from adopting measures, such as, dispositional criteria, that may have the opposite effect?  Research on independent thinking seems to indicate the need for the development of independent thinkers, rather than dispositionally conforming or “correct” ones. Thinking independently is primarily a cognitive process, not a dispositional one. Ironically, one may have the right disposition toward even "independence training," but neither have learned how to learn independently, nor how to teach others how to do so. This shows that having an “appropriate” disposition is neither a guarantee of one actually becoming well educated; nor that such person will not rate the disposition to do something as more important than actually doing it. For example, a teacher may reward a student for his disposition toward homework more highly than someone who hates doing it, but is more successful in completing it. In the context of a school's reward system, a dispositional approach seems unfair, because it treats subjective states more favorably than the achievement of a measurable academic standard. Unless explicitly stated by school authorities that academics rate lower than teacher or administrator evaluations of desirable dispositions, a student who met an academic standard about which he had expressed certain doubts should nevertheless not be made to feel that he is being “penalized” on the basis of his or her personality characteristics, for example,  regarding his or her attitude toward the stated goal, but evaluated mainly on the basis of his or her success or failure in meeting such goal. It seems unfair, and therefore possibly unethical, that students should be told one thing regarding, say, the completion of homework,  but when evaluated, receive punishment in the form of a bad evaluation simply because of how they felt about such homework.

Conclusion

NCATE’s  Standards are embarrassingly confusing, including the Standards' authors' view of ethics, to the point of possibly being accused of being unethical precisely because of their pretentiousness, presumptuousness, and lack of critical examination of ethical issues. By now it has become a historical cliché that in the field of education our lips, as in “lip service,” are often ahead of our wisdom, as in… “an unexamined life is not worth living.”  NCATE defined dispositions in broad strokes that included ethics, as if by spreading its epistemological net widely enough to include ethics it would play it safe, and avoid being accused of mere emotionalism. Regarding knowledge, again it included ethics as part of the knowledge base teachers must be aware of [4], but left it to others to figure out the possible contradiction between its own ethical agenda, on the one hand; and an ethically aware membership that may become troubled by NCATE’s emphasis on an uncritical, because dispositional, acceptance of the status quo, on the other.  

ENDNOTES