The concept of educatedness : an analysis of the current perspectives of a population of university teachers on the personal qualities indicative of educatedness, and its implications for university teaching
Doctoral Thesis
1994
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
The author collected from a variety of sources descriptions of more than six hundred personal qualities held to be indicative of educational development. A survey was performed to determine which of these qualities are most widely agreed to be indicators of advanced educational development (that is, qualities which would indicate that a person had developed his or her potential as a functioning human being to an advanced extent). The respondents were 42 volunteer academics from many different university disciplines, with an avowed interest in the educational development of people. This survey made use of a card-sort method which enabled each respondent to assess each of the more than 600 collected qualities as potential indicators of educational development. Subsequent interviews gathered information on the respondents' insights into the essence of personal educational development and on the processes which they felt assisted in fostering the qualities they valued. A remarkable degree of consistency was found in the way the respondents (independently) prioritised the qualities. An analysis of the responses led to the deduction of the following eleven broad themes commonly held to characterise advanced educational development: • A sense of self-worth • A positive orientation to existence • A developed power of will • Creativeness • Individuality • A disposition to search for meaning • Being properly equipped to search for meaning • Movement towards self-understanding • Evidence of integrative understandings • A life-enhancing disposition and • The ability to make meaningful contact with others. The extent of alignment shown with these themes by respondents who exhibited a broad diversity of cultural and life-experiences makes it possible to propose that these themes might conceivably represent a substantial core of a universally valid interpretation of advanced educational development.
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Pastoll, G. 1994. The concept of educatedness : an analysis of the current perspectives of a population of university teachers on the personal qualities indicative of educatedness, and its implications for university teaching. University of Cape Town.