Modelling institutional values transmission through a comparative case study of three schools

This thesis presents a model of institutional values transmission through cross-case analysis of values education undertaken in three UK secondary schools. Since the early 1980s a significant amount of research has been carried out on cultural transmission and the transmission of values, though it has focused on intergenerational transmission within families and the interaction between the school and the family in terms of converging and diverging values and worldviews. Very little work has been done on the process of transmission of values in schools or other organisations that is evidence-based. An increasing number of governments and organisations, as well as schools, are beginning to invest seriously in values education programmes, but whether the idea of values education is theoretically coherent is still disputed. Through an evaluation of the philosophical, psychological and sociological literature on values and employing phenomenological and semiotic analyses, a theory of values as transmissible entities is developed, which is then extended to a general concept of values transmission using the twin terms invocation and evocation, to denote modes of bringing value concepts to the awareness of an audience and of generating group cohesion through a shared experience linked to particular values, respectively, these terms themselves emerging from the theory of values. Through data collection, analysis and modelling of values education in three schools – a state comprehensive, a faith school and an independent – a plausible mechanism for institutional values transmission is developed. This mechanism integrates two partial models: a permeation-authority inculcation model of transmission flow with a resistance-transformation model of moral autonomy. At its heart it envisages a systemically robust cycle of institutional values discourse, institutional cultural expectations and the generation of a sense of community shored up by individual commitment. A two tier qualitative approach is used in this research, having both an inductive, theory generating phase of field research, data capture and analysis, and a deductive, hypothesis-led confirmatory phase. The inductive phase uses a case study format and cross-case analysis, providing data for analysis and for testing a set of hypotheses in the deductive phase. The development of a mechanism for institutional values transmission is carried out using an institutional model of the schools as a data collection and analytical instrument, based on three structural aspects: an authority hierarchy; an interiority/exteriority duality in the institutional lived-experience; and a system hierarchy. Multiple data collection and analytic methods are employed in each case study, in order to build up a ‘three-dimensional’ picture of the transmission of values in each school. Both comparative and iterative cross-case analyses are carried out. The findings emerging from the case studies suggest the following tentative conclusions: schools have varying degrees of awareness of the values that they impart, although all consider values education to be an important part of what they do and to impact on student performance and behaviour; while there is some explicit values-oriented pedagogy, most teaching of values is implicit; schools with greater ethnic diversity have more challenges to build a cohesive community, as this is at odds with the ‘spontaneous sociality’ of the pupils; there is a broad convergence on the same values found most widely distributed throughout schools across the widest range possible with respect to forms of governance, educational philosophy and demography. The findings carry a number of pedagogical implications: general support is found for explicit values education programmes and the linking between behavioural standards and academic achievement; the importance of the development of a ‘moral community’ around the ethos of the school and the creation of opportunities for multiple belonging is highlighted; and resistance to institutional authority structures is explored for its significant potential for transformation to an acceptance of institutional values.