Abstract
The focus of this research is how to encourage tolerance and ethnocultural empathy among young people, in particular, through the citizenship element of the Welsh Baccalaureate curriculum. Therefore, case study research has been conducted in two secondary schools in South Wales. The first stage of the research involved designing a set of resources for schools - the Tolerance and Ethnocultural Empathy for Mutual Acceptance (TEEMA) Resources – to facilitate teaching social psychology and sociology topics to Year 10 secondary school pupils based on the researcher’s experience of teaching adult learners. The TEEMA Resources have been taught in the two schools, and the results from teacher interviews, a pupil questionnaire, and pupil focus groups, suggest that teaching social psychology and sociology can support young people to reflect and think critically, leading to the development of higher levels of tolerance and some aspects of ethnocultural empathy.Questionnaires were used with pupils to indicate the effectiveness of teaching social psychology and sociology using the TEEMA Resources. The questionnaire was designed for use with secondary school pupils based on the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) by Wang et al (2003); this newly adapted questionnaire is the Adolescent Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (ASEE). The ASEE showed that compared to a control group class, the TEEMA Resources seemed to encourage ethnocultural empathy for the categories: feeling and expression; perspective taking, and cultural differences. Furthermore, the ASEE may add to the literature on ethnocultural empathy among adolescents as it is a new research instrument. In addition, interviews conducted with four teachers who used the TEEMA Resources revealed that there is a need for such an approach, and that pupils engaged with the content and were able to relate to it; this was also reflected in the pupil focus groups. The case study research also revealed that while Personal Social Education (PSE), which includes global citizenship, is embedded into all subject areas, it is undervalued as a standalone subject. Furthermore, the teacher interviewees confirmed the importance of citizenship education due to the local environment and various political and socioeconomic factors. In order to gain a wider perspective on the content of the TEEMA Resources and citizenship education, three experts were also interviewed (a Prevent Coordinator, a Youth Worker, and a diversity Trainer). These experts confirmed the importance of citizenship education to ensure community cohesion, along with the barriers that may be faced, and the applicability of the TEEMA Resources to youth inside and outside mainstream education.
The use of tolerance as a concept within the current research, as well as within government policies on education, led to the development of a Conceptual Framework of Tolerance for Community Cohesion. Drawing on the political philosophy literature, the conceptual framework contains a continuum of thin to thick conceptions of tolerance, along with the individual and structural sociological factors that affect tolerance. Conceptualising tolerance as a process that can shift, beginning with thinner conceptions that refer to putting up with difference, and moving towards empathy and mutuality, rather than viewing tolerance as something static, is useful for adapting teaching provision and ensuring a realistic approach to promoting community cohesion. In addition, analysing tolerance in this way should support a deeper understanding of the pedagogy in this area and it may be helpful to teacher training programmes. Furthermore, the impact of individual and structural factors, particularly outside the school environment, must be considered and appropriately addressed. The findings from the case study research have been related to the Conceptual Framework of Tolerance for Community Cohesion, and some of the data highlights the various types of tolerance, and how focusing on empathy can promote the thicker conceptions of tolerance required, not just for a peaceful coexistence, but for the positive multicultural experience advocated by UK educational policy.
| Date of Award | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Steve Smith (Supervisor) & Susan Haywood (Supervisor) |