How should we conduct ourselves? Critical realism and Aristotelian teleology: a framework for the development of virtues in pedagogy and curriculum

ABSTRACT

Faced with the marketization of Higher Education in England, pedagogy is under pressure in ways that often undermine lecturers’ deeply held values. For instance, this pressure results in the reduction of significant aspects of teaching to narrow metrics and requires universities to operate within intrusive structures that subordinate their pedagogical aims to profit-orientated objectives. In this paper, I analyse the way that people can preserve their agency in this pedagogical context. I guide my analysis with a framework that combines critical realism with Aristotelian virtue ethics and MacIntyre’s ideas of qualities within human practices. I suggest the kinds of qualities that might assist faculty to preserve and advance rich pedagogical projects in the current circumstances. Finally, I use a critical realist morphogenetic approach to argue that people may be able to resist losing their way when faced with ubiquitous performativity regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical realism
• virtue ethics
• performativity
• pedagogy
• MacIntyre
• reflexivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bushra Sharar, is the pen-name of Bushra Connors, senior lecturer in Education at the University of Hertfordshire. Her book Emergent Pedagogy in England: A Critical Realist Study of Structure/Agency Interactions in Higher Education, published by Routledge, applies critical realism in a consideration of structure/agency interactions in the lives of university lecturers in England as they work to develop pedagogical approaches against the backdrop of current drives to marketization and performativity regimes in the HE sector.

ORCID

Bushra Sharar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3353-6445