Tracking Values In Web Based Student

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Thomas Hansson, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden

Abstract: When vocational student teachers communicate on a virtual platform in a combined campus and web based university course they focus on the contents of teaching and learning. However, in communicating professional teacher knowledge they implicitly express their personal values too. Without giving it much thought, they embed values in their verbal entries and they assess embedded values in their peers’ texts. This article introduces a soft systems model for categorizing the influence of values on web based interactions.

Keywords: Communication; Interaction; Relations; Soft System; Values

INTRODUCTION

Reflective thinking, introspection and contemplation seem to activate people’s consciousness and act as a catalyst for ethical behavior. People’s moral conscience suggests what, when or how things should be done for whatever instrumental, economical or personal reasons. People’s conscience is called upon in times of trouble, dilemmas and misfortune; for example when a certain activity, decision or process is instrumentally distant, economically damaging or morally harmful. This is when an individual process of ethical reflection (Brusling & Strömqvist, 1996) begins. So, values materialize when people put rational thoughts into action and explore social interaction as dialogical relations, empathic feelings and ethical standpoints.

Western ambitions on democratic education aim at promotion of spiritual and moral growth. Typical fostering themes cover values clarification (Kirschenbaum, 1977), character education (Lickona, 1993), moral development (Kohlberg, 1981) and ethical literacy (Lovat et al., 2002). The Swedish upper secondary school curriculum (Department of Education, 1998, p. 10) explores social and cultural growth, saying (transl. by this author): "schooling should establish abilities in the students to understand and/or perform ethical commitment; respect for other people; protest against oppression and abuse; help the suffering; develop empathy for others; protect the local and global environment." The national wide ranging objectives are however often referred to as "curricular poetry" and it is far from clear if the general objectives help transform people’s attitudes into motivating operations and moral practices.

Ethical problems in education like lying, plagiarism or bullying seem to attract the teachers’ attention. On a global scale people consider both factual knowledge and publicly acknowledged values as they deal with starvation, pollution and global warming. But believing that textual knowledge alone (Hansson, 2006) could provide a solution to ethical issues is an illusion. Teachers need to complement informative data, facts and truths with an awareness based on justice, integrity and self-control. According to Munro (1999, p. 527) this is an accepted contemporary paradigm, sometimes described as "technologies of the self". It covers compassionate holism, i.e. the idea of a personal dedication to help people cooperate, balance rationality with intuition and connect with the world. The purpose of learning about technologies of the self is that people are ready, willing and able to appreciate and act on moral themes, provided they experience a sense of social control along the way.

It makes sense that we should learn to establish a relational dialogue (Dysthe, 2003) regardless of contexts, power relations or values. It is also a fair assumption that people make collectively just decisions when hidden values, normative assumptions and judgmental manipulation are brought to the surface. Therefore educators must exercise pedagogical leadership and learn to establish – through ethical reflection – an actionable dialogue in which each step of the exchange is illustrated, motivated and negotiated. Some mediators have fine-tuned their skills and turned this process into inter- and intrapersonal work of art.

Development of modern ICT-software enables for qualified interactions. Focus on the mediating technology is relevant for the study of virtual communities of practice. However, many communicative qualities found in old post exchanges and modern (Blackboard) learning management systems interactions remain. Ngwenyama and Lee (1997, p. 149) mention: "The filtering out of social cues" and the "lack of personalization". They make up relevant foci whereas "feedback, channel and language" are left aside.

It would be an achievement if educators provided a practical perspective on Internet ethics or socially attractive netiquette (Shea, 2007) about what would be an optimal input for practicing values in education. However, generous and ethically valid communication makes up a complex dimension of higher human cognition. It is also reasonable to assume that a collective of student teachers interacting on a LMS would generate "productive" verbal exchanges and increased performance for all. On the impact of LMS-exchanges, Ngwenyama and Lee (1997, p. 152) say that actors share every aspect of the organizational context and: "The context also defines the power, authority and status relationships of the individuals within it." Both young "native" and adult "immigrant" Internet users look for, find out about and be ethically secure as they practice in virtual contexts (Coutaz et al., 2005), developing their personality, team roles and relations (Buber, 1988). In such situations their behavior is compatible with their expectations on personal, workplace and democratic values. Finally, the student teachers assess educational norms, the situation related to the task and the orientation of the peer whose written text they are expected to critically evaluate and respond to.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH

In an attempt at clarifying implicitly expressed intentions between US-university students, Pesendorfer and Koszegi (2006) confuse values with behavior in a study of synchronous and asynchronous negotiations. The authors’ approach is too simplistic to form a basis for further analysis. Rather than clarifying values, they combine (ibid, p. 144) loosely defined characterizations like "spontaneous and unreflective emotional behaviour", "emerging emotions", "flaming", "impoliteness" and "constrained self-awareness". As could be expected from the design, the authors (ibid., p. 149) conclude that the interlocutors stick to protocol and produce text-specific contents during asynchronous communication.

It is difficult to extract hidden, implicitly understood and intuitive values from textual LMS-entries. But it is equally hard to measure values with the help of questionnaires. Yet, Malle and Edmonson (2007) mention survey values like tradition, honesty, helpfulness, forgiveness, generosity, family relations, loyalty, relation with God, self-respect and politeness. Unfortunately, they also include goals like "peace" and attitudes like "racism" on their list, concepts that people find hard to separate from values. At other times values are mixed up with qualities we would like to see in ourselves rather than the values we actually host.

Hofstede’s (1984) classification of national cultures needs to be mentioned in the context of failing questionnaire-based value analyses. His study among IBM-employees separates between geographical spread in cultures by power-distance, individualism, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Scandinavian cultures score low on power distance, high on femininity and low on uncertainty avoidance. It is tempting to translate Hofstede’s cultural dimensions into values. If the analyzed sample were typical Swedish student teachers, they would score high in the north-eastern corner of Figure 1 because according to Hofstede, "universalism" and "benevolence" make up (high) feminine values of the Swedish culture.

A Hindu-inspired religious movement materializes as a non-curricular program called Living Values: An Education Program for UK-education. The initiative (BKWSU, 1995, pp. 1-50) comprises of peace, respect, love, tolerance, honesty, humility, co-operation responsibility, happiness, freedom, simplicity and unity. However, the collection of flower-power values are less valid than the proper values of a global study (Schwartz, 1992), exploring values that people attach to their impressions, perceptions and experiences.

Gilligan (1983) and Gilligan and Attanucci (1988) identify major moral voices based on gender differences. The male voice is characterized as "justice" and the female voice as "care". The authors’ rather crude characterization has influenced the parallelism between feminine values like "care" and "self transcendence" plus masculine values like "justice" combined with "self enhancement" in Schwartz (1992). On the other hand Hansson (2000) refutes the implied parallelism between female "care" and "openness to change" plus masculine "justice" and "conservatism". So it would be a mistake to assume that an entry by a female student teacher would automatically contain self transcendent values.

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

A majority of the studied student and teachers are typical Swedes holding on to their national values. According to Gaunt and Löfgren (1984), traditional Swedish myths are orderliness in time and place (ibid., p. 50), rationality (ibid., p. 59), collectivism and envy (ibid., p. 102). This study presents the interlocutors’ values as an integral part of their personality, identity and awareness. In order to be able to separate between the multitude of approaches to values, e.g. Gardner’s (2000, p. 125) for investigating the impact of values on student teachers’ web-based communications, it is, according to Goffman (1959), necessary to stay clear of poorly defined myths, cultural traits theory or dramaturgical ‘fronts’.

One aim is to provide an analysis based on contexts, roles and relations in a social system operating on the Internet. Another aim is to establish a theory for describing how hidden, implicit and underlying values affect the quantity and quality of vocational student teachers’ interactions. There is a need to explore exactly what the concept value signifies. When people talk about proper values they think about security, independence, success, friendliness, conservatism and freedom. But these values are often confused with attitudes like rationality, integrity and individualism. They are also misinterpreted as goals like pluralism, democracy and salvation.

Value arguments and decisions have a natural position in educational discourse. For example, after the war a majority of Swedish politicians agreed on a democratic school system. Isling (1974, p. 12) defined systemic macro-level education that "safeguards democracy and by concrete democratic procedures helps develop democracy." One likely outcome of a reformed education system would be, says the author (ibid., p. 13), "Increased emphasis on social fostering to provide an increased ability to cooperate and influence other people." (transl. by this author). However, even though the author defines democracy at length and in detail, the concept remains a political objective rather than a human value. From a normative point of view, however, Isling’s approach to a whole school pastoral ethos is a valid aim. But the approach is an insufficient measure for fostering the students’ personality and making them morally accountable citizens of a democratic society.

Balancing of Values

The structuring of professional teacher values has an impact on the succeeding analysis of verbal exchanges between web based interlocutors. The purpose of focusing on such values is to describe how collective interaction develops through relation building in a virtual context.

ESS Edunet (2007) introduces a globally relevant set of allegedly proper values that characterize human beings. The authors say (a) values are motivational and represent goals that people aspire to achieve. They are (b) implicitly understood and desirable guidelines that refer to specific objects, acts, events or situations. They function as (c) criteria for how/when/where/what to act, think or say. Finally they make up (d) a hierarchical system of ordered priorities functioning as guiding principles in people’s lives. It seems likely that the single most important aspect of individual values lies in the motivating goals they express. For example, in order to be able to coordinate between a personal goal like self realization and a public objective like democracy, people need to negotiate their values. A multi-disciplinary philosophical, sociological, anthropological and psychological field of research identifies values that according to Schwartz (1992) are based on our needs as biological organisms, but also on our ability to coordinate social interaction by personal motive and our drive to lead good lives.

It is easy to see why values relate to an individual and a collective domain of attitudes and behaviors equally. Decision making is usually difficult in morally challenging contexts where issues of e.g. justice versus care surface. Sustainable society, pollution and ecology crave for difficult decision making. Either way we choose there are positives and negatives attached to the decision. On a daily basis people experience such naturally occurring insoluble issues, contradictions and dissonances. Insoluble moral dilemmas initiate a process of dissonance resolution (Festinger, 1957). Hence, a degree of collective social sensibility combined with generous individual reasoning is needed. This is true regardless if the issues are politically fortunate like immigration, economically profitable like interest rates or socially justified like white lies.

The student teachers’ have an intuitive way of dealing with technologies of the self so as to present themselves, their ideas and their values generously and truthfully. Expressed differently, values are an indicator of a person’s identity. How s/he succeeds in balancing opposing, contradictory, complementary or competing values suggests who that person is. A personal ability to deal with dissonance resolution explains how an individual’s identity changes as a result of how s/he controls contradictory values. Mills (1958) in Byrne (1966, p. 215) says: "whenever a person is presented to a temptation to violate moral standards and then makes the decision not to do so, dissonance is created." The way which cognitive dissonance is reflected on, acted on and adjusted to is the origin of a process from which a person’s identity and verbal behavior emerges.

Furthermore, values surface during natural contradictions as inter-personal conflicts or intra-personal dissonances. When value issues are activated, they are elicited from within the subject as an intra-personal quality. Whenever conflicting values appear, the rival opponents’ inter- and intra-personal relations need to be managed by the individual’s potential to activate, steer, process and control values in Self and in Other. Morally responsible behavior is a personal thing, beginning and ending with a virtuous ability to balance values. Alderman (1996, p. 34) says we must do away with intra-personal imbalances and make peace with ourselves by reviewing and bringing our behavior in line with collective inter-personal morals.

On the issue of self management and self consciousness Herrscher (2006, p. 411) says: "The responsibility for ultimate consequences (of what we do, author’s comment) extends the limits to incorporate ethical, social, and ecological effects." Hence, this study explores a range of verbal behaviors from a perspective of human relations, interactions and outcomes, all of which are informed by the contention that human beings portray themselves as legitimate, valid and just communicators.

Relations

Long before social systems methodology (SSM) was the flower of the day, Russell (1952) identified social groupings, arguing that man is defined by actions within and between social systems. Buber’s (1988, p. 67) theory complements Russell’s global approach, suggesting an I-It/I-Thou account of internal double relations within Self, portraying how I wish to appear to Thou, how I really appear to Thou and how I reflectively appear to I. According to Buber (1988, p. 50), relation building contains a twofold principle of human life. This principle applies for identifying another human being in Self by acknowledging a primal setting at a distance that enables for establishing an independent opposite ‘object’; and for contact-making by tacit, verbal, visual, audio or symbolic means between Self and Other. Thus people learn to enter a personal relation and making somebody present by imagining the Other’s reality. Buber’s (1988, p. 61) contention about the functioning of human relations suggests that: "the inmost growth of the self is […] accomplished in the relation between one and the other, between men, that is pre-eminently in the mutuality of the making present, in the making present of another self and in the knowledge that one is made present in his own self by the other." For the purpose of this study the scope of relations signifies a communicative space for mutual acceptance, affirmation and confirmation in a web-based community of practices. In further defining the context of systemic verbal relation building, Buber (1988, p. 50) says that I-Thou relations are future oriented acts made up of acceptance, confirming speech, genuine meetings and living processes. I-It relations, on the other hand, are one sided individual (memory-archive) connections with the past, containing little experiential access to knowledge. Such an instrumental I-It orientation is demonstrated for this study in some non-communicative short and detached entries that prove hard to respond to for the student teachers.

The impact of inter-human relation building theory for social systems is substantial because people prefer to think of themselves as self-controlled agents. But in spite of traditional conceptions of instrumental agency, it would be a mistake to assume that the world is in man or that man is in the world. On the contrary, I and It are encapsulated in each other as a holistic "whole". Also, there is no I by itself, but a conception of I which belongs to the I-Thou relation and (the same) I that belongs to the I-It relation.

As to the value-laden side of inter-human relation building by internalizing input, i.e. understanding of textual contents and externalizing output in individual texts, Buber (1988, p. 49) says the only way to expose the ethical principle of becoming human runs through dialogue with a purpose "to contrast its (the Subject’s, author’s comment) reading with that of other beings." Emphasis on dialogue indicates the complexity of web-based relations in social systems between I, Thou and the mediating tool, It.

Some interactions are ethically good because they appear to the interlocutors as being honest, comprehensive and generous. Other interactions are counterproductive to systemic growth, i.e. generation of long threads, because they fail to separate between a person’s knowledge, conscience, consciousness and values. Unfortunately, digital information technologies are much too often managed and experienced as a mediating tool for distant-instrumental publication, rather than a social system for dialogical communication. If properly introduced, controlled and administered the LMS-software enables for the interlocutors to adjust their personified perceptions, reflections and cognitions to an inspiring input which influences positively a trajectory of motivating and informative threads.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this article I study "the causal interdependencies, multiple influences, and evolving patterns of human communication" (Hansson, 2008, p. 371) related to web-based interactions among vocational student teachers. Such exchanges constitute a messy non-linear situation for which the exact outcomes are hard to predict. Put differently, the article focuses on the first step in a handful of procedures (Checkland, 2000) of a soft systems methodology (SSM), i.e., model building of purposeful activities for learning about the social norms and values of web-based relation-building between peers. Hirschheim et al. (1995, p. 242) says SSM should lead the researcher to an understanding of the studied phenomenon rather than facilitate a particular problem-solving process. According to Checkland and Scholes (1990) the object of study should cover CATWOE, i.e. Customers (students) who benefit; Actors (students again) who perform; Transformations (curricular knowledge and values); Weltanschauung (a common viewpoint or a model that makes the workings of the system intelligible); Owners (students) committed to team building, working and learning; Environmental limitations (located outside the actual context of the software). The first difficulty is to define the problem by identifying values that generate long threads at a proper level for representing all the data. Another problem is to accept that there will be only effective or ineffective entries rather than right or wrong solutions. The third challenge is to find alternative solutions on how to design research with the help of analytical concepts. Succeeding operations cover descriptive definitions rather than action-oriented transformations of structural, process or attitudinal qualities in communications between vocational student teachers. Operational action research ambitions (Munro, 1999) for facilitating learning through organizational or individual management of change are left aside.

Value Directions

Regardless of nationality, culture, gender, social status or other, Schwartz (1992) argues that people build their understanding of the world on comprehensive value categories. One diagonal opposition (see Figure 1) where moral dilemmas seem to appear is entrepreneurial Openness to change versus administrative Conservatism. Another opposition which causes a similar kind of cognitive dissonance appears between benevolent Self transcendence and egoistic Self enhancement. Figure 1 outlines proper values and their relations: 1. Universalism; 2. Benevolence; 3. Conformity; 4. Security; 5. Power; 6. Achievement; 7. Hedonism; 8. Stimulation; 9. Self-direction.

Conservatism

Self transcendence

Self enhancement

Openness to change

Figure 1. Proper values, ordering of values and value directions

One dimension in Figure 1 (thin arrow) covers a focus on Self versus Other. Self transcendence in the North-Eastern corner includes universalism, i.e. understanding, appreciation and tolerance. The core value is benevolence for preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is interacting. An opposing Self enhancement direction resides in the South-Western corner. Here power equals social status and prestige, control and dominance over people. The core value is achievement, including personal success acquired through egoistic demonstration of competence. Another opposition (thick arrow) appears between values related to accommodating change and assimilative stability. Openness to change in the North-Western corner covers stimulation, i.e. appreciation of excitement, novelty and challenges. The core value, self direction is safeguarded through independent action by freedom to choose, create and explore given resources. An opposing Conservatism direction of values in the South-Eastern corner includes restraint of actions, outburst of emotions and spontaneous impulses. Core values of security and social order signify harmony and stability in relations, in Self and in Other.

However, the value directions also cover up some difficulties, e.g. the fact that value operations emerge as half-intuitive principles rather than reflected rules of conduct. Also, value formation processes usually hold true for many situations, but their validity is conditional for the researched context. As remedy to the way value directions have been analyzed historically, I study how an ethical dialogue is constituted by cases where the directions were given deductively before data collection and analysis, i.e. distributions between Openness to change-Benevolence versus Conservatism-Justice on the one hand and Self transcendence-Non-Maleficence versus Self enhancement-Autonomy on the other hand.

The student teachers’ entries contain individual voices reflecting their combined personal and professional priorities. The suggested model for analyzing values aims at classifying if the student teachers colonize the discourse through a controlling push approach by related values. Alternatively, do the student teachers create an inviting pull for learning through a set of complementary values? Put differently, the student teachers act out either a distancing journalist writing-as-publication role for an anonymous audience, or they seek personal/professional dialogism by engaging in team interaction. Focus is on identifying what values a sample of entries harbors and how those texts signal specific values, the ordering of values and emerging value orientations.

Research Objective

Let us assume that the balancing of values affects the length of threads in an LMS-forum. It seems like a good idea to position the student teachers’ values in an analytical framework of value orientations. Visschers-Pleijers et al. (2005, p. 28) define a similar starting point, saying university students prefer cumulative reasoning during verbal interactions. This bodes for a close-personal communication between the studied subjects as they are preoccupied with a professional teacher focus on general didactics. I investigate the influence of values on the length of communications in an asynchronous e-mail discourse between a group of vocational student teachers. Neither formal logic, nor empiricism or introspection guarantees the appropriateness of analysis into human values. However, this study clarifies an axiomatic truth about how people integrate, evaluate, carry out and express values. Find hypotheses related to the research objective:

H(1) Some vocational student teachers will exchange positive, i.e. benevolent, self direction and stimulation values, generating long threads.

H(2) At least one of the studied texts will portray egoistic, i.e., achievement and power values, influencing negatively the contents and the length of threads.

H(3) Swedish values like security, conformity and universalism will influence the frequency of responses positively.

DESCRIBING THE DATA

I asked another pre-study group of student teachers what inspired them to choose the teaching profession. Their motivating ambitions relate to a genuine interest in people: Meeting students; Apply knowledge; Like to learn; Fun to teach; Inspiring the students; Knowledge sharing. The majority of the student teachers’ ambitions include a drive to build relations with others. Their objectives also cover didactic classroom measures rather than moral disciplinary measures, upbringing or fostering. The student teachers’ strengths indicate a mix of instrumental teacher professional competence like structuring, assessing and analyzing contents plus close personal aspirations like patience, listening and negotiating with peers.

The studied student teachers appreciated their roles as contributors to a shared team spirit in a virtual forum. Their assignment states that they should structure, assess and analyze several titles in the course literature, post their entries at a certain date and respond to their peers’ entries. After cooperating for a couple of weeks their exchanges materialize in a variety of written LMS-forums. The studied texts (A-D) cover reflected first entries and comments among peers. The studied, described and model exchanges contain pedagogical, moral, and curricular contents. As could be expected, a shared curricular topic, theme or subject would attract many responses. Such threads express either push through negative cognitive dissonance or positive interpersonal pull, both of which seem to inspire the interlocutors and generate long threads. The students perform and benefit from creating (co-constructing, in Levin & Wadsmanly, 2008; Hansson 2010) transformations of curricular knowledge and values between themselves by identifying Self and Other, by significant expressions and by sharing a social system. The purpose of deploying the suggested model for collecting and analyzing data is to make the workings of the social system intelligible.

In-depth Interview

An inspiration for the study emanated from a student teacher’s spontaneous comment on the low frequency of responses to a peer’s entry (2007-12-15) in a forum.

Dear T! Very few people have commented on your entry. Could the reason be that the text is short. Sometimes there is no explanation why people choose not to make any comments. At other times there are long entries that still do not attract any comments. Personally, if I receive a comment from a peer I tend to respond to that same person. A merry Christmas and a happy new year! A!

As a consequence of this generous social act by one female student teacher, I organized a one hour qualitative research interview (Kvale, 1997) six months later with a male student teacher (in the same group). The purpose of the interview was to acquire a "thick description" of how the student(s) experienced the assignment, i.e. how they felt, acted and reacted to the entries. The interviewee indicated several reasons, saying it is a haphazard thing if he responded to an entry; the choice differs from person to person; he would respond to any entry he finds interesting; he would respond to a contents which lies close to his personal priorities; he prefers to respond to long entries; he believes people respond to peers they feel at ease with; finally he would respond to an entry which inspires discussion. He criticized many entries for quoting contents from the course literature. He also said he was pleased to receive a response to his own entry. Short first entries tend to generate short threads and boring responses. As the interview continued he said there must be an "opening" in an entry before he would respond. If the first entry "colonizes" the curricular contents it would feel awkward and choose not to respond because the opportunity to learn has been lost. He said some people would respond to an entry just to confirm a friendship relation. He argued that some peers would compose entries just to please the mentor/course administrator. He found such behavior immoral as those students would make a career at the expense of their peers. Finally he mentioned a laconic quote from the studied literature: "Direct your writing to the audience you seek and prefer."

The Assignment

The students were asked to discuss "Power at school", a typical theme in teacher education. This is a complex curricular issue for the students to explore by means of verbal interaction with relative strangers. It could well be that the chosen initial postings attracted a varying degree of interlocutor interest, as indicated in the qualitative interview, because of the length of the entry, the theme, peer sympathies, personal motivation or other. Although the reason could be chance, clarity, friendship, interest in the topic or other, the assumption is that individual submissions would attract peer interest because of the writer’s embedded, i.e. implicitly transmitted values. All students’ texts somehow mirror their attitudes to team building, working and learning. All of them also contain comparatively long entries. Text A (male) and Text B (female) attracted over three entries. Texts C (male) and D (female) failed to attract any responses.

Text A. (20070929) That is my experience of rules. / There are clear themes to follow. If you look at a manufacturer of bicycles, there are no clear themes. Then you must invent the wheel all by yourself. / Here there are no clear themes, / I am certain we carry many opinions about these things, otherwise we would not have chosen the profession. We must define objectives for the pupils. All of this must be accomplished according to the curriculum (LPf94) and together with the pupils. They must have a channel for influencing teaching and learning. Wouldn’t it have been much easier if someone had just said, this is the way to do it? Imagine the hard work once you have grasped the contents and methodology of your job. Get to know the students, the course material, your colleagues and the premises. And your ideas start flying if somebody says to you: This is the way you should do it. The advantage of having a school operated through management by objectives is that once you have acquired the means for managing the process, you know what to do, and you will keep on doing it only if you are certain to reach the objectives. / You can achieve all this, provided you remember to reflect on what you do and motivate your thoughts.

Key words: Creative images, concrete details, comparison between contexts.

Context, team role, relations: Focus is equally on Self and Other. The text contains a comprehensive theme based on rules related to creativity. The student deals with course literature by objective reference rather than by dealing with the procedure for conducting exchanges between the student teachers. The text emphasizes security and stability. There is some concern for peers. The text also contains some relevant comparative examples. At times there is a focus on a collective ‘us’. The student teacher emphasizes leadership through subjective argumentation and mentions a positive role model. Lone ranger self-control is a sought ideal. There is an implicit ends-justifying-the-means reasoning towards the end. There is also an inclusive use of ‘we’ combined with a strong ‘I’ perspective.

Values: All (four) value directions in a balanced profile.

Text B. (20071004) This fact has inspired the politicians in the Local Board of Education to demand that the students register in their home municipality. / "Kronos till Kairos" p.70 says that the curriculum creates structure, stability and safety. But how is it possible to account for the price we have to pay for allowing this hunt for time! / Without doubt, it is important to coordinate between school subjects, but when demands are spelled out from above and the idea is that things should look OK to the citizens, the whole process becomes unnatural. / It is much better to have a school made up of functioning teams of teachers, where every individual team member is successful, complementing each other in a shared unit on the schedule and where every teacher is available so that the team can complete a project where core and characterizing subjects are given for the students’ benefit. / Why making education a circus event by introducing a theme week? / Of course, I understand that the local schools will run into problems when there are so few students, but they must improve the quality of teaching and learning.

Key words: Criticism against politicians, focus on functionality, dissatisfaction with management, idealism, openness to quality measurement and a dubious stand on publicity.

Context, team role, relations: This text is concerned with the procedure for conducting exchanges between the vocational student teachers and the studied course literature contents. This is a comprehensive text about "quality of teaching and learning" rather than "power at school". The text focuses on adaptability in/by student teachers. There is a lot of concern for peers’ wellbeing. The text contains an argumentative example, i.e., theme week. Emphasis is on collaboration in teacher teams rather than individual pedagogical leadership. The student teacher mentions a positive model of working. Professional, social and political awareness in teachers is a sought ideal. The writer identifies himself as an experienced idealist in a group of peers, i.e. seeing Other and covering an I/Thou perspective.

Values: Conservatism and security balancing self-transcendence related to Other

Text C. (20071004) Lpo 94 says that the teacher must accommodate for each pupil’s needs, abilities and experiences. Such teacher commitment is a pre-condition for managing motivational education. But the question is: Are our students mature to take responsibility for their own studies, for reaching national targets? Well, some of them will manage all right! But far from everybody will do so. An open dialogue with the teacher who analyses the student’s level of knowledge and helps the student reach his/her targets must always be offered. Management of education today is often handled by municipal politicians. This is probably a poor solution. Education should be managed without political influencing, thus supporting a comprehensive structure, and avoid changes between periods in office for various political parties. / The students benefit from high degrees of self-control and acquire knowledge. / Students as well as educators need support from school management, psychologists and parents. In order to be able to pick up on the good opportunities, teachers need to cooperate. As a response to the question as to who has got the power at school, I conclude that the national parliament sets the law. But according to my personal view, teachers and students are in power. Without their cooperation, we would not have a good school.

Key words: A blend of neutral and agitated opinions, carefully balanced reasoning, politically correct opinions, reflective character.

Context, team role, relations: This text covers a comprehensive theme but also displays a simplistic view on teaching and learning. It focuses on personal experience of a procedure for conducting exchanges between the student teachers and on the course literature. There are several normative should-expressions, questions, answers and an argumentative style. The text emphasizes a somewhat critical stand against politicians. There is some concern for the pupils, but the main focus is on student motivation and a compassionate student teacher identity. The student teacher emphasizes collaboration with the pupils. Being a teacher is a calling more than an intellectual challenge. Commitment seems to be a sought ideal. If teachers and pupils joined forces against the politicians everything would be fine.

Values: Self transcendent and accommodating benevolence for the benefit of the students.

Text D. (20071011) Lpf94 clarifies how teachers should relate to the students and to teaching and learning. / The only thing for me to do is to follow my personal ethics and share my knowledge with the students in the best possible way. From this perspective it is a reasonable to claim that I should have the power to control education. In my role as a small dictator I make decisions based on my values about what the students should learn but how should I design teaching and learning? / This is where I get surprised. At least in the upper secondary school program where I am currently working, Industry [sic!], I see no other way to teach than to follow the principle of transmission of knowledge. / As teachers we should eagerly encourage and push our students so they learn to work in a self-controlled way and reach their targets. When we have reached this type of learning we have come close to how teaching and learning should be managed according to Lpf94. But my message is that my professional teacher skills must account for these ways of teaching and learning.

Key words: Self centered, structural (first-then) clarity, instrumental pedagogy, obedient, individualist.

Context, team role, relations: This text failed to attract responses because focus is more on Self defined as a strict (foreign) teacher personality than on relations with Other. The text explores the studied course literature and neglects a procedure for relating to peers. It is a comprehensive text in the sense that it expresses a conservative attitude to teaching and learning. The text emphasizes the ‘moment of truth’ when teachers meet the students. Authoritarian leadership, rules and stability seem to be prioritized values. There are some minor concerns for peers and students. The text contains an extreme comparison with reference to experience and to the literature. The student teacher emphasizes judgmental leadership, safety and security. Structuring of a pedagogical approach is the sought ideal. There is a means-end argument on security for the pupils too.

Values: Self enhancement, power and stability.

ANALYZING THE DATA

The LMS discussion board is less effective in transforming curricular knowledge than in supporting the students’ overall communicative competence. The objective of the succeeding analysis is to understand embedded ethical meanings of truthfulness, completeness, sincerity and contextual relevance (Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997, p. 151) in the students’ textual messages. Habermas (1978, 1987) defines the essential objectives of such research as critical social theory (CST) with a focus on participation, observation and analysis of contextualized data. But neither a positivist approach for controlling an objective reality nor a CST-approach for liberating alienated relations between student teachers is a relevant focus for this study. On the contrary, I employ an interpretative SSM-approach for accommodating intra-subjective realities between virtual interlocutors. Hence, focus is on the student teachers’ portrayal of their intuitive and implicit purpose to first identify and then build relations to Other by means of explicit curricular contents and implicitly transmitted values.

Hence, the studied context involves student teachers who take purposeful action. They have an explicit goal in mind and thus they form a social activity system. In order to explore both context and people, I deploy a SSM for modeling the interlocutors’ verbal behavior. Checkland (2000, p. 14) says that in order to learn from a SSM (see Munro, 1998, p. 520) the researcher needs to decide what is the system under investigation, in this case a closed LMS-session, and what is the objective of the studied subjects, which is to pass a future exam. Checkland (2000, p. 30) suggests that the study of social systems should be guided by transparent criteria like efficacy – asking if the transformation of curricular knowledge works; efficiency – asking if the transformation process between the student teachers is socially appropriate; effectiveness – asking if the transformation meets long term objectives of becoming a professional teacher; ethics – asking if the transformation is morally correct; and finally elegance – asking if there is an aesthetically attractive transformation of a shared learning object and good teacher personality.

Before taking social action (Habermas, 1987), however, the students have a choice to make. They seem to discard of a discursive approach and focus on an instrumental and a strategic efficiency-effectiveness understanding of the social setting. And well aware of the priorities of the training program, they opt for communicative action. Ngwenyama and Lee (1997, p. 154) say people involved in such behavior: "depend on a common language and a shared understanding of the organizational context." As active processors and interpreters the students "enact meaning from each other’s communicative actions" (ibid., p. 154). Thus, they acknowledge that the LMS-context contains an invitation to inspire, submit and receive responses that make up "rounded", i.e. completeness, truthfulness and appropriateness, text contributions.

The deployed approach yielded some valuable insights. As to efficacy (Checkland, 2000) flamboyant, agitated and argumentative entries are outnumbered by emotionally neutral entries. The former create a sense of pressure for change and hasty exploration. At this early stage of the teacher training program it is probably too much of a challenge for the student teachers to accommodate their minds to school politics, functionality of head teacher measures etc. As far as efficiency is concerned, it is a delicate situation for the student teachers to respond to their peers’ entries. Being novice writers and quite often immigrant Internet users, the student teachers seem to prefer to respond to familiar values, typically transmitted in the kind of vivid examples which they recognize from working life experiences in home schools. A probable explanation to their reaction may be that in times of change, e.g. the beginning of a study program, people tend to prefer more of the same national values. In analyzing effectiveness it is obvious that by relying on conservative rather than dynamic values in their processing of initial entries, the student teachers assimilate the traditional values of their national culture into old conceptions about e.g. theme weeks, collective teacher teams or transmission pedagogy. They stick to activities, roles and relations that would seem familiar to them. Finally, there are a few quality criteria of ethics and elegance, i.e. polite language and display of a professional teacher personality. The hypothesized set of hosted and preferred values is portrayed (Figure 2) as polite, rather respectful and professional entries.

DISCUSSION

The chosen design for successful long-thread-generating-entries is made up of a mix of professional, factual and personal values, all resting on security and conformity. The studied texts are void of contradictory influences on Openness to change versus Conservatism. Contradictory influences seem to appear between Self transcendence and Self enhancement values. More specifically, values related to contradictory influences are given as Universalism & Benevolence versus Power & Achievement. Successful Text A (Figure 2) contains neutral and non-committed values and equally successful Text B expresses stability, orderliness and conservatism. Both types attracted substantial feedback among peers. Failing Text C harbors inviting and accommodating, but vague values and failing Text D signals argumentative masculine leadership values. Find the positioning of first entries among 1. Universalism; 2. Benevolence; 3. Conformity; 4. Security; 5. Power; 6. Achievement; 7. Hedonism; 8. Stimulation; 9. Self-direction.

A - Long thread

Outside H1-3

B - Long thread

Verified (H3)

D - No thread

Verified (H2)

C - No thread

Falsified (H1)

Figure 2. Hypothesized and analyzed first entries

The deployed method for analyzing values was successful in generating spread of results. The first phases of a SSM helped identify significant value orientations for all texts but for Text A. It seems as if low-profile moderate and vague values outscore extreme high-profile values as inspirational input to the studied interactions. Entries harboring vague values (Text A) and Conservative-Conforming values (Text B) attracted peer feedback in long threads. A first entry harboring universal-benevolent (Text C) or self-centered power (Text D) values failed to attract feedback because in times of change (new role as student), innovative e-learning environments (unfamiliar web procedures) and relations (with strangers), the student teachers search out, balance and stick to familiar values. The deployed analytical framework enables for understanding of the student teachers’ preferred values. This is so because Openness to change parallels a flexible personality and the opposing value direction Conservatism matches a stable identity, both of which are necessary for portraying national values and attracting long threads. The result suggests that Self enhancement parallels instrumental push by a publicist approach to communication and the opposing Self transcendence matches dialogical relation building through pull.

The applied SSM was successful in revealing differences like strategies and attitudes for a limited number of cases. Productive interlocutor entries seem to express traditionally held values in an allegedly value-neutral LMS-forum. Future research will benefit from applying a refined method on a comprehensive corpus of subjects. But the question remains: Is there socio-metric network exploration at work, suggesting that those who know and like each other at a rather superficial level put their effort to establishing virtual relations. An alternative explanation – as suggested in this article – is that people’s willingness to respond to an entry is related to their appreciation of embedded values. The conclusion indicates that web-based interlocutors would first read values into their peers’ curricular entries and then – depending on how the values match their own ideals – respond to some values and stay clear of others.