CHAPTER FOUR
LITERATURE REVIEW: VALUES
4.1 Introduction
This chapter examines the concept of values by providing its definitions and theoretical explanations from established literature. The researcher reviewed different definitions and made classifications that could aid later data analysis. By combining both the definition of values and the theoretical understanding of values as deduced from moral enquiry theories, the researcher was able to deduce an own definition of values as the theoretical lens. The researcher used this theoretical lens to distil a framework for analysing data in the Ugandan school context. The researcher ends the chapter by providing a conclusion.
4.2 Conceptualization of values
Scholars tend to classify the definitions of values into individual, institutional, societal, and universal level values (Batson & Thompson, 2001; Blum, 2008; Hitlin, 2010; Ovadia, 2003; Searing, 2009). Below are descriptions of values as arising from the literature review.
Educationists and scholars describe values at the individual-level as yardsticks for determining individual progress and providing the desired individual end-goals (Ovadia, 2003:410). However, these individual end-goals are intangible, which means that they cannot be touched physically although they are necessary in propelling and directing human life. Rachels (1986:3) systematically describes individual level values in the context of moral philosophy. He says that each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs. Moreover, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue human wants and needs effectively. From what Rachels describes above, individual values are intangible goals which are assumed to be desirable. Further still, the individual wants and needs for every human being, as Rachels points out, are desirable end-
goals. Individual-level values are also core virtues within every individual (Searing, 2009:77). In
a school for example, a learner might have a particular personality which affects his or her individual learning. This is an individual-level value within that person. This individual goal
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could serve as the basis for personal judgment, choice, self-evaluation, stimulation and rationalization (Blum, 2008:415; Weiss, 2007:145).
Because values portray the desirable individual goal, they may act as compulsory guidelines for individual behaviour (Barry, 2001:413; Heenan, 2002) that are intrinsic in nature (Bernstein, 2001:340). The individual goals might include achievement (Davidov, 2008:41), peaceful existence, and personality traits such as self-correction, obedience, trust, empathy, integrity and good life (Hackley, 2000:42). As a result, values could be defined as facets that shape individual character to what is ultimately ideal and acceptable (Rachels, 2000:16). What could further be learnt about individual-level values is that they are self-directed, meaning they cannot be complemented to other people or institutions. They are individually possessed and developed, but not socially generated (Boguslavsky, 2007: 86). For example, one‟s personality trait is only significant to him or her and not to others. This argument is similar to James Rachels‟ (1986:7) ethical egoism which allows each individual person to view his or her own life as being of ultimate value to himself or herself. However, all the definitions and explanations of individual- level values indicate an abstract description of them. There seems to be no tangible definition of the term except a portrayal of psychological feelings, emotions and abstractions. More still, ethical egoism cannot always be correct because it cannot provide solutions for conflict of interests. We need moral rules, only because our interests sometimes are selfish, which exacerbates conflicts.
At an organizational level, some researchers tend to assume that values are modes of behaviour that propel change in an organization (Searing, 2009:433). Since an organization has goals, it is the organizational-level values that provide the process of achievement of the goals. In a school context for example, organizational-level values include discipline, leadership, punctuality in class, completion of the syllabus, academic performance, and school leadership (De Klerk & Rens, 2003:360).These organizational values are then referred to as process values. Management and staff could pursue process values for the achievement of the organizational goals (Fullan, 2001:32; Passi, 2006:47; Sergiovanni, 2006:302). But in the course of pursuing organizational goals, values espoused could be the people‟s activities implemented and attitudes displayed (Sergiovanni, 2006:304). Unfortunately, process values could also be bad. In a school setting for example, disruptive learner behaviours such as violence, bullying and homicide could also be
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process values but condemned as school-level crimes which affect quality schooling (Turiel, 2002:51). In other words, organizational process values could propel institutional change, either positively or negatively (Turiel, 2004:56).
At a societal-level, values could be defined as elements of “conformity” to the established order (Du Preez, 2008:35). For example, people must conform to norms and customs of particular societies in order to ensure cohesiveness (Njoroge & Bennaars, 2000). People define values at the societal-level as intangible instruments that could drive social change in the positive or negative direction depending on differences in people‟s interpretations of the change (Searing, 2009:433). As drivers of social change, societal-led values occupy an indispensable role in an entire society (Davidov, 2010:170). This social change factor could either be constructive or destructive to that whole community (Pepper, Jackson, & Uzzelli, 2010:127). Social change could be constructive if it is in line with a particular social culture, tradition, and way of life (Njoroge & Bennaars, 2000:7). Social change could also be constructive if the security of society is provided (Stegall, 2003: 3). For example, the change that aims at improving social welfare is changing for the better (Wilson & Cowell, 2005:95). The preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people with whom one is frequently in contact with is a positive value at a societal- level (De Klerk & Rens, 2003:356).
On the other hand, the change that aims at creating social conflict like destruction of the environment is bad change demystified at the societal level. Such change might lead to the destruction of an ecosystem that provides life to an entire society. This same change has been pursued outside the society‟s norms and customs. Likewise, murder and rape are socially abhorred changes (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004:26). More so, the societal- level values could be destructive where they involve dividing people into groups whose interests are more than the interests of an individual. Racism is the most conspicuous example; it divides people into groups according to race and assigns greater importance to the interests of the race (group) than others. The practical result is that people may treat members of one race better than others. Likewise, Anti-Semitism and nationalism ideologies work in the same way (Wei, 2008).
Some scholars define values to refer to all-embracing human ethical standards. In other words, perceived in a universal sense, values must delineate principles of objective ethical goodness
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(Putterman, 2000:79). For example, it is of a universal concern that every human being possesses objective ethics (Du Preez & Roux, 2010:78). Ethics expresses how humans ought to live by judging what is good or bad (Stegall, 2003:3; Wilson & Cowell, 2005:95). Examples of these ethics include uprightness, peace, morality (moral conscience), and virtuousness (Morrison, 2000:44; Wolfsdorp, 2003:277). However, human ethics could be universally debatable (Copan, 2013:113); meaning that what is ethical is dependent on varied and diversionary human experiences and interpretations (Copan, 2013:400).
This diversionary nature of ethics defines the universal sense of values (Evrigenis, 2007:400). For example in secular ethical societies, the love for spirituality or religiosity to promote Godly attitudes is not considered to be of ethical importance. Secular ethics defies religion as a universal element of value and human goodness (Lewis, 2001:111). Atheists like philosopher Aristotle and Emmanuel Kant claim that one may not need to know God in order to do what is ethically objective (Copan, 2013:455), because every human being has a conscience governed by the sensory world. It is these senses that govern the choice of good or bad. Darwinism for instance is the thesis that the diversity, complexity and the adaptability which organic phenomena manifest is solely the result of successive rounds of scientific random variation and natural selection (Aspin & Chapman, 2007:23). Properly understood, Charles Darwin‟s theory undermines the place of spiritual purposes in nature.
There is no foresight in the way mutation and recombination produce variations on which the environment acts, filtering out those organisms which lack fitness minimal for survival long enough to reproduce themselves. Therefore in secular ethics human life is governed by rationality and reasoning rather than the Devine will (Copan, 2013:412). On the contrary, people like Saint Augustine provide religious ethics; that to fear God is an all-embracing universal principle, although it is an individual requirement other than a universal one (Felderhof, 2002:82; Genza, 2008:1). Understanding the values embedded in the creation of the world and matter is to have a theological sense of knowledge and existence. In conclusion, there is huge crisis in contemporary western debate when it comes to defining the ethical sense of values (Copan, 2013:433). When ethics appeals to a subjective and not an objective understanding of the universality of values (Lewis, 2001), this could bring controversy.
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Values at a universal level could also be defined as trans-situational and cross-cultural human ideals (Tiel, 2005:15). For example peace building and human rights tenets are accommodated and universally condemned by diverse views and cultures (Pepper, Jackson, & Uzzelli, 2010:27). For example, killing is universally bad (Heenan, 2002). These universal tenets describe what humanity, at a global-level, cherishes and criminalizes. From the preceding analysis, values could summarily be defined according to the individual, organizational, societal, and universal standpoints (Bernstein, 2000:8; Kimberly & Barnett, 2009:19; Kirschenbaum, 2009:424; Kraut, 2002:6). At all these levels, unique features and characteristics of values emerge to contribute to ultimate human progress.