Society has changed radically. Consequently, the educational system has come under increasing pressure to adapt, to reform, to reinvent itself and to prepare its students more adequately to face future doubts with appropriate skills and understandings whilst being adaptable and also flexible.
A pessimistic view of humanity as individualistic, competitive and self-serving dominates our society. The market mentality reduced much of education to product outcomes and performance indicators. To challenge such a view one needs to re-emphasise the values and practice of Personal and Social Development (PSD) in education and re-assert a much more positive and optimistic view of humanity.
The education of children requires the mastery of much more than an academic curriculum. The need for a pastoral curriculum consisting of concepts, facts, skills and attitudes which could, and ought, to be planned and provided by educational systems and schools if they are seriously committed to education in its fullest sense, is a priority. Ideally the human mind is to be empowered to learn spontaneously, without coercion, independently and collaboratively, developing learning skills vital for life-long learning.
A channel for self-development
PSD is a fundamental aspect of the educational experience of the whole child. PSD introduces features of education that may go beyond the traditional boundaries of subject based teaching. Looking at each individual as an indivisible, unique, decision-making social being that needs to be understood in a social context, that has potential and choices in life, provides encouragement and growth.
The awareness, acquisition and maintenance of life skills based on these humanistic premises teach students better ways to meet the challenges of life tasks and move towards self-actualisation.
Knowledge and information alone are not enough: They need to be acquired within a framework of self-awareness and development of skills. These skills support students in living and working together in a way that develops and promotes health within society at large.
The role of the educator in today's society has basically changed. This is so because of radical developments in technology, which hold the power to alter not merely our educational system, but also work and culture. PSD was developed in response to the need to resolve tensions embodied within the new system of schooling. Indeed, PSD was developed to humanise institutions and motivate students.
Thus it is seen as completing an education, which is underdeveloped by a conservative curriculum limited to the academic subjects. PSD can facilitate the work of the academic curriculum because it happens to be vital to that all-round development of the child as a 'whole person', namely what proper education is all about.
PSD aims
The aims of PSD are:
¤ To have a positive regard for self and for others and their needs;
¤ To develop life skills to enable students to participate effectively and safely in a changing world;
¤ To make a commitment to learning for life;
¤ To identify, review and evaluate the values children and society hold and recognise that these affect thoughts and actions.
These aims empower individuals to develop their views on values in society and so take increased responsibility for their own lives. One needs life skills to empower children to face the challenges of everyday life, but PSD involves more than life skills. It aids students to adopt a more positive regard towards themselves and others.
PSD is meant to help students develop those skills they already have, while being supported in higher order skills, such as how to reason, solve problems, and develop strategies for thinking ahead, only until such time that they can perform these themselves. Indeed, PSD empowers students with alternative and critical learning opportunities that challenge prevailing practices and social structures.
The emphasis in PSD is where it should be, that is on the learner and the environment one is in. It is the learners who are placed in charge of their own learning, with the teacher drawing from them the themes that are then expanded upon development.
PSD in primary state schools
PSD was introduced for the first time in Maltese primary state schools in the scholastic year 2000-2001. PSD is offered from Year One, up to Year Seven. The aims of PSD in primary are similar to PSD in secondary schools, but with a primary atmosphere where students build on their own experiences and on their early learning goals for personal and social development.
Vocational education, like PSD, challenges the social order of academic discipline. Although PSD is not an examinable subject, it is hoped that through PSD students succeed in academic subjects as well as in their personal and social life. This is so because PSD offers opportunities to develop students' potential in all parts of their development, regardless of their age, abilities, social and cultural background.
Certainly a sense of self-esteem and skill in social relationships has a much greater influence on productiveness and satisfaction in one's life than scholastic attainment.
Teaching PSD
A PSD session is delivered in an informal manner. The students are not more than 15 in each group. This setting is intended to offer the opportunity to every student to participate fully. The children sit in a circle without any desks in front of them and from the very first lesson they set the class rules they intend to follow with the intention that the group functions and develops well throughout the whole scholastic year.
During PSD the children have time to talk and share their own views on the subject being discussed. This is done through various activities. The PSD teacher's main role is to lead the children and so act as a facilitator. Through such a process, the students learn to recognise their own worth, work well with others and become increasingly responsible for self-learning.
They learn to respect diversity and differences so that they move to form effective fulfilling relationships that are a necessary part of life and learning.
Experiential learning
In PSD, experiential learning means empowering students to grow and develop. Through this experiential approach one examines events of the past in order to make sense of them in a framework of developing ideas and values, look at future events and make precise plans in the light of what one has learnt.
It is a fact that individuals believe more in knowledge they have discovered themselves than in knowledge presented by others. Learning takes place through experiencing and processing.
Processing
Processing is vital in PSD. Activities done during a PSD session are useless if not followed by and incorporated within processing. Through processing students are capable of integrating and internalising their experiences. Thus they transform learning at the memory level into knowledge that is personally meaningful and theoretically logical. Processing aims at gathering the intellectual and emotional aspect so as to empower the individual to assume responsibility for one's life.
PSD in our country proves to be a vital subject in the development of the individual. Students find PSD interesting and are thankful for its introduction for it provides holistic education; they feel its relevance and so understand the importance and aims of the subject; and PSD has made their lives more meaningful for themselves as persons. PSD teachers are more than encouraged by this positive achievement to keep continuously developing PSD topics relevant to changes in daily life.
For information about PSD and the PSD Teachers' Association, email on: psdaccociation@teacher.com or write directly to the editor of "the LINK" newsletter for PSD teachers on: jfb001@waldonet.net.mt
Ms Baldacchino is a PSD teacher in primary schools.
This article was adapted from: Baldacchino J, (2002) Managing Change: A Case Study of a Curriculum Innovation in Malta. Unpublished dissertation for the MEd in Educational Management of the University of Sheffield, UK.