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The Religious Ethics Impact as Evaluative Element of Culture on the Personality Development of the Future Teacher: The Person Measurement Approach

L. Moskalyova, S. Gurov*, T. Gurova

Philological department, Melitopol teaching training university named after Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Melitopol, Ukraine

Abstract: Personality measuring today becomes popular as it is a civilization marker for modern cultural and educational changes in society. Theoretical and methodological foundations of measuring the personality are laid in the present study as the leading principle of humanitarian studies. Human measuring approach in modern understanding is presented as a product of neoclassical science. There are shown major human systems, which are directly influenced by the religious ethics.

Keywords: personality measuring, religious ethics, criteria and components of personality measuring, human development

Received August 26, 2013; Revised November 15, 2013; Accepted November 17, 2013

Citation: L. Moskalyova, S. Gurov, T. Gurova, The Religious Ethics Impact as Evaluative Element of Culture on the Personality Development of the Future Teacher: The Person Measurement Approach. American Journal of Educational Research, 2 (1). 18-22. January 2014. doi:10.12691/education-2-1-4

1. Introduction

One of the most important conditions in forming the person’s value-world is the intensification of the transforming function in teacher education. For further productive development of society future teachers should take into account the growing religious feelings of youth that contribute to the growth of various types of spiritual practices and reveal the religious dimension of life’s meaning.

The relevance and significance of the problem is intensified by the need of conceptualizing the personality measuring approach to different kinds of spiritual practices of young people, taking into account the development of science, the achievements of modern theology and philosophy for the development of higher theological education in Ukraine and abroad. This article makes attempts to elucidate the main criteria of measuring the personality, the influence of teaching religious ethics on spiritual and moral qualities of future teachers.

2. Objectives

Given the urgency of the problems that solves measurement approach as a new methodology, we set out to play the major human systems, which directly influence the religious ethics:

- reproduce basic measurement of a person, which directly influences the religious ethics;

- reveal the relationship criteria of spiritual and moral development of future teachers with intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-confessional and global characteristics of the harmonious coexistence of man with himself as well as with the environment.

3. Methods

For all the investigations we used a set general and specific methods: retrospective analysis and systematization of theological, philosophical, cultural, psychological and educational literature on religious ethics in the cultural and educational practices spiritual man; synthesis of scientific literature on ethical and moral issues, including its religious aspects; induction, deduction, synthesis, comparison and juxtaposition of ideas, concepts, theories, religions and so on.

4. Results

The personality measurement today becomes the civilization marker of modern cultural and educational changes in society. In particular, today in the scientific literature there are four historical stages of educational measurements (stages, characterized by the transition of mankind from the oral to the written examination, measurements, limited to human cognition sphere – to complex measurements, changes in subjective person measurements to objective determination, etc.) [1]. Theoretical and methodological foundations of measuring the personality are laid in the present study as the leading principle of humanitarian studies [14]. New directions in measuring the impact of various factors (including religious ethics) on the internal state of a person are gradually defined in today’s human studying [11].

Given the urgency of the problems that solves the personality measuring approach as a new methodology, we had a target to display the major human systems, which are directly influenced by the religious ethics.

Human measuring approach in modern understanding is presented as a product of neoclassical science. Global prognosis, future development of culture and a human, patterns and relationships in the historical processes have an impact on the current developments in the field of humanitarian scientific knowledge. As presented in the Human Development Report, nowadays in the field of human measuring the Human Development Index is applied [12]. This index, according to Helen Clark, despite its defects, is still the basis for the development of a wide range of information and analysis data related to various aspects of human life.

According to the developers of the Human Development Index, a new understanding of human development is the inclusion of a number of human freedoms, the rights of people on a long, healthy and creative lives; the rights to achieve the objectives that are really valuable; on active participation in ensuring equitable and sustainable development on the shared planet [[12], p. 2].

Modern Human Development Index is modified, since its adjustment is being held with taking into consideration the inequality. We are impressed by the authors’ assertion as for the constancy in the traditions of human development where the concept of human measuring should be dynamic but not frozen.

And while the human measuring in medicine as a field that affects the development of the person, have serious scientific research (quasi-experimental design to assess the public mental health) [7], the scope for the development of the personality who is pursuing higher education has insufficient conceptual level.

Nowadays, there’s an interesting method for interpretation of the stories taking into account the man’s belonging to a religion [4]; there’s also a method of calculating the spiritual intelligence “SQ”, which represents the extension of the traditional understanding of the psychology that justifies the two processes related to human development – the basic one (instincts, body, emotions, unconscious) and the secondary one (cognitive, ego, rationality, consciousness) [16]; and the procedures for measuring the seven spiritual identities [8]. Both latter methods of measuring a person present a particular interest to us because of their potential for applying in working with individuals who are in the process of growing up.

It should be noted that the “SQ”, and the seven spiritual identities, is not related to a separate religion. Here’s a quotation of the author: “Throughout human history, every known culture has had some set of values, though the specific values differ from culture to culture. SQ is, thus, prior to all specific values and to any given culture. It is also, therefore, prior to any form of religious expression that it might take. SQ makes religion possible (perhaps even necessary), but SQ does not depend upon religion” [[16], p.10].

The authors write about the use of SQ to enhance the human potential, personal growth, as the spiritual intelligence helps a man to be more creative and flexible. Spiritual intelligence is used to solve existential problems, where one feels the power of his own habits, which makes it difficult to live a full life [[16], p. 13].

Indicators that the authors consider to be the features of high SQ, include: the ability to be flexible and a high degree of self-awareness, the ability to withstand and overcome the pain, inspiration, vision, values, reluctance to cause unnecessary harm, the tendency for the vision of relations between the various things; the tendency for asking the question “Why?” or “What if?”, search for “fundamental” responses, etc. [[16], p. 15].

The scientists, indicating that a person’s identity is established with the help of many factors, point to a direct effect of religion on the development of the personality. For the study, they used the term “spiritual identity” that helped to define the distinctive characteristics of the spiritual experience of the person identifying himself on the grounds of religious and non-religious belonging to the groups of people. Processing of the data array helped to group information into seven different types of “spiritual identity” among them one should mention: 1) senso-centric; 2) socio-centric; 3) eco-centric; 4) cosmo-centric; 5) geneo-centric; 6) chrono-centric; and 7) transo-centric [[8], p. 373].

The fact is that in the field of spiritual and moral development of future teachers there are very few formal standards that serve as benchmarks for personality measuring. Learning the level of affectivity of teaching the religious ethics on the development of a future teacher you need to establish measurable criteria and indicators that will be a feedback for the results achieved, their compliance with those attitudes and goals that were set at the beginning.

We noticed a systematic occurrence in almost all theological and philosophical studies and scientific literature on the spiritual development of students, in particular, who choose the teaching profession – personal development is impossible without compliance with ethics, which one way or another has always been affected by religion. However, the combination of the terms under consideration is one that always comes into a collision with opposition and controversy in scientific circles. Thus, on the one hand, it becomes important to measure the cognitive rate (knowledge about the ethical tenets of religion), and on the other hand we often hear the question: Why do students who live in a secular society, should study the religious tenets if there is the right fixed by the law?

Indeed, today there are specific documents that direct people to certain responsibilities in the field of human dimension (commitment), but their basis always laid in values (love, compassion, dialogue, mutual understanding, duty, honor and dignity, etc.) which always will be at the heart of world religions. So, religion is the root where values make sense, without religious knowledge there’s no ethics of forgiveness, no ethics of human growth as a personality, there’s no prosperity.

Also, this question can be answered by referring to the opinion stated by Robert Gutierrez. While not denying the need for the task to promote civic knowledge, skills and aptitudes, the author suggested the thought that we are impressed by: “The youth of today, by and large, does not accept the mantle of civic responsibility” [[6], p. 69]. According to the author there’s a counterweight to civil liability in the field of youth education which lies in the developed sense of religion. Thus, based on a strong sense of religious education (emotional criterion), the capacity for self-development and men’s civic engagement can get a powerful development. Therefore, the emotional criterion should take into account the ability of future teachers to develop a sense of goodwill in a community, the culture, the formation of determination and belief in personal self-creation. Thereby, we see the need to use the emotional criterion for personality measuring in diagnosis and measuring system.

During the consideration of a wide range of indicators of emotional criterion that characterize the internal mental processes and reveal their dynamics, peculiarities of the states of self-destruction and self-development, there should be mentioned one more criterion – the behavioral one, which, in turn, can be diagnosed due to the system of thirty acts of spiritual identity, developed by a modern academician Ivan Bech [2].

Considering the fact that religious ethics demonstrates a wide range of issues related to human development, and in the field of our study there are intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-religious and global characteristics of a harmonious coexistence of man with himself as well as with others, we can mention the fact that religious ethics in the modern world has gradually acquired the holistic concept of interpreting the various processes of personal development through spiritual practices.

However, it should be noted the existing diversity of religious ethics – Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism. On the one hand it’s because of the regulation of the practice in the very life of people who identify themselves with one or another form of religious outlook. On the other hand, we see the different phases of the development of religious ethics as a theoretical framework, which are caused by implementation of non-linear, dynamic scripting reality. Meanwhile, in studies devoted to religious ethics, there’s still no common understanding of the internal processes of personal growth through social interaction, this can be proved by the variety of interpretations of spiritual practices, leading to the development, understanding, harmony and integrity. The main difficulty in understanding the phenomenon of religious ethics and its influence on the future of the teacher is a “human” factor, which is not always taken into account by the proposed practical rules of one’s religious life.

Religious educators have borrowed practical rules for living, which led to the prosperity and development of the individual, society, thus making a “breeding selection” of such rules in the system that have a direct impact on people. Unfortunately, there is a small number of works with the risen question about the influence of religious ethics on the development of future teacher.

Revealing in the study the three main criteria of spiritual and moral development – cognitive, emotional, behavioral, we at the same time support the thesis as for the necessity for quality measurements. This is possible in the case of equitable treatment of the tester to the future teachers who have the right to profess different religions. The test criteria, in turn, correlate with:

1) sensory perception (sight, smell, hearing, touch), i.e. the primary perception of reality (intrapersonal level);

2) the interaction of the social environment (sociocentric level);

3) relationship with close and distant relatives (familycentric level);

4) spatial sensations (feeling oneself in time (past-present-future), a sense of the natural environment, the adoption of the planet itself as a particle (spatial level).

Using the four level system of personality measuring, we can trace the influence of teaching religious ethics in higher educational establishment on the personal growth of the future teacher.

It’s worth noting that the future teacher is imposed on a professional duty of taking care about the “spiritual health” of his students. It is evidenced by a number of legislative documents, among them – the education standards. This is because the school is so vital for human coming into being when students get solid foundation of knowledge, here also takes place the process of providing active social relationships between children and adults, as well as fixing emotional foundation for studying and communication. At this stage of life early relationships begin to form in the smallest model of a society – in the classroom. The classroom, where the child gets in, can include students with different cultural, religious, national or ethnic beliefs and convictions. Thus, the ability of future teachers to worry properly about the “spiritual health” of students is very important in shaping their moral values as it will promote children's successful interactions with peers and become a projection of a future adult life of a formed, spiritually rich personality in society [13].

We take into account that the student develops a certain spiritual tradition, that is why the level of his spiritual development has already had the basis. Thus, his primary sensations (sensory level) to the perception of the religion itself and its ethics, which is a part of the traditional culture of the society, occur much earlier than it is at a higher education institution.

A person watches different relationships and interactions between people who identify themselves with any particular religion throughout his life but not just during training at a university. Thus, even while being a child a person is actively interested in these relationships depicted in fairy tales (such as folk tales “The antique priest”, “Priest’s tricks”, “Carefree monastery”, etc.; in poetry of Alexander Pushkin “The Tale of the Priest and his workman Balda”). Then, after a certain time, a person makes certain of the lack of correspondence in provided spiritual and moral ideals of conduct with the realities of life, or, on the contrary, he sees the selfless manifestation of spiritual care, the incredible power of the spirit, the effects of spiritual practices on the internal state of the person, the spiritual development the whole society.

From our point of view, examples of ethical behavior faced by the child affect his consciousness, touch his inner feelings and gradually develop moral qualities that are suitable for different types of religious ethics. And if the examples of ethical behavior one can observe throughout life, the period of maturation, as evidenced by a number of studies [2], is favorable for the formation of the active moral qualities of the person on his deep level – intrapersonal. Period of growing up is a sensitive period for formation of religious or non-religious identity, formation of outlook. The mentioned period is associated with the beginning and the gradual acceleration of self-knowledge acts, cross-checking and criticism of the moral ideals of the society, the search for inner meaning, the coming into being of the “self-concept”, self-identification, etc. The search of inner meanings is carried by a number of different spiritual practices, including those that are not inherent in the religion where the future teacher was brought up when he was a kid.

The researchers outline specific professional qualities of the future teachers: being initiative, creative and active; having abilities to correspond your own desires with the wishes of the students; abilities to critical thinking and analytical evaluation; a talent for hearing and apprehension, etc. One of the most important qualities for a good teacher is being altruistic and spiritually open to his upbringing [3].

Spiritual practices of religion are aimed at maintaining the sense of connection with the loved ones or distant relatives. For example, in the Christian religion – the rites of remembrance of the dead, pray for the family, a family celebration of Christmas, Easter, etc. All of these practices are acceptable in Ukrainian society, and the future teacher, while being brought up in it, gradually gains an experience of these types of spiritual practices.

The numerical data that we have received from a number of survey and individual interviews with prospective teachers, strongly suggest the fact that today the family occupies the first place in the ranking values of the modern student, who has chosen the profession of the teacher [[9], p. 331].

Religious ethics also has an impact on the future teachers through his spatial sensations. As the surveys show, there is the tendency understanding by students the fact that a number of modern technologies cause significant damage to the man, his natural environment and the planet itself. Aimed at one and the same goal is to get rich quickly, they lead to the pollution of nature, depletion of land resources, which can’t be filled in within a short period of time. We are watching the development of environmental centers, participation in environmental actions, active environmental laboratories, conducting of environmental studies by future teachers who would seem don’t have any direct relationship to ecology as a science. We also see the recent scientific works where there convincing arguments as for the necessity to provide the formation of planetary thinking among students [15].

5. Discussions

Recent discussions in the problem of the person’s measurement disclose a variety of systems to identify only a few data relating to the spiritual man. Religious ethics affects the future teachers through its spatial sensations. Surveys show that individual conversations, the tendency of students to understand that many of the modern technologies cause significant damage to both the human and his natural environment, and the planet itself. Aimed at the same goal – to get rich quickly, they lead to the pollution of nature, deplete land resources, which can’t be filled within a quick period of time. We can see the development of environmental centers, participation in environmental actions, active environmental laboratories, conducting environmental studies of future teachers who don’t consider ecology as a science. Also recently we’ve discovered the work of scientists who argue convincingly for the need of the formation of planetary thinking among students [15].

Nowadays, however, there are few studies that reveal the empirical evidence on the personal characteristics of future teachers, their spiritual sphere, addressed the specific mechanisms and techniques that affect the development of the personal growth of students. Our study draws attention to the fact that there are major flaws in the construction measurement diagnostics in the field of spiritual and moral development of a person. Using this data, for the diagnosis of future teachers (aged 18-25 years), we consider three main criteria of spiritual and moral development of the individual (cognitive, emotional, behavioral), which are a manifestation of people to four-level system (intrapersonal, socio-centric, family-centric, spatial levels).

6. Conclusions

The main measurement systems of a person that we can use for future teachers, are: a modified human development index, a method of calculating spiritual intelligence “SQ”, the measurement procedure the seven spiritual identities, etc. In these systems, as well as on the system represented us in the study, religious ethics directly affects. In response to these in the theory and practice of spiritual person’s measurement criteria of the future teacher in moral development (cognitive, emotional, behavioral), we think that it’s important at the time of diagnosis consider the relationship with the characteristics of a harmonious coexistence of man with himself as well as with the environment. Such diagnosis can learn effectively the influence of the teaching of religious ethics on the personal development of the future teachers.

Therefore, the levels, provided in the article, for personality measuring may be acceptable to different groups of students who correspond themselves with any particular religion. In this case, we are shifting the emphasis on the ethics as an integral part of the world religions, which postulates a mutual enriching and have a great impact on the youth of today.

References

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