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ABSTRACT
This article explores the use of the AQAL model to support student self-understanding in courses aimed at developing social conscience at an international school in Hong Kong. In one such course, the Integral framework provided a useful conceptual map that assisted in bringing a wide array of course materials to curricular coherence, and led to an all-high school gathering to consider greater institutional balance. Through these curricular explorations, it is proposed that the AQAL model may be used as a pedagogical tool in social conscience courses to facilitate a holistic sense of meaning and life direction for high school students.
KEY WORDS adolescence; AQAL model; secondary education; quadrants; qualitative research
In spite of the realization among some that the ecological "stability that produced civilization has vanished" (McKibben, 2010, p. 27), global society as a whole seems intent on maintaining or perhaps even exacerbating its overly consumptive habits. In a section entitled "The World Lacks a Vision of a Viable Global Future," Willis Harman (1998) states:
Since modern culture ascribes no "reality" to inner experience, transcendent values have no power and materialistic values prevail. Thus it seems reasonable for society to be characterized by economic rationalization of an ever-increasing fraction of social behavior and organization, (p. 127)
In the contemporary context where daily economic indicators seem to dominate headlines around the globe, educators struggle to bring personal meaning and coherence to classrooms and to school life. Indeed, it is a challenge to continue this quest for humane values when it seems that no enduring images are powerful enough to inspire widespread change of ailing sociopolitical systems. In this modern milieu, perhaps it comes as no surprise, as Harman suggests, that the inner experience of students is under threat as schools strive to become increasingly concerned with that which is demonstrable, measurable, and quantifiable. Contemporary culture seems to lack a "big picture" that might ascribe inherent value to student introspection and realization.
In an effort to challenge these trends in my own context, I have implemented curricula at an international school in Hong Kong over the past decade that aim to develop social conscience among students. Some background about the school setting is useful in order to understand these curricular changes. This K-12 international...