PERSONAL AUTONOMY AS EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIV E - ASPIRATION AND REALITY

After a clarification of the notion of personal autonomy it is shown t hat the gap between the ideals of education (educational objectives) a nd the daily teaching practice has remained largely unexplored. The pr esent study is focused upon the exploration of this gap and deals with the question how much teachers would like to achieve the educational objectives ,,self determination'' and ,,social responsibility'' (educa tion to personal autonomy) and in which extent they try to db so in th e daily practice. A comparison between the ideal of education and the daily practice demonstrates that the gap is more important in the fiel d of personal autonomy with respect to the mediation of knowledge and skills and with respect to keeping the discipline: The objectives of p ersonal autonomy are aspired in a strong way, but in realization they do not differ from the other educational objectives. There are differe nces depending on the subject matters. It is also investigated which k inds of teaching methods are used by the teachers to achieve students' autonomy. It is shown that teachers dispose of the necessary repertoi re of teaching methods and that they use these methods - the more they esteem the objectives of personal autonomy the sooner. Finally the qu estion is asked if and in which situations teachers reflect on values and educational objectives. According to their answers those reflectio ns occur surprisingly often. Once more it is shown that there is a sig nificant correlation between the frequency of reflections on education al objectives and the tendency of aspiration of realizing the objectiv e of personal autonomy. The results serve as a basis for the discussio n of questions concerning the organisation of schools and for concepts of teacher training.