Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy and counterfactual thinking: Year 7 students’ development of agency,resilience,critical thinking and fourth-person perspective

Abstract

Agentic orientation, critical thinking (CrT) and taking the fourth-person perspective (4PP) are described as teachable attainments. A Personal Viewpoints (PVs) Biblical Studies curriculum challenged Year 7 students to resolve socially problematic situations through group discussion and perspective-taking. A life-issue scenario was used to pre- and post-test. Students’ PVs were coded. Responses were more personally agentic following the curriculum intervention, suggesting a strengthened resilience when faced with the threat of an oppressor. Increased perspective-taking and CrT, encouraged by counterfactual thinking, fostered students’ reliance on personal Bible-based judgements and led to greater other-focused, personally agentic resilience in socially problematic situations.

Keywords

agentic orientation counterfactual critical thinking fourth-person perspective group discussion Personal Viewpoints

Introduction

It has been accepted by most societies that their persons have moral agency, actions for which all agents are accountable. To be personally agentic is to intentionally make things happen by one’s actions. It is the deliberative ability to make choices and action plans with a proactive commitment to bringing them about. In this study, it equates to primary agency, while secondary agency parallels proxy agency that relies on others to act on one’s behest and collective agency exercised through communally interdependent effort (Bandura, 2001).

Prosocial action depends on the general recognition that people are to be treated with respect and are to express that respect to others (Recchia et al., 2015). Being prosocially agentic in socially problematic situations is valued by societies and is considered one sign that a person has a healthy resilience structure. It is increasingly being recognised in Western societies such as Australia that young people need a source of resilience if they are to overcome moral and other socially difficult circumstances and act prosocially with the respectful, other-focused perspective this requires (e.g. AGDE, 2018; McGonigle, 2017; Meichenbaum, n.d.).

Resilience: A goal of educators

The Christian school at the centre of this research has as its focus the authority of the Bible. This entails embracing the belief that perseverance (which includes resilience) and character development are products of acting with confidence in all situations, especially in times of stress and pressure (e.g. PGS, 2019). Romans 5:3 expresses this belief: ‘We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance: perseverance character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us’ (NIV). To be agentic in such circumstances requires resilience, that is, the ability to successfully adapt to difficult life experiences and the capacity to rise above those circumstances. It involves successfully maintaining a stable equilibrium of psychological (and physical) functioning in the face of significant sources of stress such that the disruption caused by an adverse event is temporary (e.g. Ahmed, 2019; Liu et al., 2018; Patoine, 2019; Russo et al., 2012). Meichenbaum (n.d.) suggests that it is the ability to move from being a victim to being a ‘survivor’ and even to becoming a ‘thriver’.

Situations where resilience is required often involve someone being oppressed, for instance bullying. One option for resolving local oppression is to think of a counterfactual that takes into account the oppressor’s goals and use that to change the oppressor’s behaviour. Being able to understand not only the oppressor’s viewpoint towards the victim and oneself but also the victim’s and the community’s opinions, expressed as Personal Viewpoints (PVs), is an important component of knowing how to act as other-focused, perspective-aware citizens (Diazgranados et al., 2016) and in a Christianly resilient way (Meichenbaum, n.d.). This aligns with Bloom’s ‘reasoned compassion’ (thoughtful helping), where one employs conscious, deliberate reasoning in order to be effective in enacting moral choice (Bloom, 2016). The use of developmentally appropriate critical thinking (CrT) and personal perspective-taking, fostered in Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy (PVP) curriculums (e.g. Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith and Knowles, 2017), are capacities that can help students learn to be agents in situations where someone is being exploited and oppressed, including themselves. These practices can help students to engage in other-focused, personally agentic behaviour indicative of resilience, a goal of the Year 7 curriculum intervention.

This intention of the Year 7 curriculum intervention aligns with research which confirms resilience contains behaviours, thoughts and feelings that can be learned, fostered and progressed. ‘Challenge’ has been shown to have a causal relationship with the development of student character, especially for the acquisition of perseverance (e.g. Liu et al., 2018; McGonigle, 2017; Meichenbaum, n.d.; Patoine, 2019). Relatedly, the Australian Government Department of Education launched its paper, ‘Student Resilience and Wellbeing Resources’, in October 2018 under the auspices of the Minister for Education (AGDE, 2018). It provided a Student Wellbeing Framework that called on schools to implement policies and support mechanisms to help all students be active participants in building a school culture that ‘values diversity and fosters positive, respectful relationships’ (AGDE, 2018).

To develop a culture of respect is also a core component in the Strategic Education Plan of the school involved in this research (PGS, 2019). To equip learners to respect, treat every other as a neighbour, and to be sensitive to others is also part of the school’s vision of achieving ‘Christian character in community’ (PGS Strategic Direction, n.d.). Wicking and Dean (2020: 52) reported that this is best supported in the context of positive relationships and the security of a school environment, such as that espoused for this school (PGS, 2019), where students feel ‘connected, protected and respected’. The PVP, with its focus on discussion, requires that students be especially familiar with ‘respect’. It includes exploring and seriously considering the validity of the thoughtful viewpoints of their peers (and Jesus’ viewpoint) in the light of a biblical framework (e.g. 1 Cor 12:4–6).

The PVP

This article sets out how the researchers at a Christian school in north-west Sydney tested their PVP with Year 7 students to see if it could increase students’ resilience resources. This involved use of a 10-lesson Biblical Studies curriculum based on the PVP- Year 7 Personal Viewpoints Biblical Studies Curriculum: For Critical Thinking and Kingdom Agency (7PVP Curriculum). The pedagogical approach encouraged the use of counterfactual thinking and group discussions to resolve socially problematic situations based on Biblical narratives and contemporary situations. Counterfactuals are hypotheticals used to engender divergent thinking processes to assess the impact of possible actions (e.g. Postiff, 2010). The curriculum was designed to increase Year 7 students’ CrT, fourth-person perspective (4PP)-taking and their use of agentic validation structures via counterfactuals, such as being aware of PVs of protagonists in Biblical narratives, particularly Jesus, and those of other students. These were tested using student’s resolution of a life-issue scenario that reflected a social problem that Selman (in Diazgranados et al., 2016) submits often occurs in schools – bullying – with a specific focus on cyberbullying (Cyber-bullying Scenario Survey, Online Appendix 1).

PVs – The cognitive constructs students used to resolve problematic social situations

Student’ responses in previous surveys were named PVs as they expressed personally held commitments, beliefs, feelings and judgements and contained an intrinsic moral dimension, with students invariably showing moral sensitivity (e.g. Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith, 2017; Smith and Knowles, 2016, 2017, 2018). Although the students’ PVs shared common elements (basic themes as per Attride-Sterling, 2001: 385), each student used unique vocabulary. This particularistic nature meant PVs were deemed to provide a window into students’ thinking and decision-making processes.

Fourth-person perspective

According to Selman and his colleagues, levels of social perspective-taking refer to ‘the degree to which a response acknowledges, articulates, and identifies the positions of an increasingly larger number of actors in a given situation’ (Diazgranados et al., 2016: 576). At the level of 4PP, people have the ability to generalise personal perspective inferences which encompass community-wide perspectives and necessitate keeping multiple perspectives in mind at the same time. One does not see from this perspective and then from the other – one looks at the entire big picture or view and understands that different people have different perspectives (Selman, 2003). This makes possible the coordination of the perspectives of self and others with an awareness of multidimensional levels of communication. Students who have acquired this level of perspective-taking ‘can step outside their self-ego system’ and are able to ‘view themselves as actors with others’ (Selman, 1980: 39–40).

Use of 4PP often begins to occur about age 12. For these early adolescents, who comprise our research cohort, the emergence of formal operational thinking as per Piaget (1955) allows them to increasingly consider the thoughts and feelings of others in the wider community. Furthermore, their struggle to form a unique identity and gain acceptance motivates them to ‘use their social competencies to understand the perspectives of multiple others’ (Diazgranados et al., 2016: 576; see also Erikson, 1978).

The PVP curriculum intervention prompted students to take the 4PP to sympathetically understand the thoughts of the Bible protagonists, to feel their hopes and fears, their suffering and their joys, in situations involving the communal opposition of people to Jesus and his teaching. Jesus relied on scripture when experiencing oppression. For example, in the midst of being mocked and crucified by his opponents, Jesus quoted Ps 22:1 to express his pain (and that of all who suffer unjustly) to God: ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’; Matt 27:46, NIV). Mays (1985) suggests the importance of Jesus’ direct reference to scripture in Ps 22:1 is that it changes the perspective of those experiencing suffering. As members of the Christian school in this study the students are encouraged to follow Jesus’ example. Validating their thinking and the impetus for their actions in this Christian community includes turning to Scripture as a way of thinking beyond the self. In their context, using scripture requires looking at the entire situation – the big picture – and recognising the multiple perspectives that 4PP requires.

Critical thinking

CrT is ‘the bricks and mortar of problem solving and decision making’ (Bellanca et al., 2012: 13). It involves students using mindsets for evaluating their thinking while actually in the process of thinking. It is similar to an internal dialogue where people ponder whether their thoughts are exactly what they wanted to be thinking – a way to contrast the ideas of their thinking against their personal frames of reference (e.g. Heiman and Slomianko, 1985; Shim and Walczak, 2012). This includes whether their thinking needs to be altered to accommodate other ideas such as the perspectives of others and/or new information (counterfactuals).

Skills such as CrT and its robust assessment are at the centre of the NSW Government’s curriculum review (see M Scott in Cawsey, 2019: 13). The process of students thinking about their thinking is also germane to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA’s) stipulation that thinking skills be integrated as an instructional strategy in education. This involves students being taught to effectually apply thinking and increasingly sophisticated understanding to the resolution of problems both at and beyond school – to develop their thinking beyond the mere transfer of knowledge (ACARA, n.d.; see also Bellanca et al., 2012; Westwell, 2013).

Pivotal to this is not assuming students already have these critiquing abilities but that they need to be acquired and can be learned (Hattie and Yates, 2014). The PV pedagogical approach incorporates these mandated instructional strategies especially as Christian educators have also identified their importance. The capacity to bring the gospel to bear on life, for Christian Education to be transformative, requires a CrT approach instead of just retrieving and recognising correct answers and regurgitating facts (Tredinnick, 2017; Tsui, 2002). As Wright (2012: 16, 18) suggests, this is the type of thinking required to challenge ‘the embedded basic assumptions, the intuitive, habitual thinking, which students find difficult to inhibit … and retreat to in times of cognitive dissonance’. The other-focused inclusivity of the PVP necessitates that such CrT be applied to the PVs of self and others to provide the counterfactuals required to open students up to the possibilities beyond their basic assumptions.

Counterfactual thinking and resilience

In accordance with the school’s understanding of Christian resilience formation, it was considered in developing the 7PVP Curriculum that students should be encouraged to recognise the PVs of Jesus. Through Bible narratives, discussion and reflection, students were helped to see the commonly interpreted meaning of Jesus’ countercultural actions of serving others; that He, God incarnate, came ‘not to be served but to serve’ (Matt 20:28, NIV). Equally, students were exposed to Jesus’ countercultural belief that loving actions (agape) are God’s way to treat all people, friends, enemies and others; that we do things that put others first although there may be discomfort and inconvenience to ourselves. This is expected even at the expense of being misunderstood (e.g. Evans, 2011). Being countercultural requires rethinking – counterfactual thought – and causes stress and leads to struggle. To be agentic in such circumstances demands resilience to maintain stability in the face of such significant stress (Meichenbaum, n.d.; Scholl and Sassenberg, 2014).

The concept of Jesus being countercultural is representative of the thinking of the Christian school involved in this research. The PVP was designed to encourage Year 7 students to be agentic when they witness the oppression of others, because that is what Jesus did. A key school understanding regarding being countercultural to instances of cultural oppression is Luke 7:36–44, where Jesus challenged Simon the Pharisee about his judgemental attitude to the sinful woman (e.g. Geldenhuys, 1951).

Students need scaffolding to hypothesise what Jesus would have people do in the 21st century in a difficult situation. Such hypotheticals – counterfactuals – are used to assess the impact of an action, ‘pertaining to, or expressing, what has not in fact happened, but might, could, or would, in different conditions’ (Postiff, 2010: 4). Considering an outcome based on a different path helps make student thinking visible. It can prepare them for a better future outcome as they modulate their thinking to reflect on alternative possibilities and envisage changing what they did to influence or control what they might do next time. Such counterfactual thinking can be used as a learning experience, partly because students are made more aware of their own thinking. By students asking, ‘What if I did this?’ or ‘What if I did that?’, they create counterfactual alternatives to reality (facts) by imagining how the past could have been different and imagining alternative antecedents (e.g. see Brodie, 2020; Markman et al., 1993; Postiff, 2010). In PVP terms, students consider the implications of an action by asking what might happen if they used a different PV to consider their options. Knowledge modulates the plausibility of these alternative possibilities (Byrne, 2016). In the PVP, such knowledge comes from, for example, examining how Jesus would act, or how peers thought about and solved social problems corresponding to issues in Bible narratives.

Being perceived as powerless (versus powerful) diminishes self-focused counterfactual thinking by lowering sensed personal control (Scholl and Sassenberg, 2014). Resilience provides power and therefore more effective use of counterfactual actions, especially when trying to eschew secular culture’s accepted thinking and practices and typically, for the students in this study, those counter to a Christian ethos (PGS, 2019). The 7PVP Curriculum’s group discussions focused, where possible, on how Christians today could be involved in countercultural thinking through the counterfactual process. It was hypothesised that by using the PV pedagogical approach requiring students to participate in group discussions as to how Christians today could be involved in countercultural, even counterfactual, thinking, they might acquire a Christian orientation to persevere in times of trial and to be agentic on behalf of the oppressed (as per Rom 5:3–5). It was surmised that Year 7 students could acquire a propensity to consider Jesus’ counterfactual orientation with an appreciation of the possible cost of acting to be supportive of those being bullied by using ‘other-focused, personally agentic resilience’ in the face of a socially problematic situation. A gain in prosocial PVs would be indicative of this greater resilience.

Method

Participants

To test the PVP curriculum’s impact on these students’ CrT, 4PP and use of agentic, impetus and validation structures, the curriculum incorporating the PVP was taught across five Year 7 Biblical Studies classes, comprising 130 students (before the curriculum implementation). Of these, 121 students (55 girls and 66 boys) completed the pre-test and 116 (54 girls and 62 boys) completed the post-test. The students were aged 12–13 years. The year group is part of the Middle School (MS) of a Christian school with moderate fees situated in the semi-rural outskirts of north-west Sydney, Australia.

Materials and procedure

PVP curriculum

The teachers taught the 10-week 7PVP Curriculum. This can be accessed from the authors through The Excellence Centre (TEC) at the school, info@theexcellencecentre.org. The Biblical Studies curriculum was chosen because it was not a mandated K–12 curriculum which allowed for flexibility in content and application. The lessons covered a conflict between oppressive protagonists and Christian protagonists, with resilience, courage and faith in God being characteristics attributed to the latter. Students analysed the intentional viewpoint of characters in the Biblical narratives, both friend and foe, and how these were operational in resolving socially fraught situations. Through group discussion, in pairs, small groups and whole class, as well as through self-reflection, students applied their thinking to similar modern social situations. Questions encouraged students to critically analyse and to take 4PP (i.e. to consider the perspectives of multiple others and more widespread community perspectives, which in this school community included Bible-based Christian perspectives). This augmented their understanding of the motives and intentions of those in the narratives. Learning activities concentrated on students exploring PVs, both their own and others, used to resolve the social problem.

Small group discussion was a key PVP learning strategy providing students with the opportunity to hear others’ PVs and to have their own challenged. This allowed for students to consider the plethora of possible solutions, to think counterfactually, which was expected to increase the likelihood of CrT. The PVP also focused on encouraging students to take the position of ‘being in another’s shoes’ – to try to be other-focused in their interpretation and resolution of the social issues they encounter throughout the 10-week curriculum. In Lesson 2, for example, students watched a video on YouTube of Chinese students fighting racism from a BBC News clip (2017). The students were asked to discuss among themselves what the Chinese students’ viewpoint was on racism and to consider why the Chinese students ‘didn’t like the racism’. Similarly, in Lesson 3 (see Worksheet sample, Online Appendix 2) students were asked to consider multiple viewpoints about forgiveness expressed in the narrative of Jesus responding to Simon the Pharisee and to collaborate to address the situation as a group, through prayer (Luke 7:36–50).

Student testing

The students were pre-tested and post-tested using a scenario with five open-ended questions – the Cyber-bullying Scenario Survey (Online Appendix 1). In the scenario, the student is questioned as to what they would do if they were aware of the cyber-harassment of a victim. Survey respondents were asked: Question 1 (Q1) What would you do (having observed this)?; Question 2 (Q2) Why would you do that?; and Question 3 (Q3) Why do you think that is the right thing to do?

Previous research testing of curriculums for different year groups has required distinct scenarios with each generating their own cluster of PVs, suggesting there is a specificity to each scenario and the curriculum context in which it is tested (Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith and Knowles, 2017, 2018). This exact correspondence of the moral issue in the scenario was required, otherwise comparability was constrained. Repetition of the Cyber-bullying Scenario Survey for both pre- and post-testing was accepted as appropriate, for comparability. As Hillmer (2020) recommends, survey researchers like ‘pre- and post-test data … to be in the same survey so that they can easily make data comparisons in the analysis phase’. The main challenge with survey reuse is judging whether pre-testing actually influenced the result. This is less problematic for instruments with open-ended questions that do not have a predefined set of answer options (ECA, n.d.; Shuttleworth, 2009). As such, in this study, with the survey requiring open-ended responses, the preference was to use the same survey.

Ethical considerations

Consideration of the AARE (1993) Code of Ethics was undertaken in this research. This included the basic principles that ‘Researchers … should recognise that educational research is an ethical matter, and that its purpose should be the development of human good’ and that ‘Respect for the dignity and worth of persons and the welfare of students, research participants … shall take precedence over self-interest of researchers, or the interests of employers, clients, colleagues or groups’.

The integrity of the scenario of a morally problematic social situation was ensured through its development by selected staff and the researchers and its acceptance by the MS executive. Permission to survey students about their learning and school experience was provided by the school executive. Parents had given approval for involvement in school-based surveys and research as part of the enrolment process for their child. However, to ensure anonymity students were not required to name their answer sheets and no personal, identifying or sensitive information was requested. Numbering students’ answer sheets protected their identities but allowed for pre- and post-test matching if required.

All students in Year 7 were included in the pre- and post-test processes as it was part of the introduction and conclusion to the Biblical Studies content for the term and thus approved by the school leadership as per any curriculum content. The surveys were administered by the Biblical Studies teacher for each class. Teachers were provided with survey instructions to read to the students to reduce test bias and to help ensure all students understood the survey scenario and the survey questions. Any aversion to being involved was a class participation matter for the Biblical Studies teacher.

Only the researchers were involved with coding the actual student surveys. The researchers have spent many years developing the trust to collect and analyse data within the school community involved. This has not been extended to those outside the community, therefore specific data have not been shared beyond TEC (cf. APA, 2020: 16–17). The surveys were stored securely in the school’s research administration section of TEC. The general results of coding were passed on to the teachers and summaries of the study have been provided for the school community in the school’s publication, Christian Education Matters (https://www.theexcellencecentre.org/tec/cem/).

No contact with the researchers was required on the part of the students. The use of the student responses for research purposes did not lead to an unusually dependent relationship between researcher and participants, nor was there any risk (physical, emotional, social or legal) to individual participants’ normal well-being (AARE, 1993). For example, through consultation with executive and teaching staff, researchers ensured that the scenario was within the students’ knowledge range. The provision of survey instructions was also made for this reason. Similar ethical practices had been implemented in previous Year 7 research (e.g. Smith and Knowles, 2017) and found to be acceptable to the school.

Trustworthiness

Data trustworthiness was understood to include the four key components of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (e.g. Devault, 2019).

Credibility: Data interpretations and conclusions were shared with the participant MS teachers and MS executive (‘member checks’), for clarification purposes. This resulted in affirmation of the project and its findings. Use of the same survey for pre- and post-test, a type of triangulation, and multiple coders (analyst triangulation) also supported trustworthiness. The high degree of coherence across student answers to each of the three questions, and across the five classes, also deemed the survey results as credible.

Transferability: The PVP’s applicability to development of curriculum for multiple year groups demonstrated transferability (Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith and Knowles, 2017).

Dependability: Peer-reviewed, published articles (Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith and Knowles, 2016, 2017, 2018) supported construct dependability. However, testing of curriculums for separate year groups has required different scenarios constraining generalisability in this respect. The PVP was not limited by this as the pedagogy was congruent across curriculums.

Confirmability: Replicability requires that data categories be made internally consistent, with ‘rules devised that describe and justify category properties … a basis for later tests of replicability’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, in Devault, 2019). To ensure the basic themes reflect the data, Attride-Sterling (2001: 392, 393) recommends ‘summarising particular themes in order to create larger unifying themes … higher order coding themes … that condense the concepts and ideas mentioned at a lower level’. The students’ answers coded as PVs (‘basic themes’) were readily subsumed into the higher order ‘organising themes’ of agency, impetus, validation, CrT and 4PP. These provided the core principle that encapsulated the main point of the text data – the ‘global theme’ (see also Paynter, 2020). For PVP studies in general, this is the notion that prosocial action and morality logically depend on the general recognition that people are to be treated with respect and are to express that respect to others. Such prosocial action – agency (e.g. Bandura, 2001) – in socially problematic situations requires resilience, one sign of which is the expression of primary agency in fraught situations. This provided a global theme for the 7PVP Curriculum of ‘other-focused, personally agentic resilience’ in socially problematic situations. The PVs and higher order coding themes supported replicability across PVP studies.

Coding and analysis

Grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) was used to code the students’ written responses to the scenario (Saldana, 2016). Prior PVP survey results had provided insights that led to the researchers identifying the students’ responses as PVs (e.g. Knowles and Smith, 2020; Smith and Knowles, 2017). Coding of the textual data (student survey responses) determined the PVs. The focus was on how students’ PVs pointed to their agency (the action the student would take from responses to Q1); the impetus for their actions (why they would take that action, Q2); and the validation of their impetus (how they would verify their reason was right, Q3). This facilitated the process of theory generation by allowing different PV categories to emerge (e.g. Diazgranados et al., 2016). Both researchers agreed on the criteria of the PVs that were clustered to represent the organisational themes/categories of agency, impetus and validation (see Online Appendix 3), as well as for the occurrence of CrT and for expressing community-level 4PP-taking.

Criteria for students using CrT

This code was used if students’ answers asked ‘What would happen if?’ and/or produced sequential thoughts; showed an understanding of reciprocity; were reasoned; discussed implications and consequences of the action; saw more possibilities or expressed alternatives. That is, they were identified as checking their thinking more abstractly or thinking ‘harder’ (e.g. Shim and Walczak, 2012). For example, Student 121 (Q3) wrote ‘I would say that because if you stand up to a bully they may do the right thing and because its [sic] wrong to lie’. This response was coded CrT because of the sequence of ideas – an understanding of implications (of telling the truth) and consequences of action (standing up to the bully). Another example of sequenced thinking was Student 113 (Q3) who responded ‘They could think that it is just a joke, they could also just do it to be rude, also I would tell a teacher because he threatened me’.

Criteria for students using 4PP

Using 4PP involved being able to generalise personal perspective inferences which encompassed community-wide perspectives; and/or keeping multiple perspectives in mind at the same time; looking at the big picture; understanding that people have different perspectives (e.g. Selman, 2003). Student 117, for example, in response to Q3 expressed a form of 4PP writing ‘I would say that because it’s not nice and if that photo was me, I would want someone to stand up for me’. A further example was Student 115 (Q2) when explaining why she would confront the bully, who wrote ‘I would say that because everyone has feelings whether boy or girl, we’er [sic] all human’.

Data analysis

As the occurrence of a particular PV is measured as either occurring or not, they formed categorical variables. The means depended on how many members each category had, that is, the proportion of students who used the PV for that question, for the pre-test and the post-test. This comparison was first done by graphing the data (Figures 1, 2 and 3 for Agency, Impetus and Validation PVs, respectively). As our variables were categorical, the number of things that fell into each combination of categories (i.e. frequencies) was analysed with a χ² test (e.g. Field, 2018).

Figure 1.

Agency factors, ‘What would you do?’

Figure 2.

Impetus PVs ‘Why would you do that (take that action)?’

Figure 3.

Validation PVs ‘How could you prove to someone that your reasons in Question 2 were right?’

Gains in use of particular categories provided a framework to understand how early adolescents respond to social situations following the PVP curriculum implementation. The Pearson χ² test was used to compare the pre- and post-test use of PVs for those identified in the graphs from error bar (95% confidence interval) comparison as plausibly providing a significant statistical result. Lack of overlap of the error bars indicated that the effect of the intervention caused use of the PV to be significantly different, as if the pre-test and post-test means were from different student populations (e.g. Field, 2018).

As ‘large effects can be deemed “non-significant” in small samples’, effect sizes were considered (Field, 2018: 89). These afforded a measure of the strength of association between categorical variables for the PVP intervention. Cramer’s V and/or odds ratios were used. Cramer’s V provides scores between 0 and 1 with ‘0.10 = small effect … , 0.30 = medium effect … 0.50 = large effect’ (Field, 2018: 117). For categorical data in 2 × 2 contingency tables as used in this study (pre-test/post-test and PV used/PV not used), odds ratios quantify variable relationships. Dividing the occurrence of the variable by its non-occurrence (PV odds) and comparing these for pre-test (pre-test odds) and post-test (post-test odds), and then dividing these, provided the odds ratios for the likelihood of post-test use of the PV compared to the pre-test.

Results and discussion

The coded student responses contained 18 PVs (basic themes) across the first three survey questions from which the categories of agency, impetus, validation, CrT and 4PP were established (see Online Appendix 3). Table 1 provides the counts for the various PVs across Questions 1, 2 and 3.

Table 1.

PV counts (N_pre-test = 121; N_post-test = 116).

	Q1 WHAT would you do? (Agency)
Test	PVs		Agency PVs
	A: Afraid	NA: Not afraid	P: Primary	S: Secondary	N: Non	CrT, Q1	4PP, Q1
Pre	14	24	64	44	36	13	14
Post	11	22	78	34	29	24	25
	Q2 WHY would you do this? (Impetus)
	Impetus PVs
	C: Confront Perp.	CB: Character Beliefs	E: Empathy – change Perp./support Zara	J: Judgement Perp. actions	CP: Compassion	PA: Pragmatic Approach	AA: Avoid Attention Perp.	NA: Not afraid Perp.	Cl: Clarify Perp. motive	CrT, Q2	4PP, Q2
Pre	48	31	29	22	13	14	15	10	4	18	18
Post	59	38	27	24	15	12	12	10	5	29	29
	Q3 HOW would you know you were right?									Q1, 2, 3 combined
	Validation PVs									TOTAL Q1, 2, 3
	CBv: Character Beliefs	Em: Empirical evidence	PAv: Pragmatic Approach	PC: Expect Perp. to change	AUT: Teacher Authority	AUB: Biblical Authority	PM: Protect myself	CrT, Q3	4PP, Q3	CrT, Q1, 2, 3	4PP, Q1, 2, 3
Pre	53	25	22	10	25	4	6	17	13	48	45
Post	74	34	16	8	15	6	7	34	16	87	70

CrT: critical thinking; 4PP: fourth-person perspective; PV: Personal Viewpoint.

Question 1 (Q1 – What would you do?) – Agency

The increase for Q1 in Primary Agency (P), CrT and 4PP (Figure 1) pointed to a positive effect of the PVP. For Q1 Statistical Analysis, see Online Appendix 4, and for examples of Agency PVs from student survey responses, see Online Appendix 3.

Agency

The language of the students’ resolutions was more agentic following the curriculum intervention with 15% more students identified as using the Primary Agency, ‘P’ PV. In the pre-test, an example would be Student 113 who wrote ‘Will it be bad for me, or will it be bad for you? Even though it is just a joke it can be hurtful to other people’. In the post-test, the stronger words of Student 104 who wrote ‘I would say to Finn that he has done something nasty and he should feel really bad. And to treat people like he would like’ suggested greater agency. The error bars for ‘P Primary’ (Figure 1) suggested this effect was significant which was confirmed, with χ² = 5.08, p = 0.024 (<0.05). The Cramer’s statistic of 0.15 suggested an effect size between small and medium. The odds ratio (1.81) showed that the number of students who used Primary Agency in the post-test was almost two times that in the pre-test. This indicated an inclination to become more personally involved with an agentic orientation of wanting to act to produce a good change in the situation, for example, student 104 above ‘ … to treat people like he would like’.

There was a concomitant decrease in the Secondary Agency responses, with 6% fewer students using this PV. An example is Student 118 who relied on others in his pre-test response – ‘This is not a joke – its [sic] bullying. I am going to tell the teachers because it is very mean’. This was not the case for the post-test – ‘It’s not a joke and it’s mean and unkind and should not have been made. You should apologise to Zara’. Though the ‘S’ decrease was not significant (see overlapping error bars for ‘S Secondary’), students were less inclined to seek the help of a substitute (a teacher, parents, police) to take action to resolve the cyberbullying issue, as this example illustrates. The pre/post odds ratio (ascertained from Table 1 data) showed that 1.4 times more students used this before the curriculum intervention than after. While asking for help is an effective action, it was anticipated that the PVP would encourage students to become more personally involved – I can act, I have power (Scholl and Sassenberg, 2014) – indicative of strengthened resilience, and this was shown in these ‘P’ and ‘S’ results. Additionally, less reliance on Secondary Agency, especially in relation to a bullying scenario, is a somewhat favourable result as it has been reported that bullying can be exacerbated by teacher involvement (Campbell, 2019; Urban, 2019).

There was a decrease of 5% in the students opting to not get directly involved – Non-agency (N Non). This PV signalled that ‘no comment was made about directly resolving the situation … ’ (see Online Appendix 3). While not significant (error bar overlap, Figure 1) this was a positive change. The odds ratio of 0.75 (using Table 1 data) also suggested fewer students were likely to use Non-agency after the curriculum intervention, although having no students choosing this path would have been preferable. Similarly, the percentage of students who were coded as being Afraid (A), while decreasing by 3%, still involved almost 10% of students. That these students knew what to do but would not do it for fear of the bully was problematic particularly as it suggested a suppression of their impulse to help.

CrT and 4PP

There was a gain of 10% in students using CrT in Q1 to articulate what they would do. There was a similar gain for 4PP. There was minimal error bar overlap in Figure 1 for both CrT and 4PP, so χ² analysis was included for these category combinations. Both were found to be significant – for CrT, χ² = 4.48, p = 0.035 (<0.05), and for 4PP, χ² = 4.29, p = 0.038 (<0.05). The odds ratios (CrT = 2.17 and 4PP = 2.11) showed that the number of students who used CrT and 4PP in describing what they would do to resolve the cyberbullying situation in the post-test was more than two times that in the pre-test.

Question 2 (Q2 – Why would you do that?) – Impetus

Reporting why students used the impetus they did for their agency helped establish the extent to which the PVP developed students’ social thinking. Figure 2 shows the various PVs coded as revealing Impetus in response to Q2. For Q2 Statistical Analysis, see Online Appendix 4, and for examples of Impetus PVs from student survey responses, see Online Appendix 3.

Impetus

Figure 2 shows that the largest gain was in the use of the ‘Confront the perpetrator’ (‘C’) PV, with 10% more students using this PV in the post-test. While error bars suggested a possibly significant gain, χ² = 2.996, it was not with p = 0.083 (>0.05). However, the odds ratio of 1.56 did suggest that more than 1.5 times more students used this PV in the post-test, a positive outcome especially as 51% of students (Figure 2) felt it was important to confront the bully and stop the bullying following the curriculum intervention. Student 126 wrote in the pre-test ‘I feel like just saying to stop isn’t going to do anything. It will just make them target me next’ compared to his post-test response, ‘I think getting people to actually reflect on themselves they will realise what they are doing is really stupid’. The issue of looking at confidence intervals rather than focusing on significance, especially for smaller samples (Field, 2018), is worthy of note for interpreting the ‘C’ PV data. One explanation may be that this PV was well used even before the curriculum intervention, so the increase was less marked.

There was an increase of 8% in the number of students who used their inner values, the ‘Character Beliefs’ (‘CB’) PV to explain their actions. While χ² = 1.462 was not significant (p = 0.23), the odds ratio of 1.43 did support the graphs suggestion that there was a notable gain in use of ‘CB’ for Q2.

As acting to confront the oppressor would be thought of as stressful, changes in impetus to be personally agentic by confronting the bully supported by one’s character beliefs were deemed to be expressions of increased personal resilience as per studies supporting the contention that resilience can be ‘learned’ (e.g. Liu et al., 2018; Patoine, 2019). These results provided evidence of a positive impact of the curriculum intervention on student resilience, a need increasingly recognised in Western societies such as Australia, in order for young people to overcome moral and other socially difficult situations (AGDE, 2018; McGonigle, 2017; Meichenbaum, n.d.).

The finding that 10% of students still wanted to avoid the bully’s attention (‘Avoid Attention’ (of the perpetrator/bully) – ‘AA’) is troubling. It suggested that these students really lacked the resilience required to stand up to bullies even after the curriculum intervention. This suggests a limitation of the PVP curriculum to help some students apply resilient thinking in resolving socially problematic situations and aligns with the 10% of students who used the ‘Afraid’ (A) PV in Q1. Wicking and Dean (2020: 52) have stressed that resilience development is best supported where students feel ‘connected, protected and respected’. The PVP requires that students be especially familiar with ‘respect’ as they explore the viewpoints of peers while treating others with honour where there is disagreement and appreciating uniqueness. T Lamont (personal communication, 18 December 2018) maintains this is especially the case in a Christian school such as this where ‘in everyone it is the same God at work, as per 1 Cor 12:4-6’. This may necessitate more scaffolding for some students and could well explain the continued fear of the bully that the 10% use of the ‘AA’ and ‘A’ PVs exposed.

Research also suggests that resilience is an experience-dependent active process. It requires mechanisms to be ‘awakened’ that mediate changes in the brain which ensure prompt return to pre-stress normality (e.g. Patoine, 2019; Russo et al., 2012). For some students, these mechanisms may not have been switched on in the past; their exposure to struggle or socially problematic situations may well have been limited (e.g. Stone, 2020).

Self-reflection is particularly beneficial to the emotional modulation and behavioural control indicative of resilience as it enables students to contemplate what they might do better next time (e.g. Bandura, 2001; Brodie, 2020; Markman et al., 1993). This equates to counterfactual thinking – to modulate thinking to consider alternative possibilities and consider changing the fact of what was done to influence/control what is done next time (Byrne, 2016). Impetus could be changed by a counterfactual challenge to a student’s initial (pre-test) PV orientation that was contrary to the Biblical curriculum. This teaching, especially if it is novel to the student, may result in a new (in a Christian school, Biblical) way of seeing what a person could do about bullying. For example, Student 111’s pre-test impetus was to avoid bullying – ‘I would say that because usually no one wants the subject of bullying to be them’ compared to wanting to stamp it out in her post-test – ‘I wouldn’t like that for me and I want to stop bullying, especially online because you can make up your user name [you can deceive]’. Changes in the use of the Character Beliefs PV and especially Confronting the bully suggest this type of thinking had occurred.

CrT and 4PP

Increase in students’ use of CrT and 4PP for considering the impetus behind their agency was anticipated because impetus requires thinking about the reasons one acted as one did (CrT). It also stimulated students to think beyond themselves as they deliberated on the implications of their actions from a broader community perspective (4PP). For both CrT and 4PP, 10% more students used this thinking to clarify the impetus behind their proposed actions, with error bars (Figure 2) suggesting possible significant effects. Due to their identical counts, both generated χ² = 3.82 and p = 0.051 (>0.05). While marginally not reaching significance, the odds ratio of 1.96 for both indicated that almost two times more students used CrT and 4PP in providing reasons for their actions following the 10-week curriculum. The group discussion activities, by requiring students to consider the thinking of others and influencing students to think about changing their own approach – to think counterfactually – played a part in adjusting their responses, a PVP curriculum goal.

Question 3 (Q3 – Why do you think you are right?) – Validation

The results of students’ responses to Q3 (Figure 3) provide further information regarding the PVP’s impact on students’ social thinking. For Q3 Statistical Analysis, see Online Appendix 4, and for examples of Validation PVs from student survey responses, see Online Appendix 3.

Validation

Following the PVP curriculum, 20% more students used the ‘Character Beliefs’ (CBv)¹ PV to validate their impetus for their actions in relation to the cyberbullying situation with error bars suggesting a significant effect. This was confirmed with χ² = 9.52, p = 0.002 (<0.01). The Cramer’s statistic of 0.20 indicated an effect size midway between small and medium. The odds ratio (2.26) showed the number of students who used CBv in the post-test was 2.26 times that in the pre-test. The highly significant increase in the use of ‘Character Beliefs’ for validating students’ agency (CBv) was deemed a PVP curriculum effect.

The pedagogical reliance on group discussions gave students practice at testing their PVs within their group and meant they were encouraged to articulate validations for their answers. This pushed students to clarify their thinking in relation to social problems arising from the Bible narratives and the related discussion of social situations in their own context. Their resultant thinking made students more aware of their consciously acquired beliefs as distinct from their default validation opinions. For example, Student 116 wrote in the pre-test ‘Imagine someone doing that to you’ but expressed a much stronger validation type answer in the post-test writing ‘If Zara found out, she would be hurt inside and humiliated too’. The greater use of Character Beliefs (CBv), as well as the gains in Empirical evidence (Em) and Pragmatic Approach for validation (PAv)² (Figure 3), signified that students were more aware of the value of their beliefs and had greater confidence in them and in a more pragmatic ‘reasoned compassion’ (Bloom, 2016). An example for Q3 was Student 64’s post-test response ‘If I talked to the bully and his face went white, I’d know he is guilty’ compared to the pre-test response ‘I’m not sure. Maybe I should ask someone to make sure’. Such an expression of healthier resilience could feasibly arise from the students’ appreciation and response to the examples of the experiences of characters in the Bible narratives they had studied as part of the 7PVP Curriculum.

Question 3 provided evidence of counterfactual thinking because, for many students, the process of validating their impetus for their actions involved determining from a suite of possible personal reasons the most likely one to be acted on. This effect can be seen in students’ greater reliance on their interpretation of empirical evidence because counterfactual thinking challenged them to consider other tangible evidence of effects of, and on, the bully. The 9% increase in the students who used ‘Empirical evidence’ (Em) following the PVP lessons was not significant (χ² = 2.37, p = 0.12 (>0.05)), however, the odds ratio (1.59) showed that ‘Em’ was actually used in the post-test by over 1.5 times more students. Concomitantly, students being less dependent on teacher’s authority, demonstrated by the 8% decrease in the number using ‘Teacher’s Authority’ (AUT), though not statistically significant (χ² = 2.53, p = 0.11 (>0.05)), supported this declared growth in self-reliance.

CrT and 4PP

There was an increase of 17% in the number of students using CrT for Q3, with χ² = 8.17, p = 0.004 (<0.01). The task of validating one’s impetus for one’s actions required cognitive activity that elicited deeper thinking for students to connect their impetus with their beliefs. The PVP provided students with opportunities to think about their thinking, such as in group discussions where they were required to listen to, appreciate and possibly accommodate other people’s PVs. When responding to Q3 in the post-test the students showed a greater facility to apply such thinking in validating the impetus for their projected actions and to check how others would be affected by the implications of their actions, seen as a significant gain in CrT.

Increase in use of 4PP apparent for the previous questions was not evident for Q3. The non-significant (error bars, Figure 4) 4PP increase of 3%, unlike for Q1 and Q2, was well below the increase for CrT. For many students, cognitive load associated with validation of their impetus possibly left less capacity for other thinking such as for perspective-taking (e.g. Arsalidou et al., 2013). A further possibility is that students trusted themselves more with their own thinking to do the right thing (increased CBv), for example, Student 10 (Q3) said ‘He may have looked guilty or maybe worried. Bullys [sic] don’t like to be or feel cornered’. This also comes through in the lesser reliance on other authorities (AUT).

Figure 4.

Use of CrT and 4PP across all questions.

Cross-survey use of CrT and 4PP

Figure 4 shows that use of CrT and 4PP thinking across the Cyber-bullying Scenario Survey increased across the whole survey following the 7PVP Curriculum intervention (for Statistical Analysis, see Online Appendix 7). CrT was used by 12% more students in the post-test than the pre-test, which was a highly significant gain, with χ² = 14.83 and p = 0.000 (<0.001). The increase of 8% in the number of students who used 4PP was similarly significant, χ² = 12.23, p = 0.000 (<0.001). There are many instances of student thinking changing in this way. An example for CrT is Student 15 whose impetus for the pre-test, ‘I would say that because it is the right thing to do’, was transformed in the post-test to ‘I say this because someone needs to know about this issue, to do something about it’. An example for 4PP is Student 125 whose thinking changed from ‘would you like it done to you?’ to ‘They are arousing feelings that could really effect [sic] them throughout there [sic] life. And could change there [sic] future’.

The PVP was shown to effectively augment the use of CrT and the use of other-focused personal perspective-taking even at the community level, in students’ understanding and resolutions of socially problematic situations.

Conclusions

Through discussion and self-reflection, students applied thinking identified in Biblical narratives (coded as PVs) to modern-day social situations. The PVP was explored using the 7PVP Curriculum. The positive effect on students’ expression of agentic orientation, CrT and 4PP processes signified these were teachable attainments.

The PVP curriculum’s biblical narratives, discussions and reflections focused on how Christians today could be involved in countercultural actions through counterfactual consideration of their own previous actions and recognition of societal conformity contrary to Jesus’ teaching. This PV pedagogical practice promoted student formation by facilitating awareness of the PVs of Jesus and the acquisition of Jesus-like countercultural thinking and actions; that is, of serving others both friend and foe, in-group and out-group. By occasioning familiarity with situations requiring action for victims of oppressors, the likelihood of confronting an oppressor was increased. Such prosocial action (agency) in socially problematic situations required resilience, one sign of which was the expression of primary agency in fraught situations.

The gain in students who would confront the bully and act on their character beliefs and the empirical evidence they observed – who had confidence in their increased reliance on their personal judgement – showed that resilience, an adaptative resource in the face of stress and promoted in the Bible as leading to character and hope (Rom 5:3), increased as a resource across the Year 7 cohort. This was judged to be indicative of a commitment to respectful relationships; to the notion seminal to the PVP that prosocial action depends on people being treated with respect and expressing that respect to others – a generalisable moral order which should be understood by all (Erikson, 1978) with roots in the Biblical command to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12:31, NIV).

The researchers recommend that schools make their Christian studies or other values-based learning more effective by using the PVP. These pedagogical practices increased students’ other-focused, personally agentic resilience in their social thinking. This was especially evident from the observation that students became more involved in solutions to problematic social situations through their own actions, rather than relying on others, and led to greater resilience in the face of a bully.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-ice-10.1177_2056997120966355 - Supplemental material for Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy and counterfactual thinking: Year 7 students’ development of agency, resilience, critical thinking and fourth-person perspective

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ice-10.1177_2056997120966355 for Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy and counterfactual thinking: Year 7 students’ development of agency, resilience, critical thinking and fourth-person perspective by Thomas Smith and Anne Knowles in International Journal of Christianity & Education

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-2-ice-10.1177_2056997120966355 - Supplemental material for Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy and counterfactual thinking: Year 7 students’ development of agency, resilience, critical thinking and fourth-person perspective

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-2-ice-10.1177_2056997120966355 for Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy and counterfactual thinking: Year 7 students’ development of agency, resilience, critical thinking and fourth-person perspective by Thomas Smith and Anne Knowles in International Journal of Christianity & Education

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Thomas Smith

Anne Knowles

Notes

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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