Civil Depth Perception: An Experiment in Competence Development
Publisher: University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Lund University, Sweden
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Lund, Sweden
Language: eng
Format: Paper
Number of pages: 21
Description: This article focuses on the perception of the surface and deep dimensions of a society and its relation to competence. 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium participated in an experiment in which they were at two occasions exposed to video taped projections of model societies. They responded to 15 statements marking the degree of certainty with which they perceived quality of life in these societies. The instrument measures Life Quality (LQ in a certain civilisation by two factors, Eigenvalue (FI, and Visibility of Social Texture (FII. The model societies are based on three modes of modelling man interacting with his society, specifically on the concepts of (1) behaviourism, (2) structuralism, and (3) process. The function of these concepts has been to specify the actual society, namely Sweden. It is assumed that Sweden is familiar to the participants but conceptually unknown. Between the two occasions of video exposures the students were given a nine weeks course in modern ideas and concepts, especially those, which have been made dependent on 20th- century novels and which connect to the three models. The certainty, with which the students perceive Eigenvalue and its conservation in Social Texture in the four societies, differs significantly from the first to the second occasion. The first time, the only society that meets the requirements is the society based on behaviour modification, while the other three seem unspecified to all the students. The second time a dramatic change takes place in that, firstly, Sweden now is assessed with highest certainty, and, secondly it gets its conceptual specification mainly by the behaviourist model. Thus the study has shown that the students have augmented their conceptual understanding of the dimensionality of a society and have come to “know” the society they live in.
Table of contents: title: Civil Depth Perception: An Experiment in Competence Development  3; title: Method  4; title: Participating Students  5; title: Materials  5; title: Behaviour model; title: Humanist model; title: Growth model; title: Operationalized Theory  6; title: Illustrations  7; title: Analysis of Dialogue Text  9; title: Measuring Instrument   10; title: Design and Procedure   12; title: Results   12; title: Civil Disparity - Occasion (1)  13; title: Civil Disparity - Occasion (2)  16; title: Conceptual Foundation  17; title: Discussion  19; title: References  20