In this dissertation, an educational perspective called the moral dimension of teaching is developed. The work includes a theoretically informed discussion from a pragmatist point of view in which the concept of pedagogical rhythm is introduced. The concept captures the need for teachers to regularly shift their intentions and occasionally act in contradictory ways as a consequence of the moral which emerges from interaction in pedagogical situations. Using this perspective, criteria are developed for the characteristics of discussions of the work of teachers, which are desirable in order for students in pre-service teacher education to have opportunities to develop their teachership. Secondly, the educational perspective as it is conceptualised serves as a theoretical framework for a study of discussions taking place in net-based seminars among students in teacher education. The study consists of 14 recorded seminars in which discussions of the work of teachers are analysed in terms of content and direction for reflection. The result of the analysis is a construction of four different focal points for processes of making judgements: existential, performative, critical and professional. Mainly the performative, and to some extent the critical, focal points appear to be supported by the net-based environment, although potential for the professional focal point is found when available tools in net-based settings are used in deliberate ways. Finally, based on these four focal points, possible future predispositions among student teachers are deliberated. Student teachers’ future opportunities to develop a moral and epistemological authority are discussed, as well as teachers’ general opportunities to exercise professional responsibility. The conclusion emphasises that a perspective such as the one developed in the dissertation is important, as it creates an understanding for the need to educate student teachers to exercise a form of responsibility that goes beyond being accountable to society.

TITLE: The Moral Dimension of Marriage in Young Adults AUTHOR: Alena Pikhartová DEPARTMENT: Department of Psychology SUPERVISOR: PhDr. Miroslav Klusák, CSc. ABSTRACT: The presented thesis is based on a study of moral psychology and its methodological tradition, particularly on Gilligan's morality of care. The marriage has become a subject of this research. The main source of the empirical data are interviews about the Wedding dilemma and following interviews about this topic. The aim of the research is to mediate an insight into young adults' reasoning about moral dilemmatic situations, that deal with a wedding and setting up the family, and to uncover a moral dimension of the marriage. This study is a contribution to the theories of morality, to the discussion about the acceptance and the rejection of the marriage, and to the discussion about moral dimmension of the marriage. According to my findings (and by using my methodological procedures) it is possible to find a difference in reasoning between married and unmarried respondents. The moral dimension of the marriage is consisted in the possibility of hurting the others in the case, that partners don't concur in the question of the marriage. One or the other is pressed (in this case into the marriage), or must renounce his or her needs. An...

The immense scope of Sir Thomas Malory¡¦s Le Morte Darthur has long kept daunting his readers. In terms of space, Malory includes both historical locations and imaginary and unnamed natural locales in his work. These places have different functions and therefore transmit different dimensions of spatial imagination. This dissertation examines three kinds of space¡Xwater as space, urban space and mystical space, and the aesthetic relations to these spaces in Le Morte Darthur. These named spaces and the selected locations in each category will be analyzed in the framework of microspace and macrospace, a structure proposed by Dick Harrison in conceptualizing medieval spatial experiences. Chapter one explores water as space. Some geographical sites, such as harbors, lakes, wells and rivers, and an imaginary space of Lancelot¡¦s tears as a qualitative concept are discussed in relation to the aquatic regenerative power. Particular interests are in how Malory accentuates differences which water exhibits in these sites and how water functions as a link to the past and to the future via language and spatial verticality. The second chapter moves to urban space, localized in specific places. This chapter aims to explicate how some medieval cities in Le Morte Darthur are consecrated or deconsecrated as a result of the city¡¦s association with distinct social and moral/immoral activities. The final chapter discusses mystical space. The places of sojourn of the Grail knights during their quest are marked by spatial verticality and horizontality, in proportion to each knight¡¦s moral worthiness. These locales form a preparatory path towards the space where the Grail vision and a divine message are ultimately revealed. An analogy between the interior space of the Grail and the extracosmic void space is drawn in order to convey the essence of the Grail in spatial terms. The progression from chapter one to three reflects a tendency from the physical to the mystical world of the human existence imagined in Malory¡¦s work. Moral dimension plays an important role in that it enables the transformation from microspace to macrospace in some instances. The term ¡§aesthetic spaces¡¨ will include both microspace and macrospace, in which Malory employs real and imaginary sites to fulfill his aesthetic ideal. ¡§Aesthetic spaces,¡¨ when taken in a broader sense, will also apply to ¡§poetic space¡¨ when language results in the transference of space which characters experience. Three categories of texts will be employed in the discussion: literary, historical and theoretical texts. The first group includes Le Morte Darthur, some major medieval English romances and chronicles and the Old French prose Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles; the second, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century philosophical, religious and historical documents; and the last, theories of medieval spatial thinking from Harrison and Mircea Eliade. Through comparisons of a number of passages in Le Morte Darthur and these two French versions, this writer attempts to show that Malory, as the first writer to incorporate the Grail narrative into Arthurian romance in England prior to the late fifteenth century, succeeds in presenting microspatial and macrospatial thinking in Le Morte Darthur.

In this dissertation, an educational perspective called the moral dimension of teaching is developed. The work includes a theoretically informed discussion from a pragmatist point of view in which the concept of pedagogical rhythm is introduced. The concept captures the need for teachers to regularly shift their intentions and occasionally act in contradictory ways as a consequence of the moral which emerges from interaction in pedagogical situations. Using this perspective, criteria are developed for the characteristics of discussions of the work of teachers, which are desirable in order for students in pre-service teacher education to have opportunities to develop their teachership. Secondly, the educational perspective as it is conceptualised serves as a theoretical framework for a study of discussions taking place in net-based seminars among students in teacher education. The study consists of 14 recorded seminars in which discussions of the work of teachers are analysed in terms of content and direction for reflection. The result of the analysis is a construction of four different focal points for processes of making judgements: existential, performative, critical and professional. Mainly the performative, and to some extent the critical, focal points appear to be supported by the net-based environment, although potential for the professional focal point is found when available tools in net-based settings are used in deliberate ways. Finally, based on these four focal points, possible future predispositions among student teachers are deliberated. Student teachers’ future opportunities to develop a moral and epistemological authority are discussed, as well as teachers’ general opportunities to exercise professional responsibility. The conclusion emphasises that a perspective such as the one developed in the dissertation is important, as it creates an understanding for the need to educate student teachers to exercise a form of responsibility that goes beyond being accountable to society.