Why Valuing the Individual Matters to Learning

Quakers often refer, with self-deprecating humour, to their individualism. The non-hierarchical structure of belief and importance of personal testimony all contribute to a distinctive and robust sense of the importance of the individual. In descriptions of their school, each of the schools studied reflected this by drawing attention to the importance of one particular Quaker testimony: “There is that of God in everyone”. This chapter will explore this theme and how students and teachers describe being able to be themselves. How this contributes to students feeling free to discover their own pathways to understanding will be examined, along with teachers’ attitudes to educational objectives beyond examination success. Ideas emerging from the findings suggest new ways to understand the importance of fostering self-determination in students, including how this psychological disposition is connected to social contexts and the values that shape these.