GREVOL (Group for Educational Innovation in Values Education) is an educational innovation group promoted by the Institute for Education Sciences of the Technical University of Valencia (UPV). The Group comprises 20 professionals, most of whom are university lecturers in disciplines related to the courses taught at the UPV, although its members also include administrative and service staff and an intern.
Higher education institutions train citizens who will perform key roles in society as professionals who have decision-making responsibilities in public and private sectors of society. Introducing values education and professional ethics is important for raising students' awareness of the social value of their professional work. Nevertheless, values education occupies a marginal position in academic syllabuses.
Introducing values education in technical disciplines poses a number of difficulties that need to be identified so that appropriate strategies can be developed. One of the greatest of these lies in defining the generic skills that students of scientific and technical disciplines need to acquire in the area of professional ethics. In this area, defining a suitable methodology and carrying out pertinent research prior to drawing up appropriate syllabuses are challenges that must be overcome.
As well as the difficulties associated with the methodology and definition of competencies, a lack of coordination and collaboration between teaching staff makes it more difficult to produce teaching materials and research proposals.
GREVOL (Group for Educational Innovation in Values Education) is an educational innovation group promoted by the Institute for Education Sciences of the Technical University of Valencia (UPV). The Group comprises 20 professionals, most of whom are university lecturers in disciplines related to the courses taught at the UPV, although its members also include administrative and service staff and an intern.
The aim of GREVOL is to improve the teaching skills of university lecturers in order to encourage ethics education for students of technology and science.
The specific objectives of the Group include:
Promoting the training of teaching staff in the field of values education.
Designing materials and methodologies for introducing values education in various disciplines.
Promoting ethical institutional management and self-assessment tools for university units.
The group was born of a training course for university lecturers on professional ethics for university teaching staff, held in 2001. Because the course was so successful, another course was held on values education in science and technology. In September 2002, the people who attended the courses, as well as other people involved in the field, were asked whether they would be interested in setting up an interdisciplinary group so that they could put into practice that which had been learnt in the courses. GREVOL began to operate informally at the beginning of the 2002-2003 academic year and was formally founded in November 2003.
In 2005, the group began to receive partial funding from the Vice-Rectorate of Courses and European Convergence. As well as financial support, the Group receives valuable institutional support as an active member of the university community.
GREVOL operates an open system and teaching staff take part on a voluntary basis. The group is highly interdisciplinary as the lecturers involved come from technical fields and areas such as philology, philosophy and law.
The group works as a centre for reflection and exchange of experiences and each lecturer is responsible for spreading the knowledge developed in GREVOL and applying it in the discipline that he or she teaches.
The working process may vary but it basically involves the following:
Reading and discussing texts.
Exchanging lecturers' experience of classroom dynamics.
Designing teaching materials and strategies for teaching values education at universities. Particular attention is paid to the methodology of moral dilemmas and to generating materials for different disciplines. Covering the specific training requirements of group members through self-education. These requirements are generally related to specific teaching methodologies and techniques that allow the knowledge attained through theoretical training to be put into practice.
GREVOL has been involved in drawing up codes of ethics at UPV, and the case of the School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEI) is an example of this. The ETSEI underwent a process for drawing up an institutional code of ethics, which was divided into three stages. First, the ethical problems facing the institution and its members in their daily activities were defined and analyzed. This initial phase included defining problems such as lack of respect, selfishness, low levels of commitment to the institution, etc. The second phase involved considering the ethical values associated with these problems, such as freedom, respect and humility. Finally, through a process of debate and public reflection, the guiding principles for institutional practice at the ETSEI were definitively formulated. These included freedom, respect, dialogue, responsibility, integrity and commitment, and they were related in the code of ethics to the specific practices that must be adhered to by all members of the institution.
Other activities that have been carried out in connection with GREVOL include:
Meetings with experts in university environments similar to that of GREVOL. Contact is maintained particularly with the Technical University of Madrid, the University of Barcelona, the Technical University of Catalonia and the Faculty of Philosophy of the UPV.
On some occasions, the exchange of ideas has led to joint projects, such as the dissemination sessions held in conjunction with the University of Barcelona's Moral Education Research Group. Specific (local and long distance) training courses on ethical learning aimed at lecturers in science and technology were also organized and taught with the Technical Universities of Madrid and Catalonia.
Finally, the Group also focuses on the systematization of its initiatives and their dissemination in national and international forums.
The GREVOL website (http://grevol.webs.upv.es/presentacion.htm) provides access to exercises and activities that university lecturers can use to incorporate values education into their teaching. The exercises are moral problems accompanied by the appropriate methodology for fostering debate and discussion in the classroom.
Twelve of the 20 GREVOL members have incorporated values education into their classes. A values education perspective can be incorporated into different disciplines in one of two ways: via the transversal incorporation of values education into a subject of a markedly technical nature or by introducing a free elective subject specifically on this topic.
Fifty-four percent of subjects in which values education is included are core or compulsory with a strong technical profile.
In the case of free elective subjects, in which the lecturer has greater freedom to design the syllabus, values education may figure in part or all of the syllabus. The proportion of GREVOL lecturers who have incorporated values education into their free elective subjects is 84%.
Currently, eight of the 15 schools and faculties of the UPV teach courses featuring aspects of values education.
To date, the UPV has organised two working sessions designed to raise awareness of ethical learning, in which the entire university community could take part.
The following book has been published by GREVOL: Boni and Lozano (coord.): La educación en valores en la universidad. Los dilemas morales como herramienta de trabajo en los estudios científico-técnicos (Values Education at Universities: Moral Dilemmas as a Work Tool in Science and Technology Courses). Valencia, 2005. Editorial UPV.
Various members of GREVOL have participated in writing the following book: Construir la ciudadanía global desde la universidad (Building Global Citizenship at Universities). Barcelona, 2006. Intermón Oxfam.
Over the course of GREVOL’s activities, several articles have been published in national and international journals.
GREVOL has driven the process of drawing up the code of ethics of the School of Industrial Engineering at the UPV (http://www.etsii.upv.es/general/etico/).
GREVOL is collaborating on the reform of the UPV’s statutes by introducing aspects of the ethical working of the institution.
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