Values Education and Quality Teaching

Some revision of public schooling history is necessary to challenge the dominant mythology that public schools were established on the grounds of values-neutrality. In fact, those responsible for the foundations of public education in Australia were sufficiently pragmatic to know that its success relied on its charter being in accord with public sentiment. Part of the pragmatism was in convincing those whose main experience of education had been through some form of church-based education that state-based education was capable of meeting the same ends. Hence, the documents of the 1870s and 1880s that contained the charters of the various state and territory systems witness to a breadth of vision about the scope of education. Beyond the standard goals of literacy and numeracy, education was said to be capable of assuring personal morality for each individual and a suitable citizenry for the soon-to-be new nation. As an instance, the NSW Public Instr- tion Act of 1880 (cf. NSW, 1912), under the rubric of "religious teaching", stressed the need for students to be inculcated into the values of their society, including understanding the role that religious values had played in forming that society's legal codes and social ethics. The notion, therefore, that public education is part of a deep and ancient heritage around values neutrality is mistaken and in need of se- ous revision. The evidence suggests that public education's initial conception was of being the complete educator, not only of young people's minds but of their inner character as well.

Presenting ground breaking research on the relationship of values education and quality teaching

Values Education and Quality Teaching: Two Sides of the Learning Coin.- Perspectives from Research and Practice in Values Education.- Student Action Teams, Values Education and Quality Teaching and Learning-Case Study from the Manningham Cluster, Victoria.- Placing Values at the Centre of School Policy and Classroom Practice-A Case Study of Modbury School, South Australia.- Moving Values Beyond the Half Hour: Peer Leadership and School Vision-A Case Study of the Townsville Cluster, Queensland.- Valuing Diversity in Children's Voice: A Case Study of Children, Stewardship and Mapping the Care of Special Places in the Western Australian Cluster.- Values and Quality Teaching at West Kidlington Primary School.- A Perfect Match: Living Values Educational Program and Aventura City of Excellence School, USA.- The Double Helix and Its Implications for the Professional Lifelong Learning of Teachers.

This book reports on the results of the Australian Government's Values Education Program that illustrate the vital role played by relationships of care, trust and respect with teachers if students are to achieve both academically and more broadly.