Giving Voice to the Impacts of Values Education The Final Report of ...

Lanyon Cluster also focused strongly on values
and Indigenous culture in its curriculum unit
development. By doing this, teachers fostered
intercultural understanding and social cohesion
across the schools.
Teachers in the cluster commented on the
transformative impact of the values education
work. One noted ‘…the project has allowed
me to examine my own thoughts about being
caring and compassionate’. Another commented
on the increased student engagement and
improved literacy outcomes that resulted from
incorporating explicit values approaches across
the curriculum:
I have discovered that teaching values in no way
‘takes away’ from literacy or numeracy time; if
anything it makes literacy and numeracy more
meaningful and thus engages the students more,
which means that their learning is increased.
Consistent with this perception of improved
literacy outcomes, another teacher observed
that students were treating one another better
because of their increased understanding and
tolerance of difference:
There is no doubt that D’s writing skills improved
due to the literacy component of the unit. However,
I also believe that without the focus on tolerance
and understanding, the improvement would not
have been so great…It was clear that the focus on
tolerance and understanding in the classroom
gave the children opportunity to express their own
opinions in their writing…the values component
of the unit enabled the students to understand
that they all have strengths and weaknesses…My
students learnt to value each other’s differences
instead of teasing each other.
Students also remarked on improved relationships
resulting from explicit values teaching and
learning. In this instance, deep self-reflection
allowed the student to comment on his changed
understandings and behaviours that resulted
from an investigation of integrity and its meaning
in his life:
In Grade 6 I was, I guess, a bully…I used to bully an
overweight kid…and I only did it ‘cause my friends
were doing it. And it didn’t really feel right, but I
did it anyway ‘cause I didn’t know what respect
was, I didn’t know what integrity was. So once we
had a semester on…learning about respect…[I]
learned what it was and pretty much just stopped.
[I] stopped hanging out with the mean kids. And
now I’m friends with [the kid I bullied].
This courageous and powerful story attests to the
supportive values-based climate at schools within
the cluster. It shows the power of explicit values
education to give students the language and
opportunity to connect their inner feelings with
their actions.
Teachers across the cluster also commented
on the incremental improvements resulting
from sustained values teaching and learning.
A common observation from teachers was that
many students did not understand what some
values concepts meant, or why they might be
useful and applicable in their lives. Teachers
needed to consistently model, discuss and refer
to behaviours to build students’ understanding.
As one teacher put it:
In my class I’ve got a couple of [students with]
really big challenges in their behaviour and…one
of them…his behaviour was…triggered adversely
by students within the class who would not value
him, not show him the care and compassion which
he obviously…needed. As part of doing this values
unit…our focus was care and compassion [and]
something that was really significant to me was
at the beginning of the year, even though my class
were fairly cohesive, what really stood out was that
they didn’t really have a deep understanding of
what care and compassion actually was. And at
the beginning of the unit, their responses were very
materialistic, very much about self.
As the unit developed, the children were starting to
give each other compliments, initially when they
thought I was listening to it, because they were
obviously expecting me to notice and [say] ‘well
Section 3: Accounts of the VASP cluster projects
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