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

I have realised that giving part of yourself makes me feel really great…this has helped me to change.
(Student reflection, final VASP report, Lanyon Cluster)
I felt good…I could see we were making a difference…doing something good. (Student reflection, final VASP
report, Lanyon Cluster)
Evidence of the impact of the VASP on student agency can also be seen in reflective comments from teachers.
One teacher referred to students developing a values perspective, where they ‘take ownership of their
choices [and] actions…’ (Teacher reflection, post-project survey). One wrote: ‘Students got a lot of meaning
out of focusing on particular values which could then be consolidated by putting these into use in the
community’ (Teacher reflection, post-project survey). Another asserted that ‘students have to own their own
values education. Then it will happen and be sustained’ (Teacher reflection, final VASP report, Melbourne
Eastern Regions Cluster).
The following story excerpts from parents further illustrate how the values learnt through giving, service
and outreach have become integral to children’s lives:
I think [my son] Callum’s got a natural empathy in his character anyway, and I think [the project on poverty]
helped deepen that…An example of his empathy and his willingness to help others is in the holidays he was
asked to help feed a cat across the road and to help out the family, and he was willing to do so…at the end of
the holidays the family came home and offered him money and said, ‘You must take the money.’…He said,
‘No, I really wanted to do this, because this is what I enjoy doing’. But they insisted. So anyway he took the
money but he felt uncomfortable. So he decided to deal with that by sharing his money around with his
friends…[he] told me that…he would prefer just to do the job without having been paid. And his motivation
was just to be kind rather than financial. (Parent MSC story, Southern Highlands Schools)
It’s having an opportunity to talk to people outside of her normal scope of family, has made a big difference
with her. And just yeah, she comes home and she is now interested in their stories and because she can
contact her grandparents because they live away, you know she will often get on the phone now and go,
‘Oh, what did you do today’ Instead of before it was always about what I did today and so it is a big change
in her whole conversation. (Parent MSC story, Greater Brisbane Cluster).
Explicit focus on ethical, intercultural and social issues
Several clusters designed curriculum and learning experiences for students around ethical, intercultural and
social issues, through which they could explore their values and discover more about themselves and others.
Examples of these include: fundraising; the youth forum on refugees; the Big Day In forum on poverty;
investigations of religions in Asia and human rights; online philosophical inquiries into ‘big questions’; and
the creation of virtual relationships and a study of the ethical dilemmas associated with these relationships.
The development of students’ intercultural understanding is powerfully represented in the story of change
above (Story 4, Evaluation Summit, Section 2), where one student describes how an individual can help to
bridge the cultural divides that exist in the school and community. Inspired by personal stories of refugees
and their experiences prior to and after their arrival in Australia, this student chose to cultivate relationships
with refugee students in the school.
Section 2: Impacts of the Values in Action Schools Project
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