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

The national gatherings proved an invaluable
forum for professional development around
values understanding and the creation of a shared
vision for participating teachers. These gatherings
also promoted a whole centre approach. Youth
workers joined teachers for two of the gatherings,
enabling useful exploration of the relationship
between the educational and correctional aspects
of the juvenile detention centres.
As one of the youth workers observed:
When staff sit down with the kids in the unit and
are able to actively supervise and interact...then...
the kids [want] to be involved a lot more, and what
I could see in some of the sessions...was...kids at all
different levels of education and, I guess, personal
experiences, were able to disclose to some of
those that were perhaps a bit younger, maybe not
exposed to quite as much, and put it in...their own
terms, what a specific value actually...meant for
them. And then how other younger kids could then
relate to that value, whether it was…very much a
family orientated type value or whether it was…
talking about tolerance and that’s when…mum’s
had a gutful and she doesn’t want to do anything
more or the other kids are screaming and to make
the other group understand…so…that’s been…quite
a good journey. And one that I think should continue.
The cluster also completed two pre-, mid- and
post-project surveys. The first was a Personal
Wellbeing Index, which sought responses to
the question ‘How happy are you’, for seven
domains. The second tool was developed by
the cluster itself, and asked participants to
rate the importance of each of the nine Values
for Australian Schooling from the National
Framework for Values Education in Australian
Schools (DEST 2005) in order to better understand
the students’ relationship to values, and to
observe changes in these relationships over
the life of the project.
In addition to these tools, the cluster collected
‘impact stories’ from the students, in which
the students reflected on what they felt they
had gained from the project. The following
student excerpt exemplifies the comments
in the impact stories:
The most important value...at the moment for me is
respect. Because you get some of these other values,
like a fair go and freedom, if you show respect in
the first place. Because some of these things don’t
just come, you have to be good to others, and
then good things will happen. So, yeah…respect
is the most important one for me…If you want to
change…it’s all up to the person. Nothing else can
make them change. But I suppose…the VASP project
has…helped in a way…for me to see things in a
different point of view, and just start giving back
to the community instead of taking from them.
The greatest challenges for this cluster arose from
its unique context. The student population was
transient, parents could not be included and the
community referred mostly to the correctional
facility. It was challenging to maintain focus on
a whole centre approach given the competing
educational and correctional objectives of the
centres. Further, the profile of the student
population – generally the most disengaged and
disaffected students – posed a real challenge
in terms of developing socially shared values.
The cluster focused on using thinking, feeling,
doing and discussing as the best method of
sustaining the values work beyond each student’s
stay in a centre. Each school implemented the
‘giving’ project according to its local needs. The
variety of projects included artistic performance,
community projects, service projects (such as
creating an artwork for a women’s refuge),
building and construction, and development of
innovative curriculum. Overall, the staff involved
in the project felt that it had a significant impact
on their teaching and provided opportunities to
enable young people to understand and respect
values, and to look within themselves at how they
could use values to effect positive change. This
extended account from a teacher in one centre
illustrates how the project worked in one context:
Prior to the VASP project...because of our
predominantly short-term remand context,
we really considered values education to be
something that wasn’t highly relevant to us...
Participation in this project…was a catalyst for
us to focus on…what can we do...and as a result
of joining in this project we really embarked on
quite an exciting and different journey as a school
community. We commenced with brainstorming as
to how we, as a whole school staff, could facilitate
values education.
78 Giving Voice to the Impacts of Values Education: The Final Report of the Values in Action Schools Project