About this resource
Values-centred Schools – A Guide is based on the Guiding Principles and Key Elements and Approaches outlined in the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005).
The Guide's information, advice, practical tools, resources and accounts from school practice are drawn in large part from major projects within the national values education program, 2005–09, funded by the Australian Government. In particular, the guide draws on:
- the school experiences and final reports of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Projects – Stage 1 and Stage 2 (2005–08)
- the research and publications of the Australian Council of Deans of Education Values Partnerships Project (2005–08)
- the key notes and reports of the National Values Education Forums (2004–08) and the National Values Education Conference (2009)
- the materials of the Values Education Curriculum and Professional Learning Resources Project (2005–09).
Visit the Values Education website to access and view all of these sources.
Values-centred Schools – A Guide is part of the Values for Australian Schooling suite of resources, developed and distributed to all Australian schools from 2005 to 2009. The Guide is designed to complement:
- Values for Australian Schooling Kit (2005)
- Building Values across the Whole School Resource Package (2007, 2009)
- Supporting Student Wellbeing through Values Education (2009)
- Values in Global and Cultural Contexts (2009).
About the school stories
This Guide is designed to offer practical advice and guidance to schools and school leaders. The authors have been determined to keep that advice grounded in the experiences, learning and reflections of actual school practice. Accordingly the Guide offers dozens of illustrative ‘stories’ from real school situations from across Australia and in many different school contexts.
Where the stories appear
The stories appear throughout the Guide in two different ways:
- short stories from individual schools/clusters appear in the In practice section of each theme, available in the left-hand navigation menu
- fuller, more elaborate stories from individual schools/clusters appear in the Key Resources, available from the right-hand navigation menu. They are also provided as PDF documents in the Stories menu available in the top menu bar.
All the stories offer authentic accounts from principals or other school leaders about their experiences in implementing or developing values-centred school cultures. Often they are success stories. Other times they are war stories. They are always learning stories.
Sources of the stories
The stories have been gathered from four main sources:
- the 50 school projects and final report of the 2002–03 Values Education Study
- the 26 cluster projects (166 schools) and final report of the 2005–06 Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 1 (VEGPSP Report – Stage1)
- the 25 cluster projects (143 schools) and final report of the 2006–08 Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 2 (VEGPSP Report – Stage2)
- research interviews with other school leaders who have led values education work in their schools with or without grant funding.
Identifying the story source
All the stories have basic identifiers but some are more detailed than others. Where stories have been gathered in interview confidentiality agreements require that school personnel and schools themselves are not named or identified.
Accordingly users should note that:
- the short stories often only provide a general identifier about the speaker, the school type and State/Territory location
- full stories gathered by interview have an ‘alias school’ name but a true jurisdictional identifier
- stories (short and full-length) gathered from the VES or VEGPSP Report – Stage1 and VEGPSP Report – Stage 2 provide actual speaker names, school/cluster name and locations.