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Key Resources

• Guiding principles (31kb)
• The ‘Double Helix’ Relationship Between Quality Teaching and Values Education (170kb)

Engage: Teaching staff

• The National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools nominates quality teaching as a key element in the delivery of planned and systematic values education.  Effective values education, it says, is delivered by teachers 'in all areas of the curriculum and within total school life' who are skilled and resourced to practise values education 'in a variety of different models, modes and strategies'.
• Student learning is linked to connectedness to school, adults and the broader community. Both stages of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (2005–08) have demonstrated the particularly strong link between values education and quality teaching. This 'double helix' relationship has been described in detail by Lovat & Toomey in the ACDE Values Education Partnership Project. The evidence from these schools' experience is that values education underpins quality teaching and that quality teaching is the key to improved school and classroom environments and better student learning outcomes.
• The single most important factor influencing student outcomes is the teacher. But quality teaching is not only about cultivating students' cognitive development and higher order thinking skills. It is about enabling students and teachers to achieve the very best they can. This means that quality teaching fosters positive and mutually respectful relationships, and engages students emotionally by creating a safe, open and trusting environment in which the student as a whole person can develop.
• Most people choose teaching out of a deep commitment to helping students learn. This is a values decision. However, in pre-service teacher training, a focus on enabling student skills and knowledge and the teacher's role as 'values educator' is not always consciously developed. Moving into the values domain can thus be a significant leap for many staff. An explicit focus building a values-centred school environment invites teachers to revisit their own motivations for teaching and to reflect on their daily role as values educators within their classrooms and within the school community.
• A first step is to develop staff support for the notion of embedding values education into all aspects of their interaction with students: in the classroom, in curriculum, in their pedagogy, in school activity beyond the classroom walls and in the modelling they present to students. The second step is to support staff with the skills and understanding to practise values education in all they do.