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Key Resources

• Recommendations to Australian schools about the principles of good practice in values education (36kb)
• Principles of good practice in values education (44kb)
• Griffith Primary and Secondary Schools cluster
• Merrylands Guildford cluster
• Sea and Vales cluster

Implement: Curriculum and co-curriculum

• Developing a values-centred school necessitates that values education is taking place within the curriculum, within the co-curriculum and beyond the curriculum. As part of the curriculum and co-curriculum programs and the teaching and learning activities of the school, values education occupies a place in the cross-curriculum domain. In the development of the national curriculum, values education is acknowledged as part of the general capabilities to be explicitly addressed in the content and elaborations of the curriculum. In the values-centred school the values-centred curriculum includes the practice of value-centred pedagogy. Download the Curriculum Design Paper from ACARA and review, in particular, Section 4.2: General capabilities. 
• The National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools notes that 'schools and educational leaders recognise that values interact with and are integral to all key learning areas'. The National Framework identifies a set of nine shared values for Australian schooling and expects 'individual schools will develop their own approaches to values education in partnership with their local school communities'. It urges schools to 'apply their values education priorities to their overall curriculum provision' and use values education 'within and beyond the classroom to help develop students' social and civic skills and build student resilience and responsibility'.
• The final reports of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stages 1 and 2 provide numerous examples and extended case studies of different ways values education can be implemented within particular learning areas and across the curriculum. See Griffiths cluster, Merrylands–Guildford cluster and Sea and Vales cluster from VEGPSP Report – Stage 2. The reports highlight the following key principles of values education that are generic to any approach in the curriculum and co-curriculum:
  
  1. Values must be explicitly articulated and explicitly taught.
  2. Values education is an integrated curriculum concept rather than a program, an event or 'addition' to curriculum.
  3. The values explicitly taught are also the values modelled in the teaching and learning process and all of school activity.
  4. Values education is as much about how students are taught as what they are taught.
  5. A values-centred curriculum must provide opportunities for students to reflect about the values and practise the values in action.
  6. Values education uses values-centred and student-centred pedagogies within all curriculum.
• A values-centred curriculum means values are explicitly threaded through curriculum planning, curriculum design for all key learning areas, student engagement in curriculum development, integration with co-curricular programs, pedagogical approaches, classroom operations, assessment and reporting.