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• Recommendations to Australian schools about the principles of good practice in values education (36kb)

Implement: School heart

• The National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools urges schools to 'engage in articulating the school's values through the school mission and ethos'. The values are the heart of any school ethos. The National Framework suggests that quality values education programs arise in part from schools and their communities identifying what the community values (its guiding ethos) and working together (whole-school approach) to see it actualised. A good starting point to establish the values, to find the heartbeat of the ethos, is to ask 'big picture' questions: What sort of school do we have now? What sort of school do we want for our students? What place do values hold in our school? What values are expressed in our policies and practice? What values are evident and real in our policies and practice?
• The important role of the questioning is that it examines, and starts a conversation about, the explicit and implicit values of the school culture.
• The Final Report of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 1, Implementing the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools – highlighted the 'need for people to talk first about the ethos they wished to establish before engaging in any values education program activity'. It encouraged the use of an 'invitational approach' to teachers and parents in creating a values conversation. View, in particular, points 1, 2 and 8 in the Recommendations to Australian schools.
  

• It is a conversation for the whole school community: school leadership, teachers, ancillary staff, students and parents. The conversations need time to ferment and take hold. The aim is to create a real dialogue about values in the school – an exchange of views, concerns, ideas and ideals. Schools need to create meaningful and inclusive opportunities for both formal and informal conversations. Discussions can be supported with activities to probe, gather opinion, share information, explore meanings and promote reflection. Useful tools to inform and encourage the conversation include surveys, focus groups, web research, articles, stories, school forums, student presentations, barbecues and newsletters.
• Taking stock of which values are operating in the school is an important part of getting started. In conducting a values audit you will be testing the reality, finding the gaps, adding to the conversation and working toward a new vision. Audits are one way of having evidence-based conversations about the values in the school organisation, programs and operations. Audits also provide an opportunity to describe, analyse and interpret the school culture in a snapshot and over a longer period of time. The audit results should be shared with staff, students and the parent community as part of the dialogue. The audit also can be used as a baseline benchmark and a tool for monitoring your school's progress.
• From the audit and the conversations, a shared values language will emerge. The school community is able to move to the next step of naming an agreed set of shared and endorsed values that will become the heart of the school's life and culture. These explicit values and the shared language around them will be the touchstone for building the school's ethos. 'Get your values right, make them clear and put them everywhere.' (Werribee cluster, VEGPSP Report – Stage 1)