Monitor: In Practice

Now that our core values are in place after approximately three years, we are mindful of continually monitoring how these values are enacted in order to ensure congruence between policies, practices and espoused values. We are starting to document changes we see in the school – this is on a large whiteboard in the staffroom where we have set up a matrix. We look at the whole gamut – affective behaviours, classroom management, the way students behave in the yard, how teachers and students interact – and we also keep records of our interactions with the parents. We have not yet set up systems for this as our energies have been focused on implementing the values approach. The next stage is systematically putting in the processes to monitor and evaluate not only the behaviours and attitudes and the way it feels around the school but also to explore whether the environment is having an impact on learning – that is, looking at the state testing results in literacy and numeracy.

Principal, small government primary school (SA)

As far as measurement [of values education outcomes] is concerned, I do feel that it's not realistic to point to specifics. I think you can only tell with soft measures – the good news stories and the bad ones. Sometimes when we are working so hard and there's an incident in the yard, I wonder whether the values are really part of the kids' psyche. Then my faith is restored by an incident like one recently when we had intruders in the school and our student leaders were the ones who approached the principal asking to run a year-level meeting to discuss and resolve the issue. They ran the whole thing and worked through some pretty significant issues. The staff were in the room but did not need to say a word. That kind of student initiative is the best evaluation you can get – but as I said, it's not something readily measurable. When we see parents coming into the school for Harmony Day – parents who never had any contact with the school in the past – well we know the values approach is working and making these changes in school culture – but what measurement or evaluation tool could you possibly have to capture these things? It's about the atmosphere – the way the rooms look, the way the kids hold themselves.

Deputy principal, government secondary school (NSW)

I used the school review data that comes out annually from Central Office based on test results as the starting point for monitoring and evaluation at our school. I used data and evaluation as a way of creating the cultural shift in the school. By presenting or even confronting staff with our literacy and numeracy test results it was clear that we needed to get onto school improvement in a serious way and start to document what and how we were going about the teaching and learning enterprise. I also found the initial values survey very useful as a foundation for working with staff on the kinds of tools we should be using and the kinds of practices we needed to monitor and evaluate our school ethos and operations. We use the data as a summary document. It tells us how we've gone in the past twelve months, gives us a point of comparison with the preceding years and also gives us an audit starting point for future planning because it shows us the gaps we still need to work on.

Principal, government high school (SA)

The Stage 2 clusters were encouraged to attend more consciously to monitoring and evaluating the values education work. As the cluster case studies show, a number made significant efforts to develop empirical data based on a variety of measures and tools (climate surveys, test score comparisons, incident reports, staff surveys and the like) that would provide evidence of outcomes for students and for other sectors of the school community. Cluster experiences also suggest that positive outcomes in values education can be achieved through a continuous and supported action research cycle that monitors and evaluates the intended values education approaches among the teaching staff.

VEGPSP Report – Stage 2

The PERSIST project was a staff-initiated values-centred project focused on teaching, learning, assessing and reporting on competencies in three areas – skills for lifelong learning, skills for individual achievement and skills for living in a civil society. The school introduced student portfolios to recognise the qualities being fostered in students and to systematically report on them. To date, the school has identified eight major outcomes of the PERSIST project. These include:

1. There has been a more active involvement by students in a wider range of school programs.
2. Feedback from parents, employers and the community has increased and is increasingly positive.
3. There has been a more systematic integration of values education and student welfare strategies into the classroom, co-curricular and extracurricular programs.
4. There has been a measureable shift to a more broadly based culture of student responsibility and more harmonious relationships.
5. There has been a greater willingness among students to celebrate both their own success and that of their peers.

Principal, Rooty Hill High School: adapted from Christine Cawsey, 'Naming, Measuring and Modelling the Values of Public Education', in Susan Pascoe (ed) Values Education, Australian College of Educators, Canberra, 2002, pp 79–80