Neville Clement

Quality teaching and values education: coalescing for effective learning

Awareness of the potential of quality teaching (or teacher excellence in content, knowledge and pedagogy) to impact upon student achievement is an outcome of recent school‐effectiveness research. This research has extended the understanding of the conception of ‘teacher’ beyond surface factual learning to that of induction into learning of intellectual depth, which engages the more sophisticated skills of ‘communicative capacity’ and ‘self‐reflection’. Habermas provides a conceptual framework for this expanded notion through the awareness that knowing extends beyond factual knowledge to the challenge of ‘communicative knowledge’ and ‘self‐reflectivity’. Quality teaching alerts educators to the potential of the role of explicit teaching in values education and, in turn, the capacity of values education to complement and even enhance the learning goals implicit in quality teaching. By this is meant that values education has potential to remind individuals and systems that it is the affective and relational aspects of teaching that ultimately give it its power and positive effect. Data from the Australian Governments Values Education Good Practice Schools project are offered as evidential support for this hypothesis.

The pedagogical imperative of values education

Recent research has exposed the potential of quality teaching to exercise a positive influence on student achievement. Extending beyond surface and factual learning, quality teaching has posited conceptions of ‘intellectual depth’, ‘communicative competence’ and ‘self‐reflection’ as being central to effective learning. Implicit in these conceptions are values dimensions reflected in notions of positive relationships, the centrality of student welfare, school coherence, ambience and organisation. The influences of these on student learning, welfare and progress have been observed across public, private and religious sectors, thus confirming earlier studies of similar phenomena in religious schools. Evidence from the Australian Governments Values Education Good Practice Schools Project indicates the benefit to all schools of reflecting on, re‐evaluating and rethinking the implications of values education for curricula, classroom management and school ethos in the interests of student wellbeing and progress. This indicates a pedagogical imperative for values education which extends beyond boundaries of personal or systemic interests and ideologies.

Values Pedagogy and Teacher Education: Re-conceiving the Foundations

The article explores the research findings of values pedagogy, both Australian and international, and makes application to the need to re-conceive many of the assumptions and foundational theories that underpin teacher education, based on the new insights into learning, human development and student wellbeing that have resulted from these research findings.

Neuroscience and Education: Issues and Challenges for Curriculum

Abstract The burgeoning knowledge of the human brain generated by the proliferation of new brain imaging technology from in recent decades has posed questions about the potential for this new knowledge of neural processing to be translated into “usable knowledge” that teachers can employ in their practical curriculum work. The application of the findings of neuroscience to education has met a mixed reception, with some questioning its relevance for educational practice. Simplistic generalizations about neuroscience’s application to education have been dubbed as neuromyths, and regarded as being at best irrelevant to or at worst counterproductive in bringing about good educational practice. In recent times, expansive literature generated in the area of educational neuroscience has drawn attention to a range of epistemological and conceptual issues pertinent to the attempt to translate neuroscientific research findings into usable knowledge that has the potential to improve curriculum practice. Issues involved in such a process include the place of neuroscience among the corpus of disciplines constituting the educational foundations; the conceptual framework required to translate knowledge between neuroscience and education; and, whether usable knowledge can be generated from neuroscientific information, so to be applied in curriculum work. These curriculum questions have direct bearing on curriculum work as the issue of usable knowledge relates directly to the teacher’s role in the curriculum process. This article will consider the expectations and constraints in relation to the contribution of neuroscience to the production of usable knowledge for curriculum work.

Values Education as Holistic Development for All Sectors: Researching for Effective Pedagogy.

The paper argues that values education has moved from being associated most heavily with the religious agenda of faith schools to being central to updated research insights into effective pedagogy. As such, it represents a vital approach to education in any school setting. The paper draws on an array of values education research and practice in making the case but centres especially on findings from a number of recent publicly funded projects in Australia with which the authors have been associated. Of special importance is evidence from the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project and the Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience that provide both anecdotal and empirical evidence that high quality values education contributes to holistic educational development, including academic advancement, of students across all school sectors.

Addressing issues of religious difference through values education: an Islam instance

The article’s main focus is on exploring ways in which modern forms of values education are being utilized to address major issues of social dissonance, with special focus on dissonance related to religious difference between students of Islamic and non‐Islamic backgrounds. The article begins by appraising philosophical and neuroscientific research relevant to the underpinning concepts behind such forms of education. It then explores evidence from the federally funded Australian Values Education Program, and its various related research projects, that suggests that values education has potential to impact on a range of educational measures, including those related to enhancing understanding and tolerance across lines of religious difference.

Student Wellbeing at School: The Actualization of Values in Education

This chapter focuses on the necessity of providing those conditions under which student cognitive, affective, social, moral, ethical and spiritual potential can develop and flourish. It recounts recent educational research pointing to the influence of schools on student wellbeing and its relationship with academic achievement, particularly in relation to providing for the affective, cognitive and social developmental needs of students. It argues that the values embedded within the learning context play a vital role in determining the quality of the educational experience. It also speculates that taking values to the heart of the educational endeavour begins with valuing students and orchestrating those conditions wherein students can develop agency across personal, social, academic, spiritual and moral domains.

Perspectives from Research and Practice in Values Education

As we saw in the previous chapter we now know from the school effectiveness research that the single most influential factor regarding student improvement is the classroom teacher. We also know that teachers’ subject “content” knowledge and their “pedagogical” knowledge play a crucial role in enabling student improvement. With regard to the latter, the literature suggests that values are not an “added extra” to education, but rather, that values are at the very core of quality teaching in that students learn best in a learning situation consciously structured around positive values of care and concern for student progress. From a quality teaching perspective the focus of schooling has to be on student achievement and providing those conditions where students are best able to achieve. This implies a role for values in any quality teaching effort. It is self evident that values permeate every aspect of schooling, the selection of content, the way the school is organised, staff selection and many other things. Thus, there is a prima facie case for values playing a part in quality teaching. In considering the relationship between values and quality teaching, this review of research and practice addresses three main questions:

Values and the Curriculum

This chapter will explore values pedagogy as a contemporary approach to engaging students in the most complete forms of learning that are directed towards and, increasingly evidence suggests, result in holistic student achievement. It will address those aspects of values pedagogy that focus particularly on the place of curriculum as a driver of whole person development and to the forms of implicit and explicit teaching that serve those ends. It will explore a range of research projects from different countries that illustrate findings related to the comprehensive learning effects elicited by well-crafted and pedagogically sound curriculum content, implementation, assessment and evaluation. It will also focus on the positive effects that, research tells us, emanate from creating a positive ambience in which values-oriented curriculum can function.

Service Learning as Holistic Values Pedagogy.

Recent research findings have led to the conception that values pedagogy connotes a philosophy of learning and principle of curriculum organization with potential to enhance all dimensions of the learning environment. Enhancement includes student responsibility to themselves and others and positive impact on learning outcomes. Allied research demonstrates that a particularly potent feature of such pedagogy is to be found in service learning. The article appraises the research relevant to such claims, including among empirical findings from the Australian Values Education Program.