SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION

Terence Lovat

The Art and

Heart of Good
Teaching Values
as the
Pedagogy
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Terence Lovat

The Art and Heart of Good

Teaching
Values as the Pedagogy

13
Terence Lovat
University of Newcastle
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)

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Foreword

I first met Prof. Terence Lovat (Terry) while I was Head Teacher of West
Kidlington Nursery and Primary School in Oxfordshire, UK. He had modestly
asked if he could visit the school, as he had heard that the school was engaged in
innovative, explicit pedagogy based on values education. He was currently working
with others to develop a programme of values education in Australia. Hence, he
began a very significant and fulfilling professional and personal relationship
spanning twenty-five years.
In 1995, while Head of West Kidlington, I embarked on a part-time doctoral
research study at Oxford University, supervised by the giant of moral education,
Prof. Richard Pring. The aim of the study was to see if by developing a values
pedagogy the quality of pupil education would be enhanced. This intensive piece of
research took ten years to complete. Professor Lovat refers to the positive results
and outcomes in this book. However, in my thesis my main recommendation was
that there was a need for further research to ascertain the legitimacy of values
education, and that this research should be undertaken by establishing a study
ranging across a number of schools that had adopted values education.
Professor Lovat and his colleagues in Australia provided the convincing and
substantial evidence in a large study of many schools (described in this book),
which validated my conclusions in my small-scale research.
He brilliantly and succinctly describes in this scholarly crafted masterpiece the
evidence that supports the centrality of values education as the creator of a school’s
ambience, which provides a positive learning culture, based on calmness, good
relationships and feeling safe.
We live at a time when systems in education, the health service, politics and
others are under scrutiny for their fitness for purpose. This book is timely, as its
arguments are firmly rooted in quality research and not on the vested interests of
the educational establishment or the whims of politicians.
Terence Lovat shows in this transformational book his excitement of fifty years
of great scholarship—seeing what works in practice and how schools can be places
where children truly flourish. I am sure this book will become standard recom-
mended reading for anyone who is interested in providing quality education for our

v
vi Foreword

young people. For others, it will act as a poignant reminder about what really is
important in education. Thank you Terry for all that you have done and do to
promote excellent scholarship, firmly rooted in school experience, thereby
becoming one of the giants of education, on whose shoulders many others and I are
pleased to sit.

Hambleton, UK Dr. Neil Hawkes

Founder, Values-based
Education (VbE)
https://www.valuesbasededucation.com
Preface

The Art and Heart of Good Teaching: Values as the Pedagogy comes at the end of
five decades or so of my involvement in education, formal and informal, and across
public and private systems, in Australia and internationally. In that time, I have
seen many things come and go, things both good and bad. I have outlived any
number of new ideas, some mere fads, others wonderfully innovative and effective.
Unfortunately, the latter have not always had longer shelf lives than the former,
especially if the latter were seen as resource-heavy, to be ruffling established
thinking or merely associated overly with “the former government”. It seems
education is too often the subject of ministerial whims, bright but perhaps not well-
founded ideas or to being a mere tool for making the kind of splash aimed at a
move up the ministerial flagpole to something more prestigious.
Moreover, let me not make politicians the sole bêtes-noires here! There can be
other forces that take down worthwhile reforms and initiatives in education, both
from within and without. In the 1970s, I saw some of the best reforms I’d witnessed
trashed in South Australia post a reformist government era; here, some of the most
exciting, engaging, whole community education was brought down by a conser-
vative alliance of teachers, unions, parents, media and the succeeding government.
In the late 1990s and into this century, I saw wonderful early childhood initiatives
in New South Wales, principally in the form of “Young Starters”, taken down by a
strange partnership between bureaucrats looking to their budgets and some threats
being felt in the private preschool establishment.
Nationally, I experienced and was involved first-hand in the groundbreaking
work being done for most of the first decade of this century through the Australian
Values Education Program. Work from the programme continues to impact inter-
nationally in remarkable ways. I have been invited to speak and consult about it on
almost every continent in the past decade; books and publications emanating from
it have sold or been downloaded in unprecedented numbers. Yet, in Australia, its
impact died almost as quickly as it was felt, replaced by a national priority, sup-
posedly directed at enhancing literacy and numeracy. While doubtlessly a worthy
goal in itself, the way the priority was thought through (or not), structured and
implemented, in the form of a programme called NAPLAN, ranks as the most

vii
viii Preface

clunky, uninformed and damaging thing I have seen done in Australian education
in the past fifty years.
I don’t wish this book to be negative. On the contrary, I wish to share the
excitement I experienced as part of the Values Education Program, including
especially the insights that I gained about what works best in classroom learning,
some of it predictable but much of it counter-intuitive in a way that forced me to
reflect and research more deeply than I might otherwise have done. This led me to
see the overwhelmingly beneficial effects when a values orientation drives the
entire pedagogy, both the implicit and the explicit dimensions of the learning
experience. In other words, in reference to the title and subtitle of the book, the art
and heart of good teaching is optimized when values are the pedagogical driver.
Shorthand for all this is values pedagogy, the main term you will find throughout
the book. If that is not clear at this point, it hopefully will be by the time you finish
sifting the evidence within.
I want the book to be stimulating and exciting for you, the reader. If you’re a
teacher or teacher educator, to perhaps lift your spirits a little that things can be
better again than much of what you’re experiencing now. In my view, for the past
decade, we’ve been around the dark side of the mulberry bush. Time to come into
the light! That is what The Art and Heart of Good Teaching: Values as the
Pedagogy is really all about.
That said, I need to start by expunging the dark side. Here, I apologize for being
strident and pulling no punches. I have no wish to offend. Please put any
potentially offensive words down to the frustration rendered by fifty years of seeing
education pulled this way and that, too often in a damaging way, without sufficient
reference to the wisdom of the past or the wisdom residing in the heads and skills
of the average classroom teacher and most educational researchers. Let me get that
out of my system in the first chapter before moving on to the optimism to be found
in the rest of the book.

Newcastle, Australia Terence Lovat

Acknowledgements

Rarely is effective research in any field carried out by a single researcher. Even in
the ancient Greek academies, we find the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
acknowledging the inspirational work of those who went before them and those
with whom they collaborated. We find the same with the groundbreaking scientists
of the likes of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan. It is commonplace,
even and in some ways especially among the great research figures of history to
find them acknowledging the giants on whose shoulders they stand and the many
who have collaborated and facilitated in some way their signature work. If this is
true of any discipline, it is even truer of education that is so inherently a
collaborative endeavour, whether at the teaching or research end.
Hence, the research that I will elaborate upon in this book, seen by many as
groundbreaking in its own way, can also be seen as nothing new if one understands
the history of the discipline. The perspectives I will highlight from recent research
actually reflect educational perspectives that can be found thousands of years ago
and persistently repeated through the centuries. People like Pythagoras and
Socrates from the Graeco-Arabic world, like al-Farabi and al-Ghazali from the
medieval Islamic world, and certainly the twentieth-century Western doyens like
John Dewey and Richard S. Peters have all laboured the inherently moral and
holistic dimen- sions of effective education. We only need research of the kind I
will elaborate upon because we continually forget the wisdom of the past, as well
as the present, and allow educational policy and practice to be determined by
politics and media commentary, invariably in the hands of those whose only
qualification to comment on education is that they themselves went to school. It is
not unlike the same people wishing to determine health policy and practice on the
basis of their occasional visits to GPs and hospitals.
I wish to acknowledge the giants on which this work stands but more especially
those who impelled and supported the research expounded herein. I acknowledge
Dr. Brendan Nelson, Former Federal Minister for Education, a rare politician who
understood what education was truly about and strove to do more than play
political football with his portfolio. I acknowledge the former staff of the then
Curriculum

ix
x Acknowledgements

Corporation who managed the research projects I will be referring to, the
principals, head teachers and staff of the hundreds of schools involved in the
projects and the many university researchers who served as mentors and friends of
the school clusters in which the research resided, as well as the national and
international experts and consultants who supported the work. Above all, I
acknowledge the team with whom I was privileged to work most closely and which
became the kernel and driver of the research, Dr. Kerry Dally and Dr. Neville
Clement of the University of Newcastle and Dr. Ron Toomey from Victoria
University and the Australian Catholic University. Without all these people, in
their various ways, this research would not have been done and so this book could
not have been written.

June 2019 Terence Lovat

Contents

1 The Instrumentalist Curse: “NAPLAN must go!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Introduction.................................................................................................1
1.2 The Dubious and Contestable Purposes of NAPLAN..............................2
1.3 The Insidious Folly of NAPLAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin
of Values Pedagogy...................................................................................7
2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................7
2.2 Values Education Study and Its Results....................................................8
2.3 The Nature of Values Education: A Two-Sided Coin............................10
2.3.1 The Implicit Side of the Values Education Coin.........................11
2.3.2 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin:
The Extra-Curricular Example.....................................................13
2.3.3 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin:
The Curricular Example—Theory...............................................14
2.3.4 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin:
The Curricular Example—Practice..............................................17
2.4 Conclusion.................................................................................................20
References..........................................................................................................22
3 Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects........................................25
3.1 Introduction...............................................................................................25
3.2 VEGPSP 1.................................................................................................26
3.3 VEGPSP 2.................................................................................................27
3.4 Testing and Measuring the Effects of Values Pedagogy........................29
3.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................30
References..........................................................................................................31

xi
xii Contents

4 Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values Pedagogy:

Calmness, Positive Relationships and Safety and Security.....................33
4.1 Introduction...............................................................................................33
4.2 Calmness....................................................................................................34
4.3 Positive Relationships...............................................................................37
4.4 Safety and Security...................................................................................41
4.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................44
References..........................................................................................................44
5 Service Learning......................................................................................47
5.1 Introduction...............................................................................................47
5.2 Service Learning in the Values Pedagogy Programme...........................49
5.3 The Surprise Effect—Or Not? Theorizing Service Learning..................53
5.4 International Perspectives on Service Learning.......................................55
5.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................57
References..........................................................................................................57
6 The Theorist and the Practitioners..........................................................61
6.1 Introduction...............................................................................................61
6.2 The Theorist: Jurgen Habermas...............................................................62
6.3 The Practitioners: Neil Hawkes................................................................65
6.4 The Practitioners: Vasily Sukhomlinsky..................................................67
6.5 Conclusion.................................................................................................69
References..........................................................................................................69
7 Concluding Thoughts...............................................................................71
7.1 Introduction...............................................................................................71
7.2 Why Any Surprise?...................................................................................72
7.3 Bold Claims for Academic Improvement.........................................72
7.4 Powerful Counter Vested Interests...........................................................73
7.5 Summing up the Argument......................................................................73
7.6 Conclusion.................................................................................................74
References..........................................................................................................75
Bibliography..................................................................................................77
Chapter 1
The Instrumentalist Curse: “NAPLAN
must go!”

Abstract The chapter will briefly review an instrumentalist turn in education

policy and practice, especially as seen in the Australian NAPLAN imposition on
schools during this time. It will offer this as one of countless international
examples of such policies and practices driven largely by the priority to elevate
national results on international testing mechanisms, such as PISA. The point will
be made that such policies and practices seem often to be impelled by political and
media agendas with- out sufficient reference to the wisdom residing in classroom
practice or educational research. The damage to good teaching that ensues is
therefore predictable.

Keywords NAPLAN · PISA · Literacy · Numeracy · Testing regime

Instrumental learning · Standardized
· testing · Pythagoras ·
Antisthenes

1.1 Introduction

By the time you’re reading this book, you might well be saying “NAPLAN?
What’s that?” In case that’s so, or if you’re not familiar with recent Australian
education history, let me run you through it briefly. Unless you come from the
handful of countries whose education policy has not turned to instrumentalism and
obsessive accountability over the past decade or so, then you will recognize the
story by another name. NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy and
Numeracy) was the brainchild of the Australian Government in 2008. At its heart
lay a national literacy and numeracy testing device imposed initially on Years 3, 5
and 7 (average ages 8, 10 and 12) and eventually on Year 9 (average age 15) as
well, across all registered schools. It was soon declared mandatory for any school
that wished to maintain government registration. Its results were inserted into a
software program called “My School” (essentially a large data set about each
school’s numbers, demographics and, once imported, NAPLAN test results). This
import was supposed to show which schools were doing well and which not so. It
quickly became a ready-reference for parents in their school selection, not to
mention a serious reputational issue for schools and a crucial key performance
indicator (KPI) for school principals.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_1
2 1 The Instrumentalist Curse: “NAPLAN must go!”

1.2 The Dubious and Contestable Purposes of NAPLAN

NAPLAN had two main stated purposes: first, it was supposed to strengthen
literacy and numeracy levels of Australia’s young people; second, it was supposed
to improve Australia’s standing in the OECD international testing device called
PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). At the time of writing,
although over one billion dollars have been pumped into its direct costs in the past
decade, there is no indication that either objective has been achieved in any
substantial way. According to a New South Wales (NSW) case study that appears to
typify the national result, literacy and numeracy levels have not improved, at least
according to the limited NAPLAN device itself (NESA, 2018, p. 23). Additionally,
our standing in PISA is demonstrably worse than before NAPLAN began, in the
sense at least that Aus- tralia has slipped down an increasingly competitive league
table around a few vital indicators (ACER, 2016).
Moreover, there is a hue and cry coming now from every level of state education
bureaucracy, teacher unions and teachers themselves that NAPLAN must go. Is this
merely because, on the evidence, it is a largely pointless exercise, at least against its
principal objectives? Well, no! Let’s face it, every education system probably has
lots of expensive white elephants still clomping around. In the case of NAPLAN, it
seems it’s worse still! The voices of opposition are growing because NAPLAN has
been judged by people who should be listened to as doing damage to students’
learning. Mind you, anyone with an ounce of knowledge and understanding about
effective learning could have told us this the moment the idea was announced. And
they did! But do governments ever listen to teachers and educational researchers?
More of that later. Let’s just look at what senior people and experts are saying now.
Before me, as I write, is a bevy of resistance and revolution from key educators.
NAPLAN is “… out of control,” according to the President of Secondary School
Teachers in NSW (Singhal, 2019). It is a “… serious distraction” to important
learn- ing, says a top school principal (Singhal, 2018a). It has “… a narrow focus
on a limited set of skills rather than developing capacity …” according to lead
researchers on the basis of their study into it. Indeed, just fleshing the results of this
particular research study out, the NAPLAN effects, as these researchers ascertain
them, boil down to the following:
• the NAPLAN tests added little to teachers’ understanding of students’ literacy
levels;
• the assessment was a poor measure of student achievement;
• the tests had little relation to students’ lives, or to their future job prospects;
• pressure to prepare students for NAPLAN detracted from other learning opportu-
nities;
• stress around the inflated importance of the test negatively impacted some students’
wellbeing; and
• pressure to “teach to the test” frustrated many teachers, reducing their sense of
professional autonomy (Carter, Manuel, & Dutton, 2018).
1.2 The Dubious and Contestable Purposes of NAPLAN 3

Meanwhile, an international testing expert declared NAPLAN to be “bizarre” in

its inappropriateness. It is directed at all the wrong kind of learning and actually
encouraging bad writing (Perelman, 2018). Brilliant, isn’t it?
Finally, the politicians, the very people who should have consulted teachers and
educational researchers before throwing good money after bad in this execrable
exercise, have come aboard. At the time of writing, four of the six state education
ministers are calling for either serious review or to have NAPLAN scrapped, with
the NSW Minister arguably the most vocal of them (Singhal, 2018b). On this point
at least, the Minister and the main teacher union seem to be of one mind. Most
recently, the federal government’s own national policy and practice entity, the
Gonski Institute for Education, has called for its “ditching” (ER, 2019).
It seems the time for review has passed owing to too many politicians and
bureau- crats dragging their feet on a policy and practice that was probably
unsound from day one and for which evidence for unsoundness has simply grown
by the day. There now seems little prospect of anything worthwhile coming from a
modified program. The very name, NAPLAN, has become poisonous among those
with the best educational heads, synonymous with bad teaching and incompetent,
negligent and damaging education. It seems it must go, at least in its current form,
even to preserve what might actually be of some usefulness, but mainly to recoup
the important learning that is being jeopardized by its retention.

1.3 The Insidious Folly of NAPLAN

To make it clear, the concerted voices are telling us that NAPLAN not only
achieves nothing worthwhile but that it has become a pest in the business of sound
education. In spite of the continuing reassurances that it shouldn’t be driving the
curriculum in schools, the way it was set up inevitably turned it into an obsession
and highly distractive to other far more important things about effective learning.
There are very sound theoretical reasons why this is so, and I’ll cover some of
them later in this book. For now, though, let’s just say it is astounding that, having
learned everything we have about effective learning over the years, we could have
made such a disastrous mistake in the early years of the twenty-first century.
And it’s not just what we’ve learned in the recent past. I’ve had the opportunity
to study up on educational thinking in ancient Persia, in Pythagoras’s Graeco-
Roman academies and in medieval Islam, among others. There are messages even
there about the folly of instrumentalism in education, about standardized learning
and especially standardized testing, about thinking we can “fatten the pig by
weighing it more often”.
Two and a half thousand years ago, Pythagoras, a mathematics nerd if ever there
was one, learned through trial and error that his students learned mathematics
better when in a supportive environment that didn’t place too much pressure on just
one form of learning, especially low-level retentive learning, but rather took
students on a journey across varieties of learning. He discovered that they became
more skilled
4 1 The Instrumentalist Curse: “NAPLAN must go!”

mathematicians when the curriculum was varied across the sciences, the arts and,
especially the creative arts. Above all, he found that the best learning occurred
when the curriculum was individualized, not standardized.
In regard to this latter vital point, one of Socrates’ pupils, Antisthenes (445–365
BCE), wrote about 100 years on that Pythagoras had learned the art of effective
learning. As he put it, he had the genius of being able to find the kind of wisdom
digestible to each individual. This, he said, “is wisdom itself in teaching—just as it
is stupidity to impose one kind of wisdom on a diverse audience” (Horky, 2013).
Isn’t it remarkable that these things could be seen so clearly and written so lucidly
such a long time ago, yet we continue to ignore them, think we know better and
inevitably end up exactly where we are with the NAPLAN fiasco?
And let me be clear that it is not just NAPLAN; it is no more than a particularly
vicious example of an era that has seen accountability out of control. “The bean
counters have taken over” would be a neat way of summarizing the effect of gov-
ernment ignoring the educational wisdom both of the past and that resides in most
classrooms in most schools. Teacher wisdom and most educational research
wisdom has been supplanted by accountability measures that serve political and
loud media agendas and can be often used to fool community members, including
parents, into thinking they reflect somehow the heart of education. In fact, they not
only don’t reflect the heart of it; on the contrary, they invariably work against it.
Hence, we end up with the ultimate irony of young people at their most
impressionable and edu- cable age spending too much time not being educated at
all or, worse still, actually being de-educated, their imaginative potential drained
and their cognitive capacities shrunken.
As I suggest, one of the problems for education is that governments seem too
rarely to take notice of the inherent wisdom that comes from the profession,
especially from the grounded experience of teachers, but even from educational
researchers, except those who deliver the findings that suit their politicized
agendas. If medical or engineering professionals, including their research arms,
were treated the way government treats teachers and educational researchers, there
would be a howling all the way to Parliament House. But teachers and most
educational researchers don’t seem to possess that kind of power. Hence, when
NAPLAN was first proposed, inspired as it was from a US experiment deemed
widely then to be a failure, there was a widespread knowledge that it would be a
“dead duck” but a resignation that it would happen anyway. Once the educational
bureaucracies and teacher unions had joined with the politicians in endorsing it, as
was the case at the time, the voice of teachers and most researchers was muted. The
rest is history, as they say!

1.4 Conclusion

My own take on all this is as a former teacher and more latterly an educational
researcher, one who played a leading role in the Australian Government’s Values
Education Program. While the folly of NAPLAN would have been apparent to me
1.4 Conclusion 5

even as the classroom teacher I once was, it was the insights that came with the
Values Education Program that truly showed up what Pythagoras could have told us
thousands of years ago, namely that instrumentalism in the form of a standardized,
test-based obsession like NAPLAN was always bound to be counterproductive to
what works best in classroom learning.
So let me explain how it was that the values education work formed so strongly
my ideas about what works best, and what doesn’t, in classroom learning.

References

ACER. (2016). TIMSS 2015: A first look at Australia’s results. Australian Council of Educa-
tional Research Report authored by S. Thomson, N. Wernert, E. O’Grady & S. Rodrigues.
Melbourne: ACER. Available at: https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&
context=timss_2015.
Carter, D., Manuel, J., & Dutton, J. (2018). How do secondary English school teachers score
NAPLAN? A snapshot of English teachers’ views. Australian Journal of Language and
Literacy, 41(3), 144–154.
ER. (2019, March 21). Ditch NAPLAN for sample testing: Gonski Institute. Education Review.
Available at: https://www.educationreview.com.au/tag/naplan/.
Horky, P. (2013). Plato and pythagoreanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
NESA. (2018). Annual report 2017–2018. Sydney: NSW Education Standards Authority. Avail-
able at: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/papers/DBAssets/tabledpaper/webAttachments/
74873/NESA%20Annual%20Report%202017-18.pdf.
Perelman, L. (2018, April 9). NAPLAN’s writing test is ‘bizarre’ but here’s how kids can get
top marks. ABC News. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-09/NAPLAN-writing-
test-bizarre-heres-how-kids-can-get-top-marks/9625852.
Singhal, P. (2018a, September 8). NAPLAN a serious distraction: Top principal says NAPLAN
must go. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/education/NAPLAN-
a-serious-distraction-top-principal-says-test-must-go-20180906-p5022k.html.
Singhal, P. (2018b, April 9). ‘Severely defective’: Rob stokes backs highly critical report on
NAPLAN testing. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/education/
severely-defective-rob-stokes-backs-highly-critical-report-on-naplan-testing-20180409-
p4z8k2.html.
Singhal, P. (2019, February 5). ‘NAPLAN out of control’: Teachers say test eats into curricu-
lum. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/education/NAPLAN-out-
of-control-teachers-say-test-eats-into-curriculum-20190130-p50ul5.html.
Chapter 2
Values as Implicit and Explicit: The
Two-Sided Coin of Values Pedagogy

Abstract The chapter will explore the essence of a values approach to teaching
and learning, what will be referred to as values pedagogy, through research and
practice that demonstrate how it works in establishing a conducive environment for
learning (referred to as the implicit dimension) and curriculum implementation
(referred to as the explicit dimension). Regarding the implicit, the chapter will
draw on a multiplicity of research that underlines the essential nature of the
positive learning environment, especially in the form of the “ambience of trust and
care” if the best learning effects are to be realized. Moreover, it will point
especially to aspects of values pedagogical research that point to the added positive
effects realized when values drive both curricular and extra-curricular elements of
education.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Learning ambience Implicit

learning · Explicit learning · Curricular · Extra-curricular
·

2.1 Introduction

“I don’t give a damn about values!” I used to regularly start my talks on values
education with these words. It was a good way to put the audience off the scent that
I might be some do-gooder who didn’t really understand the more demanding side
of education. Or perhaps I was a social conservative using “values” language to
exclude minorities or the politically incorrect. Or maybe I was just some religious
type trying to sneak my ideology into the school!
“I don’t give a damn about values but I do care about good teaching” was the
fuller version of what I would say.
You see I found myself in the middle of the Australian Government’s Values
Education Program a little by chance. I was the chief investigator, as the title went,
of the teaching and research projects that ran as part of this $36m programme
between 2003 and 2010. It wasn’t something I applied for; I was asked to take it on
by a government agency. I always thought I was a strange choice because values
education wasn’t really my thing. I had done a little bit of work on it but only as
one of many curriculum-related side issues.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 7
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_2
8 2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values …

My field was Curriculum Theory and Practice. That was the job I had applied
for at the Newcastle College of Advanced Education in 1985. I had a book, written
with David Smith from Sydney University, titled Curriculum: Action on Reflection
(Lovat & Smith, 2003), which by the way is still in print almost 30 years on from
its first edition. I had several refereed journal articles in curriculum, and I was a
regular presenter at curriculum conferences.
I used to say to the student teachers that I was the “what works” person. In a
teacher education programme, lots of things happen. In those days, student teachers
did courses in psychology, sociology, philosophy, history and all sorts of things.
Without meaning disrespect to any of these disciplines, they would often be the last
courses on students’ minds when they went into the classroom, either for practicum
or their first job. But without understanding curriculum, how to put one together,
teach from it and assess the results, any teaching exercise was going to fall fairly
flat. So I was all about “what works”—what works in classrooms, schools and
education more broadly. My own background as a schoolteacher dealing with huge
changes at the Higher School Certificate (HSC) end is relevant to how I ended up in
this place. I was teaching in high school in the 1980s when the pattern of most
Years 10 mov- ing out, never to be seen again, turned around. I still remember
Jessica, a delightful Year 10 but bane of my existence, turning up as a Year 11 the
following year, saying “Bet you never thought you’d see me again, Mr. Lovat!”
with a cheeky grin that suggested we were going to be playing the same
disciplinary games for another year.
“Lovely to see you, Jessica!” I half-lied.
For the first couple of years of this changing Years 11–12 demographic, we had
very little in the way of relevant curriculum to offer to those who had never
planned to be at school to this point. The curriculum was fairly much exclusively a
pre-university one. It became a state issue and, being close to the Board’s
Headquarters in North Sydney, I got involved in helping to develop some of the new
curricula, originally called “Other Approved Studies”, that might be more relevant
to those who weren’t naturally heading to university. So, I regard myself as having
cut my teeth on the “what works” aspects of curriculum. If it doesn’t work, forget
it! That’s precisely the experience and take on education that I took to my first
tertiary job at Newcastle and later into the values education work.

2.2 Values Education Study and Its Results

My first involvement in the Values Education Program was in being asked to

review and evaluate the report that had come from the 2003 pilot project titled
Values Educa- tion Study (DEST, 2003). Sixty-nine schools had received a small
amount of money to support a two-term (one semester) intervention. Some schools,
or certain teachers within them, had actually been doing something described
loosely as values educa- tion, while others took the opportunity to begin doing
something.
Some very loose guidelines were provided, basically clarifying the importance
of values in shaping personal behaviour and maintaining coherence in any
community.
2.2 Values Education Study and Its Results 9

Then values education itself was defined as “… any explicit and/or implicit school-
based activity to promote student understanding and knowledge of values, and to
inculcate the skills and dispositions of students so they can enact particular values
as individuals and as members of the wider community” (DEST, 2003, p. 2).
Different schools took these broad guidelines in a variety of directions. You’ll
find the final report in the bibliography if you’re interested to see more. At the end
of the semester intervention, each school was asked to provide a report
summarizing what they did and to reflect on what they thought was achieved,
providing evidence where they could. My job as an evaluator was to read through
the compilation of these reports and offer feedback on whether anything
worthwhile had been achieved. So I took my “what works” head into this exercise.
I read the reports and soaked up some impressions. I then went back and did a
word search, looking for common themes in order to see if there was a coherent
message coming through or just a whole lot of unrelated thoughts. I found three
banks (or categories) of words, ranging from what I called the predictable, through
the less predictable and to the unpredictable. What I meant by that is that, even in
the setting up of any programme, certain language is inputted before anything
happens on the ground. So, if you’re setting up a history course, there’ll be talk of
dates, persons, events; if it’s a chemistry course, you’ll see lots about gases,
chemicals, experiments; if it’s environmental education, language about land,
sustainability, etc. This is the predictable discourse that you’ll then expect to find
when the course actually runs and when it is assessed.
It’s no different with values education. Inevitably, there’ll be talk about things
like respect, justice, human rights, etc., just in the set-up stage. Predictably, then,
this language will come through all the way to the reporting stage. And it did! No
surprises there! Less predictable was talk of students’ social and emotional
wellbeing seeming to be more pronounced, of better behaviour in classrooms, more
self-discipline and a word that would keep popping up for all the years of the later
projects, resilience. What teachers were saying by this was that, as a result of the
intervention, students seemed to be coping better, rolling with the punches,
handling the knocks of life and bouncing back better than before. Some surprises
there!
Then came the bank of words I was absolutely not expecting to find. Teachers’
pedagogical practice had strengthened and, allied to this, so had student
engagement, including in their academic work. Student outcomes, including
academic ones, had improved. Total surprise here yet the testimony seemed
concerted across schools that had not had the opportunity to consult with each
other. I could only conclude that something was working, or at least being claimed
so!
So, I highlighted these things in my report, as did others presumably, and that
was the real beginning of the programme. The Education Minister of the day,
Brendan Nelson, took a proposal to Cabinet the following year that the Australian
Values Education Program should be funded. It was approved. Over the next year
or so, the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST,
2005) was drafted and, in 2005, the first set of school-based projects began as part
of what was called the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project, or
VEGPSP (DEEWR, 2008; DEST, 2006).
10 2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values …

The Framework (DEST, 2005) laid out the foundations and principles for the
pro- gramme, including identifying some of the values that, through intense
consultation across the country, were considered “universal” or at least as universal
as could be, granted a multicultural, multireligious, multivalue society. That is, the
attempt was made to get beyond the standard objection of “oh yes, but whose
values?” to which I would often respond “sure, but whose history, whose English,
whose science?” Cur- riculum is about making choices, whatever the subject, and a
good curriculum will strive to be as fair as possible to all participants. I actually
believe we achieved this in more robust fashion in values education than is
achieved in most of our curricula. After much consultation and debate from
government bodies through to individual school communities, a list of values was
proposed (Care, Respect, Responsibility, etc.—see the full list in DEST, 2005), not
to be exhaustive or exclusive but rather to be indicative of baseline values we
might regard as universal, regardless of eth- nic, religious, gender or other
differences. They were what we described as “hooks to hang the hats on”, rather
than intended to limit the pedagogy. Schools and clus- ters of schools selected
some, deleted others, added their own, and then went on to employ them in very
different ways. As long as whatever was proposed adhered to the principles in the
Framework, that was all that mattered. And what were those principles?
Well, the Framework (DEST, 2005) identified the three categories of effects that
had come through in the 2003 study. In a word, these showed that values educa-
tion, when implemented in a certain kind of way, had potential to sharpen students’
understanding of the importance of personal and social values, enhance their
overall wellbeing and comfort in the school, and to have a positive effect on their
academic attention and output. What is that “certain kind of way”? The answer to
that is to be found in the Framework’s principles; in a word, it is when values is the
pedagogy, when both an implicit and explicit focus on values is driving the entire
= ven- ture the two sides of the values education coin. This needs quite a bit
learning
of unpacking but don’t be put off by the jargon because it is essentially what most
good teachers will be doing anyway.

2.3 The Nature of Values Education: A Two-Sided Coin

Narvaez (2010, 2014, 2016), Narvaez, Panksepp, Schore and Gleason (2013), the
neuropsychologist, is one of many who emphasize the importance of imagination
in building the confidence and mindset essential to what she refers to as
“efficacious learning” (we might also say “good teaching”). She ties imagination,
emotion and the rational together in the following way: it is imagination that
unlocks the emotions that are needed for sound reasoning. Why? Because
reasoning is both rational and emotional. The mind thinks both logically and
emotionally; the mind thinks with feeling, in other words.
Narvaez focuses a lot on the ways in which human knowing has worked over
the millennia of human existence, a process that in a sense is repeated each time a
new
life comes into the world. Among her specialities is early childhood education
where imagination is the key or, if it is not stimulated, it is the death of efficacious
learning. But she makes the point that imagination is not always the result of
spontaneous impulses. It requires both the safe environment (wherein students can
feel free to take the risks associated with imaginative play) and the guiding hand of
craftily planned pedagogy. It is another way of talking about the two-sided coin of
values education, the implicit side being the safe, values-filled learning
environment and the explicit being the values-focused pedagogy. This requires
even further explanation.

2.3.1 The Implicit Side of the Values Education Coin

By implicit is meant that the learning environment must be values-filled, character-

ized by care, trust, respect, encouragement, etc. Interestingly, this finding really has
nothing to do with values education, as such. There is any amount of research that
has demonstrated the importance of the values-filled “ambience”, as Fred
Newmann (Newmann & Associates, 1996) described it. Fred’s work at Wisconsin
was in the area of “authentic pedagogy”, the pedagogy most associated with
teaching that works best, or “quality teaching”, as we often refer to it. He came up
with five “pedagogical dynamics”, as he called them, five features or
characteristics that seemed to sum up the things most obviously associated with
teaching that was working, achieving its goals, including academic achievement.
The last and most important was the “am- bience of care and trust”. Fred had no
pretensions at being a values educator but he came to the same conclusion as we
did about the essential features of such an ambience if anything good is to come
out of it.
Similar evidence came through in an Australian Council for Educational
Research (ACER) study conducted by Rowe (2004). Of the four factors that most
obviously contributed to students “doing well”, the top two were care and trust,
even ahead of the old chestnuts of good teaching “knowing their stuff and being
able to get it across” (content and style). Ken actually rang me late one night to tell
me about these results; he knew I would be interested. Like Fred, Ken had no
pretensions at being a values educator; indeed, I always suspected that Ken thought
it might be an overly soft touch approach to teaching, maybe even overladen with
a religious agenda. That is until the results of this study came through. On his own
admission, Ken was expecting to see “content and style” as the two main factors. I
still recall him repeating over the phone “Care and trust, mate! Care and trust! Can
you believe it?” I also recall me responding with “well, I must tell Confucius!”
followed by his inimitable raucous laughter. Sadly, Ken perished at Marysville in
the so-called Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, a great loss to the education world.
Again, there is nothing new in what Ken discovered, something Ken’s raucous
laughter conceded. The Confucius gem I was referring to goes something like
“where there is no trust between people, no good will be happening”. We don’t
really need Confucius to tell us this. From the highest levels of political leadership
down to our own day-to-day experiences, we know its truth. We know that walking
into a
setting where we don’t trust or feel trusted creates tension. The same goes for the
environment that lacks care or is overly competitive or punitive. We feel the blood
rushing from our heads, our palms get sweaty and it’s hard to think straight. We
feel on tenterhooks as though our every action and word is being judged harshly.
Why on earth then would we not know that is a bad environment for learning for
anyone, even mature adults with the most stable of backgrounds? Of course, the
bad environment becomes even worse when it is the learning of little people at the
most vulnerable stage of life, and doubly so for those coming from an insecure or
unstable background. Yet this is precisely what we risk when we lose the care and
trust priority and replace it with instrumentalities like NAPLAN, for instance, and
the obsessions and blind spots it generates in learning environments. Somehow,
people who know well the truth of Confucius’s gem forget it and good teaching and
learning is the casualty.
Instead of Confucius, I might well have said Pythagoras or Socrates, or any of
the other great polymaths of the past who addressed educational criteria. Socrates
was a pupil of Pythagoras and Antisthenes a pupil of Socrates, and so on down the
generations. The wisdom attributed to Pythagoras about respect for each individ-
ual’s readiness, learning disposition and interests comes through epoch after epoch.
Pythagoras himself learned about it in ancient Persia by all accounts and we then
find it as a sine qua non (defined below) in the educational philosophy of the great
minds of ancient Greece, including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It also comes
through strongly in the educational philosophy of early Islam, including in the
works of al-Farabi and al-Ghazali.
In an Islamic education conference in 1977, Muhammad al-Attas noted a
number of features about the direction of Western education that threatened the
essence of Islamic education. One of these concerned the “overly academic”
emphasis in the West that tended towards standardized learning and testing and,
inevitably, a focus on the outcome, the result, the grading, all of which threatened
the imperative of individual student care.
Values education therefore has no monopoly on what we call the “implicit” side
of the coin. It’s just that, as we often said, the truth of the positive ambience being
essential to any effective learning must apply doubly so to values education.
Imagine the irony if not hypocrisy of running something called values education
that was clearly not values-filled. Imagine trying to speak with students about the
importance of care, trust, respect, etc., if they could pick a mile off that the teacher
didn’t care, was untrustworthy and clearly did not respect them, nor they the
teacher. So, the implicit side of the coin, care and trust, was what we called the sine
qua non of values education, meaning “without them, don’t even open your
mouth!”.
2.3.2 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The
Extra-Curricular Example

The explicit side of the coin was a little more unique to the values education pro-
gramme, we felt. Here, we trialled the idea of building the learning discourse
around values, referring to both curricular and extra-curricular discourse. Starting
with extra- curricular, this meant using the language of values to inform matters
like behaviour management, as an instance. To give an example of when the
language is not inform- ing it. I recall a head teacher in an Australian school telling
me that when she took over the school, she discovered there was almost incessant
traffic between class- rooms and her office of students being put on detention or
simply “being sent to the principal’s office” because of some behaviour issue.
The pattern had been that students lined up at the office door where they would
be handed a “card” (red/yellow/blue—depending on what behaviour management
scheme they were following at the time), some demerit points or simply to be told
they were staying in at lunchtime/after school, etc. By and large, they weren’t even
asked for their input on whatever the problem might have been and invariably
didn’t get to see the principal anyway, except in the worst of cases. In other words,
there was no language transaction.
The new head teacher in question had been trained in values education, at least
to some extent, and so could see the problem immediately. She decided that she
would speak with each child, at least until she got a handle on what seemed to be
the major behavioural problems in the school. So she started with the child at the
front of the line, a boy in Year 3, about 8 years of age. She asked him what had
happened and he told her he had hit another boy. Having found out the apparent
cause, she then asked “well, do you think that was respectful?” To which the boy
replied “what’s that, Miss?” Even after more prodding, she came to realize that the
boy had no understanding of basic values language, much less what it might mean
and even less idea of how the language might translate into practice. As she
proceeded to deal with the rest of the queue, she found this was not a one-off
instance. In fact, it was commonplace that the children in the school had no concept
of values; hence, there was no starting-point or meeting-point by which to begin a
meaningful transaction. They were, in this sense, behaviourally illiterate.
This became a clue for her in changing the school culture around behaviour
management. This particular school became part of the 2003 pilot study, as well as
being the lead school in a cluster with a values education intervention across the
four years of VEGPSP. In the case of this cluster, the intervention involved an
explicit programme focused on a “Value of the Month”, drawn from the values
proposed in the National Framework. So, the value for the first month might be
“Respect”, for the second month “Responsibility”, for the third month “Doing your
Best”, etc.
The school would then be saturated with language about the value of the month.
It would often be found on the noticeboard at the gate, under a heading like “Our
Value this month is XXX”. The word would be on the door leading into
administration, on the sliding glass of the secretary’s area and on the door of each
and every classroom.
The principal would speak about the value at assembly, often with parents present,
making the point that this value was not just a school one but important in life
generally. Time would normally be devoted to speaking about it in all the classes in
the school and, whenever there was a behaviour incident, the first port of call
would be to remind the student in question about the importance of the value “…
as we have discussed it in class/assembly!” Teachers went on to report how much
better behaviour was in their schools and they put much of it down to the fact that
they now “… had a language by which to discuss behavioural issues”.
So, that’s an example of how the explicit side of the values education coin can
impact on the extra-curricular. Now, what about the curricular? This will take even
more unpacking, first of the theory, then of the practice. Bear with me!

2.3.3 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The

Curricular Example—Theory

Well, it’s not a totally different point from what I’ve been saying about the extra-
curricular. It’s all about language, about discourse—and perhaps about levels of
understanding or “ways of knowing”, as Habermas (1972, 1974; Lovat 2013)
would put it. Here, I feel I’m really back on my home turf, where I cut my teeth in
education. This is where my “what works” persona enters the scene.
Curriculum is clearly all about language and discourse but what sort of language
and discourse? What are we really trying to learn amidst all the subjects we deal
with at school? Is it just the facts-and-figures the student can regurgitate at
assessment time, the easily measurable? Or are we trying to achieve more than
that? Are we interested to stimulate their imaginative brains, to have them interpret
the facts-and- figures so as to truly understand them, rather than just regurgitate
them? Do we want to prepare them for life, personal happiness and effective
citizenship? Are we interested to stimulate their critical brains so they might
actually challenge some of today’s facts-and-figures because they might in fact be
yesterday’s facts-and-figures? Are we producing a new generation for a new world
or an outdated one? There are so many lessons from history about the difference.
Let me go back to Pythagoras for a moment. He was a remarkable guy, a poly-
math, we’d call him, one who could turn his mind to almost any area of learning.
Among other things, he was a pretty good cosmologist, one who studies the stars
and the universe. Not that he did this on his own, mind you; again, he’d had the rare
opportunity for a Greek citizen to have learned from the amazing Persians.
However he came to it, he came to believe that the world was not flat, as most
thought in his day, but that it was a sphere floating around other spheres, namely
the sun, the planets and indeed the stars that he could see. As it turns out, he was
fairly spot on but two thousand years later, young students were still being taught
that the earth was flat and the sun, planets and stars just moved around a dome that
covered the earth.
 Worse still, people like Galileo, a cosmologist in the seventeenth century, were
being excommunicated (meaning effectively condemned to hell for eternity) for
daring to suggest that the earth was not flat with a dome and, furthermore, that the
sun didn’t go around it but it went around the sun. The church, effectively the
education authority of the day, wasn’t interested to even know how Galileo had
figured this out. As they understood the Bible and the many dictates of Popes,
Galileo’s worldview contradicted God’s word and so he was a heretic who had to
be flung into hell. It took until 1992 for Galileo’s excommunication to be
overturned, almost 400 years on from when he spoke the truth, 2500 years on from
when Pythagoras spoke it. Today’s facts-and-figures can be wrong! How many
other examples of this are there? How many generations of students were taught
that slavery was a moral activity? That women were inferior to men? That black
people were lesser humans (if human at all) than white people? And so it goes on!
So, what knowing skills do we really want to pass on to the next generation?
This is where Habermas comes in. He is an epistemologist, someone who studies
how people have come to know what they claim to know and how this knowing
gets passed on down the generations. In speaking of our ways of knowing being
impelled by cognitive interests, he effectively taps into some very interesting
updated neuroscience about how our brains work, including how they have
developed over thousands of years, highlighting the crucial importance of wonder
and imagination in brain development. Quite likely, it was imagination that
stretched the human brain beyond that of other species, so influencing the neo-
frontal cortex to expand and become the basis for humanity’s dominance among the
species. It’s interesting that it’s imagination that gets emphasized in these studies,
not the knowing of facts-and- figures which, if overdone, can actually retard the
brain’s development. How often do we hear early childhood experts talking about
these things? In early childhood, imaginative play can stimulate brain growth while
too much repetitive work can push the brain the other way. So what do we do? No
comment!
Habermas underlines the importance of facts-and-figures knowing, or what he
calls the “empirical–analytic” but he also points out how restrictive it can be, espe-
cially if it comes to be seen as the be-all-and-end-all of knowing. As suggested, he
believes that ways of knowing are impelled by what he calls our “cognitive
interests” and, in turn, our cognitive interests develop according to what we come
to know. So, it might be that we have a cognitive interest to know the facts-and-
figures about the American Civil War, for instance; it is likely that we have this
cognitive interest merely because we have to study up on it to pass an exam. Let’s
say we study up on them so well that we get 100% in the exam, that we even go on
a quiz show with the Civil War as our special topic and we take home all the prizes
and that we even win a competition that adorns us with the title of being the world
champion when it comes to the American Civil War. We’ve studied up on it so
much, there is no conceivable fact or figure we don’t know.
Even so, Habermas would probably want to say “well, congratulations on your
achievement but what do you really know and how has this knowing developed
your overall cognition? Sure, you can tell us the middle name of General Robert E.
Lee’s third cousin twice removed on his mother’s side; you can tell us who
embroidered
the socks that General Sam Grant was wearing at the Battle of Shiloh and you can
tell us what’s written on the rear (down low on the right-hand side) of General
George Pickett’s headstone in the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. But
do you know what this war was all about, why it started, what it achieved, what its
legacy has been? And do you know the answers to these questions from both sides?
Are you able to sift, sort and evaluate the different points of view, debate them,
communicate about them, teach them to others? Have your cognitive interests
developed to the point that they stimulate this kind of wonder and imagination so
that your cognitive interests themselves continue to grow and develop? In a word,
are you able to interpret and critique? Have your imaginative capacities been
stimulated at all? Or are you stuck in the rut of an endless cycle of fact and figure
gathering to the point that your brain has gone to sleep around any other kind of
knowing?”.
Well, I’m not sure Habermas would be so disrespectful but I’m guessing this is
something like what he would want to say. I say again, it’s not that he doesn’t see
the huge importance of the empirical–analytic (the facts-and-figures) as a baseline
for knowing. After all, it would be hard to know what the Civil War meant in its
time, what it means in its legacy and what the different views were if we had no
idea when or where it happened or anything about the main characters. Facts-and-
figures matter, but they are best seen as baseline learning rather than knowing in its
full or most impacting sense. Yes, they are the most easily measured way of
knowing, be the measure in a quiz show or classroom test, and that makes them
very attractive when putting together any course of learning. And as long as we
understand where they fit in the grand scheme of learning, then that’s all fine. It’s
when they become its be-all-and-end-all that things get out of perspective and we
set up education systems that damage learning potential rather than enliven it.
Nor is Habermas convinced that facts-and-figures learning should necessarily be
the first port of call in knowing. Yes, at some point, we need to know that 2 2+
4 and that gravity means that anything that goes up must come down, and that the
world is divided into various countries with different languages and traditions, and
that our solar system is just one of 100 billion or so such systems in our Milky Way
Galaxy, and so on. But does that mean we have to start any learning process with
this kind of facts-and-figures knowing? No! And if we go about this kind of
learning process in a boring, repetitive, regurgitating way, ironically, the knowing
will be less well achieved than if we leave some of it to the end of the process.
“Never give the answer before the question has been asked in earnest” is a
wonderful way to guide effective learning.
So, the explicit side of the values education coin bought into all this kind of
thinking. Here we had values as the central discourse for the extra-curricular, like
behaviour, so why not for the curricular as well? Why not make the accrual of
values the central learning goal for any content in any subject? Let me explain.
See, one of the many misconceptions about values education (apart from it
being a do-gooder, not really serious, maybe political or even cupboard religious
exercise) is that it means doing something additional to the curriculum. Hence, the
common response we got from teachers was “we don’t have time for anything
more!” “we’re too busy!” “we can’t fit another thing in!” As an aside, there was a
very interesting
reflection from a school principal who had resistant staff of this kind but pushed
forward anyway. After a couple of years of running with the programme, the same
principal commented that staff now say they have more time. Why? Because the
students are more settled, more focused, more engaged, etc. So what happened?
Well, in a word, what happened was that values education became the pedagogy,
or what we would eventually describe as a “values pedagogy”. That is, it wasn’t an
additional thing to the curriculum. On the contrary, it drove the curriculum. Let me
explain, referring again to Habermas along the way.
The content of any curriculum area tends to focus very much on the facts-and-
figures (what Habermas calls the empirical/analytic) relevant to the area in
question. Why? Because that is the most easily measured. Whether it’s literacy,
numeracy, science, history or even, to some extent, the creative arts, there’s an
emphasis (some might say obsession) on assessing outcomes, competencies,
objectives, etc. If that’s what you think counts in education, then staying close to
the empirical/analytic is what will work best for you.
The problem is, as most teachers know well, the more we push education down
this track, the more boring we risk making it, the more skewed in favour of those
with retentive memories, the more unfair and potentially damaging to those many
people who learn better in other ways. Throw in Habermas’s idea that, important as
facts- and-figures might be, the less we stimulate the interpretive, critical and
imaginative ways of knowing, the more we fry the brain and, in the irony of
ironies, the less we end up learning even about the facts-and-figures. Ergo, there is
the problem we face with so much Western education, the plaything of politicians
and media, without reference to those who know the game best, the teachers and
the educational researchers. So that’s the theory; now to the practice!

2.3.4 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The

Curricular Example—Practice

So, what we did in the values pedagogy (that’s how I’ll refer to the programme
from now on) projects was to turn all this on its head. It didn’t mean anything
additional or even changing a word in the required syllabus. It was all about the
pedagogy and that just meant thinking a bit harder about the starting-point.
Short-hand for the starting-point was “Values”; in other words, instead of simply
rolling out the content because it is there in the syllabus and because we need
fodder for our measurement requirements, why not start with the question “what
value is in this content? What value for students’ important knowledge, vital
understanding of the world into which they are moving, crucial skills and
competencies for future work, important insights for their wellbeing and the
wellbeing of those with whom they will form relationships? What value is it to
their future personal and social development?” Let these questions stimulate the
pedagogy and the facts-and-figures
(the easily measurable) will find their place and likely be remembered far better
because of the contextual stimulation.
Fleshing this out a little, starting-point questions might be something like “What
is the value of this content?” (i.e. what does it mean, contribute to, benefit the
students’ knowledge-base and why?). “What important values are implicit in this
particular piece of content?” (i.e. what important take-home lessons are here for the
taking?). “What values clash/contestation is evident in this particular content?” (i.e.
how does this content illustrate the poles of debate around values?). “What do the
values that sit behind this content mean to you?” (i.e. as students, try to think of
how any of this content applies to you, your life, your growth, your happiness,
etc.).
Now, teachers would often say something like “well, it’s easier if you’re
teaching English or History or maybe Creative Arts to do that but I teach
Maths/Physics/Chemistry/Economics/Geography, so how do I apply all this?”
Well, yes, certainly English with all its novels, or History with all its events, or the
Creative Arts with all their expressive themes do lend themselves to focusing on
values. But, as I’ve told the story many times, one of the best lessons I ever saw
functioning as values pedagogy was a Maths lesson to a Year 9 class, no-one’s idea
of teaching at its laziest best! And would you believe it was all about Pythagoras?
To be precise, it was that lesson most of us will remember (or not) about the
square on the hypotenuse, potentially one of the most boring, values-neutral
lessons of all (sorry, Maths nerds!). I happen to remember the lesson about this
that I had at school; I think I was in Year 7. All I remember was the teacher
drawing what looked vaguely like a meat pie on the blackboard with a piece of
chalk, then challenging us to tell him what it was. He was no artist so it took a bit
of guesswork; finally, one of our resident da Vinci types tentatively proffered “is it
a pie?” “Yes!” was the delighted response, followed by “well today, we are going
to be talking about pies but not the sort you eat”. Not a bad start to the lesson,
actually; I gather from speaking with others that there were many worse
stimulants. Sadly, though, that’s all I recall about the lesson. Once he got onto the
Pythagorean “pi”, right-angled triangles, hypotenuses and other sides and the
squares thereof, he lost me totally. I really didn’t get it, much less see its
significance. And as for “πr 2”, well, forget it!
In the values pedagogy lesson, the teacher started with a graphic of Pythagoras
himself, a rather friendly looking middle-aged guy with a beard, holding a pyramid
and showing it to an obviously captivated group of young people. “Can anyone tell
me who this is?” “Gandalf” was the first response; wrong but a great start. The
students were alive, relating to something they knew and found exciting. “Well, a
bit like Gandalf because he was very wise”, the teacher said. To cut a long story
short, the back-and-forth about this took only a minute or so with one student
actually naming Socrates. Very close! “Good guess, Tom; this man actually gave
Socrates a lot of his ideas”. Then she wrote Pythagoras’s name on the board,
starting to tell just a little of his life, how he’d been a bit of a rebel, how he’d often
felt lonely and unloved, how he was always asking questions about life, how he’d
travelled a lot and discovered things he’d never thought were possible. It didn’t
take long before this guy who died 500 years before Jesus appeared in Galilee was
their mate.
 It all sounds so ridiculously simple but the great benefit of starting like this,
even against my meat-pie teacher, was the emotional engagement. The
neuroscientist would say the students’ emotional intelligence was stimulated and,
in turn, that’s a known stimulant for imagination which, in turn, is a great
stimulant for sound reasoning processes. The link between imagination, emotion
and sound reason is one that a lot of today’s neuroscientists play with; if you want
to look further, have a read of some of the work of Darcia Narvaez or Immordino-
Yang (2011), Immordino- Yang and Damasio (2007), as examples. Their works are
in the bibliography.
So, once the emotions were in the right place and the imaginative impulses at
work, time to move to some of Habermas’s empirical–analytic way of knowing (nb.
NOT the other way around). Having shown why it was that Pythagoras’s mind
turned to right-angled triangles, hypotenuses, and the like, namely, that he was
trying to solve some real life puzzles, the teacher started to put the whole theorem
together. I won’t pretend to be as much of an expert on this as she was but, to cut to
the chase, it all made perfect sense in a way that had evaded me as a reasonably
intelligent Year 7 many years before. The lesson was a crafty blend of some
impassioned biography, making connections with real-life issues, including
contemporary ones, and getting the basic facts-and-figures of the mathematical
formula across.
By the end of the three lessons it took, the students seemed to know and be able
to practise the formula as well as could be expected, had learned about an
important his- torical character and, best of all, could see the value inherent in his
work. They could see that without the mathematical genius of Pythagoras, we
might not have ever been able to build the kinds of structures we take for granted,
learned the aerodynamics that underpin the art of air flight, or be out there among
the distant planets discov- ering our universe. They also learned a lot about the
importance of certain personal and civic values by exploring Pythagoras’s life,
values like resilience, responsibility, doing your best, respect and trust. By the time
the lessons were wrapping up, these were simply falling out of the discussions with
no need for artificial contrivance. The values pedagogy had not taken any extra
time; indeed, it likely saved lots of time by assuring student engagement as its
starting-point. It didn’t disturb the syllabus content or even have need of adding to
it; indeed, it simply served to sharpen the focus on it. It didn’t distract at all from
the lesson objectives and their assessment; indeed, it seemed to facilitate them.
This is just one of countless examples of how the explicit side of the values
education (sorry, values pedagogy) coin can be applied to curriculum content.
Values is simply shorthand for ensuring that content is meaningfully conveyed,
thinking a little harder how to extract the “so what?” element from any curriculum
content and make that the focus and priority. If Habermas was commenting at this
point, he would say the values focus pushes our cognitive interest towards the
interpretive, the critical and the imaginative, rather than the bare facts-and-figures.
But, by doing that, it impels a way of knowing that is ultimately more effective in
terms of grasping the facts-and-figures, as well as learning to interpret, critique and
imagine; that’s the irony! If Darcia Narvaez was commenting at this point, she
would say the values focus both settles the emotions and instils the imagination in
one hit, thereby impelling the sound reasoning needed for efficacious learning.
2.4 Conclusion

As suggested above, the importance of the values-filled ambience for achieving all
that is most hoped for in education, including academic success, is well and truly
embedded in the research and in the culture. We didn’t need values pedagogy
projects to tell us about this one. The issue that persists is whether this ambience is
sufficient for wellbeing and academic improvement to be realized. To some extent,
it depends on which side of the old debate about values being caught or taught you
reside. I would say we learned through the programme that, yes, values are clearly
caught through modelling and functioning in wholesome, values-filled
environments but the empowerment entailed in enhanced academic engagement
requires that they be taught as well. Not taught in a haphazard way but in a way
that is consistent with the calmed, relationships-rich, safe and secure ambience on
the implicit side of the values pedagogy coin; in other words, taught in a way that
respects individual worth, rights and capacities, challenges students’ cognitive
powers, recognizing that these powers entail and require emotional and social
engagement. But also taught in a way that places values discourse at the centre of
curriculum content.
While there were early indications of the link between values discourse and aca-
demic focus in the earliest of the Australian projects, it became especially apparent
in the transition between phases 1 and 2 of VEGPSP. While results from this study
confirmed “… the vital link between a values approach to pedagogy and the ambi-
ence it created with the holistic effects of this approach on student behaviour and
performance” (Lovat et al., 2010, p. 11), it noted also that “… the explicitness of
the pedagogy around values being seen to be determinative” (p. 11) was important:
The principle of explicitness applies more broadly and pervasively than has been previously
recognised … values-based schools live and breathe a values consciousness. They become
schools where values are thought about, talked about, taught about, reflected upon and
enacted across the whole school in all school activities. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 37)

The “explicitness principle” was further confirmed in the Testing and

Measuring Study, summarized in the following way in the report:
The closer the attention a school gives to explicitly teaching a set of agreed values, the
more the students seem to comply with their school work demands, the more conducive
and coherent a place the school becomes and the better the staff and students feel. (Lovat,
Toomey, & Clement, 2010, p. 12)

We surmised that there is something about values discourse that students (and
teachers) find more personalized than much of the regular talk of the classroom.
Such discourse then becomes disruptive of the standard regimes that too often
separate teachers and students. Conversations about values are conversations worth
having!
While we initially referred to the connection between explicit values discourse
and academic improvement as a “surprise effect” (Lovat, 2017), we were able to
find more than mere strands of research evidence of one kind or another that
seemed to explain it. Among these were Damasio’s (2003) neuroscientific findings
around the
2.4 Conclusion 21

cognition/affect/sociality nexus, so that discourse that engages more of the whole

person (emotion, social and moral impulses, aesthetic and spiritual inclinations)
would naturally have flow on effects to enrich cognitive functioning. There are also
Ginott’s (1995) insights that feeling well and thinking well are two sides of the
educational coin and that it is mainly up to the teacher to affect both positive
feeling and thinking by the way the relationship with the student is forged and the
curriculum unfolded. Furthermore, Robinson and Campbell’s (2010) work
demonstrated the clear connection between explicit discourse about values and
enhanced pedagogical engagement by teachers and students. Similarly, Osterman’s
(2010) work provided strong evidence that the teacher who both positions
themselves well with students and engages in the most enriched curriculum action
is the one who produces the best academic effect. Her work produced further clear
evidence of the implicit/explicit nexus in values pedagogy, as well as the direct
pertinence of values pedagogy to good teaching in general.
Ofsted (2007) noted the role played by the explicit values discourse at West
Kidlington School, UK, as seeming to be determinative of improvement across the
various quality measures, including academic performance. In detailing the
features that sit behind this generalized notion of values discourse, Hawkes (2010)
makes the further link with the idea of a common language:
(values education) explicitly develops an ethical vocabulary, based on the values words,
which becomes a common language accessible to both students and adults. It encourages
reflective learning … (p. 234)

Furthermore, Toomey (2010) illustrated in his work the ways in which the
common language about values came to shape all aspects of school life, including
greater attention to academic work, citing again the testimony from VEGPSP:
We also found that by creating an environment where these values were constantly shaping
classroom activity, student learning was improving, teachers and students were happier, and
school was calmer. (p. 33)

Hence, “…there is now a vast store of evidence from values education research
that the establishment of a positive, caring and encouraging ambience of learning,
together with explicit discourse about values in ways that draw on students’ deeper
learning and reflectivity, has power to transform the patterns of feelings, behaviour,
resilience and academic diligence” (Lovat, 2010, p. 10).
So that’s the nature, scope and promise of values pedagogy. As with any pro-
gramme, it worked better in some places than others, and in some classes in some
places than in others. There was a natural evaluation point at the halfway mark of
VEGPSP where all the clusters had to write a report and have it signed off by a
“University friend” serving as a guide, sounding board and final endorser of claims
being made. Some clusters didn’t sign up for the second round, while others did.
Only those with convincing reports from phase 1 were accepted into phase 2. All
that aside, what did the results look like? I will explore them in Chap. 3.
 22 2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values …

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DEEWR. (2008). At the heart of what we do: Values education at the centre of schooling. Report of
the values education good practice schools project—Stage 2. Melbourne: Curriculum Corpo- ration.
Retrieved 12 September from: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/values/val_vegps2_final_
report,26142.html.
DEST. (2003). Values education study (Executive summary final report). Melbourne: Curriculum
Corporation. Retrieved September 12, 2016: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/
VES_Final_Report14Nov.pdf.
DEST. (2005). National framework for values education in Australian schools. Canberra,
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Lovat, T. (2010). Synergies and balance between values education and quality teaching.
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Lovat, T. (2013). Jurgen Habermas: Education’s reluctant hero. In M. Murphy (Ed.), Social
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(pp. 69–83). London: Routledge.
Lovat, T. (2017). Values education as good practice pedagogy: Evidence from Australian empirical
research. Journal of Moral Education, 46, 88–96.
Lovat, T., & Smith, D. (2003). Curriculum: Action on reflection (4th ed.). Melbourne: Thomson.
Lovat, T., Toomey, R., & Clement, N. (Eds.). (2010). International research handbook on values
education and student wellbeing. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Narvaez, D. (2010). Building a sustaining classroom climate for purposeful ethical citizenship. In
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ester, UK: Office for Standards in Education.
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Osterman, K. (2010). Teacher practice and students’ sense of belonging. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, &
N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing
(pp. 239–260). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
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Chapter 3
Findings from the Values Pedagogy
Projects

Abstract The chapter will build on the concepts outlined in the former chapter
with reference to the various stages of the Australian Values Education Program.
Key elements of the programme will include the large intervention study titled
Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (VEGPSP) that ran in two phases
from 2005 to 2008 and the Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values
Education on Student Effects and School Ambience that ran in 2009. The chapter
will identify the major findings emanating from these projects to further the case
being made about the beneficial effects of values education comprising the
pedagogical driver, what from now on will be referred to in shorthand as values
pedagogy.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Values education study Good

practice · Testing and measuring · VEGPSP · Personal
· and social values
Behaviour and wellbeing · Academic
· diligence

3.1 Introduction

As suggested above, across the four years of the Values Education Good Practice
Schools Project (VEGPSP), it ran in two phases, each comprising a two-year inter-
vention. A total of 312 schools from across the country, across all age groups and
all sectors (public, private and religious) formed into 51 clusters to run at least a
two- year intervention. About half followed up with a second two-year intervention
and so, all up, had four years’ worth of a values pedagogy programme to assess,
evaluate and report on. Each cluster provided a report, and these reports were
combined into a single report for each of the two phases. Each cluster had a
university researcher attached to it to assist, crosscheck claims being made and
help with the final report. This made it the most comprehensive values pedagogy
research ever completed and assessed anywhere in the world, to my knowledge. So
what did we find?
The findings were extensive, several hundred pages worth. You can find them in
full in the reports (DEST, 2006; DEEWR, 2008) cited in the bibliography. The
same three banks of words from the Values Education Study (DEST, 2003) were
reaf- firmed time and again. In other words, the predictable outcome that students’
accrual of important personal and social values was strengthened was
affirmed. As well,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 25
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_3
26 3 Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects

the less predictable outcome that students’ behaviour and wellbeing improved was
a regular feature of the findings. Furthermore, the quite unpredictable outcome that
somehow the ways in which values pedagogy functioned enhanced students’ aca-
demic attention (what we eventually described as academic diligence) was
confirmed over and over again.
As already mentioned, we initially referred to this last effect as the “surprise
effect” because it had not constituted a stated claim for the programme but it was
nonetheless ever-present. It was in part in trying to explain this effect that we
turned to the kind of literature (e.g. Habermas, 1972, 1974, 1984, 1987, 1990;
Narvaez, 2010, 2014, 2016) I cite in Chap. 2. But let me not rush ahead; let’s go
through the findings phase by phase. I will provide the kind of summary we had to
report to government, with just some samples of the sorts of things that teachers,
principals and university researchers reported, knowing that you can refer to the
entire report on the website if you wish.

3.2 VEGPSP 1

The Phase 1 Report of VEGPSP (DEST, 2006) spoke of an array of learning out-
comes enhanced by the projects. They included the following, as reported in Lovat,
Dally, Clement, and Toomey (2011): quality teaching and pedagogy; holism in the
approach to student development; quality relationships at all levels; values being
both modelled and enunciated in the curriculum; enhanced intellectual depth in
both teacher and student understanding; greater levels of student engagement in the
main- stream curriculum; student willingness to become more involved in complex
thinking across the curriculum; increased pedagogical approaches that match those
espoused by quality teaching; greater student responsibility over local, national and
inter- national issues; greater student resilience and social skills; improved
relationships of care and trust; measurable decline in the incidence of inappropriate
behaviour; greater student awareness of the need to be tolerant of others, to accept
responsibility for their own actions and their ability to communicate; improved
students’ sense of belonging, connectedness, resilience and sense of self; reflective
change in the par- ticipant teachers and schools; provision of the opportunity to
explore from within and reflect on identity and purpose; changed approaches to
curriculum and pedagogy; enhanced students’ ability to articulate feelings and
emotions impelling the emo- tional development of the students; evident
transference in all aspects of classroom teaching and in the students’ ability to deal
with conflict in the playground; calmer and more cohesive classroom atmosphere;
creation of a comfort zone for discussing emotions; improved levels of happiness
for staff and students; development of higher- order thinking skills; introduction of
restorative pedagogical practices; changes in the ways teachers related with
students; improved engagement and commitment of pupils, teachers and parents; a
greater appreciation of the need to create interpersonal intimacy and trust in the
classroom; and, the “ripple” or “trickle-down” effect that values pedagogy had
across the school.
3.2 VEGPSP 1 27

Samples of feedback from the classrooms included the following:

… the documented behaviour of students has improved significantly, evidenced in vastly
reduced incidents and discipline reports and suspensions. The school is … a “much better
place to be”. Children are “well behaved”, demonstrate improved self-control, relate better
to each other and, most significantly, share with teachers a common language of
expectations
… Other evidence of this change in the social environment of the school is the significant
rise in parental satisfaction. (DEST, 2006, p. 41)
The way that most teachers model behaviour to the students has changed. The way many
teachers speak to students has changed. It is now commonplace for teachers to speak to
students in values terms … for example, if a child has hurt another child, we would bring to
the child’s attention the values of “Respect”, “Care” and “Compassion” as well as “Respon-
sibility” for our actions… As a staff we realise the importance of modelling good behaviour
and the values are the basis for this. (DEST, 2006, p. 75)
Everyone in the classroom exchange, teachers and students alike, became more conscious
of trying to be respectful, trying to do their best, and trying to give others a fair go. We also
found that by creating an environment where these values were constantly shaping
classroom activity, student learning was improving, teachers and students were happier, and
school was calmer. (DEST, 2006, p. 120)
… has provided many benefits to the students as far as a coordinated curriculum and
learning experiences that have offered a sense of belonging, connectedness, resilience and a
sense of self. However, there has been none more significant than the reflective change that
has occurred in the participant teachers and schools. (DEST, 2006, p. 185)

3.3 VEGPSP 2

The Phase 2 Report (DEEWR, 2008), again summarized in sections of Lovat et al.
(2011), uncovered even stronger links between a values approach to pedagogy and
the ambience it created with the holistic effects of this approach on student
behaviour and performance. In phase 2, a number of features of the broad values
approach were clarified. These included the explicitness of the pedagogy around
values being seen to be determinative, a greater awareness about the crucial
significance of the teacher, and the role of an experiential or “service learning”
component (see Chap. 5) coming to be seen as a particularly powerful agency in
values pedagogy. The following quotes are indicative of these features:
The principle of explicitness applies more broadly and pervasively than has been previously
recognised … values-based schools live and breathe a values consciousness. They become
schools where values are thought about, talked about, taught about, reflected upon and
enacted across the whole school in all school activities. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 37)
We observed that those teachers whose classrooms were characterised by an inclusive
culture of caring and respect and where character development played an important and
quite often explicit role in the daily learning of students were those same teachers who also
demonstrated a high level of personal development, self-awareness of, and commitment to
their own values and beliefs. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 39)
Uniformly, teachers report that doing something with and for the community increases the
students’ engagement in their learning. This resonates with an interesting but relatively new
28 3 Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects

proposition in education: when students have opportunities to give to their community, to

something beyond themselves, it changes their attitude to the learning tasks. (DEEWR,
2008, p. 41)
It was … observed (within the school) that where teachers were seeing the importance
of establishing relationships and of respecting their students – this was reflected in the
behaviour of their students … Where teachers are embracing values education as something
that is important and to be embedded in practice – their pedagogy is enhanced. (DEEWR,
2008, pp. 81–82)

The evidence from VEGPSP 1 and 2 suggested that values pedagogy has the
power to produce changes in classroom ambience and to effect positive influence
on school culture more generally. Values pedagogy offered a licence for
engagement in dialogue around values and ultimately for a common language to
develop between staff and students by which improved relationships, behaviour and
the addressing of difficult issues could be brokered. The “ripple effect”, cited
above, was observed across sectors and served as a catalyst for a positive change in
the demeanour of the whole school, especially cohering around factors concerned
with teacher–student relationships, teacher and student wellbeing and student
attention to academic responsibilities. Consistent with Newmann’s (Newmann &
Associates, 1996) thesis that the key to effective teaching was in the ambience of
learning, it seemed apparent that it was in the creation of an environment where
the explicated values were shaping behaviour that student learning began to
improve. A quote that captured much of the comprehensiveness of the findings,
and also pointed to the next logical stage of investigation, is in the following:
… focussed classroom activity, calmer classrooms with students going about their work
purposefully, and more respectful behaviour between students. Teachers and students also
reported improved relationships between the two groups. Other reports included improved
student attendance, fewer reportable behaviour incidents and the observation that students
appeared happier. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 27)

Thus, the VEGPSP phases 1 and 2 reports illustrated the dynamics of the
reciprocal interaction between values pedagogy and good (or quality) teaching. We
would come in time to refer to this relationship as a “Double Helix” (Lovat &
Toomey, 2009), a term borrowed from the field of genetics that refers to two
things bound together so tightly, they cohere and become one thing. Courtesy of the
evidence, we had ample demonstration that a well-constructed, clear and
intentional values pedagogy, integrated implicitly and explicitly into the fabric of
the school, has potential to bring transformational changes to the ethos of the school
and the learning environment of the classroom. Transformational changes were
seem most markedly in student and teacher behaviour, student motivation to learn
and the day-to-day learning habits that other research studies have correlated with
improved academic achievement.
As illustrated in the quote above, by the time the Phase 2 Report was compiled,
there was a growing indication that the vast array of anecdotal data and teacher
testimony were testable in some way. This led directly to the idea that these
anecdotal data could and should be tested for their reliability. Hence, the following
project!
3.4 Testing and Measuring the Effects of Values Pedagogy 29

3.4 Testing and Measuring the Effects of Values Pedagogy

The inextricable link between quality teaching and an integrated values orientation,
as well as the particularly beneficial effects of a service learning component as part
of this mix (something I will amplify below in Chap. 5), was the subject of much
anecdotal evidence and strong teacher assertion in the two phases of VEGPSP
(DEST, 2006; DEEWR, 2008). Across the four years in which the project rolled
out, the nature of the evidence shifted from being purely qualitative to having a
quantitative edge, albeit lacking formal instrumentation and measurement. These
latter were drawn on in the Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values
Education on Student Effects and School Ambience (Lovat, Toomey, Dally, &
Clement, 2009). In this study, there was interest in all of the claims being made
around student effects, with a dedicated focus on arguably the most contentious set
of claims, namely those around student academic improvement.
Granted the high stakes around the academic achievement claim, the study was
characterized by intensive quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. In the
end, we believed there was sufficient tested evidence to support the claim that a
well-crafted values education programme, functioning as best practice pedagogy
(values pedagogy), had potential to impact on a range of measures typically corre-
lated with student achievement. These measures included, in turn, school
ambience, student–teacher relationships, student and teacher wellbeing and
student academic diligence.
Summarizing these four factors briefly: concerning the matter of school
ambience, quantitative and qualitative evidence was elicited from students,
teachers and parents that confirmed the development of a “… “calmer”
environment with less conflict and with a reduction in the number of referrals to
the planning room” (Lovat et al., 2009, p. 8). Regarding student–teacher
relationships, there was a similar array of evidence of a “… rise in levels of
politeness and courtesy, open friendliness, better manners, offers of help, and
students being more kind and considerate … the main impact of values education
on student-teacher relationships appeared to be a greater understanding of each
other’s perspective or at least to have a greater respect for each other’s position” (p.
9). About student wellbeing, the report provided evidence of “…the creation of a
safer and more caring school community, a greater self- awareness, a greater
capacity for self-appraisal, self-regulation and enhanced self- esteem” (p. 10).
Finally, and arguably the most contentious evidence concerned with the factor of
student academic diligence, where the report spoke at length about evidence of
students ‘…putting greater effort into their work and “striving for quality”,
“striving to achieve their best” and even “striving for perfection”: “The aspect of
students taking greater pride in their work and producing quality outcomes for their
own pleasure was also mentioned by both teachers and parents” (p. 6). The report
continues:
Thus, there was substantial quantitative and qualitative evidence suggesting that there
were observable and measurable improvements in students’ academic diligence, including
increased attentiveness, a greater capacity to work independently as well as more cooper-
30 3 Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects

atively, greater care and effort being invested in schoolwork and students assuming more
responsibility for their own learning as well as classroom “chores”. (Lovat et al., 2009, p. 6)

The main quantitative data that underpinned the claims above were
supplemented in the study by a number of case studies drawn from primary and
high schools, from across the country and across the sectors. In summarizing the
effects of values pedagogy noted among the case studies, the report says the
following:
Overwhelmingly, the strongest inference that can be drawn from the case studies, when
taken together as a collective case study, is that as schools give increasing curriculum and
teaching emphasis to values education, students become more academically diligent, the
school assumes a calmer, more peaceful ambience, better student-teacher relationships are
forged, student and teacher wellbeing improves and parents are more engaged with the
school … Moreover, the case studies suggest that any relationship between values education
programs and the quality of student attitude, parent involvement, interpersonal relations and
the like is much more complicated than simply being the case that values education in and
of itself produces such quality teaching effects. Rather, it seems clear that the fit between
values education and quality teaching is better described not as one having an impact on the
other, but rather as the two of them being in harmony. That is, values education, academic
diligence, school ambience and coherence, student and teacher wellbeing, the quality of
interpersonal relationships and, up to a point, parental participation harmonize in some way.
The closer the attention a school gives to explicitly teaching a set of agreed values, the more
the students seem to comply with their school work demands, the more conducive and
coherent a place the school becomes and the better the staff and students feel. (Lovat et al.,
2009, p. 12)

3.5 Conclusion

So the research evidence is in, I would suggest. The findings have been accepted
into any number of world-class academic journals that involve peer review, the
most rigorous form of assessment and endorsement that the academic community
offers. As examples of these, see the ones listed in the bibliography. Lovat and
Dally (2018), for instance, was an article solicited by an international journal that
focused especially on the research evidence obtained from the Testing and
Measuring Study.
As suggested throughout, the evidence has not only been tested against the best
standards the academic community can muster but, of greater importance in my
view, it conforms to the perceptions of those on the ground, the teachers and
principals in schools. This research programme was not, as some might be, an
antiseptic or ethereal one divorced from day-to-day classroom realities. On the
contrary, it was all about “what works” (to draw on my old curriculum persona) in
classroom teaching and learning. If politicians, media and parents take no notice of
this, they do so at their peril. More accurately, they do so at the peril of the children
who are in the school for one main purpose, to learn best what is needed for their
future lives, not to be pawns in political jousting.
As suggested a few times, the findings were immense. They take up hundreds
upon hundreds of pages of reports, reports I might add that had to go through the
grill not only of peer review but of ministerial review. To save you wading through
3.5 Conclusion 31

all that, and to offer a thematic order that might not always be apparent in the
reports, let me now lay out as clearly as possible some of the major ideas and
themes that came through in the findings. This will be the task of Chap. 4.

References

DEEWR. (2008). At the heart of what we do: Values education at the centre of schooling. Report
of the values education good practice schools project—Stage 2. Melbourne: Curriculum Corpo-
ration. Retrieved September 12 from: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/values/val_vegps2_final_
report,26142.html.
DEST. (2003). Values education study (Executive summary final report). Melbourne: Curriculum
Corporation. Retrieved September 12, 2016: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/
VES_Final_Report14Nov.pdf.
DEST. (2006). Implementing the national framework for values education in Australian schools:
Report of the values education good practice schools project—Stage 1: Final report, September
2006. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation. Retrieved September 12, 2016 from: http://www.
curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/VEGPS1_FINAL_REPORT_081106.pdf.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1974). Theory and practice (J. Viertal, Trans.). London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans.) (vol. I). Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans.) (vol. II). Boston:
Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenhardt & S. Nicholson,
Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Lovat, T., & Dally, K. (2018). Testing and measuring the impact of character education on the
learning environment and its outcomes. Journal of Character Education, 14(2), 1–22.
Lovat, T., & Toomey, R. (Eds.). (2009). Values education and quality teaching: The double helix
effect. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Dally, K., & Clement, N. (2009). Project to test and measure the impact of
values education on student effects and school ambience. Report for the Australian Government
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) by The University
of Newcastle, Australia. Canberra: DEEWR. Available at: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/
_resources/Project_to_Test_and_Measure_the_Impact_of_Values_Education.pdf.
Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement:
Contemporary research evidence. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Narvaez, D. (2010). Building a sustaining classroom climate for purposeful ethical citizenship. In
T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education
and student wellbeing (pp. 659–674). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture, and
wisdom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Narvaez, D. (2016). Embodied morality: Protectionism, engagement and imagination. London, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Newmann, F. M., & Associates. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellec-
tual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Chapter 4
Features of the Learning Ambience
Created by Values Pedagogy: Calmness,
Positive Relationships and Safety
and Security

Abstract The chapter will highlight a number of factors that have been commonly
identified as features of the positive effects of values pedagogy, both in the Aus-
tralian program and internationally. These factors are summarized thematically as
calmness, positive relationships and safety and security. Persistent cross-
referencing will be provided that underline the consistency to be found around
these factors in the Australian program and international research.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Learning ambience Calm

learning environment · Positive relationships in learning
· Safety and security in
learning
·
4.1 Introduction

So many of the teachers who were involved in the values pedagogy projects made
comments along the lines of “this is just good teaching, isn’t it?” This goes to the
heart of what I’m trying to say in this book. I go back to my earlier disruptive
lecture starter “I don’t give a damn about values!” It was a response to the
presumption that I was somehow a values education flag bearer, something I never
felt. As a teacher myself, and then later as a curriculum expert (?), my only interest
has ever been in what works, and it just happens that values pedagogy, in the way
we rolled it out with its full-barrelled implicit/explicit two-sided coin, appeared to
work for the essentials of education. By essentials, I refer to the range of
educational goals, taking in the broad goals of overall student betterment through
to the narrower goals of academic enhancement. In this sense, I was never
interested in being seen as a values pedagogy advocate but rather in sharing the
important lessons we learned about what works best for education generally. It just
happens that, in my case, I learned the best lessons through my involvement in
values pedagogy. And one of the best lessons of all concerned the ambience of
learning.
Let us return to the earlier point about Fred Newmann’s (Newmann &
Associates, 1996) sine qua non among his five pedagogical dynamics for authentic
pedagogy (or quality teaching, or just good teaching), namely the ambience of care
and trust. The findings from our values pedagogy programme made it clear, if
there had ever

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 33
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_4
34 4 Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values …

been any doubt, that such an ambience of learning (what I continue to describe as
the implicit side of the values pedagogy coin), together with the other side of the
coin, namely explicit discourse around values (the two-sided coin explicated in
Chap. 2), is what unlocks the doors to improved academic diligence and learning.
So, what were the features of this ideal learning ambience? Well, as is to be
expected, it worked slightly differently in different settings so no generalization
will be perfect but the findings nonetheless pointed to a certain pattern of features.
These included something about: calmness, a word that continued to press through
the evidence; positive relationships, both student to student and teacher to student;
and safety and security, something about feeling protected in the learning
environment.

4.2 Calmness

The Values Education Study (DEST, 2003), referred to at the outset, spoke of
“cohe- sion” and greater “peace” developing in the schools that engaged in the
study, and that this was a change for the better. I referred above to the school
principal who had some resistance from staff about getting involved in the
programme at all on the basis that they didn’t have enough time. Yet, having been
through the programme, the same staff were reflecting that they had more time,
largely because the learning environment was so much calmer. This normally
seemed to be in association with comments about student behaviour and
engagement improvement. So, it seems, on the surface, that better behaviour and
stronger engagement led to this calmness.
In this sense, perhaps calmness is merely the flip side of the more typical
classroom dynamic which tends towards the confrontational if not conflictual,
taking teachers away from their primary focus for too much of the average day. If
this is the case, there are no great underlying epistemological, neurological or other
scientific issues at stake in the link between the calmness aspect of ambience and
improved diligence. It is all quite simple: calmer environment results from lack of
bad behaviour which in turn means teachers can teach more and, hence, students
probably learn more and improve their academic focus. QED: calmer environment
causes improved academic diligence! Or is it a case of what comes first, the
chicken or the egg?
The flip side is that it is the strengthened academic focus that itself calms the
envi- ronment. By this explanation, through engaging students in deeper ways of
knowing, ones that stimulate the interpretive, critical and imaginative cognitive
interests (a la Habermas, 1972, 1974), the emotional and imaginative parts of the
brain such that sound reasoning is impelled (a la Narvaez, 2010, 2014, 2016), then
learning becomes a richer experience, resulting in a greater sense of calm in the
students. Looking at it this way, there probably is some deep-seated cognitive or
neurological theory that needs to be drawn on—and someone like Habermas,
Narvaez or Immordino-Yang (2011), Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) is good
at doing that. So, is it the chicken or the egg first or is it perhaps both taking their
turns? There was evidence pointing both ways in the data.
4.2 Calmness 35

In the first phase of VEGPSP (DEST, 2006), the theme of calmness was linked
throughout to improvement in both behaviour and learning. The school was a
“better place” because values pedagogy had led to students displaying improved
self-control and hence becoming better behaved. The way it was phrased,
sometimes it seemed the better environment happened first and the improved
learning followed. At other times, it was phrased in a way that suggested the
opposite. In these cases, the teacher’s own pedagogical approach was seen as the
main stimulant. That is, when teach- ers were faced with the challenge of placing
values at the heart of the curriculum, especially through the explicit side of the
coin, they implemented more engaging learning activities. Furthermore, through
using the discourse of values in addressing behaviour issues themselves, students
began adapting better to their learning and, in the accumulated effects of all this, a
greater calmness descended:
… by creating an environment where these values were constantly shaping classroom
activity, student learning was improving, teachers and students were happier, and school
was calmer. (DEST, 2006, p. 120)

In the second phase of VEGPSP (DEEWR, 2008), the link between calmness
and effective learning environments was arguably even stronger, most markedly for
those clusters and schools that already had two years of values pedagogy behind
them. There was also a greater emphasis to be found on the notion of cohesion
accompa- nying calmness, of the explicit links between calm and the inclusive,
caring environ- ment, and of the ripple effect down to both student and teacher self-
confidence:
We observed that those teachers whose classrooms were characterised by an inclusive
culture of caring and respect and where character development played an important and
quite often explicit role in the daily learning of students were those same teachers who also
demonstrated a high level of personal development, self-awareness of, and commitment to
their own values and beliefs. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 39)

In the Testing and Measuring Study (Lovat, Toomey, Dally, & Clement, 2009),
the above assertions from teachers and others around calmness were confirmed.
There was numerous evidence pointing to the following:
… a calmer, more caring and more cooperative environment than before the values program.
(p. 7)
… a “calmer” environment with less conflict and with a reduction in the number of referrals
to the planning room. (p. 8)
… assemblies had “dramatically improved” and were “much calmer” and … there was
“more ordered movement around the school”, all of which helped to “set a better tone”. (p.
8)
… the school assumes a calmer, more peaceful ambience. (p. 12)
… calmer and more peaceful classrooms, and helped children to be more settled and
attentive. (p. 34)
… calmer, more caring and more cooperative environment than before the values program.
(p. 44)
… most staff are calmer in their approach to students. (p. 52)
… the school assumes a calmer, more peaceful ambience, better student-teacher
relationships are forged, student and teacher wellbeing improves and parents are more
engaged with the school. (p. 68)
36 4 Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values …

Virtually all the case studies report that, since the schools’ involvement with values
education, they have become significantly calmer and more peaceful places … Most put this
down to the students knowing the meaning of things like respect and responsibility. (p. 80)
The positive effects on school ambience included teacher perceptions of the school being
calmer and more peaceful, of conflict being managed more constructively and of students
demonstrating improved social skills. (p. 86)
The main outcomes of the school’s values program have been: 1. A focus on the explicit
teaching of values 2. The calming effect it has had on the school. (p. 99)
The focus group was unequivocal about the impact the values education program has had
on classroom life. Classrooms are calmer since its introduction. (p. 101)
The group felt that there was a direct correlation between the success of the values
education program and the increased calmness and respectfulness observed in classrooms.
(p. 101)
… contributed to the school becoming a calmer and more peaceful environment where
mutual respect is taken seriously. (p. 102)
… the school seems calmer and more focused than it was 1–2 years ago (i.e. before the
values program). (p. 123)

In international studies, the notion of calmness in conjunction with improved

learning is also evident. Farrer (2010) refers to calmness among both students and
staff as one of the features of the values pedagogy she witnessed transforming the
West Kidlington, UK, school under the leadership of Neil Hawkes:
Because everyone’s happy and calm, they’re learning more. (p. 396)

Farrer refers to calmness as a deliberate strategy that sets the scene for the kind
of values pedagogy that leads to enhanced learning. She speaks of the importance
of “a moment’s silence” before assembly or class as an element in the pedagogy
that settles children into a relaxed and receptive state for learning. In this sense,
calmness is more a cause than an effect.
Abdul-Samad (2010) also recommends establishing calm as a prerequisite for
effective learning. She also underlines the importance of the teacher modelling
calmness in order that the right learning dispositions might be set up. Sukhom-
linska (2010) emphasizes similarly the crucial role for effective learning of
instilling calmness among pupils, and Tooth (2010) provides case study data that
illustrate the importance. In turn, this calmness is something that the students then
take into their learning routines. In the work of Adalbjarnardottir (2010), Narvaez
(2010) and Nielsen (2010), calmness is referred to as a feature of values pedagogy
but one that results from stimulating, imaginative learning, rather than an artefact
that impels such learning.
In conclusion, what we can say is that calmness is a regular feature of the learn-
ing environment to be found when values pedagogy is driving the learning. As we
reported in summarizing this feature:
Whether as cause or effect, or both, the calm classroom, characterized by a range of features
including more positive and self-regulated behaviour among students, better organization
of curriculum and teaching, learning activities more likely to stimulate the whole person
(cognition, emotion, sociality, etc.), more explicit values discourse and ideally a component
that involves social engagement, seems to be a persistent facet of the learning site where
academic diligence is regularly reported. (Lovat, Dally, Clement, & Toomey, 2011, p. 216)
4.3 Positive Relationships

The issue of improved and positive relationships resulting from values ped-
agogy, teacher–student, student–student and, while not quite so targeted, teacher–
teacher/principal–teacher, was prominent from the beginning of the pro- gramme.
In the 2003 study report, we read:
… the … projects … were underpinned by a clear focus on building more positive relation-
ships within the school as a central consideration for implementing values education on a
broader scale. (DEST, 2003, p. 3)

The positive relationships theme persisted throughout and, as with so much of

the evidence, became more sophisticated as teachers and researchers had time to
reflect on its impact on the learning environment, including explicitly the ways
teachers were teaching:
It was … observed (within the school) that where teachers were seeing the importance
of establishing relationships and of respecting their students – this was reflected in the
behaviour of their students …Where teachers are embracing values education as something
that is important and to be embedded in practice – their pedagogy is enhanced. (DEEWR,
2008, pp. 81–82)

At the heart of the relationships factor lay the issue of language and discourse,
as I spoke about it above. The notion of having a “common language” around
values was referred to constantly as having provided a new means of dealing with
issues of behaviour and other transactional matters, as well as offering a deepened
focus for how to deal with curriculum content. By means of a shared language,
issues could be brokered between teachers and students, and students and students,
so alleviating conflict, improving behaviour and ultimately strengthening
relationships between the various stakeholders. Similarly, by means of a shared
language, issues arising from curriculum content could be grappled with at a
deeper level than was common in classroom discourse. These features then had a
“ripple effect” on the total learning environment. Hence, reports on the issue of
improved relationships were always enmeshed in a matrix of related issues:
… focussed classroom activity, calmer classrooms with students going about their work
purposefully, and more respectful behaviour between students. Teachers and students also
reported improved relationships between the two groups. Other reports included improved
student attendance, fewer reportable behaviour incidents and the observation that students
appeared happier. (DEEWR 2008, p. 27)

In the Testing and Measuring Study (Lovat et al., 2009), claims such as these
were further tested. Claims around matters like attendance and behaviour reports
were easily able to be verified through school records of such things. Less easily
measurable claims were put to the test in different ways, through interviews and the
like. As a result, we were able to elicit evidence of a range of behaviours relevant
to improved relationships. These included: teachers recognizing the need to
respect, listen to (pp. 8, 9, 102, 107), understand (p. 9) and care for students (p. 53).
They became more aware of students as persons and their particular needs as they
took the
time to be interested and listen to them about their lives outside of school (pp. 9,
32, 47, 61, 82). In a reciprocal manner, student’s respect for teachers increased (pp.
51, 66, 83). The student–teacher relationship was recognized as an important factor
in student academic engagement (p. 100). Stronger collegial ties between students
and teachers developed (p. 13), so that there was genuine two-way communication
(p. 61) and this resulted in a more positive ambience in the classroom: “the values
focus produced more respectful, focused and harmonious classrooms”. (p. 100)
In the end, we believe the findings (Lovat et al., 2009) stood up to being tested
and measured more formally and the central importance of the relationships factor
was confirmed:
Teachers’ and students’ comments also suggested that improved relationships between stu-
dents contributed to a more cooperative and productive learning environment. (p. 6)
Of student–teacher relationships, there was evidence of a ‘… rise in levels of politeness and
courtesy, open friendliness, better manners, offers of help, and students being more kind and
considerate … the main impact of values education on student-teacher relationships
appeared to be a greater understanding of each other’s perspective or at least to have a
greater respect for each other’s position. (p. 9)
While previously, teachers might have been able to establish caring and positive relation-
ships with ‘well-behaved’ students, the explicit teaching of values meant that teachers now
regarded instances of ‘misbehaviour’ as teaching opportunities whereby students could be
assisted to identify their mistakes and practise the value that they hadn’t yet ‘learned’. (p.
10)
The results of the current investigation provide … consistent findings that values education
changes teacher-student relationships so that rather than enforcing minimum standards of
behaviour or school work, teachers are more likely to support and encourage students to
strive for higher ideals. (p. 12)
… as schools give increasing curriculum and teaching emphasis to values education,
students become more academically diligent, the school assumes a calmer, more peaceful
ambience, better student-teacher relationships are forged, student and teacher wellbeing
improves and parents are more engaged with the school. (p. 12)
… the effects of well-crafted values education programs extend to a transformation of
student behaviour, teacher-student relationships … (p. 16)
Teachers’ comments suggested that improved relationships between students contributed to
a more cooperative and productive learning environment. (p. 37)
Some parents were optimistic about changes in relationships between students and
attributed this to the impact of values education… (p. 49)
… the quantitative and qualitative survey data obtained from the students, teachers, and
families in the Group A schools provided converging evidence about the positive impact
of values education on student academic diligence, school ambience, student and teacher
relationships and student and teacher wellbeing. (p. 58)
As well as being the conduits for disseminating values, teachers also benefited from more
mutually respectful relationships with students and from more collegial relationships with
other staff. (p. 66)
… the relationships between staff and students and between students have improved enor-
mously since we introduced the values program. (p. 78)
… case studies that present data on student – teacher relationships mostly report improved
and very positive patterns. (p. 81)
The outcomes of this improved relationship are reflected in the School Survey data. (p. 84)
 Improvement in students’ interpersonal relationships was noted by students, staff and
parents and these observed and measurable changes in student behaviour had important
repercussions for the schools’ ambience. (p. 86)
… the investigation of the impact on Student-teacher relationships revealed that values
education helped to develop “more trusting” relationships between staff and students. (p.
87)
… more trusting student-teacher relationships and the more peaceful and harmonious school
climate emanating from the values education programs appeared to have a positive impact
on both Student and teacher wellbeing. (p. 87)
… the quantitative and qualitative evidence … has demonstrated that a well-crafted and
well-managed values education intervention has potential to impact positively on …
student- teacher relationships… (p. 88)

Clement (2010) draws on a wealth of international research in demonstrating

that the issue of relationships lies at the heart of the flow-on effects from values
pedagogy of improved behaviour, calmer environments and enhanced academic
focus, as a package of factors:
The development of intrinsic motivation flourishes in the context of secure relationships.
(p. 48)

The findings concerning the centrality of relationships to efficacious learning is

found in any number of international studies. Carr (2010) proposes that teaching is
an inherently relational endeavour and so effective teaching requires positive and
supportive relations between teachers and their students:
… teaching as both a professional role and an activity is implicated in, or impossible to con-
ceive apart from, human qualities of an inherently “personal” nature, or from interpersonal
relationships. (p. 63)

Carr goes on to say that because teach in g is by its very nature a “people
pro- fession”, the kinds of relationships that characterize it are even more integral
to its work and its likely success than that of any other profession. The teacher
whose relationships with students are not characterized by fair treatment, trust and
support is unlikely to be having any positive effect on their students’ outcomes or
wellbeing.
Robinson and Campbell (2010) point to two main features of a values approach
to learning, namely the quality of the learning itself and the quality of the teacher
–student relationship, underlining especially the importance of “inclusiveness” on
the part of the teacher such that all students know they belong and are valued. It is
this kind of relationship that determines their engagement with learning. Tirri (2010)
identifies, through her empirical work on professional ethics, that relationships
management is crucial to effective professional work for teachers and that part of
this management entails the capacity to deal with emotion:
The skill in understanding and expressing emotions is … necessary for teachers to establish
caring relationships with their students and their families. (p. 159)

Tirri’s idea fits well with the neuroscientific evidence I have explored above.
The teacher who can deal with emotion is most likely to impel the imagination that
Narvaez suggests is central to the sound reasoning needed for learning.
 Hawkes (2010) illustrates the centrality of positive relationships to achieving all
the benefits of values pedagogy, including the academic effect of improved
attention to student work, a view endorsed in this case by a UK inspectorial Ofsted
Report (Ofsted, 2007). Meanwhile, Gellel (2010) suggests:
… teachers play a fundamental role since it is through the relationships that they establish
and develop with students, colleagues and the wider community that they share and
facilitate values and holistic development. (p. 163)

Osterman (2010) makes the link between teacher–student relationships and the
quality of teaching one of hand-in-glove, the implicit and explicit two-sided coin
of values pedagogy. It is not just the teacher who establishes good relationships
with students who facilitate greater academic impact but the teacher who does this
in conjunction with good quality content and effective pedagogical strategies. She
labours the point that high-quality teaching has its own effect on relationships. In
other words, establishing positive relationships is itself part of efficacious
pedagogy but so also is the way in which content is disseminated. Osterman also
underlines the crucial nature of modelling for good relationships to ensue. It is the
way students see the teacher relating to fellow students that is the great determiner
of how they will relate themselves. The teacher who employs favouritism,
cronyism or discrimination of any kind is modelling precisely these negative
behaviours. In contrast, teachers must be the model they want for the class.
Osterman (2010) refers to results of a study that illustrated the centrality of positive
teacher–student relationships to be inherent to teachers achieving the best academic
results:
…these teacher behaviors appeared to contribute to a more positive classroom environment
where students were engaged in and valued learning and where relationships with peers
were governed by friendship and support. (p. 247)

Arthur and Wilson (2010) report on a study from the UK that confirmed rela-
tionships as one of a number of key features of programmes that nurture student
wellbeing, including in the development of character and students’ overall growth
in knowledge and confidence as learners:
Above all, the quality of relationships between teachers and students is an essential aspect
of character formation in schools. There is a positive relationship between character
dimensions, achievement and learning dispositions. (p. 352)

Meanwhile, Dasoo’s (2010) report on a South African study with a particularly

disadvantaged clientele illustrates dramatically the indispensable nature of
promoting and establishing the right sorts of relationships as an inherent and
inextricable part of the pedagogy. In this case, it is a veritable sine qua non first
step in effective pedagogy:
I will present evidence of how a values education initiative has the potential to refocus and
nurture the teacher’s understanding of the important role he or she plays not only in
imparting subject knowledge to a learner but also in creating relationships with them that
are indicative of commitment to and care for the development of their character and the
eventual role they will play in society. (p. 360)
 Sun and Stewart (2010) propose that relationships are “… positively associated
with students’ motivation, achievement, feelings of belonging and affect in
school”. (p. 409) Meanwhile, Benninga and Tracz (2010) note that one of the
features of the “values” schools that had the most tangible positive academic
results were those schools that “… promoted a caring community and positive
social relationships”. (p. 523) Adalbjarnardottir (2010) concludes, on the basis of
her empirical work, that a teacher’s capacity to establish effective and positive
relationships with students and among students is a fundamental piece in the puzzle
of teacher competence. Johnson and Johnson (2010) confirm this view in their
work that shows the impact of values pedagogy on strengthened relationships with
peers and others.
Granted the emphasis on relationships as a key feature of trusting environments
(Bryk & Schneider, 2002) and of ambiences that impel quality teaching (Newmann
& Associates, 1996), it is hardly surprising that it became such a resounding issue
across the values pedagogy projects in Australia.

4.4 Safety and Security

As with the calmness and relationships factors, safety and a sense of security in
their learning environment came through as crucial in the earliest phase of the
values pedagogy programme. There were routine comments about safety in the
physical environment through to the kind of security implied in being surrounded
by more positive relationships (DEST, 2003, pp. 18, 20, 58). The concept of safety
took phys- ical safety as a given; clearly, no efficacious learning will be happening
if students do not feel physically secure in their environment. Moreover, it referred
back to the issue of relationships, teacher–student and student–student, and the
acceptance of difference, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. that was either a
characteristic of the school or not. One of the overt goals for some in developing a
values pedagogy was as follows:
…to re-engineer a school culture so the school could promote and nurture itself as a safe,
compassionate, tolerant and inclusive school. (DEST, 2003, p. 96)
The core school values contribute towards the desirable outcomes of safety, happiness,
connectedness, emotional well-being, high self-esteem, exemplary behaviour, citizenship,
service, achievement and student self-confidence. (DEST, 2003, p. 131)

In the later projects, the safety factor became even more pronounced and the
con- nections with student wellbeing and their academic attention were more
obvious. Moreover, the sense that students had agency over their own safety
through tak- ing responsibility for their own environment became a feature. In
turn, this would influence the learning ambience:
The atmosphere of care and safety generated in a community of inquiry provides a space in
which less confident students can try out ideas with the guarantee that they will be listened
to. (DEST, 2006, p. 121)
 Moreover, the issue of the common language provided by values pedagogy
came to be seen as instrumental and inherently related to safety and security:
Virtually all projects recount the importance of developing a “shared language” for their
values education programme – a language that is shared between all involved, teachers,
parents and students. Sometimes the shared language is arrived at through good values
education teaching and discussion with colleagues. At other times it comes from
interrogating the National Framework so that it correlates with the language the school uses.
(DEST, 2006, p. 15)
…a shared school community language that could contribute to positive, safe and inclusive
learning communities. (DEST, 2006, p. 181)

As with all the factors, the safety and security factor came to be seen in more
sophisticated light as the projects moved to their later stages. By phase 2 of
VEGPSP, it was seen as being more enmeshed with other pedagogical factors,
while the allied notion of possessing a common language persisted:
The pedagogies engage students in real-life learning, offer opportunity for real practice, pro-
vide safe structures for taking risks, and encourage personal reflection and action.
(DEEWR, 2008, p. 9)
(Values pedagogy) …requires students to scrutinise questions that are difficult to resolve
or answer, and focus on listening, thinking, challenging and changing viewpoints within a
guided and safe environment. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 28)
The structured discussion and agreed values that govern the engagement provide safety and
support for students as well as an expectation that correction and revision are part of the
debating process. It promotes critical thinking and encourages an obligation to respect one’s
fellow inquirers. It attempts to produce better thinkers and more caring members of society,
who accept differences and, at the same time, submit conflicts to reasonable scrutiny. All
participants are expected to respect one another as thoughtful members of the group who
communally seek to better understand the issue at hand. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 28)
The pedagogy gives students responsibility but recognises the inherent risks of this and
accordingly provides for student safety and support. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 32)
Participation in values education projects can provide a safe learning environment for teach-
ers to expand their repertoires of practice through the sharing of strategies and supportive
debriefing. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 60)

The many claims around the centrality of safety and security as a feature of the
learning environment where wellbeing and learning are intertwined were
confirmed when put to the test in the empirical project designed to test all the
claims of the earlier projects:
When values education was explicit, a common language was established among students,
staff and families. This not only led to greater understanding of the targeted values but
also provided a positive focus for redirecting children’s inappropriate behaviour. Teachers
perceived that explicitly teaching values and developing empathy in students resulted in
more responsible, focused and cooperative classrooms and equipped students to strive for
better learning and social outcomes. (Lovat et al., 2009, p. 88)

Toomey (2010) notes the link between the introduction of values language and
stu- dent patterning of behaviour. Similarly, Dally (2010) observed that values
language
4.4 Safety and Security 43

provides a positive focus and “consistent expectations” when discussing appropri-

ate and inappropriate classroom behaviour with other teachers, students and parents
(p. 514). This constitutes in itself a safety and security factor.
Similarly, the theme was easy to find in international research. Robinson and
Campbell (2010) note that students report safety as a feature of those environments
where values pedagogy is being implemented, as do Tirri (2010) and Haydon
(2010). Osterman (2010) identifies the setting up of “safe space” in which students
feel respected and are safe to practise respect for their fellows as an artefact of the
kind of teacher practice that is most associated with academic performance.
Spooner-Lane, Curtis, and Mergler (2010) also note safe space as one of the
enmeshed features of those sites where teachers both establish the right
relationships and provide overall high class pedagogy:
…teachers must possess certain capabilities that will allow them to provide high quality
instruction in a safe, supportive, and stimulating learning environment and design and
manage individual and group learning experiences that are intellectually stimulating. (p.
383)

Narvaez (2010) cites her own earlier work in making the connection between
the safety of the physical environment and the potential psychological security that
is necessary to the effective learning ambience. She notes the distraction from
learning that ensues when students feel unsafe and become preoccupied by their
insecurity:
When climates are unsafe to the individual, they will provoke a “security ethic” in which
self-safety becomes a major focus and priority for action. (p. 667)

Brew and Beatty (2010) tie the notion of the safe environment to the overall
social cohesion experienced by the student and hence the strengthening of this
envi- ronment’s potential to support enhanced academic success:
Among interrelated outcomes are increases in student sense of safety and belonging, parent
and community partnership involvement in school and student academic performance, along
with decreases in bullying, vandalism, absenteeism and discipline problems. (p. 680)

They cite a principal of one of their project schools who summarized the link
between safety and academic progress in the following way:
The biggest impact would have been respect and ultimately all schools their first priority is
academics … I think sometimes I would rather put respect first and put the academic pillar
second. All the research and all the work that we have done as a staff and as a community
that when kids are physically and emotionally safe the academic piece will come – so
therefore that is why I look at that respect piece first before I look at the academic piece.
(pp. 683–684)

Adalbjarnardottir (2010) emphasizes the importance of the safety factor in her

analysis of teachers undergoing professional development in an effort to enhance
their learning environments:
… as teachers create a caring and safe classroom atmosphere, students can feel free to
express their ideas, feel they are heard, and feel the need to listen to each other – and feel
motivated to argue, debate, and reach agreement. (p. 744)
44 4 Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values …

4.5 Conclusion

Let me finish this section on ambience with the words from our own summative text:
It seems the jury is well and truly in that ambience is one of the most significant keys to
academic improvement. Furthermore, this ambience is characterized across vastly different
research domains in a remarkably predictable way. What then is this predictable characteri-
zation? In which ambience does this improvement occur? Once again, the evidence suggests
that it occurs in the ambience characterized by calmness, by positive teacher-student rela-
tionships and by safety and security in both basic and sophisticated senses. No doubt, there
are other words that could be used and other emphases drawn out but we are at the point of
saying that, in all likelihood, any of these characterizations would be reducible to one or all
of these key features. Hence, it is clear what constitutes the main implicit aspect of values
pedagogy, namely, the ambience of learning as understood above, and this all makes perfect
sense. It is in accord entirely with the pedagogical work of Newmann, cited several times in
this book. The ambience of support and trust is a sine qua non of the pedagogy that
produces the best holistic results. (Lovat et al., 2011, p. 224)

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Chapter 5
Service Learning

Abstract The chapter will explore an adjunct feature of values pedagogy, found
when part of an integrated values programme but also when in freestanding form.
Service learning as a pedagogy has its own following including professional associ-
ations, conferences and research outlets. Emanating largely from the USA, service
learning proved to be an especially effective adjunct to a number of the Australian
projects. It fits well with the notion that the best kind of knowledge is knowledge
that is enlivened in practice, in this case practice that has potential to benefit the
wider society and providing students with a sense of social agency.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Service learning Ways of

knowing · Communicative action ·

5.1 Introduction

There were lots of things we learned from the values pedagogy experience. This
book is a humble attempt to capture some of the most important and enduring
things learned, such that almost anyone who was part of it would have the same
concerns as me about NAPLAN, as outlined in the opening chapter. Without doubt,
one of the most enduring lessons is related to the component I’m describing here as
“service learning” (Lovat & Clement, 2016), a particularly powerful demonstration
of the potency of the explicit side of the values pedagogy coin.
In the case of service learning, the explicit dimension connotes more than
merely reflecting on and discussing values but moreover the practical application
of values agency. From a theoretical point of view, it goes to the heart of
Habermas’s (1972, 1974, 1984, 1987, 1990) conjoining of ways of knowing with
communicative action. In a word, for Habermas, the ultimate knowing is to be
found in action. The roots of the thinking are to be found in Aristotelian philosophy
and might be roughly summarized as “putting your money where your mouth is.
Don’t just talk about it, do it!” In many ways, service learning came to be seen as
the “cherry on the cake” for values pedagogy. It became clearer and clearer as time
went on that the generally positive effects of values pedagogy, such as have been
explicated throughout this

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 47
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_5
48 5 Service Learning

book, were amplified in those sites where service learning was included as part of
the pedagogy.
The notion behind service learning actually goes by a number of names, includ-
ing “community engagement”, “community visitations”, “community service”,
“stu- dents for action” or simply “service”. One of the clusters in our projects
focused its entire values pedagogy on “Student Action Teams”. So, what’s in a
name? Why select “service learning” as the best of them? There are two reasons:
first is that there is a recognized professional association, literature, research,
conferences, much practice and generally a tradition focused on “service learning”;
much of it is in the USA but it has spread, including to Australia. Going for that
term means we can borrow and mine some of what’s already there, rather than have
to start from scratch. Second is that the association in question has nailed much of
the implicit/explicit two-sided coin of values pedagogy. This needs some
explanation.
Many of the programmes named above do a great job of making connections
between the school and the community, and between the academic pursuit and
some real-life situations. There is no doubt this can be a great learning experience
in itself, just as any explicit experience can be. For a young person to be introduced
to some of the sadder and more challenging realities of their society can open their
eyes in a way that no amount of in-class lessons could do. But, just as I attempted
to outline above about the implicit and explicit sides of values pedagogy generally,
it is the explicit that really nails the learning experience. So much so that, once
you’ve seen it at work, the idea of merely sending students out to visit a community
outreach of some sort without explicitly drawing on that experience in ramming
home the learning seems like a wasted opportunity. And explicitly drawing on the
service experience in ramming home the learning is what the tradition of service
learning has done so well.
Done well, service learning sets up a cycle of within and without school
learning, such that students are regularly prepared for whatever situation they are
moving into (itself a vital step so they are guaranteed of being ready emotionally
and in every other way), then enter the experiential site (hospital, old people’s
home, youth centre, detention centre, indigenous enclave, minority religion, etc.)
and then come back to the school to share their experiences and be guided in their
thinking, so as to prepare for the next experience. And so it goes around, learning
academically and practically in a cyclical fashion, reflecting on the overall learning
in order to both give and learn more next time seems to set up a particularly
positive and receptive state of mind. Habermas would refer to this as the praxis
moment in the knowing and learning, when the cognitive interest is in engaging in
practical action rather than mere reflection. In values pedagogy terms, one has gone
from even the most critical and imaginative forms of learning to becoming a
participant in the focus of learning.
5.2 Service Learning in the Values Pedagogy Programme

As already mentioned, what we saw happening regularly in those clusters that

focused their values pedagogy on service learning, totally or as an adjunct, was that
all the most desirable effects that I have outlined above seemed to be achieved
doubly so. Indeed, the earlier idea of values pedagogy entailing a conjoining of
quality teaching and values education as a “double helix” was extended to the
notion of these two conjoining further with service learning as a “troika” (Lovat,
Toomey, Clement, Crotty, & Nielsen, 2009b).
By and large, the clusters that included a service learning component in their
values pedagogy were those that really landed all the best effects, including most
surprisingly (well, that is what we thought at the time) academic enhancement.
Why was this so? What was it about a service learning venture that was able to
achieve this so well? Remember here Narvaez’s (2010, 2014, 2016) notion of
imagination, emotion and sound reasoning working in conjunction. The service
experience stimulates the imagination; students are experiencing things that, by and
large, are new to them, sometimes exciting and sometimes highly challenging but
always impacting on the emotions. By making the service experience the focus of
reflective learning, the teacher is maximizing the potential for the emotions to be in
the right place for sound reasoning to follow.
In the report on the first phase of VEGPSP (DEST, 2006), service learning
ventures included working in aged care centres, reading programmes for people in
hospitals, developing safe travel programmes for students going to and from
schools, environ- mental projects and the development of Student Action Teams
linked to the work of the Red Cross. The reflections of students and teachers
indicate that these experi- ences resulted in learned empathy, enhanced
communicative competence, a greater sense of student agency and an intrinsic
motivation to engage in meaningful action. As one teacher commented:
The overall confidence of the students grew as they gained an understanding of the needs of
the residents and they came away feeling a sense of achievement and greater understanding.
This then flowed into the conversation and written responses gained after the trip. The
students showed compassion to the circumstances the residents lived in and wanted to
discuss other ways they could help. (DEST, 2006, p. 157)

From speaking with teachers and students who engaged in service learning, we
saw a variety of amazing things happening. These include students who were most
negative, most resistant to learning in its traditional forms, sometimes students with
the most challenging behaviour issues, actually settle down remarkably once they
had experienced serving in a community site. The reasons for this were many and
varied. Feedback sometimes seemed to suggest it was because these students, often
ones with a “chip on their shoulder”, saw people who were worse off. If they had a
gripe about their life situation, they often came to see that it could be worse. If they
believed their parents didn’t love them enough, they came to see there were parents
who had totally abandoned their children. If they were feeling sorry for themselves
because they didn’t think they looked so good or had some minor ailment, they saw
people with really debilitating illnesses. If they were feeling lonely or were having
a fight with their friends, they saw people who had nobody to visit them.
So, while preservice reflection often revealed apprehensiveness about the poten-
tial for the experience to have any meaning for them, reflection after the event often
showed how profound the effect was, including the students’ perspective on them-
selves and on their own self-esteem and confidence. The following quote captures
this especially well:
From all of the people in the respite centre, I saw how they respected me and they tolerated
how hopeless I was. They were so patient it was unbelievable. I really respect them and I
tried to do my best because it was so important to them – all of those values things really.
(DEST, 2006, p. 160)

Now, some might want to say this is a deficit theory of learning and couldn’t it
just throw the students into a fit of depression? Well, all I can say is it seemed to
work. Deficit in the sense of gaining some perspective on life, especially getting
your own life into perspective, can be one of the great learning experiences of
anyone’s life. One does not have to dig too far into history or the vast store of the
literature to know that. As for bouts of depression, all I can say is we didn’t see that
or anything like it. The experiences were often challenging, for sure, and that again
was the importance of the explicit follow-up, the dialogic reflection on all they had
learned. What might have been an overly challenging experience was often
mitigated by talking it through. Only on a few occasions did anyone note a student
for whom it was deemed better that they not return to their original site, in which
case they were reassigned to something that suited their emotional state a little
better.
What worked especially well was when students engaged somehow in cross-
cultural service learning. One of the schools made connections with a school in
Tanzania where resources were far more limited than in their cosy Australian
school. They set up communication of one sort or another, including online. The
learning here was immense, and yes some of it probably was deficit in the classic
sense. The Australian children came to realize that much of what they took for
granted in their schools was not the way it is everywhere. But the learning went
way beyond that. The brightness, enthusiasm and warmth of the Tanzanian children
were infectious. They didn’t have as much materially, but they seemed so much
healthier in attitude and overall wellbeing than the average Australian child. It was
noticeable and much commented upon, including the students themselves.
Andy Furco, a service learning specialist from the USA and who became a
friend of our programme, has some wonderful stories about the international
potential of service learning. Students can come to learn about worlds they will
probably never visit, come to a level of tolerance and understanding of cultural
difference that often goes quite beyond their own family values and come to
discover the indescribable joy of overcoming fear of “otherness” and all the life
and spirit sapping that goes with prejudice. You can read more about Andy’s great
work (Furco, 2002, 2003, 2008; Furco & Root, 2010).
The other feature of the learning experience we noted seemed to come from stu-
dents’ feeling, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that they had something to
give.
Some of the jargon for this is in the notion of “agency” or perhaps
“empowerment”. What I mean by this is that students seemed to report a discovery
of what I would call agency. Sometimes for the first time, they became agents
rather than recipients; they had something to give, rather than being on the
receiving end. It was, in that sense, an important growing-up moment for them. As
kids, they are fairly powerless. They rely on others, mainly parents, wider family,
teachers, to provide; this is what they are often fighting as adolescents. They want
some power but not necessarily the responsibilities that go with it; they are perhaps
not sure just what it would mean, how it would play out, what they would be giving
up. In the service learning experience, much of this seemed to resolve itself. So, it
was not just a matter of going out and having one’s horizons widened in whatever
way but, moreover, sensing that one was being placed in a position of giving rather
than receiving and, in turn, receiving even more than could have been anticipated.
We saw some of this in that wonderful quote from a student above, and you’ll see
more below.
In the report of the second phase of the project (DEEWR, 2008), the potential
of service learning as a means of achieving the holistic effects of values pedagogy
became even more obvious. The executive summary of this project offered the fol-
lowing summary of what we saw happening around enhanced student agency and
the growing confidence that went with it:
The Stage 2 cluster experiences speak convincingly of the critical importance of enabling
and providing opportunities for student agency. Although present in many of the Stage 1
projects, the role of student empowerment and agency in values education practice has been
significantly highlighted in Stage 2. Starting from the premise that schooling educates for
the whole child and must necessarily engage a student’s heart, mind and actions, effective
values education empowers student decision making, fosters student action and assigns real
student responsibility. Effective values education is not an academic exercise; it needs to be
deeply personal, deeply real and deeply engaging. In many of the Stage 2 projects students
can be seen to move in stages from growing in knowledge and understanding of the values,
to an increasing clarity and commitment to certain values, and then concerted action in
living those values in their personal and community lives. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 11)

The report identified, for a range of cluster projects, the centrality of service
learn- ing pedagogy in achieving the project’s intentions. For one cluster that took a
global education focus on children’s working conditions in third world countries,
reflec- tion on action resulted in enhanced empathic character as demonstrated in
student- initiated campaigns to alert consumers to manufactured goods that were
produced by child labour. In another cluster, engagement with disadvantaged
groups in their own community led to organized activities to address loneliness and
deprivation, again portraying growth in empathic consciousness, an essential
learning outcome related directly to the goals of enhanced citizenship capacity.
Thus, community engagement provided opportunities for holistic learning that
accommodates an action-oriented approach to values pedagogy, as proffered in the
report:
Service learning is a pedagogy that aids the development of young people as they learn to
engage in the worlds of others and then participate in civic service. It is a form of
experiential learning which is integrally related to values education, and helps young people
to empathise, engage and take their place as civic-minded, responsible, caring and
empowered citizens in our community. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 34)
 In an important development from the Stage 1 Final Report … the Stage 2 cluster expe-
riences drill deeper and report on the effects on students of what was taught, and link it
to increased student agency. Teachers assert that increased student agency makes school-
ing more meaningful, enjoyable and relevant to students’ lives. Student agency refers to
empowering students through curriculum approaches that:

.engage them;
.are respectful of and seek their opinions;
.give them opportunities to feel connected to school life;
.promote positive and caring relationships between all members of the school community;
.promote wellbeing and focus on the whole student;
.relate to real-life experiences;
.are safe and supportive. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 40)

In this statement, we begin to sense an awareness of and confidence in the vital

links between holistic and effective student agency and the wider goals of learning
inherent to the school, including its foundational charter around academic learning.
Here, we see some of the flesh on the bones of the claim made earlier in this book
that values pedagogy can no longer be seen merely as a moral imperative but,
moreover, as a pedagogical one as well. In the light of the insights of the
neurosciences regarding the nexus of cognition, affect and sociality (Immordino-
Yang & Damasio, 2007), this can hardly be surprising. In the second phase of
VEGPSP, other connections with wider research findings became overt:
The Stage 2 cluster experiences accord with research findings in the field of social-
emotional learning and its relation to building academic success. Zins et al. (2004) conclude
that … socially engaging teaching strategies focus students on their learning tasks.
(DEEWR, 2008, p. 41)

As with all other findings of the earlier projects, claims around service
learning’s effects were subjected to empirical appraisal in the Testing and
Measuring Study (Lovat, Toomey, Dally, & Clement, 2009a). Included in the report
was considerable evidence of the role that service learning played as an element of
the values pedagogy under investigation:
The notion of service learning was implicit in many of the activities which schools
introduced to develop students’ responsibility and respect for others and the environment …
Thus, students were able to put the values into practice in functional and purposeful ways
while making a meaningful contribution to the school environment. (Lovat et al., 2009a, p.
34)

The report noted that the general effects of enhanced social consciousness and
empathic character, which have been identified in values pedagogy generally, were
particularly strong features of the results where service learning was an explicit and
intentional component of the programme:
Service learning … engages students in action-based activities where they can apply
their curriculum learning in direct service to others or their community. It combines
principles of constructivist learning with a very practical manifestation of empathy and
social justice in the form of giving to others or contributing to worthwhile social change.
(Lovat et al., 2009a, p. 183)
 … service learning allowed “head, hands and hearts” to be involved in a values based
partnership. (Lovat et al., 2009a, p. 208)
… service learning (means) putting what has been learned about values into active practice.
(Lovat et al., 2009a, p. 227)

Furthermore, it was noted that service learning was a particularly powerful

adjunct in strengthening the link between values pedagogy and academic
achievement:
… when students have opportunities to give to their community, to something beyond them-
selves, it changes their attitude to the learning tasks…
Uniformly, teachers report that doing something with and for the community increases the
students’ engagement in their learning. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 41)
This resonates with an interesting but relatively novel proposition in education: when
students have opportunities to give to their community, to something beyond themselves, it
changes their attitude to the learning tasks. (Lovat et al., 2009a, p. 183)

Hence, the Australian research illustrates the need for good practice pedagogy
to be values-driven and shows that action-oriented pedagogies such as those sur-
rounding service learning provide educational experiences which enhance student
agency and autonomy in learning, reflected in evidence of students’ increased
moti- vation and engagement, as well as enhanced academic performance. From the
above extracts of the various reports, it can be seen that involvement in service
learning provides students with rich experiences that, when coupled with reflection
and val- ues discourse, will impel the development of empathic consciousness
characteristic of engaged citizenship. Evidence from the Australian projects
indicates that holistic values pedagogies include an element that motivates students
to apply and extend their existing knowledge to effect meaningful changes in the
world beyond the class- room (cf. Newmann & Associates, 1996). It is this holistic
learning experience that seems then to impact positively on their disposition
towards learning more generally and, as the evidence suggested, academic
improvement is the persistently reported result. A surprise effect, perhaps!

5.3 The Surprise Effect—Or Not? Theorizing Service

Learning

I have spoken a few times about the “surprise effect” in the relationship between
values pedagogy and academic improvement. As I also said, over time, the surprise
became less so and more easily explainable, including reference to updated
research of one sort or another. As an example, just look at this quote from the
neuroscientists, Antonio Damasio and Mary Immordino-Yang:
Modern biology reveals humans to be fundamentally emotional and social creatures. And
yet those of us in the field of education often fail to consider that the high-level cognitive
skills taught in schools, including reasoning, decision making, and processes related to
language, reading, and mathematics, do not function as rational, disembodied systems,
somehow influ- enced by but detached from emotion and the body. (Immordino-Yang &
Damasio, 2007, p. 3)
 If one comes to see things this way, then it is no surprise that engaging students’
emotions as strongly as possible, along with their social conscience and, ideally,
sense of purposeful social agency, would have the kind of positive impact on their
will to learn, sense of purpose around learning, confidence to learn, etc., which
were in fact the persistent results. The bigger surprise is that we would ever not see
things this way. But then, you see, I think good and effective teachers always do see
things this way. It is politicians, media, sometimes parents and even educational
bureaucrats who have been out of the classroom for too long who don’t get it and
lead education down dead-end alleyways like NAPLAN.
Similarly, if one cracks the mind of Habermas (1972, 1974) concerning the way
cognitive interests impel ways of knowing, it is actually no surprise that ambiences
of care and trust (the implicit) and curriculum content that focuses on values and
prioritizes values discourse (the explicit) should have the kind of positive effect on
academic learning that we saw. Now, what I am saying in this chapter is that in
those sites that worked their values pedagogy around service learning, by whatever
name, the effect was even stronger.
I claim now that it is even less of a surprise that a pedagogy that gives students a
greater sense of appreciation of their life experiences, or what I’m calling
perspective, that stimulates their imagination by challenging them with situations
outside their normal comfort zone, settles their emotions by helping them to see
themselves in a wider social setting, and finally gives them a sense of agency and
empowerment, possibly for the first time, should put them in a better frame of mind
for learning. Furthermore, it is even less of a surprise that the biggest difference in
all this should be seen in the so-called troubled middle to lower end of academic
achievement where the imaginative and emotional resources have likely been
working against them doing well in academic work. No surprise at all!
The other thing to say at this point, in alluding to my NAPLAN diatribe in
Chap. 1, is that it is in getting this more troubled middle to lower achieving end
doing better that test averages will rise. For many years, ACER has pointed out
that, in international testing, Australia’s top end does very well but, for a
supposedly egalitarian society, we do very badly in our middle to lower ends. And
the more we push this middle to lower end into an overly competitive, somewhat
punitive testing regime (basically pushing them into the territory that threatens
them most), then the worse they will do and, because of the weight of the middle to
lower end numbers, naturally, the worst effect will be felt on averages and means.
In a word, our overall results slip and we slide down the league table. This is not
rocket science, but one might say it is very basic neuroscience. One might also say,
a little shamefully, that Pythagoras could have told us two and a half thousand years
ago that this is precisely what would happen. So, back to the academic
achievement connection and let’s have a look at some of the international research
behind this connection!
5.4 International Perspectives on Service Learning 55

5.4 International Perspectives on Service Learning

According to Billig (2000), service learning has the propensity to contribute to the
academic achievement of students when it provides a means of practical applica-
tion of curriculum content and when it develops student cognitive capacities
through promoting higher-order thinking. Similarly, Furco (2008) points to the
direct effects of service learning on personal, social, career and values
development, and, fur- thermore, the mediated effects on student achievement
through “…engagement, motivation, self-esteem, empowerment, and pro-social
behaviours” (p. 30). In other words, service learning supplies or supplements those
items of social capital that are essential components of an environment that
supports holistic student learning and development (Goddard, 2003; Goddard &
Gribble, 2006; Scales, Roehlkepartain, Neal, Kielsmeier, & Benson, 2006). This is
all work that makes explicit connections between service learning and academic
enhancement. Related to this work, there are more indirect connections posited by
other work. One such work concerns the role of empathy and “empathic
consciousness”, probably best understood as part of the story about the role of
emotion in learning, as noted above.
Empathy is an innate quality that is fundamental to human learning (Decety &
Meltzoff, 2011; Meltzoff, Kuhl, Movellan, & Sejnowski, 2009). If Narvaez is
correct that we think with our feelings as much as our rational mind, then being
emotionally engaged with whatever it is we are learning comes to be seen as
essential. Further- more, the Carnegie Corporation (1996) refers to empathic
consciousness as one of the planks of learning that goes beyond the surface. It is a
form of sustained empa- thy. So, we might have flashes of empathy when learning
about some grave or sad situation but then quickly move out of that frame of mind,
so losing much of the learning potential in the moment. Empathic consciousness is
when the empathy lasts over a period of time, perhaps forever, where one’s
understanding of certain realities is impacted sufficiently by the learning
experience that one never forgets it.
I recall a former student of the high school where I taught coming back to the
school to speak with the senior students about her work with an international aid
agency in the third world. When one of the students asked how she became inter-
ested in such work, she referred to her own service learning programme at school
and how it had conscientized her to understand the world differently, to its many
chal- lenges around human rights and justice, and instilled in her a desire to do
something about it. She had done voluntary work for an agency for a while after
school, then went back to university part-time to do a degree focused on
international relations and thereafter had gained a full-time position with the same
agency. By the time she came to speak to the senior students, she was travelling the
world as an advo- cate trying to educate others, including governments around their
international aid responsibilities and policies. We might say the emotion that had
been inflamed by her service learning experience had sharpened into empathy and
then been sustained in the form of empathic consciousness. Her life had been
changed forever through her learning experience at school.
 For Feshbach and Feshbach (1987, 2009), empathy is an attribute that is highly
relevant to the educational outcomes of students. Empathic qualities are relevant to
both their social behaviours and their academic achievement. Empathy, they say,
plays a role in mediating the cognitive and affective competencies that contribute to
social behaviours:
The scope of functions that empathy in children can mediate include social understanding,
emotional competence, prosocial and moral behaviour, compassion and caring, and regula-
tion of aggression and other antisocial behaviours. (Feshbach & Feshbach, 2009, p. 86)

Feshbach and Feshbach (2009) make the observation that, while such social
behaviours are important educational ends in themselves, they also have a wider
effect on classroom learning. One of the pillars of values pedagogy is in the need
to intentionally foster empathy in the classroom (Dally, 2010; Stetson, Hurley, &
Miller, 2003).
Crotty (2010) observed the knowledge and deeper insights acquired as students
engaged in service learning and ethical reflection upon their experience, arriving at
answers that demonstrated knowledge beyond the expected. Utilizing a
Habermasian frame of reference in order to analyse these effects, Crotty proposed
that critical reflection upon experience provided the participants with emancipatory
knowledge that informs human responsibility and autonomy. As a result “… habits
of self- reflection have been fostered, ideologies have been recognized and higher
order thinking has been taking place” (p. 636).
Robinson and Kecskes (2010) noted from their work that service learning is a
particularly powerful pedagogy in instilling enhanced reflectivity at the same time
as it inculcates civic consciousness and builds citizenship. Reminiscent of the view
expressed often in this book that values pedagogy is a way of conceiving of and
implementing the entire teaching approach, Robinson and Kecskes, similarly,
under- line the importance of the pedagogy not being seen as additional to the
mainstream curriculum but “… integrated within the formal curriculum, including
the estab- lishment of learning outcomes, specific pedagogical strategies and
assessment plans directly connected to this specific teaching and learning
environment” (p. 720). They also reiterate the point that:
…when service-learning activities are explicitly linked to standards, learning objectives,
and essential learnings, research shows that academic outcomes improve. (p. 721)

Robinson and Kecskes offer further case study research that illustrates how
service learning can serve as values pedagogy to achieve enhanced academic
outcomes. Reflecting this perspective, Berkowitz et al. (2006) reviewed service
learning as part of an overall evaluation of moral activist forms of values pedagogy,
concluding that the outcomes were commonly around strengthened cognition,
improved attitudes and behaviour, reduction of aberrant substance abuse,
moderation of at-risk behaviours enhanced self-confidence and motivation, and “…
increased academic achievement and academic goal setting” (p. 696).
Furco and Root (2010) cite several studies that suggest that involvement in ser-
vice learning increases student engagement in academic activities and promotes
more
positive learning dispositions. Conrad and Heddin (1981) found that involvement in
community service resulted in greater student motivation and interest in
schoolwork and that the involvement in experiential learning provided “…
opportunities for stu- dents to act autonomously, develop collegial relationships
with adults and peers, and boost their self-esteem and self-efficacy”, all factors “…
known to mediate academic achievement” (p. 17).

5.5 Conclusion

Service, overtly in the form of service learning or not, proved to be an important

adjunct to values pedagogy in the clusters and schools that made use of it. Accord-
ing to Billig (2002), it engenders informed and effective social engagement, with
relationships again at its heart but, in this case, principally relationships in the
wider community. Most especially targeted are relationships where students can
practise agency as helpers, carers, supporters of those in the community in need of
such support.
Finally, Habermas’s insights into cognitive interests and ways of knowing, as
outlined above, illustrate well why it is that when education engages students
mean- ingfully in social agency, it is likely to have a positive impact on their
maturation and, in turn, social conscience, citizenship, attitudes and behaviour, as
well as issuing in strengthened academic diligence. A Habermasian perspective can
be used to explain and justify the particular kinds of relationships that seem to
result:
The frame of reference emanates from Habermas’s ‘Ways of Knowing’ and
‘Communicative Action’ theories. In a word, it is the one who knows not only empirically
analytically and historically hermeneutically, but self-reflectively who is capable of the just
and empowering relationships implied in the notion of communicative action. In a sense,
one finally comes truly to know when one knows oneself, and authentic knowing of self can
only come through action for others, the practical action for change and betterment implied
by praxis. Haber- mas provides the conceptual foundation for a values education that
transforms educational practice, its actors in students and teachers, and the role of the
school towards holistic social agency, the school that is not merely a disjoined receptacle for
isolated academic activity, but one whose purpose is to serve and enrich the lives not only of
its immediate inhabitants but of its community. (Lovat, Dally, Clement, & Toomey, 2011, p.
220)

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Chapter 6
The Theorist and the Practitioners

Abstract The chapter will explore exemplars who stand as giants in values
pedagogy theory and practice. Indirectly, the wider theoretical work of Jurgen
Habermas has been constantly referred to in values pedagogy circles for
elucidating the larger and more noble goals of education that often stand in contrast
to narrow instrumentalist goals set by governments and education systems and, at
the same time, enlightening of the reasons for values pedagogy’s positive effects.
More directly, the practical work of Neil Hawkes (UK) and Vasily Sukhomlinsky
(Ukraine) will be explored and teased out for their contribution to the field.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Values theorist Values

practitioner · Values-based education · Jurgen Habermas
· · Neil Hawkes Vasily
Sukhomlinsky ·

6.1 Introduction

Throughout this work, I have pointed to both the theories and the constant practice
that support the notion of values education as good practice pedagogy, or what I
refer to in shorthand fashion as values pedagogy. As you can hopefully see by now,
there is no shortage of research of a theoretical and practical kind that underpins
and endorses this notion. Among these strands of research and practice, there are
some I hold to be of especial importance, indeed groundbreaking, either in the new
conceptions they generate or the new practices that have become exemplary. I have
identified one key theorist and two practitioners whose work I consider to be
seminal and indeed inspirational in values pedagogy, whether their work goes by
that name or not.
The theorist is Jurgen Habermas, whose work at the Frankfurt Critical School
has pioneered whole new ways of thinking about knowing and therefore how best
we might learn and establish learning structures. While not an educationist, his
work has challenged many of the lazier assumptions we tend to make about
education. Habermas’s work was never far from hand as we pondered sometimes
surprisingly positive effects of values pedagogy.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 61
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_6
62 6 The Theorist and the Practitioners

The practitioners are Neil Hawkes, a pioneering values pedagogue from the UK.
Neil’s work in values-based education (VbE) and with the International Values
Edu- cation Trust (IVET) has inspired some 20% of schools in England and Wales
to sign up to his network and model their curricular approach to one I refer to as
values pedagogy. Neil’s work has also inspired a values approach to education in
countries too many to mention. Neil became a close friend and advisor to the
Australian pro- gramme, with his inspirational keynote lectures at several National
Values Education Forums and his many visits and consultancies to schools across
the country. As I will mention below, Neil’s recent work with his psychotherapist
wife, Jane, has brought new conceptual and practical dimensions to the field.
The other practitioner is Vasily Sukhomlinsky, a Ukrainian school principal and
teacher whose work in a Soviet-dominated Ukraine stood out for its values
approach to dealing with students and the curriculum, amidst a regime that was
anything but sympathetic. While most of us don’t face the kinds of hostilities and
counter-discourse that Vasily suffered from his authorities, nonetheless his
determination that education had to be personalized and that curriculum had to
engage all the senses, even when his authorities were enjoining the opposite, has
potential to inspire those of us faced with instrumentalist and insensitive
educational regimes to stay the course with what we know is good teaching and for
the students’ ultimate wellbeing. As I will mention below, Vasily’s daughter, Olga,
a prominent educational researcher at the University of Kiev, has kept her father’s
work alive, work that served to inform the Australian programme.

6.2 The Theorist: Jurgen Habermas

I turn to Jurgen Habermas to have the final and definitive word on the theory
behind why it is that the effects seen in values pedagogy of enhanced wellbeing,
including academic diligence, are not a surprise, indeed, why they are predictable.
Forgive me if I get off a bit on this but this is what I cut my teeth on in my own
PhD over 30 years ago, and it has fundamentally shaped my thinking about most
things ever since. I have written a chapter in an edited book that deals with
Habermas’s contribution to education. Because he himself has expressed some
bewilderment about his fame in education, a field he has not explicitly targeted, I
called the chapter “Education’s Reluctant Hero” (Lovat, 2013). If the theorizing
herein gets too much, just skip through to the practitioners a few pages on. Here
goes!
Habermas’s (1972, 1974, 1984, 1987, 1990) two key theories, “ways of know-
ing” and “communicative action”, offer especially powerful tools for analysing the
capacity of values pedagogy to transform people’s beliefs and behaviours in ways
that conform to the evidence outlined in this book. The Habermasian notion that
critical and self-reflective knowing issues in emancipation and empowerment, so
spawn- ing communicative capacity and communicative action, both justify and
explain the effects of an approach to learning that prioritizes the transaction of
values. Why? Because the ways of knowing he posits as superior (truly
emancipated knowing)
and the forms of communication he proposes as those conforming to the mature,
autonomous social agency of humanity at its best are values-laden by their very
nature. Hence, any education inspired by Habermas must equally be values-laden.
Coming at it from the other side, this Habermasian paradigm uncovers the
funda- mental flaw in the notion that education can be values-neutral; as such, it
challenges the authenticity of any education conceived of solely in instrumentalist
terms. This is precisely the perniciousness that is germane to schemes like
NAPLAN, as is the entire accountability obsession that plagues so many Western
education regimes. Habermas shows effectively why these are wolves that come in
sheep’s clothing. The idea that they are about enhancing students’ literacy and
numeracy sounds inno- cent enough, seems to make good sense and can easily
entice parents and others who want to see their children and the next generation
acquiring these basic skills. If tucked into an overall sound, values-replete
pedagogical environment of learning, the innocence and effectiveness might persist.
It is, however, when made the be-all-and-end-all of teachers’, principals’ and a
school’s worth, in the way of NAPLAN, that such schemes become an obsession
that slowly but surely distracts teachers, principals and entire systems from their far
more important work and both the moral foundations and true purpose of education
are eaten away and destroyed. In Habermasian terms, when this obsession takes
over, everything gets stuck at the empirical–analytic level of knowing, a knowing
with inherent limitations but the deceptive enticement of being easily measurable.
Hence, even as we are ticking the boxes that denote the measures, we can fool
ourselves that important learning has taken place whereas in fact we are in the
process of stunting and retarding educability.
The Muslim polymath, al-Ghazali, referred to above, placed emphasis on the
imperative of education instilling imaginativeness and eliciting wonder because
these then become the drivers of lifelong learning. On the other hand, al-Ghazali
pointed to the retarding effect of overly prescriptive forms of teaching and the
kinds of testing germane to these (Lovat, 2019). They dull the mind and can make
learning such an unpleasant experience that the impulsion for lifelong learning is
destroyed. In the desire for short-term, limited, measurable gain, we have killed off
the long- term, unlimited and immeasurable one. In the obsession for recording an
educational product so as to satisfy a systemic accountability measure, we are
effectively sapping education of its value.
In contrast, values pedagogy illustrated so well that any legitimate and effective
education must be values-laden, indeed values-replete, in terms of both ambience
and discourse. Values pedagogy’s priority of saturating the learning experience with
both a values-filled environment and an explicit teaching that engages in discourse
about values-related content lays the groundwork for the transaction of values that
supports the holistic learning effects we have been exploring in this book. The great
irony is that even the fundamentals of literacy, numeracy and other basic learning
are achieved more completely, as the evidence has shown. As I used to say often, it
is not a case of either/or, but both. It is not that we have to choose between the
richness and comprehensiveness of a values orientation to pedagogy or a more
instrumentalist
approach. The evidence suggests that values pedagogy will deliver the product of
both. This was another manifestation of the surprise effect.
Habermasian epistemology therefore is able to be used to justify
philosophically, as well as explain the practical effects of, an approach to learning
that is aimed at the full range of developmental measures in the interests of holistic
student learning and wellbeing. Rather than connoting a mere moral or, least of all
religious option, values pedagogy is able to be constructed philosophically,
psychologically and peda- gogically as an effective way in which learning can and
should proceed in any school setting.
Furthermore, because Habermas rests his notion of effective social action
(namely praxis) on people reaching to the most sophisticated ways of knowing,
the Haber- masian emphasis on knowing as the key to values formation suggests
that effective personal, social and moral citizenship is not only educable but that
there is an inher- ent educational component in it. That is, “values” are inherently
and naturally ped- agogical. As such, it is as much something educators “are” as
“do”. Moreover, this understanding of values as inherent and natural pedagogically
helps to clarify why attaining those more sophisticated ways of knowing, and then
committing to con- comitant action (such as seen in service learning), would
logically have an impact on one’s powers of knowing generally and so issue in
enhanced academic performance. In a word, Habermasian thought has potential not
only to deepen profoundly our understanding of the full human developmental
capacities that are implied in effective learning but to help us in developing the
kinds of pedagogies needed to implement them. The employment of Habermas in
the context of values pedagogy, especially when allied with social engagement in
the form of service learning, is particularly instructive. For here, we see a line of
convergence opening up between his theoretical world and the practical action
(praxis) required to produce the values pedagogy that leads to effective social
engagement, such that new knowing is implied and deeper learning enhanced. In
effect, the Habermasian theories constitute an epistemological template for social
engagement that is informed by authentic human knowing, at one
end, and impels altruistic action, at the other end.
In summary, Habermasian theory determines that effective education can never
be focused solely on “the basics” of technical learning (the techne—the easily
measured accountability data) if it is seriously looking to the good of its clients and
society at large; again, that is precisely what the NAPLAN obsession has done,
wittingly or unwittingly. In a Habermasian schema, social engagement that is
aimed at developing praxis and communicative action is not an added extra or
marginal nicety. It is at the heart of what an authentic school will be about, namely
taking on a wide-ranging social agency for the good of society and directly for the
good of its clients, the students at hand. Why would it do that? Because only the
school that provides those forms of pedagogy can ultimately facilitate the kind of
knowing that is most authentically human.
In contrast to instrumentalist notions of schooling, a Habermasian approach will
impel educational charters that deal with the intellectual, social, emotional, moral
and spiritual good of their clientele. This is an education intention directed towards
teach- ers and schools playing a role in the forming of individuals who understand
integrity,
apply it to their practical decision-making and furthermore assist in the cohering
of those individuals into functional and beneficent societies. An implication of this
education intention is around the removal of any artificial division between know-
ing and values, since all knowing has an ethical component and is related in some
way to human action. With this understanding, Habermas challenges contemporary
education to deal with the essentials rather than mere basics of learning. He offers
an epistemology that impels holistic and comprehensive pedagogy that engages
with the full array of human development and social good. And values pedagogy is
just such an educational means!

6.3 The Practitioners: Neil Hawkes

As I suggest above, there are many practitioners of values pedagogy worthy of

having a final word here, but I have had to make choices. The first one I choose is
the current UK champion of values-based education (VbE), Neil Hawkes, whose
reputation and work in the field will be known to many. Neil’s groundbreaking
work as Head Teacher at West Kidlington School in Oxfordshire became a model
for how a values approach to education could transform the entire learning
experience for students, including especially those most challenged by more
regular forms of education. After seven years of constructing this model, Neil
moved on to be an inspector of schools, where he was able to instil a values
approach more widely. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Oxford
University with a thesis that provided some of the much-needed hard evidence for
the benefits to be derived from such an approach. Neil has for many years now
been a freelancing advocate for VbE, running his own consultancy with that single
purpose. Neil and Jane travel widely throughout the UK and across the world
establishing and monitoring VbE. As mentioned above, Neil made a vital
contribution to the Australian Values Education Program as an invited keynote
speaker at a series of National Values Education Forums and was invited into many
of the VEGPSP schools to advise on and monitor the implementation of their
cluster projects. I’m happy to say that Neil and I have become lifetime friends and
that we have published work together (Lovat & Hawkes, 2013).
I have referred to Neil’s work in various places in this book, both by directly
citing him and also by citing the work of Frances Farrer who wrote extensively
of the effects she saw in the transformation of his school from being one of the
more challenging environments for learning to a national and international model
of excellence. In many ways, Neil’s work has received the biggest gong from the
establishment of any values pedagogy in its endorsement by the inspectorial regime
of Ofsted (2007), a body not noted for its florid assessment of things. Ofsted noted
the marked transformation of West Kidlington from its traditional history and
overtly identified the role that the values approach had played in this
transformation.
What Ofsted noted was the way in which a values pedagogy provides for an
ethos in which students develop positive qualities in their social interactions and in
their engagement with their schoolwork (Farrer, 2000, 2010; Hawkes, 2009, 2010,
2014; Hawkes & Hawkes, 2017, 2018). As we have seen in earlier appraisals of
this school’s rise to prominence, rather than viewing values as an appendage to be
taught alongside other subjects, values became the platform from which curricular,
policy, organizational and pedagogical decisions were made. Central to this
approach was the systematic introduction of a values language, in conjunction with
teaching and encouraging students to engage in reflection for periods of time in
order to better understand themselves and the impact of their attitudes and
behaviours on others. Farrer (2000) noted the importance of Neil’s “moment of
silence” before starting the day and before any assembly or class. Introduction of
this values-based pedagogy was accompanied by curricular reforms that were
directed at providing learning support for each student, including students with
special needs, for their personal and academic development.
The lesson learned here is that values are developed through open, caring and
sup- portive teacher–student relationships. At West Kidlington, the values-based
approach meant that not only were values taught explicitly and systematically, but
that an envi- ronment was structured so as to reflect and embody the values being
proffered, not the least of which was the conscious modelling of values by staff
themselves, both in their collegial relationships and in their relationships with
students and their par- ents. Flowing from a values-based incentive was a
realization by students themselves that they had control over their own behaviour
with attendant changes in school and classroom ambience and improved
engagement and enjoyment of schoolwork. The environment created by the values-
based approach was conducive not only for the personal and social development of
students but also their academic diligence, as evidenced by the fact that the
academic performance of the school was above the national average and well
above that of similar cohort schools (Hawkes, 2009).
As an observer of a values-based approach, both at West Kidlington and in other
schools, Farrer (2010) saw the emotional stability of students as a principal benefit
of the values-based approach to education. Reflecting the wisdom of al-Ghazali,
noted above, she saw that students’ early experience of education inevitably shaped
their attitude towards learning. When students find learning to be interesting and
able to be incorporated into their imaginative and playful worlds, engagement in
ongoing learning follows. If not, then the struggle begins. Emotional stability
provides stu- dents with the rested mind to think clearly in the midst of personal
trauma; it develops empathy and gives students the space to share troubles or to
offer support.
Farrer observed that values pedagogy resulted in improvements in student
behaviour and developed their awareness of the wider community and appropriate
ways to act within it. It also developed in students an awareness of the
consequences of their attitudes and actions on others and the capacity to listen
dispassionately to others, dispositions that enable older students to mentor
younger ones. Periods of silent reflection in daily assemblies quietened and
calmed school environments, and activities like these empowered students to
resolve their own conflicts without adult intervention and mediation. A common
language of shared vocabulary enabled consensus to be reached more quickly, and
service-type activities provided students with opportunities to enact the values
taught.
6.3 The Practitioners: Neil Hawkes 67

Neil and Jane Hawkes remain inspirational champions in their field. Neil’s main
books continue to guide the work of many schools, especially in the UK where
approximately 20% of all English and Welsh schools are now self-described as
“VbE schools”. Increasingly, the approach is being seen for its outstanding effects,
having been endorsed by education bureaucrats and right up to the British Prime
Minister. There are numerous online resources, including Neil’s TED Talk.

6.4 The Practitioners: Vasily Sukhomlinsky

Another practitioner whose work would finally be endorsed by government, but

that took considerably longer, is Vasily Sukhomlinsky (1918–1970), a Ukrainian
educa- tor and, like Neil, reforming Head Teacher. Sukhomlinska (2010), his
daughter and Professor at the University of Kiev, relates that Sukhomlinsky
believed that, since morality was the spiritual basis of personhood, it “… must
constitute the basis of edu- cation” (p. 550). The formation of a caring and trusting
relationship between teacher and student was fundamental, and the education of a
student would be deprived with- out the cognitive, emotional and social support
implied by that relationship (see also Cockerill, 1999; Lovat, 2018; Sukhomlinsky,
1981).
Sukhomlinska (2010) draws attention to the key principles in Sukhomlinsky’s
approach. First, education and child development were synonymous, with each con-
tributing to the other, so learning could not occur apart from development and, in
turn, learning contributed to development. Second, the cognitive dimension played
a leading role in moral education because moral sense was enriched through
cognition and knowledge; in turn, moral education contributed to cognitive
development. Third was the recognition that moral education not only included the
cognitive, but the cul- tivation of moral emotions in relation to empathy for others,
and reciprocity between self and others; at the time, this approach was greeted with
suspicion and criticism within the Soviet Union which was pursuing a rigid
instrumentalist education built around socialist principles.
Fourth, although Sukhomlinsky was not unique in emphasizing the practical
nature of activity in education, his distinctive emphasis was in the attention to the
moral dimension of such activity. As Cockerill (1999) points out, Sukhomlinsky
attended to the vocational, aesthetic and civic education of his students as well as
the quality of the learning environment. Fifth, moral education was to be tailored
for individual needs. Sixth, values encompassed all aspects of a student’s life,
includ- ing personal, family, school and national values. Cockerill (1999) makes it
clear that Sukhomlinsky sought to motivate students to learn by sparking their
intrinsic interest in all domains of learning that encompassed the moral, spiritual,
affective, academic, vocational and civic.
In his own principal text, Sukhomlinsky (1981) emphasizes the holistic nature of
education. Sukhomlinska (2010) points explicitly to the neurosciences in explain-
ing how education for life necessitated synergistic activity between the cognitive,
affective and social dimensions “…essential for engagement in sustained learning”
68 6 The Theorist and the Practitioners

(p. 556). She refers to her father’s persistent use of strategies like the telling of fairy
tales to stimulate emotional growth through the development of the students’
creative capacities and so, in turn, to influence critical capacities and cognitive
growth. The emphasis on mastery of content, destined to slow if not retard all
capacities, was eschewed in favour of holism in learning.
In understandings that will now be familiar to those versed in modern neuro-
science, Sukhomlinsky spoke much about the establishment of the calm learning
environment and the strong teacher–student relationship as central to any effective
learning. Trust and respect as two-way dynamics in establishing calm and positive
relationships were crucial to students opening their minds and hearts to the stimuli
of learning. Enjoyment was central to effective pedagogy; anger and punishment
were, in the obverse, ineffective. Rather than school being seen as a time wherein
students moved from their childhood, Sukhomlinsky emphasized the importance of
schooling preserving and prolonging the natural inquisitiveness and openness to
learning of childhood (Cockerill, 1999).
As Sukhomlinska (2010) notes, her father’s instinctive educational premise
revolved around the love and respect for students that he displayed, leading in turn
to a profound understanding of their own inner world and their perceptions of the
world around them. He then naturally moved beyond seeing them as mere instru-
ments for academic outcomes, a la the perniciousness of NAPLAN, to taking
practical interest in their physical, psychological and spiritual health. All
expectations about the individual student were determined not by a system’s
“stage” assumptions but entirely by the demonstrated capacities and developmental
needs of that individual. All assessments (marks, grades, etc.) were tailored to
assure encouragement, rather than judgement or, least of all, punishment or
belittlement.
Sukhomlinsky was adamant that discouragement of a student could lead to
disen- gagement from learning; then, all would be lost. Vital was to develop the
students’ “sense of agency” (think service learning) as the foundation for continued
interest and engagement in learning. Inspiring in students a love of learning and so
igniting the intrinsic motivation that constituted the grounds for ongoing
independent learn- ing was at the heart of the purpose of schooling, as far as he was
concerned (think al-Ghazali). This was best assured through engaging students’
natural curiosity.
In many ways so far ahead of his time, and genuinely prophetic, Sukhomlinsky
seemed to understand innately that personal, emotional, spiritual, social and ethical
development and maturity were not in any way distractive of the intellectual skills
and capacities needed for academic mastery; indeed, the opposite was the case. In
that sense, his educational intuitions were ahead of the neurosciences that would
confirm them and the Australian Values Education Program findings that would
endorse them. In a word, Sukhomlinsky was the archetypal values pedagogue
before we had coined the term. His natural instinct for what worked in education
provides a vital clue that values pedagogy is no add-on or foreign agent in the
business of serious education. It is in fact a far better way of achieving serious
education’s goals than most of what passes for serious education.
6.5 Conclusion 69

6.5 Conclusion

In my own experience, values pedagogy denotes the ideal blend of theory and prac-
tice, of theory that explains the practice and practice that demonstrates the veracity
of the theory. In a regime that sees no end of theory that is disjoined from effective
practice or practice that lacks sufficient theoretical justification and perhaps even
prides itself on being non-theoretical, values pedagogy serves as a foil. The theory,
a la Habermas and others, shows why it is no surprise that its practice has such
positive effects and, in turn, its practice, a la Hawkes, Sukhomlinsky and others,
demonstrates that its theoretical underpinnings are sound, enlightening and, in a
word, spot on. The three selected scholars and teachers serve to represent the
synergy of theory and practice that renders values pedagogy as the art and heart of
good teaching.

References

Cockerill, A. (1999). Each one must shine: The educational legacy of V. A. Sukhomlinsky. New
York: Peter Lang.
Farrer, F. (2000). A quiet revolution: Encouraging positive values in our children. London:
Random House.
Farrer, F. (2010). Re-visiting the ‘Quiet Revolution’. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.),
International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 395–408). Dor-
drecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1974). Theory and practice (J. Viertal, Trans.). London: Heinemann.
Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans.) (vol. I). Boston: Beacon
Press.
Habermas, J (1987). Theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans.) (vol. II). Boston: Beacon
Press.
Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenhardt & S. Nicholson,
Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Hawkes, N. (2009). Values and quality teaching at West Kidlington primary school. In T. Lovat &
R. Toomey (Eds.), Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect (pp. 105–120).
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Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student
wellbeing (pp. 225–238). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Hawkes, N. (2014). From my heart: Transforming lives through values. Carmarthen, UK: Indepen-
dent Thinking Press.
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based Education (VbE) in schools and other settings. Ethics: Contemporary Perspectives, 4,
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Hawkes, N., & Hawkes, J. (2018). The inner curriculum: How to develop wellbeing, resilience and
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Lovat, T. (2018). Vasily Sukhomlinsky’s inspiration and guidance in the Australian values education
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Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1981). To children I give my heart (H. Smith, Trans.). Moscow: Progress.
Chapter 7
Concluding Thoughts

Abstract The chapter will bring all strands of the case being made for values
pedagogy to a head. It will argue that the positive effects of such an approach to
education are apparent and have been demonstrated. It will make the case that the
essence of such an approach and its demonstrated effects is nothing new. The edu-
cational wisdom of such a pedagogy is instilled deeply in our history, tradition and
knowledge of the human person. It will proffer that the only reason we need to
continue research programs that demonstrate its effects is because political impera-
tives and uninformed media and public perceptions drive education away from such
wisdom towards instrumentalist formulas that invariably fail.

Keywords Values education · Values pedagogy · Instrumentalism Educational

effects · Academic improvement ·

7.1 Introduction

So what is so remarkable about the findings I have been underlining? Nothing!

When understood in the way I have tried to contextualize them, nothing at all! No
surprises whatsoever! The very idea that young people at the most vulnerable
points of their emotional and social lives, and as their cognitive powers are growing
and being tested, would learn better in hostile than calm settings, characterized by
negative relationships with elders and peers, rather than positive ones, and where
they feel unsafe and insecure, rather than the opposite, and where the discourse is
antiseptic and unengaging, is obviously preposterous.
So what was proven that we didn’t already know? Nothing! Anyone with the
barest of human instincts about the ways in which people function would know
perfectly well that no one will develop or operate well in environments where they
feel unsupported and uncared for and are constantly being judged, where routines
are characterized by being overly competitive and/or punitive, and where expecta-
tions and verbal engagement are vague, indecisive and unchallenging. We all know
that. So what have we shown? Absolutely nothing, I would say, except for those
who have forgotten all the lessons about human beings and effective engagement,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 71
T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs
in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_7
72 7 Concluding Thoughts

or never knew them, and except for systems that are structured as though their
archi- tects have forgotten all these lessons or never knew them.

7.2 Why Any Surprise?

In a word, there is no surprise whatever in any of these findings. The surprise

rather is that in the infancy of universal education (and that is how it is best to see
these first 130–150 years or so), we have allowed it to be overly subjected to alien
interests and foreign forces, politicized agendas that have been insufficiently
sensitized to the needs of young people and their future prospects as maximally
participating citizens. These forces have had different faces at different moments of
these past fifteen or so decades, be they the forces at work in the nineteenth century
that simply wanted children off the street or “out of the mines”, those of the early
twentieth century that saw schools primarily as “sifters and sorters” that would
ensure that the inequality judged to be essential to social stability was maintained
across the generations, those of the late twentieth century that saw education being
simply about career preparation or those of more recent times for whom schools
have become too often pawns to be moved around and exploited in the interests of
political agendas around testing and performance. These are the forces of what I
refer to elsewhere as political pedagogy (Lovat et al., 2011), rather than values
pedagogy, and forces that destroy learning and de-educate, rather than their
opposite.
A persistent theme to be found in values pedagogical research worldwide is in
the potential for enhanced learning on the part of students to result, brought about
it seems largely through a combination of more settled learning environments,
more positive teacher–student and student–student relationships, enhanced self-
esteem and a greater sense of citizenship. This latter is especially the case when
forms of service learning or other social engagement strategies are explicitly
incorporated.

7.3 Bold Claims for Academic Improvement

Claims around enhanced learning, intellectual achievement or, as we tended to

describe it, academic diligence are without doubt the boldest claims to be made
about the effects of values pedagogy. Could this often-purported “oppositional”
the- sis (e.g. there is more to learning than academic success) actually be the holy
grail of academic success? Could it be that values pedagogy actually nurtures
academic success in ways that seemingly more predictable and explicitly
academically focused pedagogies (e.g. mastery learning and testing regimes)
persistently fail to nurture, especially with those students less naturally or
environmentally disposed to learning? Could it possibly be that academic success
happens best for these clients when it is not the primary focus of their learning, as
Pythagoras discovered a mere two and a
7.3 Bold Claims for Academic Improvement 73

half thousand years ago? Is academic success (like happiness itself) something that
happens when you stop obsessing about it and get everything else right?
If the answers to the above questions were to be even a tentative “yes”, then
what do we say about the ways in which schools and the policies and practices that
surround them, their syllabi, curricula and testing regimes are structured? Could
it be that the main reason that there seems to be such an element of surprise, if
not downright denial about the seemingly demonstrable effects of values pedagogy
around students’ improvement in academic work, is that they are so threatening
to educational establishments and the politics that sit behind them? What would
we do with our expensive educational apparatus if we had to admit that systemic
education has failed so badly in its main mission in a democracy, namely to equip
an entire citizenship with the means to compete fairly in that democracy? What
would our politicians be left with to say if it was admitted that “tightening
standards”, “toughening up curricula”, “increasing testing frequency”, “improving
literacy and numeracy” (and so on ad nauseam) and then throwing schools into
competition with each other around these phenomena was actually all a tragic
misreading of the reality, doomed to make everything worse, especially for those
clients for whom it needs to be so much better?

7.4 Powerful Counter Vested Interests

In short, there are many vested interests at stake that impel explaining away, talking
down and outright denying the demonstrable claims being made about values ped-
agogy and its effects. Grasping the truth of the central claim that academic success
comes for many (and quite likely the majority) when the business of schooling is
turned on its head and new priorities are forged poses a threat to systems that have
become more than comfortable with the assumptions and practices that characterize
them. The notion that we might have “got it wrong” will inevitably be profoundly
discomforting to those who marshal and rely on these systems, be they the
politicians, bureaucrats, teachers, unions, or even those students and their parents
who happen to be the lucky ones to do quite well in these systems.

7.5 Summing up the Argument

I am at the point in this book where I need to carefully summon up the central
argument, especially around the impact of values pedagogy on academic success.
Because of the high stakes implied by this claim, I need to be cautious while being
bold, to define the limits while extolling the weight and virtues of the claim. What I
am not saying is that we have “proven” in some irrevocable way that values
pedagogy
74 7 Concluding Thoughts

and academic success are necessary and persistent companions that all one has to
do to transform non-achievers into achievers is to enact a values pedagogy
approach to education.
Indeed, the notion of “proving” anything should be rejected in favour of the idea
of demonstrating, indicating or perhaps proffering. Some might of course see in
this a weakness, namely that I’m not really so sure about the claims I’m making.
To which I say, show me then the proof that the apparatus of learning currently in
place in our systems, the syllabi, curricula, testing regimes, etc. (Habermas’s
techne of learning), ensure academic success of all or even most of its clients. If
there were such proof, why would we have such persistent debate in so many
countries when international test results are published? Why would we have had so
many reviews and reports across so many provinces in the last few decades based
on the central premise that our schools are failing to “properly educate” such a
substantial portion of their populations? If all that was needed was the techne of
learning, we would have this education business “sewn up”.
In fact, I claim there is less “proof”, in the sense of researched evidence, that
supports the implicit assumptions and claims that sit behind the well-worn techne
of learning to be able to properly educate whole populations than there is currently
(and increasingly) available to support my claim that values pedagogy is “an
indispens- able artefact to any learning environment if student wellbeing, including
academic success, is to be maximized” (Lovat, Dally, Clement, & Toomey, 2011,
p. 31). In a word, so many of the educational phenomena we take for granted, in
the sense that we assume there is some proof behind their effectiveness, are in fact
devoid of such evidence. Again, this is the nub of the threat to systems, not just
school systems and the politics sitting behind them, but indeed to those academic
systems that have supported them, especially academic systems that have
determined certain forms of teacher education based on those assumptions.
In a word, updated research on values pedagogy has confirmed that such
pedagogy and good teaching can be seen as synonymous, and “bedfellows” or, as
we put it at the time, are in a nexus relationship, forming a veritable “double
helix”:
Values education has potential to re-focus attention on the fundamental items of teaching,
namely, the teacher her/himself, the quality of knowledge, content and pedagogy and, above
all, the teacher’s capacity to form the kinds of relationships which convey their commitment
and care and which become the basis of forming personal character and tomorrow’s
citizenry.
The innovative and possibly revolutionary thought contained in this proposition is that, in a
sense, academic success becomes a by-product of a “whole-person” approach to learning …
instead of being the linear focus in learning that Carnegie (1996) implied had led too often
to failure. (Lovat et al., 2011, p. 31)

7.6 Conclusion

If you have stayed with me to this point, thank you, and I hope you have found
the reading worthwhile. If you agree with me, you will see why I had to begin by
7.6 Conclusion 75

debunking NAPLAN and any similar instrumentalist threats to the business of good
teaching. Teaching is an art, one that requires all the skills, reflective sensitivities
and devoted capacities an individual can muster. Values as a guide to the ambience
and the discourse required of learning can serve effectively as a meter by which
the art is not reduced to low-level accrual and regurgitation of facts and figures but
truly engages the emotions, the imagination and the higher cognitive and emotional
capacities of students. In other words, when values comprise both the art and the
heart of teaching, evidence suggests we end up with good teaching and its
concomitant, enhanced student wellbeing including academic achievement. That’s
what values pedagogy is all about!

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