The Art and Heart of Good Teaching: Values as the Pedagogy [1st ed.] 978-981-32-9053-2;978-981-32-9054-9

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
The Instrumentalist Curse: “NAPLAN must go!” (Terence Lovat)....Pages 1-5
Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values Pedagogy (Terence Lovat)....Pages 7-23
Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects (Terence Lovat)....Pages 25-31
Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values Pedagogy: Calmness, Positive Relationships and Safety and Security (Terence Lovat)....Pages 33-46
Service Learning (Terence Lovat)....Pages 47-59
The Theorist and the Practitioners (Terence Lovat)....Pages 61-70
Concluding Thoughts (Terence Lovat)....Pages 71-75
Back Matter ....Pages 77-78

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

Terence Lovat

The Art and Heart of Good Teaching Values as the Pedagogy

SpringerBriefs in Education

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Terence Lovat

The Art and Heart of Good Teaching Values as the Pedagogy

123

Terence Lovat University of Newcastle Newcastle, NSW, Australia

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-32-9053-2 ISBN 978-981-32-9054-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

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 recommended reading for anyone who is interested in providing quality education for our v

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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 conservative 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 internationally 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, supposedly 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

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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 dimensions 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

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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 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Dubious and Contestable Purposes of NAPLAN 1.3 The Insidious Folly of NAPLAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Values Education Study and Its Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Nature of Values Education: A Two-Sided Coin . . . 2.3.1 The Implicit Side of the Values Education Coin . 2.3.2 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The Extra-Curricular Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The Curricular Example—Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 The Explicit Side of the Values Education Coin: The Curricular Example—Practice . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Findings from the Values Pedagogy Projects . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 VEGPSP 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 VEGPSP 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Testing and Measuring the Effects of Values Pedagogy 3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Features of the Learning Ambience Created by Values Pedagogy: Calmness, Positive Relationships and Safety and Security . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Calmness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Positive Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Safety and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Service Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Service Learning in the Values Pedagogy Programme . . . . 5.3 The Surprise Effect—Or Not? Theorizing Service Learning . 5.4 International Perspectives on Service Learning . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 The Theorist and the Practitioners . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Theorist: Jurgen Habermas . . . . . . . 6.3 The Practitioners: Neil Hawkes . . . . . . . 6.4 The Practitioners: Vasily Sukhomlinsky . 6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Why Any Surprise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Bold Claims for Academic Improvement 7.4 Powerful Counter Vested Interests . . . . . 7.5 Summing up the Argument . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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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 without 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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_1

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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 Australia 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 learning, 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 opportunities; • 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

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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 bureaucrats 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

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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 government 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 educable 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

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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 Educational 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. Available 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-writingtest-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/NAPLANa-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-20180409p4z8k2.html. Singhal, P. (2019, February 5). ‘NAPLAN out of control’: Teachers say test eats into curriculum. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/education/NAPLAN-outof-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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_2

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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 moving 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 Education 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 education, 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.

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Then values education itself was defined as “… any explicit and/or implicit schoolbased 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).

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The Framework (DEST, 2005) laid out the foundations and principles for the programme, 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?” Curriculum 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 ethnic, 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 clusters 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 education, 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 learning venture = the two sides of the values education coin. This needs quite a bit 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

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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, characterized 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 “ambience 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

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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 individual’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!”.

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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 programme, we felt. Here, we trialled the idea of building the learning discourse around values, referring to both curricular and extra-curricular discourse. Starting with extracurricular, 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 informing 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 classrooms 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.

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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 extracurricular. 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-andfigures 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 polymath, 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.

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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-andfigures 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, especially 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

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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

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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-andfigures (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 factsand-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

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2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values …

(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.

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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), ImmordinoYang 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 historical 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 discovering 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.

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2 Values as Implicit and Explicit: The Two-Sided Coin of Values …

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 academic 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 ambience 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

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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 programme, 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.

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References Damasio, A. R. (2003). Looking for spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. New York: Harcourt. 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 Corporation. 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, Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. Retrieved September 12, 2016 from: http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/Framework_PDF_version_for_the_web.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. Ginott, H. (1995). Teacher and child: A book for parents and teachers. New York: Collier. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). London: Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1974). Theory and practice (J. Viertal, Trans.). London: Heinemann. Hawkes, N. (2010). Values education and the national curriculum in England. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 225–238). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2011). Implications of affective and social neuroscience for educational theory. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 98–103. Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affect and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1, 3–10. Lovat, T. (2010). Synergies and balance between values education and quality teaching. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42, 489–500. Lovat, T. (2013). Jurgen Habermas: Education’s reluctant hero. In M. Murphy (Ed.), Social theory and educational research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Derrida and Bourdieu (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 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. Narvaez, D., Panksepp, J., Schore, A., & Gleason, T. (Eds.). (2013). Evolution, early experience and human development: From research to practice and policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Newmann, F. M., & Associates. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Ofsted. (2007). Inspection report: West Kidlington Primary School, 21–22 March, 2007. Manchester, 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. Robinson, W., & Campbell, R. (2010). School values and effective pedagogy: Case studies of two leading edge schools in England. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 75–90). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Rowe, K. (2004). In good hands: The importance of teacher quality. Educare News, 149, 4–14. Toomey, R. (2010). Values education, instructional scaffolding and student wellbeing. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 19–36). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

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 intervention. 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 twoyear 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 reaffirmed 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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_3

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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’ academic 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 outcomes 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 mainstream 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 international 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 participant 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 emotional 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 higherorder 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.

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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 “Responsibility” 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

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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!

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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 correlated 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 selfawareness, a greater capacity for self-appraisal, self-regulation and enhanced selfesteem” (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-

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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

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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 Corporation. 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 intellectual 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 Australian 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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_4

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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 “cohesion” 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 environment. 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.

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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 teachers 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 accompanying calmness, of the explicit links between calm and the inclusive, caring environment, 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)

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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. Sukhomlinska (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 learning 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)

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4.3 Positive Relationships The issue of improved and positive relationships resulting from values pedagogy, teacher–student, student–student and, while not quite so targeted, teacher–teacher/principal–teacher, was prominent from the beginning of the programme. In the 2003 study report, we read: … the … projects … were underpinned by a clear focus on building more positive relationships 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

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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 students 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 relationships 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 enormously 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)

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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 … studentteacher 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 conceive apart from, human qualities of an inherently “personal” nature, or from interpersonal relationships. (p. 63)

Carr goes on to say that because teaching is by its very nature a “people profession”, 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.

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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 relationships 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)

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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 physical 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 connections with student wellbeing and their academic attention were more obvious. Moreover, the sense that students had agency over their own safety through taking 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)

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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, provide 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 teachers 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 student patterning of behaviour. Similarly, Dally (2010) observed that values language

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provides a positive focus and “consistent expectations” when discussing appropriate 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 environment’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)

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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 characterization? 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 relationships 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)

References Abdul-Samad, S. (2010). Facilitating values education leadership through discovery of personal beliefs and values. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 455–470). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Adalbjarnardottir, S. (2010). Passion and purpose: Teacher professional development and student social and civic growth. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 737–764). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Arthur, J., & Wilson, K. (2010). New research directions in character and values education in the UK. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 339–358). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Benninga, J., & Tracz, S. (2010). Continuity and discontinuity in character education. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 521–548). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Brew, C., & Beatty, B. (2010). Valuing social and emotional connectedness among learners at all levels. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 675–702). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Carr, D. (2010). Personal and professional values in teaching. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 63–74). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Clement, N. (2010). Student wellbeing at school: The actualisation of values in education. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 37–62). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Dally, K. (2010). A teacher’s duty: An examination of the short-term impact of values education on Australian primary school teachers and students. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 503–520). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

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Dasoo, N. (2010). Nurturing teacher wellbeing through values education. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 359–376). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. 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 Corporation. 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. (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. 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). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Gellel, A. (2010). Teachers as key players in values education: Implications for teacher formation. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 163–178). Dordrecht, 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. Hawkes, N. (2010). Values education and the national curriculum in England. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 225–238). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Haydon, G. (2010). Values and well-being in the curriculum: Personal and public dimensions. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 195–210). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2011). Implications of affective and social neuroscience for educational theory. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 98–103. Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affect and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1, 3–10. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2010). The impact of social interdependence on values education and student wellbeing. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 825–848). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. 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. 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 intellectual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

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Nielsen, T. (2010). Towards pedagogy of giving for wellbeing and social engagement. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 617–630). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Ofsted. (2007). Inspection report: West Kidlington Primary School, 21–22 March, 2007. Manchester, UK: Office for Standards in Education. 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. Robinson, W., & Campbell, R. (2010). School values and effective pedagogy: Case studies of two leading edge schools in England. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 75–90). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Spooner-Lane, R., Curtis, E., & Mergler, A. (2010). Embracing philosophy and raising the standard of pre-service teacher education programs. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 377–394). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Sukhomlinska, O. (2010). Values education and whole person development in Ukraine: The role of Vasyl Sukhomlinsky and current applications (A. Lenchovska, Addition & Trans.). In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 549–558). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Sun, J., & Stewart, D. (2010). Promoting student resilience and wellbeing: Asia-Pacific resilient children and communities project. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 409–426). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Tirri, K. (2010). Teacher values underlying professional ethics. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 153–162). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Toomey, R. (2010). Values education, instructional scaffolding and student wellbeing. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 19–36). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Tooth, R. (2010). Using a new body/mind place-based narrative pedagogy to teach values education in the age of sustainability. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 937–946). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

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 associations, 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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_5

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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, including “community engagement”, “community visitations”, “community service”, “students 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.

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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, environmental 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 experiences 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

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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 potential 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 themselves 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 crosscultural 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 students’ feeling, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that they had something to give.

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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 following 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 learning 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, reflection on action resulted in enhanced empathic character as demonstrated in studentinitiated 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)

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5 Service Learning In an important development from the Stage 1 Final Report … the Stage 2 cluster experiences 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 schooling 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)

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… 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 themselves, 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 surrounding service learning provide educational experiences which enhance student agency and autonomy in learning, reflected in evidence of students’ increased motivation 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 values 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 classroom (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 influenced by but detached from emotion and the body. (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007, p. 3)

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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!

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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 application 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, furthermore, 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. Furthermore, 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 empathy. 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 interested 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 challenges 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 advocate 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.

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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 regulation 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 selfreflection 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, underline the importance of the pedagogy not being seen as additional to the mainstream curriculum but “… integrated within the formal curriculum, including the establishment 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 service learning increases student engagement in academic activities and promotes more

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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 students 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. According 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 meaningfully 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. Habermas 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)

References Berkowitz, M., Battistich, V., & Bier, M. (2006). Educating for positive youth development. In M. Killen, & J. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 683–701). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Billig, S. H. (2000). Research on K-12 school-based service learning: The evidence builds. Phi Delta Kappan, 81, 658–664.

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Billig, S. H. (2002). Adoption, implementation, and sustainability of K-12 service-learning. In A. Furco & S. H. Billig (Eds.), Service-learning: The essence of the pedagogy (pp. 245–267). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Carnegie Corporation. (1996). Years of promise: A comprehensive learning strategy for America’s children. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED397995). Available at: http://eric.ed.gov. Conrad, D., & Hedin, D. (1981). National assessment of experiential education. A final report. Center for Youth Development and Research, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. Crotty, R. (2010). Values education as an ethical dilemma about sociability. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 631–644). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Dally, K. (2010). A teacher’s duty: An examination of the short-term impact of values education on Australian primary school teachers and students. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 503–520). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Decety, J., & Meltzoff, A. (2011). Empathy, imitation and the social brain. In A. Copland & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives (pp. 58–81). New York: Oxford University Press. 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 Corporation. Retrieved September 12 from:http://www.curriculum.edu.au/values/val_vegps2_final_ report,26142.html. 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. Feshbach, N. D., & Feshbach, S. (1987). Affective processes and academic achievement. Child Development, 58, 1335–1347. Feshbach, N. D., & Feshbach, S. (2009). Empathy and education. In J. Decety & W. J. Ickes (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 85–97). Cambridge, MA; London: MIT. Furco, A. (2002). Is service-learning really better than community service? A study of high school service programs. In A. Furco & S. H. Billig (Eds.), Service-learning: The essence of the pedagogy (pp. 23–50). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Furco, A. (2003). Issues of definition and program diversity in the study of service-learning. In S. H. Billig & A. S. Waterman (Eds.), Studying service-learning: Innovation in education research methodology (pp. 13–34). Manwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Furco, A. (2008). Exploring the purposes, complexities and future of values education. Paper presented at the Keynote at the National Values Education Forum, Canberra ACT, Australia, May 30. http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/verve/_resources/2008_National_Values_ Education_Forum_Report_rev.pdf. Furco, A., & Root, S. (2010). Research demonstrates the value of service learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 91, 16–20. Goddard, R. D. (2003). Relational networks, social trust, and norms: A social capital perspective on students’ chances of academic success. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25, 59–74. Goddard, T., & Gribble, N. (2006). A service learning relationship fostering cultural competency: The cultural immersion of occupational therapy students and reflective practice. Paper presented at the Enhancing Student Learning: 2006 Evaluations and Assessment Conference, Curtin University of Technology. http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/eac2006/papers/goddardgribble.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.

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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. Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affect and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1, 3–10. Lovat, T. (2009). Values education and quality teaching: Two sides of the learning coin. In T. Lovat & R. Toomey (Eds.), Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect (pp. 1–12). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lovat, T., & Clement, N. (2016). Service learning as holistic values pedagogy. Journal of Experiential Education, 39(2), 115–129. Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Clement, N., Crotty, R., & Nielsen, T. (2009a). Values education, quality teaching and service learning: A troika for effective teaching and teacher education. Sydney: David Barlow Publishing. Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Dally, K., & Clement, N. (2009a). 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. Meltzoff, A. N., Kuhl, P. K., Movellan, J., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2009). Foundations for a new science of learning. Science, 325, 284–288. 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 intellectual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Robinson, J., & Kecskes, K. (2010). Making values education real: Exploring the nexus between service learning and values education. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 717–736). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Scales, P. C., Roehlkepartain, E. C., Neal, M., Kielsmeier, J. C., & Benson, P. L. (2006). Reducing academic achievement gaps: The role of community service and service-learning. The Journal of Experiential Education, 29, 38–60. Stetson, E., Hurley, A., & Miller, G. (2003). Can universal affective education programs be used to promote empathy in elementary-aged children? A review of five curricula. Journal of Research in Character Education, 1, 129–148. Zins, J., Weissberg, R., & Walberg, H. (2004). Building academic success on social and emotional learning. New York: Teachers College Press.

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.

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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 Education 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 programme, 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 knowing” 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 spawning 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)

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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 fundamental 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 innocent 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 longterm, 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

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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 pedagogically 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 Habermasian 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 inherent educational component in it. That is, “values” are inherently and naturally pedagogical. 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 concomitant 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 teachers and schools playing a role in the forming of individuals who understand integrity,

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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 knowing 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,

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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 supportive teacher–student relationships. At West Kidlington, the values-based approach meant that not only were values taught explicitly and systematically, but that an environment 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 parents. 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 students 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.

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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 educator 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 education” (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 without 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 contributing 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 cultivation 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, including 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 explaining how education for life necessitated synergistic activity between the cognitive, affective and social dimensions “…essential for engagement in sustained learning”

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(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 neuroscience, 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 instruments 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 disengagement 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 learning 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.

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6.5 Conclusion In my own experience, values pedagogy denotes the ideal blend of theory and practice, 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). Dordrecht, 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). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Hawkes, N. (2010). Values education and the national curriculum in England. In T. Lovat, R. 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: Independent Thinking Press. Hawkes, N. & Hawkes, J. (2017). Transforming education: A systems template to cultivate Valuesbased Education (VbE) in schools and other settings. Ethics: Contemporary Perspectives, 4, 109–130. Hawkes, N., & Hawkes, J. (2018). The inner curriculum: How to develop wellbeing, resilience and self-leadership. Melton, UK: John Catt Educational. Lovat, T. (2013). Jurgen Habermas: Education’s reluctant hero. In M. Murphy (Ed.), Social theory and educational research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Derrida and Bourdieu (pp. 69–83). London: Routledge.

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Lovat, T. (2018). Vasily Sukhomlinsky’s inspiration and guidance in the Australian values education program. In O. Sukhomlinska (Ed.), Academic notes series: Pedagogical Sciences edition, 172 (pp. 15–22). Kiev: Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine State Pedagogical University. Lovat, T. (2019). Islamic education today and yesterday: Principal themes and their potential to enlighten Western education. In M. Huda (Ed.), Global perspectives on teaching and learning paths in Islamic education (pp. 1–20). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Lovat, T., & Hawkes, N. (2013). Values education: A pedagogical imperative for student wellbeing. Educational Research International, 2(2), 1–6. Ofsted, (2007). Inspection report: West Kidlington primary school, 21–22 March, 2007. Manchester, UK: Office for Standards in Education. Sukhomlinska, O. (2010). Values education and whole person development in Ukraine: The role of Vasyl Sukhomlinsky and current applications (A. Lenchovska, Addition & Trans.). In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 549–558). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. 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 educational 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 imperatives 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 expectations 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 T. Lovat, The Art and Heart of Good Teaching, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9054-9_7

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or never knew them, and except for systems that are structured as though their architects 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” thesis (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

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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 pedagogy 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

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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 indispensable 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

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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!

References Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Carnegie Corporation. (1996). Years of promise: A comprehensive learning strategy for America’s children. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York. (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED397995). Available at: http://eric.ed.gov.

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