Quality teaching and values education: coalescing for effective learning

Abstract

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

The pedagogical imperative of values education

“…By this, we proffer that, first, it has become an imperative that teachers and schools engage in pedagogical practice designed to enhance competencies necessary for personal wellbeing and social cohesion, and, second, that by its very nature such educational activity constitutes values education by whichever name in order to achieve this end effectively. Furthermore, any perception that values education is germane only to those school systems, such as private and religious schools, where values and character formation is an acknowledged and anticipated part of their educational agenda and practice, ignores the findings of current research that effective learning in any school or learning context is expedited by explicit emphasis on the intrinsic moral nature of quality teaching and schooling (Bryk 1988;Carr 2005Carr , 2006Halliday 1998;Hansen 1998;Lovat and Clement 2008).…”

Why philosophical ethics in school: implications for education in technology and in general

“…The third argument differs slightly from the above two, in focusing on the students' abilities to learn other subjects better through ethics in school, which is discussed by Lovat and Clement (2008). The argument can be stated as follows: if one learns ethics and ethical abilities, one is more likely to succeed in learning other things, such as other subjects in school.…”

“…The tool argument: The students' results in other subjects would improve if the students had ethics in school (compared to more of the same) (Lovat and Clement 2008). Hence, there should be ethics in school.…”

“…The third problem is that the traits at stake seem difficult to acquire through fostering, at least in a sustainable and long-term sense. Moreover, an important part of how ethics could benefit the learning of other subjects is by helping the students acquire critical thinking and enquiry (Dill 2007;Lovat and Clement 2008), and that means that they ought not to accept whatever people try to foster upon them, so to speak. Hence, it is hard to see how one can be fostered or forced into critical thinking.…”

An Investigation of What Korean Students Valued with regards to Mathematics and Mathematics Learning: A Study with Sixth and Ninth Graders

“…가치의 근간을 이루는 수학적 신념은 학생들이 교실 에서 경험하는 사회수학적 규범의 영향을 받아 형성된다 (권미연, 전평국, 1999). 지금까지 신념과 가치는 교육적 활동의 결과로 학습자에게 습득되거나 양성되는 하나의 부수적 산물로 이해되어왔으나, 수학 학습에 대한 신념 과 가치는 학교 교육과정에 있어서 중요한 부분이다 (Lovat & Clement, 2008). 또한 수학과 관련된 가치는 수학의 본질과 수학 수업에서의 경험을 통해 길러지며, 이러한 가치는 다시 수학 학습에 영향을 끼친다 (Seah, 2005).…”