Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing (Springer International Handbooks of Education) 3031244192, 9783031244193

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Springer International Handbooks of Education

Terence Lovat · Ron Toomey Neville Clement · Kerry Dally Editors

Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing

Springer International Handbooks of Education

The Springer International Handbooks of Education series aims to provide easily accessible, practical, yet scholarly, sources of information about a broad range of topics and issues in education. Each Handbook follows the same pattern of examining in depth a field of educational theory, practice and applied scholarship, its scale and scope for its substantive contribution to our understanding of education and, in so doing, indicating the direction of future developments. The volumes in this series form a coherent whole due to an insistence on the synthesis of theory and good practice. The accessible style and the consistent illumination of theory by practice make the series very valuable to a broad spectrum of users. The volume editors represent the world’s leading educationalists. Their task has been to identify the key areas in their field that are internationally generalizable and, in times of rapid change, of permanent interest to the scholar and practitioner.

Terence Lovat • Ron Toomey • Neville Clement • Kerry Dally Editors

Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing Second Edition

With 32 Figures and 26 Tables

Editors Terence Lovat The University of Newcastle Callaghan, NSW, Australia

Ron Toomey Victoria University Melbourne, Australia

Neville Clement The University of Newcastle Callaghan, Australia

Kerry Dally The University of Newcastle Callaghan, Australia

ISSN 2197-1951 ISSN 2197-196X (electronic) Springer International Handbooks of Education ISBN 978-3-031-24419-3 ISBN 978-3-031-24420-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9 1st edition: © Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2010 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved 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 Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

The first edition of the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing was inspired by findings from the Australian Values Education Program (2003–2010). The program was funded by the Australian Government, taking a values education perspective and intervention into several hundred schools, public and private, primary, and secondary, across the country. Schools were coordinated into 51 clusters, where each school was working on a cluster-wide intervention for 2–4 years. Each intervention followed the guidelines of a national framework but was tailored to the context of the cluster, be it urban, rural, multicultural, Indigenous, etc. Each cluster was led by a coordinator and a lead school, supported by a university scholar, and overseen by a central committee. The entire program was the subject of a research study, Values Education Good Practice Schools Project, findings from which were further tested and measured by an evaluation study. These were the findings that inspired the first edition and remain the subject of several of the chapters in the current edition. Consistent across many international contexts, values education by whatever name seems to impact student well-being in several ways that stand up to empirical investigation. First, it assists in developing values literacy, as one might expect, a language that directs and behavior that follows overt values around respect, tolerance, care, responsibility, etc. Second, and not coincidentally, it impacts the ambience or school climate, demonstrated in less behavior management problems enhanced cohesion or “togetherness,” and what was referred to often as “student resilience.” Third, and albeit something of a surprise at first, it impacts overall achievement levels, or what we describe as “academic diligence.” As we have said many times, the surprise about achievement levels is really no surprise if we understand how human beings function and how social and emotional factors influence and determine intellectual factors. Be it from the testimony of the ancients like Pythagoras or the modern neuroscientist, student cognition is inseparable from everything else happening in their lives. The Pythagorean academies, principally directed toward mathematical acquisition, were characterized by a balanced curriculum including philosophy and creative arts, all underpinned by care and support for each individual student. Literature around Pythagoras, ancient and modern, refers to the language of imagination, his own imaginativeness, and the educational imagination that characterized his academies. Two and a half thousand v

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years later, we see the latest neuroscientific evidence offering insight into why these academies were so successful, how the brain responds to social and emotional experiences, and the overarching role of imagination in impelling optimal cognition. There are lessons here for education of any kind at any level and at any time. We believe we stumbled upon these lessons through our work in values education. Indeed, the overall pedagogical effects became so prominent in the findings that we coined a new term, values pedagogy, to capture them. In the first edition of the handbook, we reached out to researchers and practitioners across the globe whose work in values education, character education, and moral education, or by another variant term, seemed to resemble if not replicate our own work. In this edition, we have extended that reach to take in a raft of new work to be found in every corner of the world and across a wider array of disciplines. Some of the work is more theoretical, coming from educational philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, social theorists, and literature reviewers. Some of it is more empirical, taking the form of quantitative and qualitative interventions and their results. Other chapters come from practitioners who have taken values education into the classroom or tertiary setting and demonstrated its practical benefits. Coming from different disciplinary backgrounds and foci, contributions in this edition nonetheless cohere around a common focus on the pedagogical potential of values education. That is, regardless of the disciplinary flavor or the philosophical, empirical, or practical emphasis, the authors are of one mind that values education is far from a mere adjunct to efficacious pedagogy. It has the potential to be the pedagogy, to nurture, carry, and fulfill all the well-being measures, social, emotional, moral, spiritual, and intellectual, that characterize efficacious education. It is a potential we described in the original edition as a “double helix.” The double helix is a term found in the genetic sciences, denoting the two molecules of nucleic acids that fuse to form what we know as DNA. The fusion is said to resemble a spiral staircase where the two molecules wrap around each other, indispensable to each other in forming the “DNA staircase.” Similarly indispensable to each other, we suggested, is the fusing of values education and quality teaching in producing the optimal pedagogical effect, what we refer to, in shorthand, as values pedagogy. Values pedagogy connotes an approach to teaching and curriculum that prioritizes both the values-laden ambience of learning (e.g., caring, respectful, encouraging) and the values-laden focus of syllabus content (i.e., the personal, emotional, and moral lessons to be learned as far more important than the easily measurable regurgitative content). While the first edition of the handbook offered an array of indicative evidence of the potential for values pedagogy to nurture, carry, and fulfill all the well-being measures associated with efficacious education, this latest edition is fortified by evidence coming from updated research across a range of disciplines and an array of applications. Examples of disciplinary insights are to be found in stronger articulation of Habermasian epistemology and greater reference to the most recent findings in educational neuroscience. The ways of knowing and communicative action theories of Jurgen Habermas have been helpful in discerning why it is that pedagogies that optimize cognitive interest and engagement, such as values pedagogy, result in

Preface

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enhanced student and teacher well-being and overall student achievement in ways that more instrumentalist pedagogies do not enjoy. In allied fashion, there has been an increasing recognition in recent years that neuroscience has a place alongside other disciplines in informing educational theory and practice. Several chapters in this handbook provide insight into the relevance of neuroscience for the theory and practice of values education. Attention is drawn to the nature of emotion as being endemic to our humanness, the interplay of emotion and cognition, the predictive nature of the brain, the nature of moral reasoning, and the influence of the experience on brain development among other topics. Thus, neuroscience adds to the insights provided by other disciplines to give a more complete understanding of the vitality of values education. Examples of new applications can be seen in the links that some of the new chapters make to issues of intercultural understanding, including between Indigenous and colonial populations, sustainability, and environmental concerns. Moreover, since the publication of the first handbook, there has been a growing interest in the nexus between spirituality and values education. The chapters in this handbook represent a range of perspectives on this nexus, including Indigenous, various other recognized religious philosophies, as well as spiritualities or philosophies not normally regarded as religious. We, the editors, thank the various contributors to this handbook and we commend it as one containing insights into education that go well beyond the normally understood boundaries of values education to encompass efficacious education itself. We believe the jury is in about values education as best practice pedagogy. The notion of a values pedagogy as the pedagogy for efficacious teaching and learning has been vindicated by the evidence. Callaghan, Australia Melbourne, Australia Callaghan, Australia Callaghan, Australia October 2023

Terence Lovat Ron Toomey Neville Clement Kerry Dally

Contents

1

Values Education and Good Practice Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terence Lovat

1

2

Values-Based Education for a Better World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ron Toomey

21

3

Student Wellbeing at School, Neurobiology, and the Actualization of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neville Clement

4

From Surviving to Thriving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kerry Dally

5

Implementing and Evaluating PRIMED for Character Education in Colombian Schools Professional Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melinda C. Bier, Christopher D. Funk, Marvin W. Berkowitz, Nicole Bruskewitz, and Satabdi Samtani

6

Transcendent Social Thinking in Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rodrigo Riveros and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

7

Wellness-Informed Classrooms with Sustaining Climates Foster Compassionate Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Darcia Narvaez

8

Demonstrating the Value of Values-Based Education . . . . . . . . . . . Kris Acheson, Devi Bhuyan, Lindy Brewster, Jerry Burgess, John Dirkx, Steve Grande, Shagufa Kapadia, Ali Kenny, Kees Kouwenaar, Terence Lovat, Jennifer Ma, Wenjuan Ma, Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura, Thomas Nielsen, Hajime Nishitani, Guanglong Pang, Christina Raab, Craig Shealy, Renee Staton, Lee Sternberger, India Still, John Style, Ron Toomey, and Jennifer Wiley

39

67

85

111

129

147

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Contents

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10

Embrained, Embodied Values: Pedagogical Insights from Developmental Neuroscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minkang Kim

175

Consciousness, Culture, and the Place of Psychospiritual Capacities in Cultivating Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tobin Hart

191

11

Values, Education, Self, and Identity Kristján Kristjánsson

.......................

205

12

Value-Embedded Learning and the Interoceptive, Predictive Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Derek Sankey and Chris Duncan

219

The Development of Ecological Values: Cultivating Children’s Spiritual Relationships with the Natural World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lauren Foley, Amy Chapman, and Lisa Miller

235

Transforming the Theory and Practice of Character Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Arthur and Tom Harrison

267

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Promoting a More Sustainable and Inclusive World . . . . . . . . . . . Ragný Þóra Guðjohnsen, Ólafur Páll Jónsson, and Sigrún Aðalbjarnardóttir

279

16

Creating Compassionate Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Biddulph

307

17

The Positive Action Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian R. Flay, Carol G. Allred, Kendra M. Lewis, Niloofar Bavarian, and Meagan Haynes

323

18

The Value Base of Teacher’s Professional Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kirsi Tirri

351

19

The Secret Workings of the Hidden Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Mark Halstead and Jiamei Xiao

363

20

Personal and Professional Values in Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Carr

381

21

Values-based Education Neil Hawkes

.................................

397

22

Revisiting the “Quiet Revolution” Frances Farrer

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413

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Service-Learning as Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Furco

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Contents

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Moral Education as a Constant Factor in the Pedagogical Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Olga Sukhomlynska and Alan Cockerill

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25

Keystones of Holistic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John P. Miller

471

26

Advancing the Science of Character Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melinda C. Bier, Mitch Brown, Robert McGrath Marvin W. Berkowitz, and Keith Johnson

483

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Coping with Tradition and Secular Literacy Zehavit Gross

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497

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Integrating the Personal with the Public Ruth Crick

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515

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The Power of Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Davidson, Thomas Lickona, and Vladimir Khmelkov

529

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Reviewing Values and Wellbeing Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Nielsen and Jennifer Ma

555

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The Noble Role of Teachers in Values-Based Education Ron Farmer and Suwanti Farmer

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579

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Values, Wellness, and the History Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah Henderson

593

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Sejahtera Academic Framework as Values-Based Platform for IIUM Post-Pandemic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lihanna Borhan and Dzulkifli Abdul Razak

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The Evolution of Values Statements in a Service-Learning Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeremy Leeds

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When Research Meets Practice in Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . James S. Leming

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Integrating the Contours of Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bryan W. Sokol, Stuart I. Hammond, Kelly McEnerney, Melissa A. Apprill, and Marvin W. Berkowitz

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Teachers as Key Players in Values Education Adrian-Mario Gellel

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Values of Problem-Based Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moira Gek Choo Lee

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Teach Our Children Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Gray

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Contents

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Values Education and Restorative Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janene Rosser

725

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Values Education as an Ethical Dilemma About Sociability Robert Crotty

.....

739

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The Unhappy Moralist Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fritz Oser

753

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Re-Valuing the Shadows: Reimagining Possibilities for Alternative Futures through/with an Agentifying Education for a Planet in Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dalene M. Swanson

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The Five Pillars of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Omar Salim

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Reframing Education for the Future Larry Culliford

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Working with Leaders and Teachers to Grow Place Responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ron Tooth and Merryl Simpson

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Student Teachers’ Experience of Values Education and Its Implications for Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nazreen Dasoo

855

Philosophical Inquiry and Enhancing Adolescents’ General Reasoning Abilities and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rebecca Spooner-Lane and Elizabeth Curtis

869

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The Most Significant Change Technique Shahida Abdul Samad

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889

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Theorizing Social Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen A. Webb

905

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Classroom-Based Practice in Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laurie Brady

923

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Toward an Ethics of Integration in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inna Semetsky

937

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Developing Student Wellbeing Through Education for Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Libby Tudball

54

Teacher Practice and Students’ Sense of Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen F. Osterman

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Promoting Student Resilience and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jing Sun and Donald E. Stewart

995

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Values in Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1013 Tim Small

57

Transmitting Social and National Values Through Education in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031 Jasmine B.-Y. Sim and Li-Ching Ho

58

Socratic Circles Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053 Catherine Devine

59

A Reflection on the Value Implications for Learner Well-Being of Engagement in Vocational Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . 1071 Richard G. Bagnall

60

Continuity and Discontinuity in Character Education . . . . . . . . . . 1085 Jacques S. Benninga and Susan M. Tracz

61

Mathematics Education and Student Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1113 Philip Clarkson, Alan Bishop, and Wee Tiong Seah

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1143

About the Editors

Terence Lovat is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, and Conjoint Professor at Glasgow University, UK, and Royal Roads University, Canada. He was a lead investigator on research projects that functioned as part of the Australian Values Education Program. Ron Toomey is an Emeritus Professor and former Head of the College of Education at Victoria University, Australia. He was a lead investigator on projects associated with The Australian Values Education Program. He co-edited a handbook and has co-authored many academic texts and refereed journal articles associated with these project findings. Neville Clement is an Honorary Associate Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He was a member of the research team that evaluated values education for the Australian Government in 2009. He has co-edited books, including an international handbook, and co-authored or authored books, chapters, and journal articles on values education. Kerry Dally is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is an educational psychologist and psychometrician whose main teaching and research focus has been on special and inclusive education. Her current research projects include whole school approaches to positive behavior support, and student and teacher well-being.

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About the Authors

Sigrun Adalbjarnardoottir is a Professor Emerita, School of Education, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland Carol Allred is the founder and president of the Positive Action Program, Twin Falls, Idaho, USA Melissa A. Apprill is an Assistant Director at Good Neighbor Initiatives, Saint Louis University, USA James Arthur is the Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham, UK Richard Bagnall is an Emeritus Professor and member of the Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia Jacques Benninga is an Emeritus Professor at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno, USA Marvin W. Berkowitz is the inaugural Sanford N. McDonnell Endowed Professor of Character Education and Co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA James Biddulph is the first Headteacher of the University of Cambridge Primary School, UK Melinda C. Bier is currently the Co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship (CCC) in the College of Education, University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA Lihanna Borhan is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the International Islamic University Malaysia Laurie Brady was a Professor of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Mitch Brown is an instructor of psychology at the University of Arkansas, USA

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About the Authors

David Carr is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and was lately a Professor of Ethics and Education at the University of Birmingham, UK Amy Chapman is the Director of the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education: Educating for a Democratic and Ecological Society and a Research Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA Moira Lee Gek Choo is the Director of the Learning Academy at Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore Alan Cockerill is a research affiliate at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Ruth Crick has held positions at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, and Bristol University, UK Robert Crotty is an Emeritus Professor of Religion and Education at the University of South Australia Larry Culliford is a psychiatrist in Sussex, UK Elizabeth Curtis is a Senior Lecturer of Education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia Nazreen Dasoo is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Education and Curriculum Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Matthew Davidson is an original Founder and the current President of the Excellence with Integrity Institute, New York, USA Catherine Devine has worked with Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, Australia Chris Duncan was the Principal of Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School, New South Wales (NSW), Australia Suwanti Farmer is the Director of the Australian Academy for Educational Excellence, Queensland, Australia Ron Farmer is the Director of the Australian Academy for Educational Excellence, Queensland, Australia Frances Farrer was a UK-based journalist who observed the values-based education work of Neil Hawkes at the West Kidlington School, Oxfordshire, UK Brian Flay was a Professor of Public Health at Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA Lauren Foley is a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA Andy Furco is a Professor of Higher Education at the University of Minnesota, USA

About the Authors

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Adrian-Mario Gellel is a Professor and the Head of the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education (Faculty of Education, University of Malta) Mel Gray is a Professor Emerita of Social Work at the University of Newcastle, Australia Zehavit Gross holds the position of UNESCO Chair in Education for Human Values, Tolerance Democracy and Peace and is the Head of the Sal Van Gelder Center for Holocaust Instruction & Research, School of Education Bar-Ilan University, Israel Ragný Þóra Guðjohnsen is an Assistant Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Iceland J. Mark Halstead is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Huddersfield, UK Stuart I. Hammond is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Canada Tom Harrison is a Reader, HEA Principal Fellow, and the Director of Education at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, UK Tobin Hart serves as a Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia, USA Neil Hawkes was a Headteacher in Oxfordshire, UK, and is now the Director of the Living Values Trust, UK Deborah Henderson is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, USA Xiao Jiamei was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for the most outstanding PhD thesis at the University of Huddersfield, UK, in 2008 Ólafur Páll Jónsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the School of Education, University of Iceland Vladimir Khmelkov is Vice-President of the Excellence with Integrity Institute, New York, USA Minkang Kim is a Senior Lecturer of Human Development and Education at the School of Education and Social Work, the University of Sydney, Australia Kristján Kristjánsson is a Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics and the Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, UK

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About the Authors

Jeremy Leeds was a Teacher and Coordinator of Service Learning at the Horace Mann School, Riverdale, New York, USA James S. Leming was the Carl A. Gerstacker Chair of Education at Saginaw Valley State University, USA Ho Li-Ching is an Assistant Professor of Education at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Thomas Lickona is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the State University of New York at Cortland, USA Jennifer Ma is a Research Fellow of Psychology and Education at the University of Canberra, Australia Kelly McEnerney is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Southeast Missouri State University, USA Robert McGrath is a Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, USA John (Jack) Miller is a Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada Lisa Miller is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA Rodrigo Rivera Miranda is a cognitive neuropsychologist who works at the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education, University of Southern California, USA Darcia Narvaez is a Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA Thomas Nielsen is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Canberra, Australia Fritz Oser was a Professor of Education at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland Karen F. Osterman is a Professor of Education at Hofstra University, New York, USA Dzulkifli Abdul Razak is the Rector of the International Islamic University, Malaysia Janene Rosser is the Principal (Headteacher) at Newcastle High School, Australia Omar Salim is a Professor at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Durham College, Ontario, Canada Shahida Abdul Samad is an internationally accredited organizational consultant from Malaysia

About the Authors

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Derek Sankey has worked at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Seoul National University before moving to Australia Inna Semetsky is a Research Fellow at Columbia University, USA Craig Shealy is a Professor of Graduate Psychology and Executive Director of the International Beliefs and Values Institute at James Madison University, Virginia, USA Jasmine B.-Y. Sim is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Merryl Simpson is a Senior Teacher at the Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre, Queensland, Australia Tim Small is a former Headmaster and Head of Research and Development for Vital Partnerships, Ahead Space, Bristol, UK Bryan W. Sokol is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Saint Louis University, Missouri, USA Rebecca Spooner-Lane is a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia Olga Sukhomlynska is the Head Researcher at the V.O. Sukhomlynskyi State Scientific and Pedagogical Library of Ukraine, National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine Dalene M. Swanson is a Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK Kirsi Tirri is a Professor of Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland Ron Tooth is the founding Principal of the Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre, Queensland, Australia Susan Tracz is a Professor Emerita at California State University, Fresno, USA Libby Tudball is a Senior Lecturer of Education at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Stephen Webb is a Professor of Social Work at Glasgow Caledonia University, Scotland

Contributors

Kris Acheson Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA Sigrún Aðalbjarnardóttir University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Carol G. Allred Positive Action, Inc., Twin Falls, ID, USA Melissa A. Apprill Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA James Arthur University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Richard G. Bagnall Griffith University, Nathan, Australia Niloofar Bavarian California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA Jacques S. Benninga Bonner Center for Character Education and Citizenship, California State University, Fresno, CA, USA Marvin W. Berkowitz University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA Devi Bhuyan Sheppard-Pratt Psychology, Ellicott City, MD, USA James Biddulph University of Cambridge Primary School, Cambridge, UK Melinda C. Bier University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA Alan Bishop Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Lihanna Borhan International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Laurie Brady University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Lindy Brewster OR Consulting, Virginia, USA Mitch Brown University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA Nicole Bruskewitz CoSchool, Bogota, Colombia Jerry Burgess Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK David Carr University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

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Contributors

Amy Chapman Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Philip Clarkson Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia Neville Clement The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia Alan Cockerill Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Ruth Crick WILD Learning, Bristol, England Robert Crotty University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia Larry Culliford Sussex, UK Elizabeth Curtis University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia Kerry Dally The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia Nazreen Dasoo Department of Education and Curriculum Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa Matthew Davidson Excellence with Integrity Institute, Manlius, NY, USA Catherine Devine Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia John Dirkx Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Chris Duncan The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia Ron Farmer Toogoolawa Schools Limited, Ormeau, QLD, Australia Suwanti Farmer Toogoolawa Schools Limited, Ormeau, QLD, Australia Frances Farrer Former Education Journalist, Oxford, UK Brian R. Flay Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA Lauren Foley Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Christopher D. Funk University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA Andrew Furco Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Adrian-Mario Gellel University of Malta, Msida, Malta Steve Grande James Madison University, Virginia, USA Mel Gray University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia Zehavit Gross Bar- Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Ragný Þóra Guðjohnsen University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland J. Mark Halstead University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK Stuart I. Hammond University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

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Tom Harrison University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Tobin Hart University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA Neil Hawkes International Values Trust, Oxford, UK Meagan Haynes Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA Deborah Henderson Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Li-Ching Ho Madison, WI, USA Mary Helen Immordino-Yang University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Keith Johnson Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, NJ, USA Ólafur Páll Jónsson University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Shagufa Kapadia The M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, India Ali Kenny LeaderWise, Montana, USA Vladimir Khmelkov Excellence with Integrity Institute, Manlius, NY, USA Minkang Kim The School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Kees Kouwenaar Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Kristján Kristjánsson University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Moira Gek Choo Lee Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore, Singapore Jeremy Leeds Founder and former Director of the Center for Community Values and Action (from 2006-2020), Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY, USA James S. Leming Character Evaluation Associates, Ocean Ridge, FL, USA Kendra M. Lewis University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA Thomas Lickona State University of New York at Cortland, Manlius, NY, USA Terence Lovat The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia Jennifer Ma Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia Wenjuan Ma Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Kelly McEnerney Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO, USA Robert McGrath Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, NJ, USA John P. Miller University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Lisa Miller Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

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Contributors

Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura The George Washington University, Washington D. C, USA Darcia Narvaez University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Thomas Nielsen University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia Hajime Nishitani Soka/Hiroshima University, Hachioji, Japan Fritz Oser University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland Karen F. Osterman Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA Guanglong Pang Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Christina Raab Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Dzulkifli Abdul Razak International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Rodrigo Riveros University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Janene Rosser The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia Omar Salim Durham College, Oshawa, ON, Canada Shahida Abdul Samad Educational Consultant, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia Satabdi Samtani Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, LA, USA Derek Sankey The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia Wee Tiong Seah University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Inna Semetsky The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia Craig Shealy Western Washington University, Washington, USA Jasmine B.-Y. Sim National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore Merryl Simpson Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre, Pullenvale, QLD, Australia Tim Small Ahead Space, Bristol, UK Bryan W. Sokol Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Rebecca Spooner-Lane Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Renee Staton James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA Lee Sternberger International Beliefs and Values Institute, Washington, USA Donald E. Stewart Public Health, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

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India Still Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, Jersey City, NJ, USA John Style Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain Olga Sukhomlynska Ukrainian Academy of Educational Sciences, Kyiv, Ukraine Jing Sun School of Medicine and Dentistry, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Dalene M. Swanson University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Kirsi Tirri University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Ron Toomey Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Ron Tooth The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia Susan M. Tracz California State University Fresno, Fresno, CA, USA Libby Tudball Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Stephen A. Webb Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland Jennifer Wiley CoreCollaborative International, Harrisonburg, USA Jiamei Xiao University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

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Values Education and Good Practice Pedagogy The Double Helix Terence Lovat

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schooling and Disadvantage: Overturning Old Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Australian Values Education Program: An Emerging Double Helix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Confirming the Double Helix: Values Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Calm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Safe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter will introduce the handbook contents by summarizing the recent history of relevant pedagogical research insights and applying the findings to values education. The demonstrated claim, supported by evidence drawn from this research and further supported by findings from the Australian Values Education Program, is that values education constitutes good practice pedagogy. The relationship, referred to as values pedagogy, represents a double helix effect whereby two elements are linked as a complementary whole, each contributing to the inherent goals of the other. Keywords

Values education · Good practice pedagogy · Values pedagogy · Double helix · Carnegie Task Force T. Lovat (*) The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_1

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Introduction The chapter will summarize research findings from the late 1980s to today that identify the clear link between a “values” approach to learning and good practice pedagogy in eliciting maximum student effects as measured across a range of developmental factors, including academic achievement. These findings will then be brought forward to explain the holistic effects demonstrated in projects that ran under the umbrella of the Australian Values Education Program (2003–2010). The Carnegie Corporation Taskforce Report on Student Achievement (1994) will be identified as a keystone moment in which both the values and pedagogy agendas of the 1990s into 2000s were prefigured. Carnegie challenged earlier beliefs about the relative impotence of schools to make a difference. It also provided a holistic definition of learning that stretched traditional conceptions beyond the more predictable matters of separable cognition, to include measures such as communicative capacity, empathic character, reflectivity, and integrity as central to effective learning, including academic achievement. Carnegie effectively spurred a raft of pedagogical research that spawned greater optimism about the school’s role in student success. It also illustrated the inextricable “values” component of good practice pedagogy, an insight confirmed in more recent research in the field of educational neuroscience. The chapter will briefly highlight the ways in which the values and pedagogy agendas have interfaced in research and classroom innovations internationally and then offer special attention to findings from the many projects emanating from the Australian program. Findings revealed a double helix effect between values education and good practice pedagogy, so justifying the language of “values pedagogy.”

Schooling and Disadvantage: Overturning Old Paradigms Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales (1955) proffered the view that families were “. . . factories which produce human personality” (p. 16). Christopher Jencks (1972) agreed, relegating the school to one of relatively minor influence: “. . . the character of a school’s output depends largely on a single input, namely the characteristics of the entering children” (p. 256). In other words, children from an advantaged background were destined to attain academic success while disadvantage was deemed an inextricable barrier to school achievement. The Carnegie Corporation’s 1994 Task Force on Learning (Carnegie, 1996) challenged earlier research of the kind mentioned: One of the problems that has undermined school reform efforts . . . is the belief that differences in the educational performance of schools are primarily the result of differences in students’ inherent ability to learn (or not). This belief is wrong. (p. 3)

In a word, Carnegie placed the final responsibility for student achievement on the school, and especially on its teachers, regardless of student starting point. The report

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also redefined and broadened what was meant by achievement. While intellectual achievement remained at the core of the definition, other features of human development were noted as being relevant if not inherent to such achievement. Communication, empathic character, reflectivity, and self-management were named. By defining student achievement in holistic terms, Carnegie’s challenge to earlier assumptions about school systems’ priorities and the role of the teacher was profound. Hence, we find in the 1990s and beyond, a series of more interventionist studies designed to test the limits of what schools could achieve regardless of students’ starting points. The sharper focus of these studies was on testing whether a particular approach to teaching, teacher education, and schooling could break through the disadvantage effect and do justice to the broader conception of student achievement being touted by Carnegie. As a result, the language of “quality teaching,” “authentic pedagogy,” or the like began to appear as a way of capturing the findings of such research. The Stanford-based Linda Darling-Hammond was a member of the Carnegie Task Force and so in prime position to engage in this more interventionist research (Darling-Hammond, 1996, 1997, 2012, 2016). Her vast store of empirical data has continued to show the potency of the quality teacher, and associated teacher education, to break through disadvantage. Wisconsin-based Fred Newmann’s work (Newmann et al., 1995, 1996) did the same through intensive classroom-based research, studying just what it was about teacher practice, or authentic pedagogy, that produced the optimal effect. The research focused on identifying practice around the notion of “pedagogical dynamics,” ranging from factors like “sound technique” and “updated professional development” through to “catering for diversity.” Beyond individual teacher practice was the factor described as “school coherence,” connoting a total school environment committed to the well-being of the students in its care, and “trustful, supportive ambience,” concerning the relationships that surround the student, most centrally the relationship with the teacher(s). The five pedagogical dynamics worked together to produce the optimal holistic effect, meaning that personal, emotional, and social well-being could be achieved regardless of an individual student’s disadvantaged origins. When this occurred, the potential for intellectual achievement was also maximized, regardless of students’ starting points: We found that authentic pedagogy helps all students substantially . . . Neither gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status significantly affected the impact of authentic pedagogy on students. (Newmann et al., 1995, p. 8)

There are several aspects of this research that are of special interest to the consideration of values education and its relationship to good practice pedagogy. The school coherence and trustful, supportive ambience factors are among them. The fact that they stand alongside, if not indeed outweigh, more anticipated factors like sound technique and updated professional development is instructive for anyone contemplating what works in teaching and learning, be it teachers, school leaders, or educational bureaucrats, regardless of their interest or not in values education per se. The idea that care and trust are central not only to general student well-being but

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to their intellectual well-being specifically can be found in the ancient world in Confucian philosophy (Brooks & Brooks, 1998), the medieval world in the work of Abu Al-Ghazali (1991), the Persian Sufi, and in updated educational research by the likes of Nel Noddings (1995, 2002) and Ken Rowe (2004). Furthermore, recent insights from the field of educational neuroscience offer neural explanations why emotional and social factors, like care, trust and empathic character, are so central to holistic student well-being, including intellectual achievement (Clement & Lovat, 2012). Mary Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio (2007) proffer: 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. (p. 3)

Darcia Narvaez (2010, 2014, 2016; Narvaez et al., 2013), neuropsychologist and educator, makes the link between emotion and imaginative cognition in suggesting that imagination unlocks the emotions that impel sound reasoning. Accordingly, cognition connotes rationality and emotionality, both relying on imagination for optimal effect. Imagination, however, does not arise naturally from pedagogical efforts. What is needed is an imaginative pedagogy, requiring a safe and secure learning environment as well as the guiding hand of efficacious teaching. As noted above, the point about the necessity for a safe and secure, or caring and trusting, learning environment is replete in educational research, ancient, medieval, and modern. It is also surely the most fundamental requirement for any successful teaching and learning venture. We know that no one functions well in a competitive, least of all harsh or punitive environment, so the idea that young people could learn well in such an environment defies common sense. A values-laden ambience replete with care, trust, fairness, and encouragement is therefore best regarded as a sine qua non for any efficacious learning to result (Lovat, 2021). The second point about the need for a guiding hand is arguably not as clear in the literature. That teaching should revolve around sound technique with a trained and updated professional is taken for granted but Narvaez’s neuroscientific insight into the synergy between imagination, emotion, and sound cognition adds a dimension to the notion of efficacious teaching that is arguably not so apparent in educational research findings. Again, the clue might well be in Newmann’s authentic pedagogy: Authentic achievement has aesthetic, utilitarian or personal value beyond merely documenting the competence of the learner . . . student accomplishments should have value beyond measuring success in school. (Newmann et al., 1995, p. 3)

In other words, imaginative pedagogy that impels the emotions that underpin sound cognition possesses its own values-laden requirements. Pedagogy that merely requires students to “. . . memorize isolated facts about a wide array of topics (for testing . . . doesn’t) require deep understanding or elaborate communication”

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(Newmann et al., 1995, p. 3). Such pedagogy does not fit the criteria for authentic pedagogy. It is this coagulation of research around authentic pedagogy, student intellectual achievement, and holistic student well-being that offered clues regarding the “double helix” effect between values education and good practice pedagogy (Lovat & Toomey, 2009). In the Australian research, we spoke of values education as constituting a “two-sided coin,” encompassing both an implicit and explicit dimension. By implicit, we meant that the learning environment must be values-filled, characterized by care, trust, respect, and encouragement. The explicit side of the coin is seen in the orientation of the learning discourse being around the values inherent in curriculum content, rather than merely the most easily measurable features of the content: 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)

To employ Newmann’s (Newmann et al., 1995) language, the learning accomplishment must have “value beyond measuring success in school.” For learning to be efficacious in a holistic sense, “aesthetic, utilitarian or personal value beyond merely documenting the competence of the learner” must be transacted. One of the many misconceptions about values education is that it means doing something additional to the standard curriculum. In fact, it does not require separation from the prescribed curriculum content; rather, it is that values education has the potential to determine the direction of the curriculum through becoming the pedagogy. As a firmer way of flagging this notion, we eventually employed the language of “values pedagogy,” connoting the double helix between values education and good practice pedagogy (Lovat, 2017a, 2019; Lovat et al., 2011).

The Australian Values Education Program: An Emerging Double Helix The Australian Values Education Program (2003–2010) was a fully funded Australian Government initiative that developed as part of a revision of policy concerning the role of moral development as a proper goal for public education (Lovat, 2017a, b, 2020a, b). The Program began with a pilot study, Values Education Study (DEST, 2003), followed by the development of a National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005). Several research and practice projects took place from 2005 to 2010, the largest comprising the two stages of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (DEST, 2006; DEEWR, 2008), followed by an evaluation study, Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience (Lovat et al., 2009). Three hundred and sixteen schools, involving some 100,000 students, 5000 teachers, and 55 university researchers, were involved in the two stages of the

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main project, “Good Practice Schools Project.” Fifty-one clusters, involving schools across all age groups and sectors, followed the principles of the “National Framework” in constructing a project that focused on school ambience and a classroombased intervention. Each cluster project was evaluated by means of formative and summative assessment and reporting by an appointed university researcher in conjunction with the lead research team. In the year after project completion, all findings were subjected to further evaluation in the form of a mixed methods study designed to test and measure the results (Lovat & Dally, 2018). Findings illustrated the connection between values education and good practice pedagogy, with positive effects being demonstrated across a range of educational goals, including emotional, social, moral, and academic effects. Many of the reports from the school-based projects identified a greater sense of calm and improved behavior and communication among students and between students and teachers. Reports spoke of enhanced reflectivity on the part of students, greater responsibility being demonstrated over local, national, and international issues, enhanced student resilience and social skills, and improved relationships of care and trust among students and between students and teachers, with students claiming a greater sense of belonging, connectedness, and resilience. Allied to these areas of development was a consistent improvement in “academic diligence” (Galla et al., 2014; Lovat, 2010; Lovat et al., 2009, 2011). Following the guidance provided by the National Framework and informed by earlier pedagogical research, the learning ambience and classroom teaching were the two main focuses of attention. Following Newmann’s work, the trusting, supportive learning ambience was considered a sine qua non for all learning but most obviously learning being guided by a values pedagogy. The sine qua non comprised the implicit values dimension (Lovat, 2021). Meanwhile, the explicit dimension entailed the way in which classroom teaching proceeded, with special attention being given to the learning goals vis-a-vis curriculum content. As explicated elsewhere (Lovat, 2022; Lovat et al., 2011), Jurgen Habermas’s ways of knowing theory (Habermas, 1972, 1974) helped to guide planning around learning goals. In many ways consistent with the pedagogical findings and neuroscientific insights outlined above, Habermas depicts three ways of human knowing, each emanating from a cognitive interest. “Empirical-analytic” knowing results from the interest in knowledge control, “historical-hermeneutic” knowing from the interest to find meaning in knowledge attainment, and “critical-self reflectivity” knowing from the interest in being free in one’s knowing. The first way of knowing is about the facts and figures, the objective or easily measurable, while the second way of knowing is more subjective, interpersonal, and less easily measured. Meanwhile, the third way of knowing is deeply personal where self-knowing is the marker and the measure not in knowing facts or even meanings but in action, what Habermas refers to as praxis. It is the supreme knowing where actions speak louder than words or, to employ Newmann’s language, the knowing has value beyond school-based success. It is also the kind of knowing that challenges cognitive imagination, rather than merely the cognitive retention that is so often the goal of classroom-based learning.

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Hence, in the explicit dimension, normally connoting a classroom-based intervention, content was normally derived from the curriculum content of the standard syllabuses. Instead of focusing merely on the standard objectives, largely the easily measurable ones, the values inherent in the content became the added-value focus, thereby stretching rather than limiting the cognitive powers being called for. In other words, instead of simply rolling out the content because it was there in the syllabus and because a measurable outcome for reporting was demanded by the system, teachers were encouraged to begin lesson preparation with questions like 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 well-being and the well-being of those with whom they will form relationships? What value is it to their future personal and social development? What value is it for the world in general? What vital lessons about humanity and the Cosmos, if any, might be contained in this content? By gearing lesson intentions to these values-oriented ends, rather than mere measurement-related ends, the conditions were being laid for imaginativeness to be impelled, a la Narvaez, so leading to the positive emotional state underpinning sound reasoning. The goal, a la Newmann, was to elicit the aesthetic, utilitarian, or personal value beyond merely documenting the competence of the learner. The “surprise effect,” as originally dubbed (Lovat, 2017b), was that when these kinds of values questions were stimulating and determining the pedagogical direction, then the easily measurable content knowledge normally occurred anyway. In many cases, evidence suggested that, in all irony, students were more likely to remember the facts and figures at the center of such content knowledge, far beyond the measuring device, apparently because of the contextual stimulation that was being applied. Data from the projects testifying to these claims include the following: 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 . . . (DEST, 2006, p. 120) 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 education) . . . 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. (DEEWR, 2008, p. 28)

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The above quotes capture a range of features of the project findings, described as predictable, less predictable, and unpredictable results (Lovat, 2019). The predictable results concerned student accrual of personal and social values, as one might expect from a program targeting values per se. The National Framework (DEST, 2005), effectively the program’s charter, included explicit values language and so, as with any targeted program, one would predict findings to accord with the target: 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. (DEST, 2006, p. 120)

Less predictable were findings concerning improvements in student behavior and student and teacher well-being: . . . 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. (DEST, 2006, p. 41) . . . teachers and students were happier, and school was calmer. (DEST, 2006, p. 120)

They were less predictable findings in the sense that they did not constitute goal settings in the same explicit way as did values inculcation per se. Nonetheless, granted the pedagogical research findings of Darling-Hammond and Newmann, and furthermore the neuroscientific findings of Immordino-Yang, Damasio and Narvaez, they were entirely predictable. The unpredictable findings concerned the many references to improved student attention to academic tasks, development of academic habits, and enhanced learning outcomes: . . . by creating an environment where these values were constantly shaping classroom activity, student learning was improving. (DEST, 2006, p. 120)

As noted, we initially referred to this finding as a surprise effect because it was even less explicit as a stated goal of the program. Again, however, the broader understanding of student achievement premised by the Carnegie Report, along with the pedagogical and neuroscientific perspectives already mentioned, rendered it no surprise at all. As Confucius and Ghazali understood, when learners are happy and secure in a caring environment, they learn well. As Newmann and Narvaez understood, when pedagogy focuses on “value beyond success in school” and stirs the imagination that impels the emotions that underpin sound reasoning, then learners learn well. The only surprise is how easily we forget the wisdom of the ages and systems ignore the insights of the most pertinent, updated scientific learning research available. We would come to call this attached learning factor “academic diligence” because the habits demonstrated fitted the way they are referred to in the literature (Galla et al., 2014). It was the factor that created the most interest in the wider educational

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community and so the one demanding the most caution in making claims. As such, it became a special target in the evaluation study (Lovat et al., 2009). This mixed methods study, designed to test, measure, and endorse or not the many claims emanating from the program (Lovat & Dally, 2018), had the following to say about the academic diligence claims: There was substantial quantitative and qualitative evidence suggesting . . . observable and measurable improvements in students’ academic diligence, including increased attentiveness, a greater capacity to work independently as well as more cooperatively, greater care and effort being invested in schoolwork and students assuming more responsibility for their own learning . . . (Lovat et al., 2009, p. 6)

Confirming the Double Helix: Values Pedagogy As suggested above, Carnegie (1996) prefigured the nexus between values and pedagogy by illustrating that effective learning is inherently values-filled. The notion that all education is replete with values is as old as the ancient and medieval testimonies referred to above, as well as to be found in moral education literature in more recent times (Dewey, 1916, 1929; Peters, 1962; Carr & Steutel, 1999). There is a fundamental difference however between these earlier philosophical views and the era prefigured by Carnegie and followed by the pedagogical and neuroscientific research noted above, including the findings of the Australian Values Education Program. The difference is that the earlier perspectives proffered the values basis of education as a moral imperative, hence negotiable and subject to ideological debate. In contrast, the most recent findings denote a pedagogical imperative that incorporates the moral, but also the social, emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of human development. Herein, a values approach to learning is seen to be an indispensable artifact to any learning environment if student achievement, entailing and incorporating holistic development and well-being, is to be optimized. As such, it is neither negotiable nor dependent on personal or corporate ideology. The innovative and possibly revolutionary thought contained in this proposition is that, in a sense, student achievement is best understood as contained within a holistic approach to learning, ideally one replete with a values dimension (Lovat, 2013). This notion calls into question previous views of learning as a compartmentalized and linear process and calls for a reassessment of the traditional assumptions and allied approaches that Carnegie implied had led too often to student failure. As seen above, various pedagogical projects, along with neuroscientific insights, have demonstrated how a particular approach to pedagogy can break through these assumptions. Furthermore, to put a word to it, it is a values approach, a values pedagogy. It seems important therefore to tease out just what it was about this pedagogy that seemed to have the desired effect. What were the stand-out features of the values pedagogy, implicit and explicit, that established the optimal conditions for academic diligence to be brought to effect? The data suggest that the principal features are fourfold, headed, as below, calm, safe, relationships, and service.

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Calm Results from the pilot study for the Australian Values Education Program (DEST, 2003) spoke of greater “cohesion” and “peace” developing in the schools that engaged in the study, so flagging the calmness feature early on. In the first phase of the main project (DEST, 2006), the feature appeared often in reports, invariably linked to issues of improved student behavior, teacher and student well-being, and strengthened learning effects: . . . 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 the main project (DEEWR, 2008), the link between calmness and effective learning environments was more prominent, as was the link with the inclusive, caring environment: 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 evaluation study (Lovat et al., 2009), claims around the greater calming effect of values pedagogy were tested and confirmed. Links with other features, whether as apparent cause or effect, also became more explicit: . . . a calmer environment with less conflict and with a reduction in the number of referrals . . . (p. 8) much calmer . . . more ordered movement around the school, all of which helped to set a better tone. (p. 8) . . . a calmer, more peaceful ambience. (p. 12) . . . calmer and more peaceful classrooms . . . 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) 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)

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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 (ie. before the values program). (p. 123)

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 et al., 2011, p. 216)

Safe Safety and a sense of security in their learning environment came through as crucial in the earliest phase of the program. There were routine comments about safety in the physical environment through to the kind of security implied in being surrounded by a more positive environment (DEST, 2003, pp. 18, 20, 58). The importance of physical safety was considered a given; clearly, no efficacious learning will be happening if students do not feel physically secure in their environment. 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 wellbeing. (DEST, 2003, p. 131)

In the later projects, the safety factor became even more pronounced and the connections with student well-being and their academic attention were more obvious. Moreover, the sense that students had agency over their own safety through

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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)

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 the main project (DEEWR, 2008), 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. (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. (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. (p. 28) The pedagogy gives students responsibility but recognises the inherent risks of this and accordingly provides for student safety and support. (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. (p. 60)

The many claims around the centrality of safety and security as a feature of the learning environment where well-being and learning are intertwined were confirmed

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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)

Relationships The issue of improved and positive relationships resulting from values pedagogy, teacher–student, and student–student, was prominent from the beginning of the program: . . . 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 theme of positive relationships 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. The “common language” around values was referred to constantly as offering a way of addressing behavioral issues, as well as utilizing them when dealing with curriculum content. By means of a shared language, issues could be discussed more easily between teachers and students, and students and students, so alleviating conflict, improving behavior, and ultimately strengthening understanding. Similarly, through a shared language, issues arising from curriculum content could be grappled with at a deeper level than was common in classroom discussions. These features, in turn, impacted positively on learning: . . . 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)

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In the evaluation study (Lovat et al., 2009), these claims were further tested. Attendance and behavior management reports were easily able to be verified through school records. Less easily measurable claims were tested through a combination of surveys, interviews, and focus groups: 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 schoolwork, 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)

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. . . case studies that present data on student – teacher relationships mostly report improved and very positive patterns. (p. 81) The outcomes of this improved relationship are reflected in the School Survey data. (p. 84) Improvement in students’ interpersonal relationships was noted by students, staff and parents and these observed and measurable changes in student behaviour had important repercussions for the schools’ ambience. (p. 86) . . . the investigation of the impact on student-teacher relationships revealed that values education helped to develop “more trusting” relationships between staff and students. (p. 87) . . . more trusting student-teacher relationships and the more peaceful and harmonious school climate emanating from the values education programs appeared to have a positive impact on both student and teacher wellbeing. (p. 87) . . . the quantitative and qualitative evidence . . . has demonstrated that a well-crafted and well-managed values education intervention has potential to impact positively on . . . student-teacher relationships. . . (p. 88)

Service Among the various ways that schools and clusters implemented their intervention was one referred to variously as “community engagement,” “community visitations,” “community service,” “student action,” or simply “service.” These interventions were informed by the field of research known broadly as “service learning” (Billig, 2000; Furco & Norvell, 2019). Service learning entails the making of connections between the school and the community through a form of service (e.g., visitations, food drops, engagement with a benevolent organization, etc.), as might happen routinely in any school’s outreach program. The value-added component in the service-learning regimen, however, is in the attached reflectivity and learning that occurs in circular fashion in the form of outreach–reflectivity–outreach, etc., or merely service-learning–service-learning–service, etc. Service learning proved to be an especially effective way in which the implicit–explicit nexus germane to values pedagogy could be implemented. Habermas (1972, 1974) 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 (Lovat, 2012; Lovat & Clement, 2016). In the report on the first phase of the main program (DEST, 2006), servicelearning ventures included working in aged care centers, reading programs for people in hospitals, developing safe travel programs 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 teachers and students indicated that these experiences resulted in learned empathy, enhanced

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communicative competence, a greater sense of student agency, and an intrinsic motivation to engage in meaningful action: 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. (p. 157) 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. (p. 160)

In the report of the second phase of the main 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 about enhanced student agency and the accompanying growth in student self-confidence: 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. (p. 11) 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. (p. 34) . . . 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. (p. 41) . . . experiences accord with research findings in the field of social-emotional learning and its relation to building academic success. (p. 41)

As with all other findings of the earlier projects, claims around service learning’s effects were subjected to empirical appraisal in the evaluation study (Lovat et al., 2009):

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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. (p. 34) 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. (p. 183) . . . service learning allowed “head, hands and hearts” to be involved in a values-based partnership. (p. 208) . . . service learning (means) putting what has been learned about values into active practice. (p. 227) . . . when students have opportunities to give to their community, to something beyond themselves, it changes their attitude to the learning tasks. (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 that 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 seems 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. Again, it was Carnegie (1996) who proffered the link between these facets of development and academic achievement. 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 et al., 1995). It is this holistic learning experience that seems then to impact positively on their disposition toward learning more generally and, as the evidence suggested, strengthened academic diligence is the result.

Conclusion The chapter has attempted to draw together recent pedagogical and neuroscientific evidence pointing to the inextricable nature of a values component in good practice pedagogy. Central to the evidence is the large data set from the Australian Values Education Program that served to confirm the earlier research to the point that a double helix relationship between values education and good practice pedagogy became apparent. The strength and persistence of the relationship prompted the use of the term, values pedagogy.

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References Al-Ghazali, H. (1991). The book of religious learnings. Islamic Book Services. Billig, S. (2000). The effects of service learning. Service Learning, General, 42. https:// digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slceslgen/42. Accessed 22 Apr 2022. Brooks, E., & Brooks, A. (1998). The original analects. Columbia University Press. Carnegie. (1996). Years of promise: A comprehensive learning strategy for America’s children. Carnegie Corporation of New York. http://eric.ed.gov. Accessed 19 Apr 2022. Carr, D., & Steutel, J. (Eds.). (1999). Virtue ethics and moral education. Routledge. Clement, N., & Lovat, T. (2012). Neuroscience and education: Issues and challenges for curriculum. Curriculum Inquiry, 42(4), 534–557. Darling-Hammond, L. (1996). What matters most: A competent teacher for every child. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, 193–200. Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. Jossey-Bass. Darling-Hammond, L. (2012). Redlining our schools: Why is Congress writing off poor children?. The Nation, 294(5). https://profiles.stanford.edu/linda-darling-hammond?tab¼publications. Accessed 19 Apr 2022. Darling-Hammond, L. (2016). Research on teaching and teacher education and its influence on policy and practice. Educational Researcher, 45(2), 83–91. 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. Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. http://www.curriculum.edu.au/ verve/_resources/VEGPSP-2_final_3_execsummary.pdf. Accessed 31 Mar 2022. DEST. (2003). Values education study (executive summary final report). Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_ resources/VES_Final_Report14Nov.pdf. Accessed 31 Mar 2022. DEST. (2005). National framework for values education in Australian schools. Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_ resources/Framework_PDF_version_for_the_web.pdf. Accessed 31 Mar 2022. 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. Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. http://www.curriculum. edu.au/verve/_resources/VEGPS1_FINAL_REPORT_081106.pdf. Accessed 31 Mar 2022. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. The Free Press. Dewey, J. (1929). The sources of a science of education. Horace Liveright. Furco, A., & Norvell, K. (2019). What is service learning? Making sense of the pedagogy and practice. Routledge. Galla, B., Plummer, B., White, R., Meketon, D., D’Mello, S., & Duckworth, A. (2014). The Academic Diligence Task (ADT): Assessing individual differences in effort on tedious but important schoolwork. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 39(4), 314–325. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1974). Theory and practice (J. Viertal, Trans.). Heinemann. Immordino-Yang, M., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affect and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1, 3–10. Jencks, C. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America. Basic Books. Lovat, T. (2010). Synergies and balance between values education and quality teaching. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42, 489–500. Lovat, T. (2012). Service learning in the Australian values education program. In T. Murphy & J. Tan (Eds.), Service learning and educating in challenging contexts: International perspectives (pp. 199–215). Continuum.

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Lovat, T. (2013). Values education programs. In J. Hattie & E. Anderman (Eds.), International guide to student achievement (pp. 279–281). Routledge. Lovat, T. (2017a). Values education as good practice pedagogy: Evidence from Australian empirical research. Journal of Moral Education, 46(1), 88–96. Lovat, T. (2017b). No surprise in the “surprise effect” of values pedagogy: An edusemiotic analysis. In I. Semetsky (Ed.), Edusemiotics: A handbook (pp. 93–106). Springer. Lovat, T. (2019). The art and heart of good teaching: Values as the pedagogy. Springer. Lovat, T. (2020a). Values as the pedagogy: Countering instrumentalism. In K. Tirri (Ed.), Pedagogy and pedagogical challenges. IntechOpen. https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/values-asthe-pedagogy-countering-instrumentalism. Accessed 11 Apr 2022. Lovat, T. (2020b). Holistic learning versus instrumentalism in teacher education: Lessons from values pedagogy and related research. Education Sciences, 10(0341), 1–12. Lovat, T. (2021). The ambience of values pedagogy. In E. Kuusisto, M. Ubani, P. Nokalainen, & A. Toom (Eds.), Good teachers for tomorrow’s schools (pp. 148–165). Brill. Lovat, T. (2022). Jurgen Habermas: Education’s increasingly recognized hero. In M. Murphy (Ed.), Social theory and education research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida (pp. 107–125). Routledge. Lovat, T., & Clement, N. (2016). Service learning as holistic values pedagogy. Journal of Experimental Education, 39(2), 115–129. 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. 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. http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/Project_to_Test_and_Measure_ the_Impact_of_Values_Education.pdf. Accessed 31 Mar 2022. Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. Springer. Narvaez, D. (2010). Building a sustaining classroom climate for purposeful ethical citizenship. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook of values education and student wellbeing (pp. 659–674). Springer. Narvaez, D., Panksepp, J., Schore, A., & Gleason, T. (2013). The value of using an evolutionary framework for gauging children’s well-being. In D. Narvaez, J. Panksepp, A. Schore & T. Gleason (Eds.), Evolution, early experience and human development: From research to practice and policy (pp. 3–30). Oxford University Press. Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture, and wisdom. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Narvaez, D. (2016). Kohlberg Memorial Lecture 2015: Revitalizing human virtue by restoring organic morality. Journal of Moral Education, 45(3), 223–238. Newmann, F., Marks, H., & Gamoren, A. (1995). Authentic pedagogy: Standards that boost student performance. Issues in Restructuring Schools, 8, 1–12. Newmann, F., et al. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality. Jossey-Bass Publishers. Noddings, N. (1995). Philosophy of education. Westview Press. Noddings, N. (2002). Educating moral people: A caring alternative to character education. Teachers College Press. Parsons, T., & Bales, R. (1955). Family, socialization and interaction process. Free Press. Peters, R. S. (1962). Moral education and the psychology of character. Philosophy, 37(139), 37–56. Rowe, K. J. (2004). In good hands? The importance of teacher quality. Educare News, 149, 4–14.

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Values-Based Education for a Better World Ron Toomey

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values-Based Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Neuroscience of Body, Mind, and Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Emerging Neuroscience of Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Developing a “We” Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education Practice Redefined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Over a decade ago, in a previous edition of the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, we wrote about the effects of implementing what we then dubbed the “new” Values Education: the symbiotic effects between the explicit teaching of a school’s values and the enhancement of the quality of student learning and the effectiveness of teaching. As such, the “new” Values Education, more recently called Values-based Education (VbE), was essentially a novel conception of the craft of teaching and the processes of learning. At times, we also expressed the view, without much real elaboration, that VbE presented an approach to learning and teaching better suited to the times in which we were then living. We also suggested that it had the capacity to enhance students’ cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being without fleshing out details of the enhancement of spiritual growth. This chapter seeks to bolster those two claims in ways that suggest how VbE might help humankind address the life-or-death challenges it presently confronts around environmental R. Toomey (*) Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_2

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degradation, widespread social and cultural disharmony, the escalation of youth suicide, domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect, to name just a few. Keywords

Values education · Student well-being · Student learning · Cognitive · Social · Emotional · Spiritual

Introduction Over a decade ago, in a previous edition of the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, we wrote about the effects of implementing what we then dubbed the “new” Values Education: the symbiotic effects between the explicit teaching of a school’s values and the enhancement of the quality of student learning and the effectiveness of teaching. As such, the “new” Values Education, more recently called Values-based Education (VbE), was essentially a novel conception of the craft of teaching and the processes of learning. At times, we also expressed the view, without much real elaboration, that VbE presented an approach to learning and teaching better suited to the times in which we were then living. We also suggested that it had the capacity to enhance students’ cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing without fleshing out details of the enhancement of spiritual growth. A decade on, while many schools worldwide have embraced the pedagogy in one form or another, the need for its wider adoption has become more urgent. By revisiting the work of the Australian Government’s Values Education Good Practice Schools’ Project (VEGPSP) that gave rise to the “new” Values Education, and related subsequent work, this chapter seeks to bolster that conception of teaching and learning by way of suggesting how it might enable young people to become their very best cognitive, social, emotional, and especially their very best spiritual selves capable of helping rescue humanity from self-destruction. By situating the discussion within the framework of the challenges presently confronting humankind, together with recent neuroscience research related to the “new” Values Education, we argue that as schools increasingly embrace such an orientation, education can play a role in helping redress the near-fatal life-or-death challenges presently confronting humankind: challenges such as “the re-emergence of feudalism through ever increasing social, cultural and religious conflict; human rights infringement; ecological degradation; politics without principles; business without morality and the like” (Farmer & Farmer, 2015). A further hope is that it will nurture a generation that sees these challenges as opportunities to make the world a better place for all.

Challenges and Opportunities Over the last decade, the world has become an even darker place than it was when the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing was first published. Now, humankind finds itself facing literally a set of life-or-death

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challenges. We are on course for unprecedented environmental destruction through global warming and natural resource depletion. Population and consumption trends predict that we shall overshoot the earth’s carrying capacity within the century. Humanity is at war with itself in escalating numbers of regional, ethnic, and religious conflicts. The global economy and many institutions have fallen prey to the shortsightedness of a mostly economic agenda. Domestic violence, youth suicide, as well as child abuse and neglect are of such epidemic proportions that schools now find themselves having to develop “trauma informed practices” (Narvaez, this handbook). Fifty-four percent of the human race now lives under autocratic rule. Humankind, it seems, is presently intent on tearing itself apart. This is a dangerous road we tread. Because, as Barack Obama prophetically wrote in his recent book in reference to today’s world “of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and everincreasing complexity”: We will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. (Obama, 2020 p. XVI)

The most predominant approaches to education are exacerbating the problem rather than alleviating it. At a time when one would expect schools to be trying to get more people pulling in the one direction so as to create more authentic, self and socially aware people, and thus socially responsible people, prepared to redress the above situation, we find that mostly they are sending their students quite the opposite message. Rather than sending messages about the need for more cooperation, more effort for sustainability, equity, conflict resolution, as well as personal and spiritual well-being, the typical school curriculum reflects and reinforces the notion of competition and a survival of the fittest mentality. Specifically, with regard to present approaches to schooling, teachers have been distracted from their work of shaping knowledgeable, ethical, and productive members of a democratic society by a variety of extraneous forces. The instrumentalist orientation toward education so common today, together with the way it is increasingly being commodified, adds to the pressure on teachers to largely ignore those unquantifiable aspects of education like the creative, social, emotional, reflective, and spiritual development of young people. They have become key distractions from the task of educating the whole person and an improved humanity. Similarly, these days any teacher working hard at developing in young people a sense of greater shared social responsibility has serious competition from the sociopathological pressures of the Internet, the neurobiological effects of its use (Firth et al., 2019), and the growing cultural support for narcissism. There is much “push back” from the Internet and social media to efforts at sustainability, equity, conflict resolution, and personal and spiritual well-being in the form of cyber bullying, cyber pornography, cyber racism, and the social isolation that often accompanies Internet and social media usage. Moreover, with social media increasingly becoming a tool for young people’s identity development, psychologists are concerned that individuals can become “stuck” in the identity exploration process, finding the plethora of options

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debilitating, making it difficult for a person to arrive at an identity commitment let alone an identity commitment in tune with personal integrity, sustainability, equity, conflict resolution, and the like. Also, the emergence of the culture of narcissism that is being fuelled by a cult of the self and the pursuit of wealth in a hypercompetitive consumer society is stunting commitment to values like empathy, humility, caring, and integrity that are central to the development of a more harmonious, ecologically sustainable, and socially just world (Manne, 2015). These twin pressures on schools of instrumentalism and the negative socioemotional–cultural developments with the Internet and social media, together with the clamor for high “standards” and higher test scores, have all combined to make schools focus primarily on external forms of knowing and being while students’ inner dimensions are often ignored. There is increasingly less talk about schools’ role in nurturing self-awareness, spiritual well-being, imagination, exploration, emotion, joy, or self-actualization. We are by no means alone in declaring that the life-or-death turning point that humankind presently faces requires transformation not only to the educational systems that we establish and enact, but the underlying premises we hold about whom we are educating, how we educate, and why we educate in the first place. This is a great opportunity. To answer such questions, we must reconceptualize and reframe our educational endeavors so that we are not just educating students for their future lives but also educating them for the betterment of humanity: developing the cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being of all students.

Values-Based Education Between 2005 and 2008, my colleagues and I were intimately involved in the Australian Government’s Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (VEGPSP) (Toomey, 2006). The project was a two-stage, nearly A$30 million, effort designed to enable Australian schools to demonstrate, in a “ground up” sense, good practice Values Education. During the project’s lifetime, some 400 schools and thousands of teachers and students toiled away identifying, implementing, and refining their conception of good practice Values Education. The details of the schools’ efforts and their effects on students regarding the development of prosocial values and behaviors are well documented, as are the transformational effects on staff (Lovat & Toomey, 2009; Lovat et al., 2009; Lovat et al., 2010). VbE schools were calmer schools, with a more positive ethos and school culture, had happier, more motivated staff and pupils, and high levels of wellbeing and resilience. By drawing on the values-based educational practices within the VEGPSP, we were able to propose a “new” Values Education paradigm. Initially, we described it as the double helix effect between the explicit teaching of values and quality teaching (Newmann et al., 1996). That is, the explicit teaching of values and quality teaching are the two sides of the same coin. When one explicitly teaches the collectively identified and firmly held values of a school community as part of that

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school’s overall program, you change the school’s ambience. It becomes calmer. Interpersonal relationships between teachers and students and between the students themselves become more deep-going and trusting. All of this is very well documented (DEEWR, 2008; DEST, 2006; Lovat, 2007; Lovat & Toomey, 2007; Lovat et al., 2009). Moreover, such an environment is a natural crucible within which to engage quality teaching practices. Quality teaching (Newmann et al., 1996) is a values-based craft that, among other things, includes teachers and students engaging in substantive conversation. This requires trusting relationships between teachers and students: the very type of relationships that develop in classrooms that explicitly teach a school’s values. According to Newmann et al. (1996), quality teaching also involves providing social support for student achievement. This means engendering practices whereby students and teachers help each other to create a sense that “we are all in this together” regardless of background or levels of perceived competence. This requires students caring for each other, sharing, trusting, and other values. Quality teaching also involves nurturing in students higher-order thinking skills and depth of knowledge through the deep conversations involving caring and trust. The double helix metaphor was subsequently elaborated to a “troika” (borrowed from the three-horsed Russian snow cart) designed to capture the way this approach to teaching and learning draws together, and produces synergies between, the research about quality teaching, socioemotional learning, and service learning (Lovat & Toomey, 2009; Lovat et al., 2009). Specifically, it drew upon ideas within the quality teaching research about the roles of caring, high expectations, mutual respect, and the inclusion of, and support for, all students in the learning process. It also drew on ideas about the role of emotion that were found in the neuroscience research at the time. The work of neuroscientists like Damasio (2003) and Immordino-Yang (2007) suggested that the aspects of cognition treated most heavily in schools, namely learning, attention, memory, and the like, draw heavily upon the processes of emotion. Similarly, around the same time Goleman was developing his theory about “emotional intelligence” that, if Damasio (2003) and others were correct about the role of emotion in learning, would have a major impact on education. His theory about our “two minds” – the rational and the emotional – and his views about “emotional intelligence” further supported the idea that emotion was central to learning. Emotional intelligence, according to Goleman (1996), comprises five “inner” qualities: self-awareness (the ability to recognize and understand personal moods and emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others); self-regulation (the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods, and the propensity to suspend judgment and to think before acting); internal motivation (a passion to work for internal reasons such as an inner vision of what is important in life, a joy in doing something, curiosity in learning); empathy (the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people); and social skills (proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, and an ability to find common ground and build rapport). All five qualities are heavily values laden and thus provide another dimension to the symbiotic effects between values and teaching. Finally, Bryk’s (2002) work on relational

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trust was also making neuroscientific connections between the social, emotional, and cognitive processes involved in learning. Essentially then, the “troika” proposed a new paradigm for values-based, holistic learning that simultaneously engaged a range of social, emotional, and cognitive functions. It also included a service learning dimension in which students could apply the prosocial values they had been taught, and had modeled for them by teachers and other adults, and which were transacted within the curriculum to practical situations of need in their surrounding communities such as, for example, aged care, ecological degradation, and worker exploitation, thereby developing their social responsibility and hopefully their capacity for transcendent thinking and altruism. In our view then, this conception of a student well-being pedagogy holds one of the keys to enabling young people to better understand their “selves” and develop the type of prosocial behavior and responsible citizenry that can contribute to a better world. We still think that to be the case. However, with the passage of time further research, particularly in the neurosciences, has increased our confidence in that regard.

The Neuroscience of Body, Mind, and Spirit The ink was barely dry (so to speak) on the pages of the first edition of the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing when significant developments within the neurosciences began to emerge, many of which were pertinent to our thinking about the troika and its transformational potential. Such work now demonstrates that 1. The nexus between sociality, emotion, and cognition is more complex than we thought 10 years ago. 2. For those of us in the Western world, our “emotional selves” require nourishment – the way right-brain functioning is neglected in that world needs rectification. 3. The way the brain and the outside world interact is possibly a major contributor to the life-or-death challenges we currently face. 4. While the essential elements of the troika hold up under scrutiny today, there are additional things we can do as educators to fortify it and repurpose it so that it becomes an effective antidote to the life-or-death challenges we currently face. For example, the cognition/emotionality nexus in learning to which Damasio (2003) first drew our attention has now been further elaborated. We now know that within the bilateral brain both hemispheres play a role in how the mind works: neuronal “energy” “flows,” or weaves, through both hemispheres with one or the other hemisphere being more dominant than the other depending on the context (Siegel et al., 2016). The left hemisphere plays a dominant role when the mind is tasked with meaning-making about narrow, decontextualized, theoretical, technical inputs to the brain. The right hemisphere is more at home with our emotional and social selves. Moreover, Siegel’s (2016) work becomes especially important

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regarding the troika metaphor for VbE in that he has shown not only are there neural interconnects between cognition, emotion, and sociality in the neuronal electrical “firing” patterns in the brain but those patterns can be stimulated and grown through processes he calls neurogenesis and synaptogenesis. This is especially important for education when taken together with the work of McGilchrist (2009), which argues that the nature of today’s Western society in its interactions with the brain has made us left brain-dominant and thus “soul-less,” dispirited and incapable of emotionally addressing the life-or-death challenges we currently face. Furthermore, Porges (2011) and Siegel (2012) have both further advanced our knowledge about what McGilchrist (2009) calls “our embodied mind.” Porges’ (2011) work focuses on the interactions of the nervous system and the brain. His polyvagal theory suggests that there is a two-way information exchange between the vagus nerve, which is attached to the brain stem, and which passes through all the major organs, including the heart and the brain, thereby shaping our embodied mind and giving new meaning to phrases such as “gut feeling,” “heart felt,” “intuition,” “laughing my insides out,” and such. Both McGilchrist (2009) and Siegel et al. (2016) are concerned about the state of today’s world and how we can better “integrate” the right and left hemispheres of the brain: move people from a mindset of “I” (the left hemisphere) to “We” (the right hemisphere), thereby potentially enabling us to see the challenges we face as opportunities for making the world a better place. Siegel’s (Siegel et al. 2016) brain scanning work has had a profound impact on our understanding of the interconnection between body, mind, and spirit and its potential applications to education in terms of our interpersonal connectedness and its potential to enable people to develop a “We” mindset. Such a mindset has, in part at least, a spiritual dimension derived from a sense that we are all part of a greater whole. In his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, he describes the concepts of “energy” and “information flow.” Energy and information flow, put simply, is the movement across time of the physics’ property of energy, the capacity to “do stuff” such as carry out work. Sometimes that energy has symbolic value, it stands for something other than itself and thus has meaning, and thus this energy pattern is called “information.” Through sophisticated brain scanning procedures, Siegel and others (2016) have shown us that the brain has a bilateral functionality with both hemispheres contributing to how the mind (as distinct from the brain) works but with one or other hemispheres dominating depending on the context. Moreover, he argues that the functionality of the brain has effects on our spiritual well-being. Metaphorically, he sees the mind, body, spirit relationship in terms of an embodied system. One component of the system he refers to as “domains” all of which ideally need to be functioning in harmony for the system to function optimally. There are nine domains that are important areas for energy and information to flow in an integrated way to create overall well-being for a person including spiritual wellbeing. The nine domains are integration of consciousness (the capacity to sense the activities of the mind with more clarity, as well as alter them and strengthen them);

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bilateral integration (where one links the very different functions of the left and right sides of the brain); vertical integration (where one enables the consciousness experience of the cortex at the top of the brain to be linked to areas below like the limbic area, the brain stem, and the body itself); memory integration (explore how one remembers); narrative integration (how one makes sense of one’s life); state integration (realizing that we have different ways of being: relational and alone, for example, and managing those needs); interpersonal integration (how we relate to each other with compassion and support each other); and temporal integration (one’s need to balance our wish for immortality with knowledge that nothing is permanent in life). These domains provide for Siegel a comprehendible way to describe the terrain of “differentiation” and “linkage” within the brain. He suggests we should envisage the brain as a system comprised of different component parts (“differentiation”) that when they are functioning optimally (“linkage”) the system has “integration.” Given the earlier point about interconnectedness, such a system might comprise, say, the two sides of the brain, two people in a relationship, or even a whole classroom. His conception of a “system” is synonymous with that of the Troika outlined earlier as a metaphor for VbE where the triadic relationship between the explicit and implicit teaching of a school’s values, quality teaching, and service learning is drawn into a harmonious relationship when the three horses work as one. Finally, Siegel (Siegel et al., 2016) proposes that when these nine domains are integrated by a form of focussed attention typically, but not solely, accompanied by open monitored meditation, a further domain emerges: transpirational integration where one begins to have an expanded sense of self, feeling part of a much larger whole. With Bergemann and others (2011), he defines such transpirational integration as spirituality: a knowing or awareness of the interconnectedness of all things in nature. By way of explanation about this sense of oneness, he offers the image of a mother holding a daughter while they each stare into the others’ eyes. When we allow the mind, or the process that regulates the flow of energy and information that occurs within the body and our relationships with one another, to embrace the reality that this flow embraces us all, we expand our constrained sense of a separate self to an awakened sense of an interdependent whole self. When a mother uses her neural circuits to resonate with her baby, she no longer feels like a separate entity, but rather deeply interconnected with her child. And let’s say for a moment that that same mother also allowed her body and mind to resonate with everyone else around her, including her friends and even strangers. She would then find herself feeling deeply interconnected with the world around her, and thus part of something much larger than a single body limited to her skin. This is both the nature of mother and mother nature. (Bergemann et al., 2011, p. 94)

However, feeling such interconnectedness can in no way be accomplished robotically or ineluctably: it is way of “being” in the world. Einstein (1972) makes the point this way: A human being is part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few people nearest to us. Our task

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must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security. (Einstein, 1972, p. 1)

McGilchrist (2009), in similar vein, makes three important related points, broadly speaking, that are of particular relevance to the argument being made in this chapter about how, potentially at least, the original conception of the new VbE might be reinforced, perhaps even strengthened, to help make the world a better place. This might be accomplished by including learning and teaching strategies within VbE’s repertoire specifically intended to strengthen right-brain activity, nurture spiritual development, and enable young people to better understand their “selves” and develop the type of prosocial behavior and responsible citizenry that can contribute to a better world. First, McGilchrist (2009) extends our knowledge of brain lateralization by showing how the mind’s activity is shaped by inter-neuronal “firings” comprising “flow” across both cerebral hemispheres of the brain not solely within one or the other. Second, he introduces us to the importance of “attending” as part of the brain’s functionality which, as he shows, is primarily a right hemispheric function. Consistent with the work of Siegel et al. (2016) and Porges (2011), but somewhat more nuanced, he demonstrates the difference in functionality of the hemispheres: the left being a narrow, sharply focussed functionality and the right exercising a more open, broader alertness. Third, he is able to show how the frontal lobe exercises an inhibiting or dampening influence during the inter-neuronal “flow” during the synaptic “firing” within the brain so that, depending on the context, one hemisphere’s role in shaping the mind’s activity is dampened, allowing the other more effect. Thus, McGilchrist (2009) has made a very comprehensive case for a specifically hemispheric difference, and it is subtly different from both Siegel et al. (2016) and Porges (2011), as well as the one that entered the general culture in the 1970s. Importantly, he argues that in the biological evolution of the brain the left hemisphere has developed a greater capacity for dampening activity than the right, and that the world in which we now live continues to nurture that capacity in the left hemisphere. Our present world, he argues, prioritizes what he calls “the outwitting of others,” that which can be grasped, deconstructed, measured, and thereby decontextualized. It is a worldview that resonates strongly with the section above on challenges and opportunities: a world that has lost its soul so to speak. In this way, left-brain dominance over right-brain function has led our world to drift toward a reliance on abstract, de-contextualized thinking over more fluid and reflexive thought processes. As a contemporary example, we could say that our reliance on, and false belief in, algorithms to predict human behavior in, say, industries that use them to target likely customers stunts capacities for trust and connectedness. Similarly, as we argued above, the tendency for education systems to reduce student learning to measurable outcomes through standardized SAT tests (in the United States and the United Kingdom) or NAPLAN (in Australia) comes at the expense of such human values as intuition, cooperation, creativity, and empathy. Perhaps

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even more tellingly, the way education systems have now even co-opted the quality teaching regime into a standardized format contributes to left-brain dominance (AITSL, 2011). This pattern even extends to the way we have institutionalized metrics to assess things like accountability and quality assurance with KPI management tools. From a different perspective and given the importance attention plays in relationship building, Hart (2014) attributes present-day left hemisphere dominance to what he calls Continuous Partial Attention: The demanding quality of the internet and constant virtual stimulation distorts life into rapidly changing sound bites, image bytes and data bytes. This steady pull on our attention can inhibit us from giving anything or anyone our complete undivided attention. (Hart, 2014, p. XI)

Thus, chillingly Rowson and McGilchrist (2013) warn: If I am right, the story of the Western world (as described in terms of challenges and opportunities above) is one of increasing left brain hemisphere domination, we would not expect insight to be the keynote. Instead, we would expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles toward the abyss. (Rowson & McGilchrist, 2013, p. 1)

The Emerging Neuroscience of Spirituality In the context of the life-or-death challenges facing the world today, and the aspiration we had a decade ago that a key effect of VbE might be the spiritual development of the young people undertaking it, so that they became an effective antidote for the antisocial behavior that is at the root cause of those challenges, an emerging neuroscience of spirituality now suggests possibilities in that regard. That is, neuroscience is gradually shedding light on both how we might become more “We” oriented and what role education might play in that process. In doing so, it conceives spirituality in a secular (nonreligious), neuroscientific and developmental sense. Neuroscience is increasingly attending to the way the brain enables, and is enabled by, capacities for transcendent thoughts and emotions (Riveros & Immordino-Yang, 2021) or “achieving a degree of spirituality that creates a sense that we are part of a greater whole” (Bergemann et al., 2011). This mutually interdependent relationship between brain functionality and spiritual development has the potential, it seems, to shed neuropsychological light on how young people gradually form their dispositions to ethical issues. In essence, the fundamental issue here is how can people be enabled to shift from an “I” mindset to a “We” mindset? Said another way, can our now decade-old notion of VbE be further elaborated in ways that enable it to play a role in reshaping the destructive trajectory on which we currently find ourselves?

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From a neuroscientific standpoint, a key point to bear in mind in addressing such questions is that the mind is both embodied – a part of bodily processes including those of the brain – and it is relational – a property of how we communicate and connect with one another (Porges, 2011). That is, the patterns of energy and information in one’s brain activity described above are also shared between people, through a process of mirror neuronal interconnectivity, and thus the mind uses both the brain and relationships to create the self. There is plenty of evidence supporting this view. Louis Cozolino, who has studied the neuroscience within human relationships and its impact on education for over 20 years, writes that “the brain is an organ of adaptation that builds its structures through interactions with others” (Cozolino, 2006). Moreover, this interconnectedness means we should see the mind as emerging over time with changes in the energy and flow processes and the patterns of interconnectedness. Thus, defining “self” as a singular noun is limiting. Rather, “self” is better conceived as a plural verb. When we reflect on the notion of mind as an emergent process of energy and information flow in our bodies and in our relationships, we come to sense that our personal experience is a “node” in which energy flows through us, connects us to other nodes of flow, and makes part of a larger “mindweb” (Siegel et al., 2016) of interconnected individuals now and across time. This “mindweb” is the product of the synchronistic firing of neurons and linkages formed within our social networks.

Developing a “We” Mindset Neuroscience continues to identify ways of enabling our spiritual selves to flourish: both by what might be called self-managed ways as well as through education practices. The first of these (the self-managed) involve mindfulness practices. There is now a vast literature, much of it neuroscientific, suggesting that the practice of meditation is capable of countering our dominant left-brain propensity. Culliford (2011, 2014, and this handbook), for instance, draws on this literature and suggests that meditation fosters the kind of clear thinking that gives spontaneous access to wisdom. This kind of thinking is holistic, intuitive, creative, empathic, compassionate, and wise because it is not focused separately and energetically on sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions, or impulses. According to Culliford (2011), this involves introducing wisdom training exercises like reflection and meditation. Hart (2014) elaborates such exercises and provides practical advice about their implementation, including among many others, mindful walking; body scanning; inner listening; journaling; inner criticism; and living kindness. From a specifically neuroscientific perspective, Nataraja (2008) is able to show how meditation leads to an enhanced ability to switch between left- and rightbrained modes of experiencing. Activity in the “left brain” gives rise to a personalized sense of “self”: I am a husband, a son, a writer. Activity in the right gives rise to our sense of orientation in space and thus the space we occupy. The modification of the meditator’s sense of “self” can therefore be understood in terms of the shift from

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purely left brain (ego centered) to a mix of left and right. Her research suggests that the way meditation sharply focuses one’s attention is an important aspect of this shift. Attention is primarily a right-brain function; therefore, meditation precipitates a shift to right-brain thinking and in doing so allows one to escape from “the confines of an ego centric existence and the possibility of an expanded awareness beyond mere ‘self’” (Nataraja, 2008). From a neuropsychological perspective, Newberg and d’Aquili (2008) suggest that it is the decrease in activity in both orientation association areas that gives rise to dissolving the self/non-self-boundary, and the development of a sense of connectedness with all things. Notwithstanding the different explanations from these two perspectives, both support the possibility, by including regular meditation practice in a VbE program, of moving one from an “I” position to a “We” position. That is, regular meditation as part of a VbE program, arguably, has the potential to create mindsets that are more holistic, intuitive, creative, empathic, compassionate, and wise and thus find the root causes of our life-or-death challenge anathema. Finally, Siegel et al. (2016), a psychiatrist, shows by way of case studies about his patients, how from an interpersonal neurobiological perspective there are additional “mental disciplines” to Mindfulness that can be cultivated to assist one to move from “I” to “We.” The three pillars of such mind training practices include • Strengthening focused attention • Open awareness • Kind intention Research reveals that when these three aspects of mind are trained, many positive changes occur, including the stabilizing of attention, the increase in our receptivity to the experience of being aware, and the enhancement of our care for our inner selves and for the well-being of others. His hugely popular “Wheel of Awareness” approach (https://drdansiegel.com/wheel-of-awareness/) to what he calls Mindsight (a mindfulness on steroids approach to meditation) has been shown to have a dramatic effect on retrieving lapsed right-brain function. According to him, Mindfulness can be considered as more than simply focusing attention on the present moment or even regulating one’s emotions. In the Mindsight sense, mindfulness involves an internal stance of positive regard and openness to things as they are. It is a way of being in the world: it is both a quality of focusing attention on the here and now, as well as on another person, with a stance of positive regard. It is a way of repurposing the brain so that patterns of “energy” and “information” “fire” and “rewire” right-brain functioning. Mindsight is the way we can focus attention on the nature of the internal world. It’s how we focus our awareness on ourselves, so our own thoughts and feelings, and it’s how we’re able to actually focus on the internal world of someone else. So, at a very minimum, it’s how we have insight into ourselves, and empathy for others. But Mindsight is more than just an understanding. Mindsight gives us the tools to monitor the internal world with more clarity and depth, and also to modify that internal world with more power and strength. So, in all these ways, Mindsight is a construct that’s a bit larger than insight. It’s even larger than

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mindfulness, because it’s really not just about being present moment to moment, but it’s about being present so you monitor what’s going on, but then modify what’s happening. (Siegel, 2022, https://www.psychalive.org/what-is-mindsight-an-interview-with-dr-dansiegel/)

This resonates strongly with the metaphor previously offered about “self” being better conceived as a plural verb emerging over time. It also resonates strongly with the spiritual idea of interconnectedness. But it also begs the question about what needs to happen to enable one to nourish the spiritual self: what are the relevant selfmanagement techniques? The list now provided by the experts, Siegel et al. (2016) and Culliford (2011) among them, is lengthy: • Play a nonverbal communication game of copying someone else’s facial expression and guessing the emotion. • Play the nonverbal communication game of watching TV with the sound off and letting your brain “fill-in the blank.” • Journal about your day in pictures/smells/sounds to help activate the senses. • Try drawing using different sides of the brain (he recommends some books on the topic). • Journaling emotions. • Find words that depict your internal world. • Make “mindmaps” of our self and our relationship with others – how we see ourselves and our relations with others. • Tense and release certain muscle groups to become aware of them. • Have someone say “no” in a harsh tone and then a nice “yes” several times and discussing how it feels when both words are said to you. And as Culliford (this handbook) reminds us, “benefits accrue incrementally over time, devolving also onto teachers, parents, families and communities” because of our interconnectedness.

Education Practice Redefined The second way neuroscience is suggesting that we can nourish spiritual development is by changing education practice: emphasize activities that promote ways of thinking rather than what one should know. For instance, Hart (2014), drawing on neuroscience research, suggests broadening what is meant by, and needed for, education by projecting a view of the mind that is broader than that assumed by the predominant model of education described earlier, which is largely based on an education that emphasizes facts, measurement, control, predictability, reduction, and the like. This approach, he argues, is particularly short-sighted and dangerous in a world desperately in need of an integrated education for the creative and mindful thought required to meet the challenges we face today. From his standpoint, it is not a case of us needing less reason or information or skills but rather that we need more

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depth. He proposes that there are two fundamental ways of knowing the world: categorical knowledge – knowing through abstraction, separating the known from us, and knowing through contact – a direct and relational way of knowing that recognizes wholeness and connections. His view is that the latter better positions us to manage the challenges presently facing humankind. This latter form of knowledge is very similar to the way McGilchrist (2009) speaks about the ways of knowing with regard to literature and art. When one looks at, say, a piece of art, then reads the panel beside it that tells one about the artist and other details, he suggests that one is engaging in that form of categorical knowledge. However, if one ignores the panel and just takes the work in, so to speak, one engages a different kind of knowing: knowledge through contact, a direct form of knowing that is relational, embodied, and a form that recognizes wholes and connections. It has a sense of the spiritual about it: a sense of oneness that others have noted in an educational context. Knowing my students and my subject depends heavily on self- knowledge. When I do not know myself I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life- and when I cannot see them clearly I cannot teach them well. When I do not know myself I cannot know my subject – not at the deepest levels of embodied personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance, a congeries of concepts as far removed from the world as I am from personal truth. (Palmer, 2007, p.103)

Immordino-Yang (2020, 2021), a former high school science teacher-turned neuroscientist, and her colleagues at the University of Southern California’s Centre for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education are currently inching us forward toward a better understanding of what is going on in the brain with regard to acquiring knowledge that is relational, embodied, and a form that recognizes wholes and connections. She goes beyond this to point out that it also vitally involves an emotional dimension. As a way of advancing her now well-established neurobiological work on the intersection of learning and emotion, Immordino-Yang’s (2016) recent longitudinal study seeks to reveal how the neural systems involved in forging that intersection get repurposed into systems that give rise to, and create dispositions toward, moral and ethical issues. She calls this “transcendent thinking.” The work had a fundamental premise that human beings, especially adolescents, construct internal narratives about the world and their experiences in it. Narrative identity has substantial literature and comprises an evolving representation of oneself through time. It is developed as an individual integrates the recollection of past life experiences with imagined future experiences, and this narrative identity provides an individual with a sense of self-continuity and purpose (McAdams, 2008). Her recent study uses data drawn from conversations with teenagers that revolved around matters important to them like how they choose their friends, thought about their parents, and how they saw their current schooling as contributing to their future; what academic subjects they enjoyed most and why; why gang violence

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exists in their neighborhood and what could improve the situation; and how they feel when learning about true stories about selfless and heroic efforts of people. Such data over time proved to have the capacity to reveal insight into adolescent meaningmaking about the substance of the conversations. The study revealed two subtly distinct types of narrative: concrete narratives and abstract narratives. By way of illustration, Immordino-Yang and Knecht (2021) reiterate the comments from two adolescents in answer to the question about why gang violence exists in their neighborhood and what could improve the situation. Comment 1: “Why does it happen? Because they take actions or do things that don’t benefit them. They just get caught up in the moment . . .” Comment 2: “ . . . [Violence] is a cycle. Like if you really look at it . . . it happens probably because their family is in a gang and they just follow it ‘cause that’s their role models, where they came from . . .” (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020, p. 11)

The subtle distinction between comment 1 (a “concrete” narrative in Immordino-Yang’s terms, which addresses the “here-and-now” or “there-andthen”), and comment 2 (an “abstract” narrative) is that the latter incorporates reflections that transcend what is directly observable in a situation. Her term for the latter is transcendent thinking: somewhat synonymous with spiritual and “We” mindset mentioned earlier. Moreover, the brain scans also revealed that of all the adolescents in the longitudinal study, those who were ultimately “high flyers” in terms of academic achievement and self-actualization toward the end of the study showed a capacity to move from a “concrete” to “abstract” pattern of meaning-making. The researchers were able to track the coordinated activation across networks in the brain to show that getting from “concrete” to “abstract” involves whole-brain neural “cross-talk” that is at once both cognitive and emotional as well as tuned into “basic survival processes, in essence making the thinker feel more alive, like their work is personal, and like what they think and do matters.” Immordino-Yang and her collaborators (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2021) subsequently speculate about how education practice might be redefined to enable such transcendent thinking in all adolescents. They argue that any appropriate program’s structure should empower adolescents to build strong relationships with peers, staff, and the content they are exploring together in-depth. It should provide opportunities for students to choose and pursue open-ended, project-based coursework, and then leverage student interest to broaden exposure to new knowledge, concepts, skills, and questions. Ultimately, it should expect and support students “to make sense of all that they are discovering through writing, problem solving, dialogue, and reflection, culminating in presentations and defences of extended performance-based assessments in front of panels of teachers, external evaluators, and other students.” They argue that this kind of approach-rather than a predominant focus on testing-creates the conditions for adolescents to connect their emotional selves to their burgeoning intellects. Concrete and

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Such practices are more likely to produce the “depth of knowing” advocated by Hart (2014) than the “categorical knowledge” that is gained in more predominant educational approaches. Moreover, they closely resemble some of the practices adopted by the best practice schools in VEGPSP. In the earlier edition of the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, we called these instructional scaffolding techniques. See, for example, Devine (this handbook), Tooth (2010), and Toomey (2010).

Conclusion We set out with the intention of attempting to bolster support for claims made over a decade ago about how VbE might first contribute to enhancing students’ spiritual development and second comprise a pedagogy better suited to our times. While the “new” values pedagogy has proved to be enormously durable over the past 10 or so years, in light of the above discussion, its effects would be enhanced if regular openmonitored meditation practices, and right-brain development exercises along the lines of those outlined above, accompanied its implementation. From the standpoint of VbE being a pedagogy better suited to our times, we have situated that issue within the context of the need for education to address, and play some role in helping to redress the life-or-death challenges we presently face. In that regard, we shall have to find ways to raise, teach, and educate (in its broadest sense of to draw out of) young people who are capable of thinking about complex critical problems along with their social implications. We shall need to develop in young people skills for thinking together with people who are different from themselves and for appreciating diverse perspectives. They will need skills that enable them to think in morally responsible ways, creative ways, about how to see the life-or-death challenges as opportunities for collaborative problem-solving. If Immordino-Yang and her colleagues are correct, VbE might usefully repurpose its instructional scaffolding techniques as we called them a decade ago (Toomey, 2010). Reframe them so that they become more open-ended, project-based tasks specifically focussed on those ethical dilemmas mentioned at the outset: the re-emergence of feudalism through ever-increasing social, cultural, and religious conflict; human rights infringement; ecological degradation; politics without principles; and business without morality. In the process, by incorporating guided discovery techniques (Bruner, 1961), teachers could leverage student interest to broaden exposure to new knowledge, concepts, skills, and questions in ways Dewey (1938) recommended: making learning experiences centered around student interests and developing socially responsible citizens. So, it seems VbE has great potential to help redress the life-or-death challenges we presently face. The vital issue now becomes how to increase uptake.

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References Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2011). Australian professional standards for teachers. AITSL. Bergemann, E., Siwegel, D., Eichenstein, D., & Streit, E. (2011). Neuroscience and spirituality. In J. Wentzel van Huyssten & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Search of self – Interdisciplinary perspectives on personhood. William Erdmans Publishing. Bruner, J. S. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1), 21–32. Bryk, A. (2002). Trust in schools. Russel Sage Foundation. Culliford, L. (2011). The psychology of spirituality: An introduction. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Culliford, L. (2014). The meaning of life diagram: A framework for a developmental path from birth to spiritual maturity. Journal of the Study of Spirituality, 4(1), 31–44. Damasio, A. (2003). Finding Spinoza, joy, sorrow and the feeling brain. Harcourt. DEST. (2003). Values education study (Executive summary final report). Curriculum Corporation. 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). Curriculum Corporation. DEST. (2008). Implementing the national framework for values education in Australian schools (Report of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 2: Final report). Curriculum Corporation. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan. Einstein, A. (1972). As cited in the New York Times, March 29, p. 1. Farmer, R., & Farmer, S. (2015). Handbook for teachers in human values education. Australian Business Printers. Firth, J., et al. (2019). The “online brain”: How the Internet may be changing our cognition. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 117–224. Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bantam Books. Hart, T. (2014). The integrative mind. Rowman and Littlefield. https://www.monash.edu/education/teachspace/articles/five-approaches-for-creating-traumainformed-classrooms Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions learning and the brain. W.W. Norton. Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Knecht, D. R. (2020). Building meaning builds teens’ brains. Educational Leadership, 77(8), 36–43. Lovat, T., & Toomey, R. (2009). Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect. Springer. Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Clement, N., Crotty, R., & Nielsen, T. (2009). Values education, quality teaching and service learning. David Barlow Publishing. Manne, A. (2015). The life of I. Melbourne University Press. McAdams, D. P. (2008). Personal narratives and the life story. Guilford Press. McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary. Yale University Press. Nataraja, S. (2008). The blissful brain: Neuroscience and proof of the power of meditation. Gaia Books Ltd. Newberg, A., & d’Aquili, D. G. (2008). Why god won’t go away. Ballantine books. Newmann, F. M., et al. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass. Obama, B. (2020). A promised land. Viking. Palmer, P. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. Jossey Bass. Porges, S. (2011). The polyvagal theory – Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication and self-regulation. W.W. Norton. Riveros, R., & Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2021). Toward a neuropsychology of spiritual development in adolescence. Adolescent Research Review, 6, 323–332.

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Rowson, J., & McGilchrist, I. (2013) Divided brain: Divided world. Action Research Centre. https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/blogs/rsa-divided-brain-divided-world.pdf Siegel, D. (2022). Attachment, mindfulness, neuroscience and self-development. PsychAlive. https://www.psychalive.org/what-is-mindsight-an-interview-with-dr-dan-siegel/ Siegel, D., Siegel, M., & Parker, S. (2016). Internal education and the roots of resilience: Relationships and reflection as the new R’s of education. In K. A. Schonert-Reichl & R. Roeser (Eds.), Handbook on mindfulness in education. Springer. Toomey, R. (2006). Values as the centrepiece of the school’s work. Curriculum Corporation. Toomey, R. (2010). Values education, instructional scaffolding and student wellbeing. In T. Lovat et al. (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 19–36). Springer. Tooth, R. (2010). Using a new body/mind place-based narrative to teach values education in an age of sustainability. In T. Lovat et al. (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing. Springer.

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Student Wellbeing at School, Neurobiology, and the Actualization of Values Neville Clement

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Impact of Schools on Student Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Support and Caring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School Connectedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Synthesis of Influences and the Relationship of Student Wellbeing to Academic Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Education and Student Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Neurobiology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brain Lateralization: One Brain or Two? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emotion and Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attachment, Resilience, Safety, and Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Epigenetics, Brain Plasticity, and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The actualization of values at school contributes to student wellbeing as evidenced by their flourishing cognitively, affectively, socially, physically, and spiritually. This chapter is in two sections: the first reviews literature on student wellbeing at school, and the second reviews literature from neuroscience relevant to issues raised in the first section. The first section, “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values”, begins with a summary of an earlier examination by the N. Clement (*) The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_3

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author of characteristics related to student wellbeing at school. These characteristics included the impact of schools on student wellbeing at school, teacher support and caring, school climate, and school connectedness. A synthesis of these characteristics examined motivation and the relation between student wellbeing and academic achievement. Additionally, the relationship between values education and student wellbeing was examined. These findings are updated from later literature and the centrality of the socioemotional wellbeing of students emerged as a dominant consideration in regard to student wellbeing at school. The second section, “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School”, explores literature from neuroscience in relation to the nature of student wellbeing at school as it relates to the coaction of cognitive, affective, physiological, and social aspects. This includes topics like the incorporation of insights from neuroscience into educational theory; brain lateralization; emotion and cognition; attachment, resilience, safety, and trust; and epigenetics, brain plasticity, and development. These insights contribute to an enriched understanding of a values pedagogy that promotes student wellbeing at school through the values that are actualized. Keywords

Student wellbeing · Values education · Educational neuroscience · Socioemotional learning · Safety at school · Dynamic development

Introduction Student wellbeing at school is an expansive topic embracing personal, interpersonal, wider social and environmental aspects. Basically, it relates to the sense of security that a student has and the quality and capacity of the school environment to provide an appropriate and supportive space for the experience-dependent development of its students affectively, academically, spiritually, socially, culturally, and environmentally. The creation of such a space is impelled and actualized by the dynamic coaction of the character, values, and behaviors of all the stakeholders that comprise and animate the social relationships and the organizational structures that make a school. Numerous studies indicate that student wellbeing at school is enhanced by values education, whatever its mode or form, that creates the learning and social ambience that it envisages. In other words, student wellbeing at school is enriched by a values education practice where students are immersed in a school experience that implicitly reflects and aligns with the values that are explicitly practiced, espoused, and taught. Examples of this manner of learning regime are ably illustrated and described in the chapters of this volume and the previous edition of this volume (Lovat et al., 2010), and in “values-based education” as elucidated by Lovat et al. (2010, 2011). An underlying premise is that values are endemic to schools, education, and learning: “schools are not values-free or values-neutral zones of social and educational engagement” (DEST, 2003). Hence, the values that are actualized and the way

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they are actualized are of extreme importance for student wellbeing at school. Furthermore, wellbeing in this chapter is understood as an embracive term encompassing the mental, social, and physical welfare of students (Amholt et al., 2020), their interplay with the biosphere (Narvaez, 2015), and their flourishing, which includes the spiritual dimension (Clement, 2010). Although this chapter does not explicitly address spirituality, it assumes that spirituality is implicit in the values professed and enacted, existential questions (Gardner, 2000) associated with learning, and issues relating to the sense of safety and security felt by students and staff.

Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values Student wellbeing at school is reflected in the emotional–social development and the interpersonal transactions that occur at school as well as their engagement in learning as supported by broad school characteristics addressed in the literature: the impact of schools on student wellbeing; teacher support and caring; school climate and student wellbeing; and school connectedness (Clement, 2010). Additionally, there is the question of an association between student wellbeing and academic achievement, as well as the influence of values education on student wellbeing. This section, “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values”, will summarize the content of the 2010 chapter in relation to these topics and supplement the summary with reference to subsequent literature.

The Impact of Schools on Student Wellbeing The impact of schools on student wellbeing is well described by the extensive research in secondary schools in Flanders, Belgium (e.g., Engels et al., 2004; Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2000; Van Petegem, 2008). Schools were found to have an impact on student academic achievement, wellbeing, and motivation (Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2000). Engels et al. (2004) found that attributes such as positive behavior, “atmosphere at school,” student agency (or intrinsic motivation), teacher instructional support and encouragement, “the infrastructure and facilities” are all variables impacting on student wellbeing. Furthermore, the importance of positive values is evidenced in student–teacher relationships, student friendships, and expectations being clearly communicated. Again, Van Petegem (2008) found that aspects like teacher relationships, classroom characteristics, student motivation, and liking for school impact on student wellbeing. Interestingly, Opdenakker and Van Damme (2000) found that school and class contributed 19.6% and 23.2%, respectively, to student achievement in Maths and 32.5% and 23.2% for the Dutch language (Table 1, p. 174), whereas the wellbeing factors indicated that only 5–11% of variance could be attributed to school and class (p. 175). Later research by Govorova et al. (2020) analyzed 2015 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) across OECD countries to assess the influence of schools on student subjective wellbeing across cognitive, psychological, material, and social dimensions. The study identified those aspects of

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wellbeing that affected student science achievement and the magnitude of school effect on student wellbeing. The cognitive, psychological, and social aspects have an affective component given the inclusion of constructs like “enjoyment of science” and “interest in science” in the cognitive wellbeing scale; “achievement motivation” and “test and learning anxiety” in the psychological wellbeing scale; and “enjoy cooperation” in the social wellbeing scale. Also, schools did not have a large part in reduction in test anxiety. At the OECD level, girls experienced more test anxiety than boys, but had higher scores on cooperation and achievement motivation. Gross school effect on science achievement across OECD schools was 39% (ranging between 5% and 62.1% [Govorova et al. 2020, Table 7, p. 10]). School effects explained only 9% of perceived wellbeing, with the highest of 9% for “cognitive wellbeing and with “test anxiety” being at 8% (p. 7). Also, they observed that test anxiety reduced science performance by as much as 12 points. Govorova et al. (2020) point to the need for schools to integrate socioemotional development within “a comprehensive approach to education” (p. 12). The association between student wellbeing and academic achievement is discussed below.

Teacher Support and Caring Teacher support and caring impacts on student wellbeing at school, thus influencing the social and personal development of students and their academic progress and achievement. Teacher support affects emotional security, especially for young students (e.g., Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Thijs & Koomen, 2008). Lee (2007) found that the teacher–student trust relationship has an indirect impact on academic performance as mediated by school adjustment and academic motivation. Osterman (2000) provides insight into the importance of teacher caring and support: “teacher support has the most direct impact on student engagement” (p. 344, also Osterman, 2010). Furthermore, teacher support and caring includes the pedagogical competence of teachers (Gläser-Zikuda & Fuß, 2008; Osterman, 2010) and the pedagogical strategies they employ (Osterman, 2010). Teachers matter for student wellbeing through relationships of attunement and synchrony, and support across areas like behavior, self-regulation, and learning, to name a few (for a more comprehensive list, see Osher et al., 2020). Osher et al. (2020) also note the importance of teacher wellbeing. A literature review by Wentzel (2016) summarizes the multiple aspects of the student–teacher relationship thus: [Teacher] relationship qualities are believed to support the development of students’ emotional well-being and positive sense of self, motivational orientations for social and academic outcomes, and actual social and academic skills. (p. 301)

Other studies emphasize the importance of student–teacher attachment. The modeling of Govorova et al. (2020) on the 2015 PISA data found that teacher support is the school-level variable most strongly related to student wellbeing, and

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reduced test anxiety in 7 of the 10 countries where it was significant. Furthermore, the PISA data showed that instructional approaches impact on science performance and student wellbeing. Teacher-directed learning was associated with higher science performance, enjoyment of science, and being positively disposed to cooperation. On the other hand, predominantly inquiry-based learning was associated with student self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, with a reduction in exam anxiety and a raising of achievement motivation. Teacher-directed learning was positively associated with cognitive wellbeing and cooperation in 19 of the OECD countries, and inquiry-based learning with cognitive wellbeing in 17 countries (Govorova et al., 2020 , p. 10). Additionally, Cantor et al. (2019) and Darling-Hammond et al. (2020) emphasize the importance of secure attachment for the social-emotional development and academic progress of students. Bergin and Bergin (2009) understand attachment as being foundational to socioemotional wellbeing. It influences success at school “indirectly through attachment to parents, and directly through attachment to teachers and school” (Bergin & Bergin, 2009, p. 141). Teacher emotional support or caring has been associated with student self-concept, emotional wellbeing, the buffering of anxiety and stress, the pursuit of classroom goals, academic achievement, and the way students function socially; whereas perceived lack of support or negative relationships have been associated with distress or anxiety (Wentzel, 2016). Besides teaching subject content, teachers can have a role in student socialization (Dally, 2010; Lovat & Dally, 2018). In their cross-lagged study of student–teacher relatedness in relation to the reading achievement of at-risk secondary students in Singapore, Caleon and Wui (2019) found that teacher trust predicted reading achievement. Nevertheless, there were reciprocal negative correlations between reading achievement and student–teacher communication possibly indicating reluctance of students with low achievement to share difficulties and ideas with teachers. The authors conclude that the study supports the importance of positive teacher–student relationships for student achievement. This study makes a similar observation to those of Opdenakker and Van Damme (2000) and Wentzel (2016) that students of different ability levels respond to different kinds of support given by teachers, thereby indicating the need for teachers to be attuned to their students and to vary their pedagogical strategy accordingly. Trust and the associated sense of safety and security are foundational to student wellbeing and have importance for school climate.

School Climate Fundamental to a school climate that promotes student wellbeing is a culture that cultivates and facilitates trust (see Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Opdenakker and Van Damme (2000) found that positive effects of “communitarian climate” can have positive effects on student motivation and interest in learning. In short, the juxtaposition between academic interest and the communal spirit is a false dichotomy, with both being necessary for student wellbeing (e.g., Lee & Smith, 1999; Opdenakker &

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Van Damme, 2000; Phillips, 1997; Newmann et al., 1996). A survey of literature on the association between a supportive school community and student academic achievement concludes: In short, the literature establishes that indicators like relational trust, supportive relationships and networks, social capital, school climate, collective teacher efficacy, and academic emphasis impact on student wellbeing and even their academic achievement. (Clement, 2010, p. 47)

These items together indicate that student growth and maturation are nurtured by “a socially and academically positive and supportive climate” (Clement, 2010, p. 47). Aldridge and McChesney (2018), using a mixed methods literature review of 48 articles published between 2000 and 2017, found that 46 of these indicated a relationship between school climate and adolescent mental health. They concluded that there was strong evidence that school climate influenced student mental health as evidenced by “positive relationships with teachers and peers,” “positive perceptions of school safety,” “positive perceptions of school connectedness,” along with a highly demanding academic environment (p. 131). Furthermore, two of the studies included in the review indicated that the relationship between adolescent perception of the school climate and their psychosocial wellbeing was mediated by their resilience (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018). The effect of school climate is related to socioemotional development, resilience, safety and security at school, and the social and cultural factors that are among the influences on student development considered in the section “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School.”

School Connectedness School connectedness, the perception by students that they feel as if they belong to and find support at school, is important because positive relationships at school affect student wellbeing in diverse ways: it is protective of at-risk behaviors and conduct problems including substance abuse (Resnick et al., 1997; Bond et al., 2007); it has mental and physical health repercussions (Rowe et al., 2007); and it contributes to student prosocial engagement and personal development, academic achievement, motivation and agency at school, and more positive estimates of self and others (Osterman, 2000, 2010). For students from high-poverty schools, academic achievement, positive motives, and attitude were associated with higher levels of school connectedness (Anderman, 2002). The research of Battistich et al. (1995) of the multilevel analysis of the relationship between student sense of school community (school connectedness), poverty level, and student characteristics indicated that student sense of community influences a wide range of student inclinations, and social and personal attitudes including whether or not they like school, their academic motivation, altruistic behavior, prosocial motivation, and conflict resolution skill. The meta-analysis by Allen et al. (2018) of 51 studies between 1993 and 2013 involving 67,378 students analyzed 10 different themes relating to school belonging,

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with studies from the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. They found that teacher support (r ¼ 0.46) and personal characteristics (conscientiousness, optimism, and self-esteem, r ¼ 0.44) were the strongest predictors of a sense of school belonging on the part of students. These were stronger than emotional stability (r ¼ 0.35), parental support (r ¼ 0.33), peer support (r ¼ 0.32), environmental/school safety (r ¼ 0.32), or academic motivation (r ¼ 0.31). A weak association between gender and school belonging was found (r ¼ 0.18). Race/ethnicity and extracurricular activities were found not to be significant (Allen et al., 2018, Table 3). Another meta-analysis by Korpershoek et al. (2020) of 82 quantitative studies published between 2000 and 2018 of “the relationships between school belonging and students’ motivational, social-emotional, behavioural and academic outcomes” confirms the importance of school belonging for students (p. 641). The correlation between school belonging and student characteristics was small for academic achievement (r ¼ 0.18) and absence/dropout rates (r ¼ 0.16), but moderate for “motivational outcomes” (r ¼ 0.30), “perceived learning environment” (r ¼ 0.39), “behavioral engagement” (r ¼ 0.36), “educational aspirations/attitudes” (r ¼ 0.29), and self-perception (r ¼ 0.37 [Korpershoek et al., 2020, Table 2]). An Australian study by Parker et al. (2021) using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth (LSAY) of 49,232 participants between 2003 and 2015 found that low levels of school belonging was a predictor of an emerging adult not participating in education, employment, or training after leaving school. Along with the previously mentioned aspects of school life, the connection that students feel they have with school affects their socioemotional development. In turn, this affects their attitude to being at school as well as their engagement with learning, not only at school, but their engagement in post-school formal learning as well (Parker et al., 2021).

Synthesis of Influences and the Relationship of Student Wellbeing to Academic Achievement What emerges from the analysis of the impact of schools on student wellbeing, teacher support and caring, school climate and wellbeing, and school connectedness is the importance of student motivation in student wellbeing and academic achievement. Student motivation was found to be variously impacted by student–teacher trust, moral and social education, teacher caring, connectedness to school, and classroom climate. Student motivation even emerged as being a mediator of various factors relating to student wellbeing and academic achievement (see Clement, 2010 for references). Govorova et al. (2020) confirm that “achievement motivation,” an indicator in the psychological dimension, was a good predictor of science performance. Furthermore, along with “enjoy cooperation,” “achievement motivation” has a positive relationship with the cognitive dimension in most of the OECD countries; however, with a weaker impact (Govorova et al., 2020). Given that motivation featured as both a predictor and mediator of both student wellbeing and academic achievement in a range of studies, the question of a link between student wellbeing and academic achievement will be considered.

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A systematic literature review by Amholt et al. (2020) proposes that selfdetermination theory (STD; Deci & Ryan, 2012) is a metatheory that provides the link between social and contextual wellbeing factors that facilitate student motivation for academic achievement (cf. Kaya & Erdem, 2021). Amholt et al. (2020) examined 22 journal articles published between January 1, 2007, and June 1, 2017, and concluded that the research yielded ambiguous results. Nonetheless, prospects for investigating such an association are provided by aspects like social relationships; contextual factors; the vitality of the learning environment created by teachers, including the relationships of students with their teachers and peers; and student positive emotions (Amholt et al., 2020). Furthermore, Amholt et al. (2020) suggest that the association between student wellbeing and academic achievement appears to be more so for younger students and might suggest diverging developmental paths for academic achievement and student wellbeing during secondary schooling and further education. Herke et al. (2019) noted a decline in student wellbeing between grades 5 and 12. Furthermore, Kaya & Erdem, 2021 reported that as students progressed from elementary schooling to postgraduate education the effect of student wellbeing on academic achievement also declined from ES ¼ 0.19 for elementary students to ES ¼ 0.09 for graduate students. Also, Kaya and Erdem (2021) observed that reported effect sizes of the association between student wellbeing and academic achievement decreased with the increase in publication year. The two groundbreaking meta-analyses of the association of student wellbeing and academic achievement, by Bücker et al. (2018), and Kaya and Erdem (2021) have been published since the collection period of the Amholt et al. (2020) sample. Both studies report small-to-moderate effect sizes, and that differences between the components of subjective wellbeing (Bücker et al., 2018) or the wellbeing domains as operationalized by Kaya and Erdem (2021) did not reach statistical significance. Bücker et al. (2018) point out that the low correlations between student wellbeing and academic achievement indicate that the level of achievement is not necessarily correlated with the level of perceived subjective wellbeing. Bücker et al. (2018) speculate as to the way that any association between student wellbeing and academic achievement might be theorized: a causal effect of academic achievement on student wellbeing; a causal effect of student wellbeing on academic achievement; or both student wellbeing and academic achievement are influenced by a common variable. Kaya and Erdem (2021) purport that their results support SDT as the theoretical basis for the association of student wellbeing and academic achievement, which is the second possibility. They refer to Adler (2017), who provides evidence that teaching wellbeing raised both student wellbeing and their academic achievement. Support for the third alternative is suggested by the reporting of metaanalyses of highly heterogeneous distribution of effect sizes (Bücker et al., 2018; Kaya & Erdem, 2021). Bücker et al. (2018) suggest that this could indicate the possibility of a common third variable moderating the relation between student wellbeing and academic achievement. Steinmayr et al. (2018) found that after controlling for other variables, school climate, the worry component of test anxiety and self-efficacy predicted subjective wellbeing and/or academic achievement. Furthermore, Steinmayr et al. (2018) assert that the phenomenon of student wellbeing is

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multicausal and not limited to one factor. A fourth possibility is a bidirectional interplay between student wellbeing and academic achievement, and this is an area for further investigation (see Bortes et al., 2021). One Australian study by Cárdenas et al. (2022), which takes into account issues listed by Amholt et al. (2020), tested the effect of student subjective wellbeing (depression, anxiety, and positive affect) on high school students’ (Grade 9, N ~ 3400) results on standardized tests of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). After controlling for 40 confounding variables, measures of subjective wellbeing taken 7–8 months before the test were predictive of higher scores on Numeracy and those who indicated greater depression had lower test scores on Numeracy and Reading. Each of the studies cited in relation to the association between student wellbeing and academic achievement attests to an effect of student wellbeing on academic achievement; however, there is considerable variation the way in which wellbeing is conceptualized and measured and that makes comparison of the different studies difficult. Nevertheless, Bücker et al. (2018), Cárdenas et al. (2022), and Kaya and Erdem (2021) identify a positive association between student wellbeing and academic achievement, but the nature of that association is open to further investigation. Apart from its association with academic achievement, student wellbeing is important in its own right because of its influence on life beyond school (Adler, 2017).

Values Education and Student Wellbeing An overlap in research in the fields of values education and student wellbeing is evidenced by the use by researchers in both groups of “indicators such as student motivation and engagement, student self-concept/esteem, teacher-student relationships, and student sense of belonging to school” (Clement, 2010, p. 51; e.g., Benninga et al., 2003, 2006; Engels et al., 2004). Benninga et al. (2003) found a small correlation between certain indicators of the implementation of character education and academic achievement in elementary schools in California between 1991 and 2002. In their analysis of the pedagogical potency of service learning, Lovat and Clement (2016) cited evidence, which indicated that service learning had beneficial effects on academic achievement, cognitive development, and social development. The latter was evidenced by the breaking down of cultural barriers as well as on moral awareness, attitudes toward civic engagement and social responsibilities. The integration of best practice pedagogy with values education has positive benefits for both student wellbeing and their academic progress (e.g., Lovat & Clement, 2008; Lovat & Toomey, 2009; Lovat & Hawkes, 2013). Positive outcomes for student wellbeing resulting from the implementation of values-based approach were observed in an evaluation of the Australian Government’s Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (VEGPSP; Lovat et al., 2009; Lovat & Dally, 2018). Indicators of student wellbeing as a result of values education included responsible and inclusive behavior, student engagement, improved self-regulation and selfappraisal, enhanced self-esteem, and school climate. These reports indicate that

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values education had effects for students and teachers at individual, classroom, and the whole school (Dally, 2010; Lovat et al., 2009; Lovat & Dally, 2018). Furthermore, Lovat and Dally (2018) note the effect of values education on the capacity of students to reflect on their moral choices and so align their behavior with the values being learnt. Additionally, Lovat and Dally cite evidence of student growth in selfregulation in making moral choices. Moreover, Toomey (2010) reports that the instructional scaffolding of student action teams (SATs), where students were involved in making decisions and taking action in regard to community issues that they consider to be important, produced improvement in wellbeing indicators such as resilience, engagement with school, realization of full potential, academic diligence, more peaceful classrooms, more trusting students, and improved playground behavior. Toomey’s assessment is that the SATs contributed to students’ ability to engage in more complex thinking, higher order thinking, and thinking more deeply. Furthermore, in order for student voices to develop, teachers found that they needed to allow the freedom of self-expression to students. Thus, Toomey (2010) observes that teacher change facilitates student change and “promotes student agency and wellbeing” (p. 28). Also, the VEGPSP Stage 1 Report (DEST, 2006) makes reference to the “ripple down effect” of changes in teacher classroom management strategies on student behavior, with this increased repertoire of classroom management options being gained from professional development (see Lovat, 2010; Toomey, 2010). Classrooms and schools were calmer through the implementation of a values-based pedagogy, with a policy of a whole school approach (DEST, 2006). Sankey (2006) maintains that student experience is not affected only explicitly (consciously) but also implicitly (subconsciously) in the shaping of the brain and the unconscious initiation of behavior and action. The importance of this will become more evident in the discussion of the neurobiological substrates provided below. More recent publications headed by Marvin Berkowitz have produced a framework of six foundational principles incorporating 42 different practices to character education. The analysis furnished affirms an overlap between effective character education and academic education in contributing to the positive development of students (cf. Davidson et al., 2010). Although the framework does not formally reference student wellbeing, there are practices listed that serve as indicators of student wellbeing, including “Trust in teachers,” “Caring classrooms,” and “Safe environment,” among others (Berkowitz & Bier, 2014; Berkowitz et al., 2017; also Berkowitz et al., Chapter 5, this Handbook; Bier et al., Chapter 26, this Handbook). Values-education is an influence that shapes the environment in which students learn and develop and so is among epigenetic influences on their development as discussed below.

Summary Student wellbeing at school arises from those values that are embedded in the various characteristics of school life and experience, including school policy;

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curriculum explicit and implicit; pedagogical practices; and the quality of the relationships between all stakeholders associated with the school. Diverse valuesimbued characteristics in school education underpin student wellbeing: Student wellbeing cannot be attained or maintained apart from attention to values and their actualization in the educational setting, beginning with the valuing of students. (Clement, 2010, p. 55)

The various school characteristics discussed in this analysis relating to the impact of schools on student wellbeing at school all underscore that emotional and social factors are an influential part of student school experience and the way they approach learning. It is hard to disentangle “hard core” academic content from the socialemotional features. This is especially demonstrated in the analysis of the 2015 PISA data by Govorova et al. (2020), where the data indicate associations between student wellbeing and school-based aspects like pedagogical approach and teacher caring, and science performance. It demonstrates that what has been traditionally considered cognitive learning cannot be dissociated from socioemotional learning. Furthermore, an existential element is suggested in the scales related to motivation and enjoyment, which indicate emotional engagement or lack thereof. Socioemotional learning and increased academic diligence are outcomes of values education (Dally, 2010; Lovat & Dally, 2018; Lovat et al., 2011). As established in the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values,” teaching and learning is a social transactional process in which students and teachers together learn to communicate in an environment that is safe and not stressful (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; Felner et al., 2007; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Understanding the neurobiological dynamics that enable learning, which animate the observed behavior within the teaching–learning context, provides a perspective that extends beyond behavioral observations alone (Fischer, 2009; Immordino-Yang, 2016a, b; Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017; Thomas et al., 2019). Findings from neuroscience point to those biological resources that are operational in the actualization of student wellbeing and furnish a deeper understanding of the dynamic interplay between the spiritual, social, personal, and physical that together frame the environment in which student wellbeing at school is realized.

Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School The section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values” identified a range of material, social, and personal characteristics that combine dynamically to affect student wellbeing at school, with the social and emotional aspects of teaching and learning coming to the fore. This section, “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School”, will identify certain pertinent neurobiological substrates that further elucidate the phenomena identified in the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values.” For the sake of clarity, these are grouped under four headings, with each topic being of equal importance and intertwined with the others. These topics

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are: brain lateralization; emotion and cognition; attachment, resilience, safety, and trust; and epigenetics and neural plasticity. A companion chapter explores similar questions in relation to six salient themes in values education (Clement, 2023). First, however, the relevance of neurobiology (or neuroscience) to this endeavor will be argued.

Why Neurobiology? Neurobiology informs educational practice via the conduit of educational theory (Clement & Lovat, 2012; Immordino-Yang, 2016b). There are several reasons why neuroscience is important to education, in general, and the current chapter, in particular. First, neuroscience supplies direct knowledge of brain functioning rather than relying on inferences in the absence of direct knowledge of brain functioning. This extends knowledge beyond observable behavior to include the identification of underlying neural functions and, thus, provides further insight into effective educational practice (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017; Thomas, 2019). Second, the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values” identified the importance of socioemotional learning for student wellbeing, neuroscience furnishes insight into the social and emotional dynamics engaged in learning (ImmordinoYang, 2016b; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Third, not only does neuroscience give awareness into what is happening in the brain of a single person, the development of two-person neuroscanning techniques allows the observation of two-person interpersonal transactions and the right brain to right brain nonverbal communication between them (Dumas, 2011; Schore, 2019b). This is relevant both to socioemotional learning and understanding the role of the nonverbal in interpersonal communication. Fourth, there is the growing emphasis in neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry on “‘the primacy of affect’ – that right brain affective processes” operate below consciousness and increasing attention is being given to the role of affect in human development within a social environment (Schore, 2019a, p. 157; cf. McGilchrist, 2009/2019). As a result, the model of psychological wellbeing is being grounded in emotional wellbeing rather than cognitive wellbeing (Schore, 2019a). Coinciding with the attention on affect is an “interest in a theoretical organizing principle” of self-regulation, which is essential to “emotional processes” (Schore, 2019a, p. 158). The implications of the changing conceptions impelled by neuroscience, especially in relation to the primacy of affect, were flagged in the journal article by neuroeducationalist (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007) entitled “We Feel Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education.” Although this was by no means the first publication to propose that knowledge of brain function made possible by neuroscience was relevant to education, it encompassed a range of implications of neuroscience for educational theory. In effect it indicates a change of emphasis from one that majored in formal cognitive stages (see Rose & Fischer, 2009), to one that builds on the socioemotional development of students so as to better understand the dynamics of those biological capacities co-opted in learning. Its contribution in calling for such a

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reconceptualization was to explain that the dynamic coaction of the neural processes relating to sociality, cognition, affect, and the regulation of the body could not be assigned to discrete and unrelated neural processes. Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) explain that without a realistic understanding of the emotional (affective) and social processes that combine in the brain as a foreground to learning, then there would, most likely, be a misconception of the priority and interplay of the various processes that were regulated by the brain in fulfilling its central function in optimizing survival and facilitating our flourishing: [T]hose 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)

The substance of what Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) are saying is that although we might think about emotion, cognition, and the body as being different aspects of our personhood, there is, in fact, a fundamental biological relationship between them in regard to neural processes that are employed in learning and include rational thought, high reason, creativity, decision-making, and memory. The central function of the brain is the management of physiology, the optimization of survival, and allowing our flourishing (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007, p. 4; cf. Barrett, 2017b). Additionally, Immordino-Yang and Damasio indicate that moral reasoning and creativity are embedded within the affective processes that underpin cognition and social behavior. Hence, the perspective neuroscience offers is unique in identifying those processes that contribute to the wellbeing of students at school and the way that values are interwoven through the context in which learning occurs. The interplay of the personal and interpersonal, together with the social, cultural, spiritual, and physical aspects outlined by Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007), serves to create the sense of what it is like to be at school for all stakeholders, particularly the students. As psychologist-psychoanalyst Allan Schore (2012) observes, in a dynamic system like the one just outlined, regulation becomes a touch point for an integrative approach. This opens the door to an educational theory that is instantiated in integrative educational practice that accommodates the multifaceted experiencedependent nature of student development and learning.

Brain Lateralization: One Brain or Two? The nature and structure of the brain provides insight into the actualization of values. Philosopher-psychiatrist McGilchrist’s (2009/2019) thought-provoking and extensive study of the two different natures of the right hemisphere (RH) and left hemisphere (LH) of the brain concludes that they are asymmetrical, have decidedly different ontologies and sets of values, and deliver two different “versions” of the world both of which are credible. Importantly, although both hemispheres are “involved in everything we do,” there are differences in how each hemisphere

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functions (p. x, cf. p. 93). Some differences relevant to the substance of this chapter are the RH is associated with the body and emotion prioritizing “what is close, what is ‘mine’” (p. 91), whereas the LH has “the peaceful detachment from the material realm” and “emptying out” associated with mystical experience (p. 92); the RH is the locus of nonverbal communication and the LH with more explicit forms of communication; the RH processes the implicit and the LH the explicit, and it is the task of the LH to render the implicit as an object of “clarity and fixity” (p. 181); the RH is immersed in the relationship between itself and the experience of the world, while the LH abstracts and re-presents experience and therefore is “explicit, abstracted, compartmentalized, fragmented, static . . . essentially lifeless” (p. 93); the RH has an affinity for metaphor, which “underlies all forms of understanding whatsoever,” whereas the LH has an incapacity for it (p. 71, author italics); the RH is quick to detect deceit because of its affinity with the nonverbal; and the RH gives the feeling of connectedness to experience, whereas the LH provides the feeling of detachment from the world but power in relation to it. Furthermore, moral values, which like color are irreducible to another kind of experience, moral judgment, and sense of justice, are the domain of the RH (with the inclusion of the left amygdala). Also the RH mediates social behavior. Additionally, the RH has superior emotional perception, and as the specialist in nonverbal communication it “picks up subtle clues and meanings” to understand the thinking and feelings of others (McGilchrist, 2009/2019, p. 71). Bowlby (1969, cited in Schore, 2019a, p. 161), Schore (2019a, p. 161), and neurophysiologist Stephen Porges (2011, 2015, 2017) attribute the nonverbal facial expressions, prosodic voice and touch and gestures as nonverbal cues of safety, which are operative in the formation of the attachment bond, and, particularly for Porges, in the establishment and maintenance of social relationship central to our sense of safety, thus calming our “neural defence systems” (2015, p. 115). Another important feature of the brain is the capacity of “necessary distance” from immediate experience that is double edged in that it is capable of either exploitation or empathy (McGilchrist, 2009/2019). Also, this distancing enables the recognition of patterns and allows us to see ourselves as others do (McGilchrist, 2009/2019). To be able to distance ourselves from the world and even our own thoughts, actions, feelings, and emotions, and to reflect is fundamental to the learning associated with values education, as in the instances of reflection on experience or on impulse to act referenced in the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values” (Lovat et al., 2011; Lovat & Clement, 2016; Lovat & Dally, 2018). Of importance in the consideration of the actualization of values is that moral values, moral judgment, the mediation of social behavior, and the expression and interpretation of nonverbal behavior all have their locus in the RH (McGilchrist 2009/2019). Thus, when it comes to the actualization of values we should not be surprised at the alignment of moral values and judgment, as mediated through social (interpersonal) behavior and finding expression through implicit, nonverbal behavior. There needs to be congruence between the explicit and implicit enactment and communication of values because the RH will intuitively pick up on discrepancies between them (McGilchrist 2009/2019, pp. 70–72). The foregoing depiction of the differing functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain deepens the

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understanding of the different roles of the explicit and implicit in the actualization of values in promoting student wellbeing at school. Also, it has relevance for the discussion of attachment and resilience, safety (security), and trust below.

Emotion and Cognition The language around emotion can be confusing because the word “emotion” can be used to denote conscious emotional feelings as well as underlying affect. In the interest of being explicit, a distinction will be made between “feelings of emotion,” which are usually conscious, and “emotion,” which is an underlying process (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007), otherwise referred to as “core affect” by psychologists Seth Duncan and Lisa Feldman Barrett (2007). “[C]ore affect makes external information from the world personally relevant to people . . .” (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, p. 1196). Also, the brain gives meaning to sensations from the body that can result in an instance of an emotional feeling (Barrett, 2017a, p. 67). Furthermore, “emotions recruit survival-related neural mechanisms and shift cognitive processing,” whereas “emotional feelings are, in essence cognitive interpretations of changes in body and mental states” (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017, p. 349s). McGilchrist (2009/2019) observes that affect (emotion) is implicit and does not come from explicit (conscious) cognitive process but rather reason emerges from emotion, hence “the primacy of affect” (pp. 184–186; cf. Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007; Schore, 2012, 2019a). Duncan and Barrett (2007) explain that in times past it was assumed that cognition was the domain of the cortex and affect the domain of the subcortical area of the brain and impenetrable by the cognitive. In other words, the conception was that cognition and emotion were different neural circuits with emotion being the province of the subcortical to be inhibited by prefrontal cognition upon the emotional response of the subcortex to sensory input. On the contrary, recent neuroscience has shown this not to be the case, but, rather, the cognitive and the affective interact throughout various networks of the brain (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, pp. 1187–1188). The frontal regions of the brain, traditionally associated with cognition, are also involved in processing sensory information both from within and outside the body and guide responses to external objects (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, p. 1190). Although thinking and feeling might be experienced differently, they are not different kinds of phenomena, and, therefore, they are not ontologically distinct, “but they are actually two sides of the same coin” (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, p. 1202). When it comes to brain functioning, “thinking and feeling are not distinct in the brain” (Barrett, 2017a, p. 223). Even though they might be experienced in different ways, a distinction in experience does not equate to a difference in brain structure or the psychological processes producing the experience (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, p. 1201). Thinking and feeling are inseparably intertwined: There is no such thing as “non-affective thought”. Affect plays a role in perception and cognition, even when people cannot feel its influence. (Duncan & Barrett, 2007, p. 1185)

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Our range of behaviors and patterns of thinking are tied to and exist “in the service of emotional goals,” and creativity provides the means of surviving and flourishing in sociocultural complexities (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007, p. 7). Furthermore, Immordino-Yang and Damasio point out logical reasoning and rational thought are not devoid of emotion and that minimizing the emotional component in education could result in the diminution of the capacity of students to apply their knowledge in novel real-world situation because emotion gives sense and meaning to real-world experience (cf. Duncan & Barrett, 2007; Immordino-Yang, 2008, 2016b). Nevertheless, our emotional assessments do not occur in a vacuum but are guided by one’s “conceptual system” forged from the experience of the everyday; however, one has the capacity to modify and shape one’s conceptual system (Barrett, 2017a). Learning, both explicit and implicit, is a highly emotional experience (Schore, 2019a, p. 256; Immordino-Yang, 2008, 2016b), and there is interplay between learning, emotion, and body state (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). Of importance to values education is that emotion, cognition (high reason), creativity, and social functioning together are involved in ethical decisions (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). Teachers induce the power of emotions in learning when they assist students to find meaning and purpose in the subject studied and in applying it to real-world situations (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). While every subject matter is abstract and emotionally sterile, students will find it hard to find it meaningful and difficult to creatively apply in real-world situations (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007; Immordino-Yang, 2008, 2016b). This would suggest there is an existential dimension of meaning-making on the part of the student that is inherent in their engagement in learning. Moreover, Immordino-Yang (2008) maintains that learning involves students internalizing a teacher’s actions, including emotions, and then playing them out as if they were their own. Furthermore, intuitive feelings generated from experience become stepping stones to explicit knowledge (Immordino-Yang & Faeth, 2016; cf. McGilchrist, 2009/2019). Reason apart from emotion is flawed; reason works in conjunction with emotion whether advantageous or nefarious (Damasio, 1994/2006). The engagement of emotions in learning also applies to values education and the actualization of values because values are “taught” through the emotional valencies that accompany the everyday interpersonal transactions that occur in the classroom and school life, as well as in the practice of explicit values education. Student wellbeing is promoted when the values that students experience and actualize in their everyday school life are the “curriculum” for values education, where students are given the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their actual behaviors (Lovat et al., 2011; Lovat & Dally, 2018).

Attachment, Resilience, Safety, and Trust Attachment, resilience, safety, and trust are aspects of wellbeing mentioned in the literature cited in the section “Student wellbeing and the Actualization of Values,” and are the groundwork of student wellbeing at school. The importance of these aspects of wellbeing is emphasized in neurobiological literature. Psychiatrist and ethologist John Bowlby (1988/2005), who is associated with the origin of attachment theory,

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emphasized the need for the provision by parents of “a secure base” from which children and adolescents can explore the world and one which would welcome, nourish, comfort, and reassure them, and as a child proceeds through life new attachment figures are likely to be sought. A secure base is foundational for secure attachment. His work has been interpreted and extended in the light of interpersonal neurobiology with two of those being Allan Schore (2009, 2012, 2019a, b), in his work on the development and function of the right brain; and Porges (2011, 2015, 2017), in the Polyvagal Theory, which, in turn, has been applied to child development by pediatrician-neonatologist (Sanders & Thompson, 2021). According to Schore (2019a, b), secure attachment arises from an intimate relationship between an infant and the primary caregiver (usually the mother). The security of this relationship is the genesis of: a sense of security; emotional selfregulation; the development of the emotional brain (the right brain); resilience to stress and novelty; flexibility in coping with the stress and novelty in human relationships; creativity; trust; safety and positive curiosity to explore “novel socioemotional and physical environments”; internal models of relationships that can be lifelong; and emotional wellbeing. Through right brain to right brain, nonverbal communication of the primary caregiver and the infant the emotion circuits of an infant are shaped in early critical periods of brain development, and generate internal working models used by the subjective self in navigating the social world. Moreover, socioemotional development is indelibly affected by attachment coactions during the critical periods of development (Schore, 2019a, b). Secure attachment predisposes emotional wellbeing in later life, whereas attachment trauma is “growth inhibiting” and has enduring effects on the development of the right brain and future mental health (Schore, 2019a). Attachment extends beyond the provision of a secure base: “it is the essential matrix for creating a right brain self that can regulate its own internal states and external relationships” (Schore, 2012, p. 44, italics added). The attachment style, forged in the early years of life, continues throughout life unconsciously mediating interpersonal events (Schore, 2019a). The emotional brain is structured by early relationships with long-term consequences for a person’s emotional wellbeing (Schore, 2019b). It is through the nurturance of caregivers that one develops emotionally so as to feel comfortable with one’s own emotions and respond in a healthful way to social situations, making the most of joyful times and implicitly trusting that one can cope in tough times (Schore, 2019b). Furthermore, a sense of security involves knowing that one has the emotional and physical resources to cope with stress from life (Schore, 2019b). Thus, affective self-regulation, knowing how to feel secure and resilience, has a common source in a secure relationship between an infant and the primary caregiver. It is within the attachment relationship that the beginnings of self-regulation are learnt (Schore, 2019a, b), and, in turn, engagement in learning at school is dependent upon self-regulation (e.g., Cantor et al., 2019; Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; Osher et al., 2020). Also, attachment, an unconscious right brain dynamic, mediates interpersonal and personal aspects of regulation of relationships, particularly intimate relationships (Schore 2019a). The importance of attachment style for teacher–student relationships was indicated in the discussion of teacher caring and support in the section “Student wellbeing and the Actualization of Values.”

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For Porges (2015), safety is more than removing the threat of danger; it is actively providing those “features of safety that our nervous system craves” (p. 115). Also, a student’s sense of safety is critical for “optimal social behavior” and their accessing those brain regions associated with creativity and generativity (p. 115). Rather than being “a structural model of the environment,” safety is defined dynamically as “a visceral sensitivity model evaluating shifts in the neural regulation of autonomic state” and, thus, provides a different conception for evaluating behavior (2017, p. 44). Hence, the provision of a secure base at school, where those features of safety are actualized, provides opportunity for students to advance in emotional selfregulation and resilience, and it is essential for students to feel safe and be able to develop socially, emotionally, academically, and spiritually (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; Porges, 2015). Emotional resilience is foundational to feelings of trust and security and is “the capacity to transition from positive emotions to negative emotions and back to positive emotions” (Schore, 2019b, p. 226). Cantor et al. (2019, citing Masten & Cicchetti, 2016) point out that resilience is not a permanent property of an individual, but rather is dynamic and “emerges through coaction with contextual, supportive, and relational factors” (p. 325). For children facing adversity, resilience is nurtured through a supportive, responsive, and stable relationship with an adult (Cantor et al., 2019). Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) draw attention to the interwoven relationship between the body state (its health and welfare), emotion, and learning. The physiological state of the body varies with the sense of safety because cues of safety or danger unconsciously elicit attendant physiological and emotional states as described by Porges (2011, 2015, 2017) in the Polyvagal Theory. Pivotal to this theory is the notion of neuroception, which refers to an unconscious process in the brain that detects threat or safety and, accordingly, triggers changes in the body’s physiology (Porges, 2011, 2015, 2017; cf. Duncan & Barrett, 2007, above). According to Porges, detection of safety or danger elicits one of three neurobiological responses: a prosocial disposition in the case of neuroception of safety; or in the instance of neuroception of life threat, either one of two defense responses. These defense responses are either the arousal response of the fight/flight state or the response of the freeze state typified by immobilization and dissociation. If the neuroception is of safety, then warmth in nonverbal communication associated with social engagement will result in downregulation of defensiveness and evoke a sense of safety. Neuroception can be faulty, leading to attribution of safety where there is risk or of risk where there is safety. Trauma can distort neuroception negatively by changing response thresholds by disrupting the sense of safety. Spontaneous behavior is understood to be adaptive and contextual but can be maladaptive or inappropriate in the case of faulty neuroception. Porges (2017) explains that changing maladaptive behaviors involves a reflective process and developing neural structures needed for resilience and safety. (NB: this process could need therapeutic intervention and support by a professional.) Outcomes reflect aspirational values like being compassionate and loving or being self-oriented (Porges, 2017; cf. Porges & Dana, 2018). Seeking novelty is indicative of an inner security and knowing how to return to feeling safe and usually having strong networks of social support (Porges, 2017).

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Porges (2017) points out that the same classroom can be a safe place for some students, yet others are in a hypervigilant state alert to triggers of threat. This means that the cues of safety need to replace triggers of threat. Examples of cues of safety are being close to safe people, reducing low-frequency noise, and reducing unpredictability (cf. van der Kolk, 2015). Behaviors of students lacking a sense of safety can be mistaken for those of attention-deficit disorder and so understanding the neurophysiology of behavior can assist teachers in interpreting student behavior (Sanders & Thompson, 2021). As Sanders and Thompson (2021) explain, feeling safe serves two educational goals: “move them [students] towards learning” and “move them towards emotional wellbeing” (p. 178). Students who are dysregulated are unlikely to engage in learning or have a sense of wellbeing, and Sanders and Thompson (2021) observe that teachers who are aware of the relationship between behavior and physiological states are able to make more appropriate responses for the benefit of their students. Moderate levels of emotional arousal align with a sense of safety and are optimal for learning since they dispose of the engaging of left brain analytical and logical cognitive processes that are otherwise unavailable in emotionally dysregulated states (Ogden, 2018; Porges, 2017; Sanders & Thompson, 2021; Schore, 2012). Furthermore, Porges (2017) explains that “specific neural exercises . . . provide opportunities to optimize the regulation of physiological state” (p. 19). Neural exercises are instances of social engagement like choral singing, being in an orchestra, or playing with another at recess, providing opportunity for co-regulation, and developing student self-regulation. Conversely, Porges suggests that any reduction in opportunities for neural exercises in favor of more seatwork may disrupt efficient processing of information and the rise in oppositional behaviors (2017, pp. 119–121). Ideally schools are an environment where students can flourish as they develop and learn and for this to occur schools need to be a secure base where students feel safe. Various aspects of neurobiology support the identification and deepen the understanding of school characteristics that together support a sense of safety at school: attachment styles of students and teachers; the proactive enactment of cues of safety, as well as the removal of all threats of physical, psychological, spiritual, and environmental danger; and the cultivation of stable relationships to further the development of resilience in the presence of stress or novelty as students actively explore and encounter the world around them. Any activity associated with the enactment of each of these aspects involves the actualization of values. Safety of the learning environment, social engagement, improved interpersonal relationships, and self-management of behavior are promoted through values education and the actualization of values (see Lovat & Dally, 2018).

Epigenetics, Brain Plasticity, and Development Learning and development are only possible because of the plasticity and malleability of the brain (e.g., Cantor et al., 2019; Doige, 2008; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Brain malleability and plasticity is activated by social interplay and emotional drivers, and the school years are among the heightened periods in life of brain

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change (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Because of the plasticity and malleability of the brain, the quality of relationships and the learning environment shape student development and learning (Osher et al., 2020). This represents a changed perception from the nature–nurture antithesis to a nature–nurture synthesis. Former conceptualizations have been challenged in the light of evidence from the social and biological sciences regarding epigenesis with an understanding of the importance of the qualitative nature of development (Fischer & Biddle, 2006). What is supplied by nature is shaped and nurtured primarily by the social environment, but also by the physical environment. Hence, the valency of dominant values instantiated and the demeanor in which they are actualized in interpersonal and wider social interplay are of extreme importance because they have an epigenetic influence, particularly of the experience-dependent development of students and their wellbeing aspects (e.g., Diamond, 2009; Fischer & Biddle, 2006; Immordino-Yang, 2016b; Schore, 2012). Epigenetics refers to those environmental triggers that turn gene expression on or off that are not the result of changes in the gene itself: “epi” refer to those influences “over” or “above” the gene that affect the way that the gene is expressed through cell function, without changing the actual DNA (Lester et al., 2016). Our genetic endowment alone is insufficient to account for the development of our physical, behavioral, psychological, cognitive, emotional, and social development, and the apparent deficit in genetic information gives rise to need and capacity for “socially mediated learning” (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019, p. 187), that is, through family, school, and community otherwise known as epigenetic “forces” or “processes” (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; cf. Cantor et al., 2019). This means that to become fully functional humans need adequate social interplay and learning across family, school, and community (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Thus, genes are not the “prime movers” of development but rather followers (Lerner & Overton, 2017), and so present challenges to traditional step-wise conceptions of child development (e.g., Cantor et al., 2019; Lerner & Overton, 2017; Osher et al., 2020). Rather, development is perceived as a dynamic interplay between gene and environment and, therefore, not reducible to genetic endowment alone (Cantor et al., 2019; Diamond, 2009; Fischer & Biddle, 2006; Lerner & Overton, 2017; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; Osher et al., 2020). Epigenetic influences include all that comprises the ecology, the biosphere with all its diversity, and the human ideologies that influence human development (Narvaez, 2015); one’s conceptual system (Barrett, 2017a); the school and learning environment including the pedagogy (Cantor et al., 2019; Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; Osher et al., 2020; Rose & Fischer, 2009); warm human emotions, the challenge of cognitive engagement, and socioemotional interplay in general (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019); the influence of parenting on an infant (Matas et al., 2016; Schore, 2019a, b); emotional synchrony and attunement, and right brain to right brain communications (Schore, 2019a, b); history and culture (Lester et al., 2016); socioeconomic status (Bates et al., 2013; Loft & Waldfogel, 2021; Tooley et al., 2021); the valency of experience (Tooley et al., 2021); and, very importantly, the brain itself (Doige, 2008). If the necessary epigenetic resources for healthy development are not in place, then the development and wellbeing of the

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young is impaired by isolation and deprivations, such as social disadvantage in its multiple forms, or a deficit in the essential emotional support that underpins development (e.g., Bates et al., 2013; Loft & Waldfogel, 2021; Rijk et al., 2010). Evidence from the biological sciences regarding the role of the environment, especially the social environment, heavily underscores the importance of the socioemotional dimension of student wellbeing discussed in the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values.” The science of epigenetics demonstrates that the nature of the learning environment has a decided influence on the experience-dependent development of students and so influences their brain development. As part of the learning environment, the values enacted in the school matter in terms of student wellbeing at school.

Summary The section “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School” has proposed that the incorporation of relevant findings of neurobiology enriches educational theory and contributes to the understanding of the importance of the actualization of values in order to promote student wellbeing. The information provided in the section “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School” is in relation to the reconceptualization of educational theory and should not be regarded as being adequate information for the implementation of therapeutic or specialist interventions that need appropriate professional involvement or support. Deployment of robust educational theory into educational practice requires honed skills and practices that are proper to their task and supported through appropriate teacher professional development and ongoing support.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the nature of student wellbeing at school, incorporating both behavioral and neurobiological aspects. Central to the argument of the chapter is that values become observable and experienced in the everyday enactments that constitute students’ experience of learning. Socioemotional dynamics are embedded in those experiences both explicitly and implicitly. The revisiting of school characteristics pertinent to student wellbeing at school in the section “Student Wellbeing and the Actualization of Values” exposed the common thread of the importance of socioemotional factors in shaping the experience of school for students and in contributing to their academic achievement. Furthermore, the difficulty in disentangling “hard core” academic content from socioemotional development was noted, and, in fact, characteristics of student subjective wellbeing are predictors of academic achievement (e.g., Cárdenas et al., 2022). The section “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School” explored neurobiological substrates that animate and support student wellbeing at the school with a view to informing educational theory and practice. Several points of note emerge from this

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exploration. One relates to the recognition of the pervading role and function of emotion (affect) in regulating the neural processes engaged by teaching and learning, like judgment, creativity, memory, reason and moral reasoning, and also behavior (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). Furthermore, the work of Schore (2019a, b) demonstrates the role of positive role of emotional synchrony and attunement in nonverbal right brain to right brain communication in the development of the brain and self-regulation. Rather than typifying emotion as a disruptor of conscious cognition, it needs to be understood that emotion musters the body’s resources necessary to engage in conscious cognition, and requires the appropriate body state and emotional state for that to happen (Barrett, 2017a; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007; McGilchrist, 2009/2019; Schore, 2012). Students need to be able to talk to teachers and others about what they learn as well as negotiate the help or clarification they need. Socioemotional learning and learning subject content are intertwined. Another point covered in the section “Neurobiology and Student Wellbeing at School” relates to the superseding of the nature–nurture dichotomy with the realization that development is driven by gene–environment interplay. This forefronts the role of the social environment and the values enacted within it, on student development. Consequently, there is little within the educational environment that does not impact the development of students and their wellbeing at school in some way. Additionally, knowledge of brain lateralization reinforces the need for alignment between the implicit and the explicit communication of values because it is most likely that the implicit will trump the explicit in any instance of incongruence. Student wellbeing is served when students are socially engaged and feel safe enough to explore the novel, face challenges as they learn new and novel content, and adapt to the rhythms of emotional regulation that are characteristic of resilience. There is no such thing as a “values-free zone”: values are actualized in the everyday experience of students at school, and these values will have a positive or negative valency. Values are enacted in all areas of the curriculum, including the hidden curriculum, and are operative in creating school and classroom environments. Therefore, the quality of student wellbeing at school will be affected by the quality of the values that are actualized in school life. Values-based pedagogies have shown this to be the case.

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Lester, B. M., Conradt, E., & Marsit, C. (2016). Introduction to the special section on epigenetics. Child Development, 87(1), 29–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12489 Loft, L., & Waldfogel, J. (2021). Socioeconomic status gradients in young children’s well-being at school. Child Development, 92(1), e91–e105. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13453 Lovat, T. (2010). The new values education: A pedagogical imperative for student wellbeing. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 3–18). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4_1 Lovat, T., & Clement, N. (2008). Quality teaching and values education: Coalescing for effective learning. Journal of Moral Education, 37(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03057240701803643 Lovat, T., & Clement, N. (2016). Service learning as holistic values pedagogy. Journal of Experiential Education, 38(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825916628548 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., & Hawkes, N. (2013). Values education: A pedagogical imperative for student wellbeing. Educational Research International, 2(2), 1–6. http://www.savap.org.pk Lovat, T., & Toomey, R. (Eds.). (2009). Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect. 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. Final report for the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) by The University of Newcastle. http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/values/val_articles,8884.html Lovat, T., Toomey, R., & Clement, N. (Eds.). (2010). International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing. Springer. Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1563-9 Matas, E., Bock, J., & Braun, K. (2016). The impact of parent-infant interaction on epigenetic plasticity mediating synaptic adaptations in the infant brain. Psychopathology, 49(4), 201–210. https://doi.org/10.1159/000448055 McGilchrist, I. (2019). The master and his emmisary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world (new expanded ed.). Yale University Press. (Original work published 2009). Narvaez, D. (2015). Understanding flourishing: Evolutionary baselines and morality. Journal of Moral Education, 44(3), 253–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2015.1054619 Newmann, F. M., et al. (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass Publishers. Ogden, P. (2018). Polyvagal theory and sensorimotor psychotherapy. In S. W. Porges & D. Dana (Eds.), Clinical applications of the polyvagal theory (pp. 34–49). W.W. Norton. Opdenakker, M. C., & Van Damme, J. (2000). Effects of schools, teaching staff and classes on achievement and well-being in secondary education: Similarities and differences between school outcomes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11(2), 165–196. https://doi. org/10.1076/0924-3453(200006)11:2;1-Q;FT165 Osher, D., Cantor, P., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2020). Drivers of human development: How relationships and context shape learning and development. Applied Developmental Science, 24(1), 6–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2017.1398650 Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 323–367. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070003323 Osterman, K. F. (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). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4_15 Parker, P., Allen, K, Parker, R., Guo, J., Marsh, H., Basarkod, G., & Dicke, T. (2021). School belonging predicts whether an emerging adult will be Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET) after school. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.31234/ osf.io/cbwph

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Phillips, M. (1997). What makes schools effective? A comparison of the relationships of communitarian climate and academic climate to mathematics achievement and attendance during middle school. American Educational Research Journal, 34(4), 633–662. https://doi.org/10. 3102/00028312034004633 Porges, S. W. (2011). Polyvagal theory: Neurophysiogical foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, self-regulation. W.W. Norton. Porges, S. W. (2015). Making the world safe for our children: Down-regulating defence and up-regulating social engagement to “optimise” the human experience. Children Australia, 40(2), 114–123. https://doi.org/10.1017/cha.2015.12 Porges, S. W. (2017). The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory: The transformative power of feeling safe. W.W. Norton. Porges, S. W., & Dana, D. (Eds.). (2018). Clinical applications of the polyvagal theory. W.W. Norton. Resnick, M. D., Bearman, P. S., Blum, R. W., Bauman, K. E., Harris, K. M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuhring, T., Sieving, R. E., Shew, M., Ireland, M., Bearinger, L. H., & Udry, J. R. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm. Findings from the national longitudinal study on adolescent health. Journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 823–832. https://doi.org/10.1001/ jama.1997.03550100049038 Rijk, C. H. A. M., Hoksbergen, R. A. C., & ter Laak, J. (2010). Development of behavioural problems in children adopted from Romania to the Netherlands, after a period of deprivation. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7(2), 233–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17405620802063339 Rose, T. L., & Fischer, K. W. (2009). Dynamic development: A Piagetian approach. In U. Müller, J. I. M. Carpendale, & L. Smith (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Piaget (pp. 400–421). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521898584.018 Rowe, F., Stewart, D., & Patterson, C. (2007). Promoting school connectedness through whole school approaches. Health Education, 107(6), 524–542. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 09654280710827920 Sanders, M. R., & Thompson, G. S. (2021). Polyvagal theory and the developing child. W.W. Norton. Sankey, D. (2006). The neuronal, synaptic self: Having values and making choices. Journal of Moral Education, 35(2), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240600681702 Schore, A. N. (2009). Right-brain affect regulation: An essential mechanism of development, trauma, dissociation and psychotherapy. In D. Foaha, D. J. Siegel, & M. F. Solomon (Eds.), The healing power of emotion: Affective neuroscience, development and clinical practice (pp. 112–144). W.W. Norton. Schore, A. N. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. W.W. Norton. Schore, A. N. (2019a). The development of the unconscious mind. W.W. Norton. Schore, A. N. (2019b). Right brain psychotherapy. W.W. Norton. Steinmayr, R., Heyder, A., Naumburg, C., Michels, J., & Wirthwein, L. (2018). School-related and individual predictors of subjective well-being and academic achievement. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2631. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02631 Thijs, J. T., & Koomen, H. M. Y. (2008). Task-related interactions between kindergarten children and their teachers: The role of emotional security. Infant and Child Development, 17(2), 181–197. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.552 Thomas, M. S. C. (2019). Response to Dougherty and Robey (2018) on neuroscience and education: Enough bridge metaphors – Interdisciplinary research offers the best hope for progress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(4), 337–340. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0963721419838252 Thomas, M. S. C., Ansari, D., & Knowland, V. C. P. (2019). Annual Research Review: Educational neuroscience: Progress and prospects. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60(4), 477–492. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12973

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Tooley, U. A., Bassett, D. S., & Mackey, A. P. (2021). Environmental influences on the pace of brain development. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 22(6), 372–384. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583021-00457-5 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). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4_2 van der Kolk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. Penguin Books. Van Petegem, K. (2008). Relationship between student, teacher and classroom characteristics and students’ school wellbeing (van Doctor in Pedagogische Wentenschappen). Universitiet Gent. https://biblio.ugent.be/input?func¼publicRecord&recordOId¼000467993 Wentzel, K. R. (2016). Teachers’ relationship with students as motivational contexts. In K. R. Wentzel & D. B. Miele (Eds.), Handbook of motivation at school (pp. 301–322). Springer. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315773384

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From Surviving to Thriving The Transformative Effects of Values Pedagogy Kerry Dally

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Education in the Australian Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cluster Context and Program Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cluster-Level Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School-Level Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Program Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acquisition of Values Language and Growth in Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changes in School Climate and Student Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Parent Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generalizing Values in the Home Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classroom-Specific Values Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68 70 71 71 72 72 73 73 77 79 80 81 82 83 83

Abstract

The chapter will examine the role schools play in the twenty-first century in developing more than student intellect. In order to prepare students for an increasingly interconnected world facing an uncertain future, schools are acknowledging the importance of student well-being as a prerequisite for learning and achievement. Terms such as character education, social and emotional learning, positive education, and values pedagogy have been used to describe educational frameworks that focus on developing students’ character strengths and values alongside academic outcomes. The common philosophy underlying these approaches is that optimal learning occurs in a safe, caring, and responsive school K. Dally (*) The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_4

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environment that actively fosters individual resiliency and strengthens interpersonal relations. In Australia, the Values in Actions Schools Project (VASP) was one such approach that aimed to enhance student resilience, well-being, and learning. This chapter describes the transformative effects that occurred when a cluster of catholic schools extended their existing implicit values-based educational ethos to include more explicit strategies for teaching and modeling values. Teacher, parent, and student reflections indicated that the initiative helped to create an environment in which children could grow and flourish, not just socially, emotionally and academically, but also morally and spiritually. Keywords

Values pedagogy · Positive education · Character education · Social and emotional learning

Introduction At the start of the twenty-first century, an increasing awareness of the skills and capabilities needed to function in a rapidly changing and interconnected world precipitated an interrogation of the purpose of school education. In Australia and internationally, the goals of schooling started to shift from an instrumental and narrow focus on the teaching and acquisition of specific skills and knowledge to a conceptualization of learning as a more holistic enterprise that encompasses individual well-being and prepares students to be innovative, collaborative, and adaptable citizens of a global community (Howard, 2018). The role of the teacher in concert with the broader school environment is now understood to be crucial to students attaining successful social and academic outcomes. According to Howard (2018), “Children are on the path of human ‘becoming.’ They are in need of pedagogical relationships with teachers entrusted to lead them in search of meaningful lives and the beauty of their full potential as flourishing individuals” (p. 9). As described in the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005), values pedagogy aims to develop students’ individual awareness and understanding of values and how to enact them. In common with approaches such as positive education (Seligman, 2018), character education (Benninga et al., 2003), and social–emotional learning (SEL) (Elias et al., 2007), values pedagogy relies on a safe and supportive school environment that provides ongoing opportunities for students to practice using values in intra- and interpersonal situations with support from strong moral role models (Lovat et al., 2011). This dual focus on the individual and the social context in which the individual functions has its origins in Aristotle’s notion of flourishing, or eudaimonia. As discussed by Gunawardena et al. (2020), Aristotle claimed that in order to live a flourishing life an individual needs to acquire an internal capacity to function well, and this capability is best fostered by favorable external circumstances under the guidance of trusted adults.

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The personal internalization of values and the creation of caring and responsive school environments have become the foci of twenty-first-century educational approaches and have replaced the reliance on rules and external regulation of behavior that dominated school education in the twentieth century (Flay & Allred, 2010). For values to become internalized, students need both implicit and explicit learning experiences. Thus, values pedagogy relies on implicit learning through interactions with teachers who model behaviors such as caring and respect, as well as explicit learning through values being talked about in classrooms and embedded in the curriculum (Lovat et al., 2011). In the Australian context, the nine principles that underlie the implementation of values education include the “consistent, congruent modelling of values,” “developing a shared language about values,” “being explicit about the values,” “attending to the total teaching and learning environment,” and using “a student-centred, inquiry based learning model” (DEEWR, 2008, pp. 8–9). The importance of the latter two principles and “democratic” practices such as allowing students to co-design learning activities and make choices about what and how they learn have also been recognized as crucial to the creation of a “sustaining climate” (Narvaez, 2010) and an optimal learning environment (Osterman, 2010). Recent evidence from the neurosciences has also emphasized that providing choice in autonomous learning environments helps develop the brain regions related to evaluation and decision-making (Kim, 2013). Assisting children to refine their reasoning processes and problem-solving skills is essential in the internalization and expression of values as children need to learn how to make “wise decisions” in regard to the way they act and respond, rather than following a set of externally prescribed school rules. However, although both implicit and explicit learning is crucial to students’ awareness and understanding of values and acquisition of values-inspired behavior, it is not enough to merely “know” about values. Aristotle argues that it is only through “doing the good” that values eventually can be internalized and integrated as “habitual” dispositions. By giving children opportunities to practice values and engage in discourse and reflection on their own and others’ behavior, values education helps promote the capacity of students to employ “phronesis,” that is, the practical moral wisdom required to make informed decisions based on deliberate and reasoned choices rather than acting or reacting impulsively without consideration of the consequences for oneself or others. In the Australian context, it was the salience of Guiding Principle Number 3 from the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005) – “provision of opportunities to practice and enact the values” (p. 8) – that prompted the emergence of the Values in Action Schools Project (VASP). VASP was premised on the notion that it is through putting values into action and the ensuing reflection and discussions that both successful and unsuccessful attempts engendered that the most enduring and transformational effects of values education occurred. The remainder of this chapter describes the implementation and effects of the Values in Action Schools Project in a cluster of catholic schools. The origins and intentions of VASP are first explored, followed by the background contexts of the schools and the cluster aims and objectives. The implementation strategies employed

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at both the cluster and school levels and the impact of these on teacher efficacy, school climate, parent–school relationships, and students’ social behavior and learning opportunities are then explored. Finally, implications from the results are discussed.

Values Education in the Australian Context In the Australian context, Values Education came to prominence in 2003 after the federal government initiated the Values Education Study (DEST, 2003) and the subsequent development of the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005). The framework defined nine values and provided guidance for schools from all sectors in fostering these values as part of students’ social and moral development as well as academic achievement. In 2004, the federal government implemented the first stage of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (VEGPSP-1). The aim of VEGPSP-1 (DEST, 2006) was to identify good practices characterizing effective implementation of values education across a range of diverse contexts. In 2006, the project was extended to encompass a second stage (VEGPSP-2), with an emphasis on the explicit teaching of values, wholeschool approaches and parent/family involvement (DEEWR, 2008). A third phase, the Values in Action Schools Project (VASP), was a national project in which clusters of schools were funded by the Australian government to design, implement, and evaluate the outcomes of high-quality values education projects. VASP was designed to further develop the evidence base for informing improved school policy and practice in values education. The implementation of the projects was guided by 10 principles of good practice that emerged from Stages 1 and 2. As outlined in the Final Report of the Values in Action Schools Project (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010, p. 5), these 10 principles were 1. Establish and consistently use a common and shared values language across the school. 2. Use pedagogies that are values-focused and student-centered within all curriculum. 3. Develop values education as an integrated curriculum concept, rather than as a program, an event or an addition to the curriculum. 4. Explicitly teach values so that students know what the values mean and how the values are lived. 5. Implicitly model values and explicitly foster the modeling of values. 6. Develop relevant and engaging values approaches connected to local and global contexts, which offer real opportunity for student agency. 7. Use values education to consciously foster intercultural understanding, social cohesion, and social inclusion. 8. Provide teachers with informed, sustained, and targeted professional learning and foster their professional collaborations.

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9. Encourage teachers to take risks in their approaches to values education. 10. Gather and monitor data for continuous improvement in values education.

Cluster Context and Program Implementation The VASP cluster was comprised of 10 Catholic primary schools. All schools in the cluster had a high proportion of students from low SES backgrounds, and one school had a predominantly indigenous student population. New initiatives in values education and quality teaching were combined to address the significant academic and social needs of these students. The aim of the cluster was to enhance student resilience, well-being, and learning. The VASP project sought to build on the implicit values focus underlying the philosophy and practice in catholic schools as well as existing programs and strategies already in place in many of the schools. In line with the guiding principles, the cluster adopted a dual approach of improving pedagogy and extending the schools’ current implicit values base to include more explicit strategies for teaching values. A range of effective cluster-level and schoollevel strategies were employed in the implementation of the VASP project. Though the schools in the cluster were geographically dispersed over 200 km, the cluster had already established partnerships between the schools. This existing base of shared goals and professional collaboration provided a strong foundation for the cooperative VASP activities.

Cluster-Level Strategies The cluster-level strategies included professional development in values education and pedagogical approaches for all 200 staff in the schools, the establishment of school teams and lead teachers in values education and quality pedagogy, the involvement of parents and in some cases the local community, and the networking and sharing of resources and ideas among the 10 schools via both face-to-face forums and a special Wiki site on the Diocesan Education Services Website. The success of the project was also due to the enthusiastic leadership and effective management across the entire cluster provided by the two Cluster Coordinators and Deputy Coordinator, as well as the commitment and leadership provided by the school principals and assistant principals and lead teachers. A combined staff development day resulted in the establishment of collaborative writing teams, identification of lead teachers, and the adoption of an explicit focus on the teaching of values as either a whole-school or class-level initiative. Subsequent collaborative cluster activities involving the school pedagogy and values teams included a “Residential Writing Weekend” where units of work at different grade levels were revised to embed values language and concepts through cooperative learning and problem-solving activities, and the development of specific values focusedclassroom and homework activities using resources from the VEGPSP website (DEEWR, 2005).

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School-Level Strategies While the cluster shared common goals and objectives and utilized the resources and outputs produced during the collaborative staff development activities, the actual implementation of the VASP project varied in each school because of the differences in school populations, community contexts, and existing programs and activities. A number of schools adopted a whole-school approach to explicitly teaching all or some of the nine values from the National Framework (DEST, 2005), while other schools focused more intensively on specific classrooms on the values-related classroom behaviors that were essential for the implementation of the new pedagogical approaches such as cooperative learning activities and flexible teaching arrangements. The schools employed a range of strategies to make the teaching of values more explicit, including defining and describing each of the values using Y charts (what does the value look like, sound like, feel like); displaying the values in pictures, text, and photos around the school and in newsletters to parents; reinforcing the values in spontaneous interactions with students (“catch them being good”); having a “value of the week”; formal and public acknowledgment of values-related behaviors at school assemblies by the use of “values awards”; classroom reflections and discussions about student interactions and behaviors both at home and at school; developing student role plays to demonstrate the values; and dedicating specific class and homework activities to values education, such that students were required to either define, illustrate, or enact and then document a particular value. Time was allocated during staff meetings for discussion of the project, while in some of the schools, the values lead teachers also provided a “Values Pack” for their colleagues that included useful resources and visuals for teaching specific values.

Program Effects A Developmental Evaluation approach was employed to both support and evaluate the program implementation. Developmental Evaluation allows the evaluator to work collaboratively with the people implementing an innovation and provides a mechanism by which to give and gain feedback on the program and discuss how it can be improved while the project is underway (Patton, 2011). The strategies included on-site visits and face-to-face discussions with key participants; documentation and artifacts produced by individual schools; a cluster-wide survey of student and parent perspectives prior to and during the project; and student, teacher, and parent stories from the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique (Davies & Dart, 2005). MSC was chosen as the key qualitative datagathering tool for all of the VASP projects because it allowed the school communities a means of engaging in effective dialogue with the researchers and project funders in order to identify common themes across clusters in terms of program intent, impact, and possibilities for improvements (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010, p. 3).

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Student Surveys The schools administered surveys to students in the classes involved in the VASP initiative. The surveys were first administered in June and again in October 2009. Complete matched pre–post survey data were available for 250 Stage 2 and 3 students (Years 3–6) and 75 Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students (Kindergarten to Year 2). The Stage 2 and 3 surveys captured five elements of student perceptions regarding Classroom Ambience (e.g., have fun learning), How I Treat Others (e.g., treat others the way you would like to be treated), Personal Responsibility (e.g., try to do the best you can), and mostly negative perceptions of Peer behavior (e.g., other kids pick on you) and Peer impact on school (e.g., other kids break school rules). Students were also asked to describe a value and give an example of when they or others had shown this value. A simplified format was used to capture three elements of Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 student perceptions regarding School Ambience (e.g., Do you like school?), My Behavior (e.g., Do you try to be nice to others?), and sense of Belonging (e.g., Do you have friends at school?). Paired samples t-tests were conducted on the student data to compare student perceptions of their own and their peers’ behavior, as well as classroom and school ambience. The results from the pre–post analysis of student surveys revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the student responses. The lack of statistically significant differences is not surprising, given the short period of implementation and the small samples of matched data. Although the surveys were administered 4 months apart, in some schools, the VASP initiatives were only fully being realized 5–6 weeks before the follow-up data collection. The results from the quantitative survey data need to be understood and interpreted in light of the student survey comments and teacher reflections as indicated in the Most Significant Change stories.

Acquisition of Values Language and Growth in Understanding Although there were no statistically significant changes in student perceptions, there was a trend for a slight increase in scores on most of the factors with the exception of “Peer Impact on School” in the Year 3–6 surveys and “My Behavior” for students in Early Stage 1 and Stage 1. Rather than indicting an actual decline in student behavior, this downward trend in “My Behavior” may indicate that the students have become more reflective and self-critical and have “progressed” to the stage of “Conscious Incompetence” as defined by Howell (1982). Howell suggested that when new competencies are being developed individuals go through stages starting with “Unconscious Incompetence.” In this stage, individuals are unaware of the existence of a particular skill and therefore also unaware that they are not proficient in the skill, “happily naïve,” according to Howell. In terms of values acquisition, prior to the explicit teaching and clarification of the values, students may have had only a superficial or limited understanding of what it means to be kind, respectful, inclusive, etc., and therefore rated themselves highly in regard to these “naïve” understandings of the values. An advance on this stage is to progress to “Conscious

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Incompetence” where individuals are now aware of the existence and importance of the undeveloped skill and also aware that they are not yet competent in enacting the skill. This stage is evidenced by teachers noting that after only a short period of explicit values education students were able to reflect on their behavior and analyze and articulate their “deficiencies” in values-related terms. As one teacher noted: “Students are discussing values that they are not yet displaying.” For example, what value are you not showing? Students respond “I wasn’t using respect.” After the explicit teaching, students had a more specific and deeper understanding of the multi-faceted nature of each value and perhaps were judging themselves against a more accurate and realistic standard. Evidence of a more sophisticated understanding was also provided by comparing the length and complexity of the descriptions of values that students wrote in the pre- and post-surveys. The average length of each example in the pre-survey was 17 words compared to 22 words per example in the post-survey. Some pre–post contrasts of the same student’s descriptions of “respect” are shown in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Contrast between examples of “respect” from student’s pre- and post-surveys ID 106

Example of respect – pre-survey To treat people kind and loving (Year 3)

118

It is good (Year 3)

134

Listening and being kind using my manners (Year 4)

609

Most of the time treat others the way I would won’t [want] to be treated (Year 5)

711

What I think of is when you have to Respect another person and people like your parents and teachers (Year 5)

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Example of respect – post-survey Play nice with them, care for them and don’t call them names. Respect and people use it by calling people their real name and not calling them idiots and stuff. We been (sic) learning about respect and intergrity (sic). Intergrity (sic) as may be seen as quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for ones action. Respect is being a kind person to others. Being not being mean (sic) or calling people names. That’s what respect means. Respect – When everyone respects everyone else for who they are and gets on with what they are doing. Also when people don’t tease other people. I’ve seen respect in action at school when people respect other peoples property and give there (sic) stuff back in good condition. We have to respect other people and give Respect to people [who] have there (sic) hand up and the teacher picks them and they start talking and another person is talking behind them and we have to listen to the teacher and give respect to the teacher when their (sic) talking to the class. Give the teacher respect and saying thankyou to your bus driver and lisening (sic) to the princabl [principal]

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These examples illustrate some of the progressions in students’ conceptualizations of what the values mean. Prior to the explicit teaching, most of the students tended to have vague notions about the values and, as indicated by the first two examples in Table 4.1, often perceived that the values meant “being good.” In the pre-surveys, generic terms such as “good,” “kind,” “nice,” “happy,” and “manners” accounted for almost half (45%) of the definitions that students provided. Similar to the last two examples in Table 4.1, 14% of students in the pre-surveys defined a value merely by restating the name of the value, while, like student 609 in Table 4.1, 9% of students recited a canon, typically “treat others as you would like to be treated.” This student’s post-survey example, where he indicates he can now see “respect in action at school” and describes how respect is evident, encapsulates the major change in the post-survey examples. After the explicit focus students were able to provide more concrete examples of how the values could be enacted and were also more “conscious” of the values around them. The student responses to the question in the post-survey that asked them to “name and give an example of a value” also revealed a larger and broader values vocabulary after the explicit teaching. As well as nominating all of the 9 National Values (examples provided below), 19 additional terms, each with a relevant example, were used to describe a range of related behaviors, including actions toward others, for example, kindness, support, and friendship/friendliness; personal attributes, such as truthfulness, effort, patience, courage, and [being] reliable; interactions with others, for example, cooperation, forgiveness, helping/helpfulness, [being] generous and sharing; and an awareness of concepts and qualities that promote social cohesion, such as equality, inclusion, empathy, and understanding. Thus, with the exception of a minority of students, the explicit teaching appeared to enable the majority of students to move beyond “unconscious incompetence” or superficial and rote definitions of values, to a stage where they could at least envisage and articulate a more elaborate understanding of specific ways in which the nine values could be “put into action.” These examples included Respect – When I wanted to tell a joke and Riley said “I don’t want to hear your stupid joke!” And then Oscar said: “Show some Respect for Jamsey I want to hear his joke!” And I told my Joke. And everyone laughed. (603) Integrity – When our teacher is out of the room we still do a lot of good things and do what we’re told even when he is not there. (154) Responsibility – Wene we do sumthingrone we are the wons to blame. [when we do something wrong we are the ones to blame] (403) Fair Go – Because at home when my borther [brother] took out the trash and the next time the trash had to be taken out again my mum told jack to do it but I said it is my tearn [turn] because jack did it last time. (415) Honesty – When I was playing 44 homes with my friends I was beening [being] honest when I didn’t get to the tree before they tipped me but they thought I did so I told them the truth. (607) Care and Considerations – I have worked with someone who I thought would get chosen last. (764) Freedom – We give each other freedom When we help each other. (604) Doing Your Best – when I do hard math challengers [challenges] and I never give up and neither do my friends. (613)

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According to Howell (1982), the stage after “Conscious Incompetence” is “Conscious Competence.” Becoming consciously competent often takes considerable time, and progress can be erratic as an individual may have an incomplete grasp of the skill, may learn and then forget, or may demonstrate the skill in some situations but not in others. As one student said, “I do not understand values and if I know it I fgetit [forget it]” (166). Mastery of the new skill is gradually attained either through experience or formal learning and some may need the assistance of extra tuition, extra practice, or even extrinsic rewards. In this stage, the skill is not yet “second nature” and conscious effort as well as the support and encouragement of an “expert” may be required. The staff at one school noted that the students appeared to be in the stage of conscious competence since the students were now demonstrating the values more consistently, although the decision to do so often required conscious deliberation as well as teacher scaffolding and support. The student responses to the questions in the post-survey regarding aspects of student behavior and school climate also support the notion that students were more conscious of their “inadequacies” and were “trying harder” to operationalize the values, with 98% of students indicating that since they had been learning about values, they “tried to be a better person” some, most, or all of the time. The importance of the teacher’s role in maintaining a consistent focus on explicating the values was also evident in the student responses with 97% of students perceiving that the teachers “talk to students about values” some, most, or all of the time. As well as talking about values, the importance of teachers modeling values was also noted by students. Aaahhh ... Respect!! Just that Mrs T showed respct (sic) by putting a word for Ryan so he could know how to spell it, but she wrote it on the board for anyone else who wanted it. (546) My teacher shows care and compasion (sic) because when we are upset, He makes us happy again by making us laugh. (417)

Teachers modeling, discussing, noticing, and rewarding values-related actions appeared to be a powerful combination as evidenced by the frequent reference to these modes of “instruction” in student responses to the survey question asking how students had learned about values. Other commonly stated activities were assembly, role plays, circle time, peer support, writing about values, homework, quotes from the bible, newspaper articles, stories about saints, posters and signs on school walls and windows, class or school rules, value of the week, poems and songs, prayer flags, Y-charts and mind-maps, and learning about values in specific lessons such as Religion, Personal Development Health and Physical Education, and even spelling. Obviously, teachers were actively embedding discussion and promotion of the values into a broad range of lessons and activities. This explicit teaching also incorporated opportunities for practical applications since many students also

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referred to the need to “show” the values, for example, “by trying to do it to others” and “by talking and whatching (sic) if it happens.” One teacher described how the simple explanations of the values at the weekly assemblies impacted on both the students and the teachers. The succinct description of each value has facilitated teachers talking the talk of values education and highlighting children who are walking the walk in using those values much better than before. Children have been noticeably attentive during Monday morning exclamations of each value and during awards ceremonies for children being rewarded for utilising the values. They appear to show genuine interest in what value is going to be delineated next and related to what were otherwise confusing concepts because they have been put into the context of the school.

Not only were teachers now “talking the talk,” their own behavior, in regard to how well they did, or did not, model the values was also under scrutiny from a more informed and “values conscious” student body. Some students commented on the mismatch between teacher talk and teacher practice: “Well My Teacher yells at me . . . My teacher is teaching that he doesn’t have paitanes [patience] (539) and “we have been doing ‘Understanding’ and the teachers expect us to have this value but most of the teachers don’t have the value in a lot of ways” (540). Though such criticisms were relatively rare, they indicate that the explicit teaching was making students not only more self-reflective, but also more analytical, thus exercising their “higher order thinking” skills.

Changes in School Climate and Student Well-Being The post-survey responses indicated that the majority of students believed that school was now a “happier place to be” (89%), other children were more friendly (93%), and the classroom was more peaceful (88%). The post-survey student comments supported these views with students noting many improvements in the playground, for example, sharing sports equipment and putting it away, giving others a turn, allowing others into games, picking up rubbish, older students helping younger students, doing kind things for others, and speaking respectfully to each other (i.e., not teasing or calling each other names). Changes in the classroom included listening when the teacher or other students are talking, boys working with girls, putting in effort to do your best, helping others with their work, and “being more mature finishing work and being more responsible” (778). Although there was less evidence collected from teachers about their perceptions of change, some teachers noted that the students had fairly quickly absorbed and acquired the “language of values” even though they were not yet proficient at putting the values into practice. The majority of the older students can discuss what each of the values mean although we are yet to see change in the way the students interact with each other using the values in the playground. (Teacher, School 8)

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At other schools, however, teachers noted that classroom and playground behavior was starting to improve, with “less hitting” and more students complimenting each other, greeting teachers, and using the language of values to resolve minor disputes. A common understanding of the values words and what they meant improved students’ capacity to communicate and conciliate in times of conflict. One student comment reflected how a common values language assisted this process: We’ve been learning about integrity and I see it in the playground when we’re playing games for example when we’re playing handball and someone gets out and does not take it out and someone says “you are not showing much integrity” and the person thinks to themself and says “no I’m not showing much integrity” and takes it out, then the game is play on and there is no more fighting anymore. (128)

Similarly, another principal described how the explicit teaching of just two values, respect and responsibility, in their school’s predominantly indigenous student population “equipped the children with a vocab[ulary] that they never had before.” Explaining to the students the “myriad of definitions of each of those values” and helping the students to understand that trust lies at the heart of responsibility and to reflect on and “own” their behavior assisted students to independently “sort out” playground problems and even to prevent problems. And what we’re finding is the children have a much greater awareness of where they may have gone wrong or where their mate might have gone wrong and they can verbalise it now which is great because before they would have just got angry and hit each other.

The principal noted that a common understanding of the values words and the kinds of actions that the words represented “shortened the conversation” when students were resolving disputes and in situations where teachers were assisting students to reflect on instances of inappropriate behavior. The power of the values vocabulary relied upon the whole school “speaking the same language” and on linking discussions to authentic experiences: “All the staff are using this language, the kids are using the language, and we have plenty of real life predicaments where we can refer to them.” Across other schools in the cluster, the students made frequent reference to how values such as “fair go,” “inclusion,” and “integrity” were applied in their games and interactions with the effect of creating a more socially harmonious environment. Fair Go Fair Go is where you give others more of ago (sic) if you’ve had more goes, and you share things instead of doing it all yourself. (430) incluetion [inclusion]¼ if someone has nothing or noone to play with let them in your game. (525) Fair go - I have showed fair go when there was a girl with a disability and [she] got out straight away but I said she wasn’t out. (764)

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In handball people do integrity in handball or as well people do sportsmanship and say great job or better luck next time and instead of going you’re so bad, or I got you out hahaha but when you’re nice it makes people really feel good. (127)

These quotes suggest that learning about values had heightened students’ awareness of the impact of their behavior on others. One of the pedagogical approaches employed by the catholic schools cluster to encourage and support student selfreflection was the use of the “awareness examen.” The awareness examen was a prayer that was conducted at the end of each day and provided a scaffold for students to remember their experiences throughout the day, give thanks for positive events, and see ways in which they could change or address any negative aspects. One kindergarten teacher focused her Most Significant Change (MSC) story around the impact of the awareness examen on her 5- to 6-year-old students. Despite some initial reservations about how effectively such young children could reflect on and articulate their thoughts, the teacher was surprised by the “depth” of their responses and felt that the process of reflecting on past and future events was developing both higher order thinking and a greater sense of optimism in her students. The other good thing about the awareness examen is it looks toward tomorrowand so the kids are, at the end of the day, thinking about what’s something they can do tomorrow to make it a good day. (MSC story – Teacher 2)

This teacher described how incidents of “dobbing” had decreased as the children were now giving each other compliments and striving to create positive interactions so that they could be part of another child’s remembrance of their “best thing from today.” Knowing in advance that they would have to reflect on their daily experiences, children were also approaching each day with greater optimism as they were looking to identify the “best thing” that happened to them. The examen helped the children to become not only more aware of how their behavior affected other children, but also made them conscious of the connection between their own thoughts and feelings. Students themselves noted a connection between their actions and feelings, identifying that “doing good deeds” often lead to enhanced feelings of well-being. Honesty- I have showed honesty by finding money on school grounds. Instead of keeping it I gave it to the teacher. I gave it to the teacher because it was the right thing to do. Being honest makes me feel good. (720). I fell [feel] heaps better when evryone (sic) dose [does] the right thing. (521)

Parent Surveys The parent surveys were designed to provide a measure of parent perceptions of their children’s behavior in the home context (Social behavior, Personal responsibility, and Attitude to school), as well as parent attitudes toward values education and their perception of the school environment (Beliefs about behavior and learning and

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School climate). Open-ended questions were also employed to gauge parent beliefs about values, their relationships with school staff, and any changes in their child’s behavior. The majority of the parent data were unmatched in order to provide anonymity, and independent-samples t-tests were conducted on responses from 200 parents in the pre-survey and 80 parents in the post-survey. Of the 80 parents who completed the post-survey, less than half (36) provided responses to the openended questions. The results from the pre–post analysis of parent surveys revealed that, although there was a trend for scores to increase across all of the scales, the only aspect in which there was a statistically significant difference was in parent perceptions of school climate (t ¼ 2.71, P < 0.05). Prior to the VASP initiative, parents already had positive perceptions of the schools as caring and supportive environments; however, the introduction of an explicit approach to teaching values was welcomed enthusiastically by the parents. As evidenced by the mean score of 3.7 (maximum of 4) on the pre-survey scale measuring parent beliefs about behavior and learning, parents strongly believed in the importance of teaching children values at school and also had strong beliefs about the link between children’s social and emotional skills and their academic learning. The parent comments also belied this enthusiasm for the values initiative, with parents nominating the 9 national values, as well as an additional 38 different “skills” and “qualities” they felt schools should help to develop in children. These included a range of “resiliency” skills such as being self-sufficient, tenacious, confident, courageous, imaginative, motivated, and creative, as well as interpersonal behaviors underlying effective social relationships, for example, courteous, helpful considerate, understanding, caring, compassionate, patient, generous, loving, and kind.

Generalizing Values in the Home Context The inability to detect a statistically significant difference in parent perceptions of change in their children’s behavior is not surprising, given the reduced number of parents who completed the post-survey and the short period of implementation. However, one parent noted that the program was in accord with “Catholic teaching” and was “amazed” that it had created such an impact in her child’s school “because our children have been taught respect, caring, giving. I mean they were taught giving in bucket loads at our school, you know . . . and for a program to still make a change, I think is enormous!” (MSC Parent story 2). While the majority of parent comments indicated that there was “no change” in their child’s behavior at home, a number of parents added “yet” and several suggested that the time frame was not long enough to “gather information of a reliable nature” (P071). Many parents reported that their children could now “verbalize values” but had “trouble putting them into action” (e.g., P111). Several parents acknowledged that this was still “an improvement” and that “even though outcomes may not be immediately obvious, these are life-long lessons to learn” (P115). These comments further support the notion that, for many children, just learning the language of

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values was a “progression” to the stage of conscious incompetence. One parent expressed appreciation for the school’s support in equipping his children with a better understanding of the values since this provided a “short-cut” to addressing disputes at home. What I have noticed is that both my kids are now using words like ‘respect’ to tell each other how they want to be treated. Before we would have had to explain the ‘value’ in more words. (511)

At another school, the value of the week was displayed in the parent newsletter as well as the local newspaper so that eventually the values language would filter through the school to the community. A peer support program involved students from Year 6 teaching the value of the week to small groups of students from Kindergarten to Year 5. A teacher at this school identified that this kind of “saturation” assisted in helping students to generalize the applicability of the values: “Using the nine core values in a wide variety of circumstances has allowed the students the ability to find the usability of these values embedded into all areas of their lives.” While a school-wide and at times community-wide approach was adopted by some schools to promote this kind of generalization, other schools implemented more focused class-level initiatives.

Classroom-Specific Values Pedagogy Rather than attempting a “blanket” school-wide coverage of all nine values, some of the schools adopted a “class-level” approach and focused on the values that were most conducive to the new learning paradigms that were being established. At one of the larger schools, two Year 5/6 classes were targeted for the project, owing to significant social difficulties and academic disengagement within this group. Flexible furniture arrangements, cooperative learning activities, and choices in social groupings supported the teaching of key values such as respect, integrity, and responsibility. In order to function in an ever-changing learning environment, students were confronted on a daily basis with the need to demonstrate these values. The survey responses from students in these classes indicated a predominance of examples of values, based on the “twenty-first-century learning tables” and the need to work cooperatively with others. “The new tables that we got have taught me to work with different people” (772). One of the teachers described how the new learning arrangements meant that everyday class activities now involved “choices” such as who to sit with and where to sit, and these choices required the students to interrogate and exercise their values. “You’re giving children the opportunity to make decisions, to work with others, to accept differences, to show compassion.” The teacher noted that the basis of children’s decision-making had changed during the year, and instead of just working with their friends, children were now electing to be in mixed-gender groups and selecting as peer tutors students who previously had been isolated, such as those with lower abilities and children from different cultural and racial backgrounds. The two class teachers felt the structural and pedagogical

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changes had created a classroom culture in which values were “naturally embedded” and provided opportunities for the children to go beyond “lip-service” to a “deeper lived practice.” The requirement for each group member to contribute to a combined learning process and product had created a “learning community” where collaboration was critical to success. Thus, students were recognizing the benefits of demonstrating integrity and responsibility and were helping to build these qualities in others by reminders such as “you’re not doing your bit, this is our work, come on we’re here to work together.” Although the students’ academic engagement and classroom conduct had improved noticeably, it was not evident that these behavioral changes had transferred to the playground or permeated through the rest of the school. One teacher reported that there was an increase in “awareness of inappropriate behaviour in the playground” and students were making “value judgements” about these incidents, while another teacher commented on the difficulties of instigating change in a “big and traditional school.”

Discussion Despite some variations in the way the VASP project was implemented across the cluster, there appeared to be some common impacts of the explicit teaching of values and the collaborative learning approaches, on the students and teachers within these schools. The student comments indicated an increased capacity to define and explain the values, and there was considerable evidence that student behavior was starting to change in response to the explicit teaching, with students acquiring both the words to express the values as well as a clearer conceptualization of how the values could be put into action. The advantages of the whole school approach seemed to be that all members of the school community shared the same language and the same understandings. Both teachers and parents noticed that this provided a “short-cut” for students to resolve their own disputes as well as for teachers and parents in situations where inappropriate behavior needed to be analyzed and addressed. The important role of “more expert others” such as teachers, parents, and peers in supporting and scaffolding children’s progression from ignorance to awareness to competence was evident. Class discussions, authentic problem-solving, integration of values into units of work across key learning areas, the awareness examen, and the daily choices and decisions attached to cooperative learning environments provided opportunities for students to reflect on their own behavior and the behavior of others and to practice and plan how they could act or respond differently “tomorrow.” While the values awards at assemblies may be regarded as a type of “extrinsic reinforcement,” the awards were also a public acknowledgment of what the schools “valued” in terms of student outcomes, that is, “prowess” in enacting values was given the same status as sporting, academic, or artistic accomplishments. Because humans tend to emulate significant others and adopt the values and practices in their immediate social context (Ryan et al., 2013), a school environment where values are modeled and incorporated into every facet of school life assists students to eventually integrate the

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school’s values as their own and reach Howell’s stage of unconscious competence by acting spontaneously and autonomously in accordance with those values. Overall, a focus on values in Catholic schools was “nothing new” and initially the teachers did not see that there would be a significant change in their own practice that already reflected an implicit approach to the inculcation of values. What changed after the introduction of the explicit focus and over the duration of the project was a greater commitment to equipping students with a values vocabulary and to finding ways of providing opportunities for students to discuss, apply, and reflect on the values. While many of the students may already have had a tacit understanding of values, acquired from home, school, or church, these and other students still benefited from the verbal, visual, and practical mediums that teachers used to define and clarify “concrete” examples. As noted by Kristjánsson (2017), a values-focused pedagogy represents a strengths-based approach that aims to further develop values that children already possess in nascent form. The role of the school and the teachers is to create the kind of environment that provides opportunities to practice values and that scaffolds and acknowledges this development.

Conclusion The final word goes to a student and a teacher, both from different schools who independently identified the transformative effect of an explicit values education program. When asked to describe how they had been learning about values, a Year 6 student simply stated, “We have been finding out what to do to be better people.” In a similar fashion, a teacher from a different school also recognized that when teachers set clear expectations for children and acknowledge their efforts, provide explicit examples, and act as good role models, schools can create an environment in which children can grow and flourish, not just socially, emotionally and academically, but also morally and spiritually. I guess the crux of the most significant change for our school is that the person children want to be and are asked to be, one who acts out of the goodness God made them in, is more attainable now and realistic because they’ve been shown how values can be implemented into their own lives.

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Implementing and Evaluating PRIMED for Character Education in Colombian Schools Professional Development A Cross-Cultural Collaboration Melinda C. Bier, Christopher D. Funk, Marvin W. Berkowitz, Nicole Bruskewitz, and Satabdi Samtani Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Character Education in Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The PRIMED for Character Education Conceptual Framework and Primary Translation Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Translating Research-Based PRIMED for Character Education Design Principles . . . . . . . . Brief History of PRIMED and Successful Implementations of PICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED in Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coschool Participant Recruitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Planning an Enhanced PRIMED Institute for Character Education –Colombia (PICE-C) . . . . Evaluating PRIMED Professional Development and Implementation Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Opening Retreat Satisfaction Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Satisfaction Survey Description and Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Satisfaction Survey Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pandemic-Related Changes to Data Collection Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED Focus Group: Description and Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Potential Differences Between the Expected In-Person Team Focus Groups Versus the Zoom Cross-Team Focus Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED Focus Group Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Immersive Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participants’ Examples and Perception of Changes Pre-Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participants’ Perceptions of the Interaction Between Their PRIMED Initiatives and the Challenges of the Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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M. C. Bier (*) · C. D. Funk · M. W. Berkowitz University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] N. Bruskewitz CoSchool, Bogota, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] S. Samtani Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, LA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_5

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Summary of Focus Group Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post (RPP) Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post Test Description and Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post Test Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Colombia is looking to build a new, peaceful society following 52 years of internal conflict. Many believe that the integration of character education in Colombian schools can make a significant contribution to improving the quality of education and the potential for lasting peace in post-conflict-era Colombia. One recent effort to provide research-based character education programming to Colombian schools is the PRIMED (Prioritization, Relationships, Intrinsic Motivation, Modeling, Empowerment, and Developmental Pedagogy) for Character Education Project. The project is being carried out through a cross-cultural partnership between the Center for Character and Citizenship (the US program developers and evaluators) and Coschool SAS (one of the most prominent providers of character education expertise and training in Colombia). Together, these partners set out to (1) provide high-quality professional development and (2) evaluate participants’ perceptions of the relevance, acceptability, and feasibility of PRIMED in their particular school contexts. The planned professional development and implementation support had three components: (1) a 5-day opening retreat, (2) an academic year of follow-up professional development and support, and (3) a culminating conference. In this chapter, we describe phase I of the project implementation and the ways in which evaluation strategies were reconceived in response to the global COVID pandemic. This project was supported by a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to Coschool SAS, Bogota, Colombia. Keywords

Character education · Educational leaders · Cross-cultural intervention

Introduction The development of student character, and the role schools can play in that effort, is a global priority. There is ample evidence of this global interest albeit under a variety of labels. In the United States, organizations such as Character.org, CharacterPlus, and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, as well as philanthropies such as John Templeton Foundation, Kern Family Foundation, and Bechtel Foundation, are testament to this interest. Globally, organizations such as the Templeton World Charities Foundation, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue in the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Education in Singapore, Coschool SAS in Colombia, and the HTC

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Educational Foundation in Taiwan are similarly examples of a much more far-reaching global impetus to implement character/virtue/moral education.

Character Education in Colombia Colombia has reached a key crossroad in its history as the country looks to build a new, peaceful society following 52 years of internal conflict. Education has not been a national priority for many years, but that is changing. Existing initiatives aimed at improving the quality of education and the prospects of peace in post-conflict era Colombia are beginning to focus on promoting professional development of principals and teachers. Rectores Líderes Transformadoras (Principals Leading Change) is a program offering training and accompaniment in educational leadership to principals. The Programa Todos a Aprender (Everyone will learn) developed between 2010 and 2014, and still operating today, focused on teacher training, among other elements, to ensure positive learning environments and gains in achievement on standardized tests in language and math. El Premio Compartir (Compartir Foundation Prize) recognizes outstanding principals and administrators assigning new prestige to the role of educators in society. Initiatives around citizenship education began with Programa de Competencias Ciudadanas (Citizenship Competencies) spearheaded by the National Ministry for Education (2011–2014), which established a set of national standards for citizenship accompanied by a curriculum. While these national efforts are a step in the right direction, in practice, what teachers receive is static information, limited professional development (if any) on the curricula, and no distinguishable training on how to implement character education in their schools and classrooms. Without sufficient professional development of educators, implementation of any educational innovation is likely to be shallow or nonexistent (Albers & Pattuwage, 2017). Indeed, without high-quality implementation in significant numbers of schools, the hope that Colombia’s K-12 educational system will produce safe environments and responsible, active, and peaceful citizens will not be realized. It is this need for systematic, deep professional development and widespread whole-school implementation of researchbased character education that led Coschool SAS to review existing character education programs and frameworks for their 1. 2. 3. 4.

Conceptual and programmatic appeal/alignment Availability of adequate professional development and implementation support Track record of successful international implementation and contextualization Potential to be scaled up, throughout Colombia and potentially other Spanishspeaking countries in Latin America

After a careful review of character education approaches that met these criteria, Coschool SAS began a partnership with the University of Missouri-St Louis, Center for Character and Citizenship, to bring the research-based PRIMED program to Colombia.

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The PRIMED for Character Education Conceptual Framework and Primary Translation Mechanism The PRIMED Framework of six design principles for implementing comprehensive character education is the culmination of two decades of work at the Center for Character and Citizenship, University of Missouri-St. Louis. It is based on a distillation of the most extensive collection, synthesis, and analysis of the scientific literature related to effective school-based character education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007; Berkowitz et al., 2017; Johnson et al., in press; Brown et al., in press). PRIMED is an acronym that stands for six broad principles (Prioritization, Relationships, Intrinsic Motivation, Modeling, Empowerment, and Developmental Pedagogy) for creating education experiences that nurture the flourishing of human goodness (Berkowitz, 2021). The principles are a result of the synthesis of the scientific literature, begun with the What Works in Character Education project and a vision that successful educational implementation initiatives enable the people in schools to own, master, implement, and continually refine and extend their character-promoting programming. The principles are defined as follows: • Prioritization involves making character development central to the school’s mission and purpose; it must be an authentic, intentional, and strategic priority in the school. • Relationships refer to intentionally and strategically nurturing healthy relationships among all stakeholders in the broadly defined school community. • Intrinsic motivation relies on fostering the internalization of core values and the authentic development of virtue and actively removing extrinsic motivators to promote students’ good behavior. • Modeling emphasizes the power of what students see in the adults around them; adults must take the responsibility to become and model the character they aim to nurture in students. • Empowerment includes the flattening of school and classroom governance structures and making authentically welcoming spaces for all stakeholder voices and positive actions. • Developmental pedagogy is about shifting pedagogy toward long-term outcomes, intentionally promoting the lifelong love of learning that has a lasting impact on the holistic quality of students’ lives and their contribution to a peaceful democratic society.

Translating Research-Based PRIMED for Character Education Design Principles While the Center for Character and Citizenship has disseminated PRIMED in multiple formats including print publications (scientific journals, chapters, and

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most recently a full-length book published in both English and Spanish), professional conference keynotes, short live and video presentations, and full-day workshops, PRIMED has primarily been translated into school-based practice via a 5-day team-based immersive experience called the PRIMED Institute for Character Education (PICE). PICE is aimed at school leadership teams that intend to use the PRIMED Framework to design and implement character education in their schools. PICE normally enrolls up to five school leadership teams made up of 4–6 members, including the school principal. PICE has had three primary goals: (1) immerse participants in the fundamental concepts and effective practices of character education; (2) provide team building experiences for the school leadership team members; and (3) support school assessment and strategic planning (Berkowitz, 2021) for implementing character education. Character Education Immersion. PICE is delivered in a concentrated 5-day block of time, typically with a full day each day of a work week (Monday– Friday). The majority of the first four days is spent exploring the concept of character and character education, and then studying the PRIMED model of six design principles for effective comprehensive character education and their respective research-based implementation strategies (Berkowitz, 2021; Berkowitz et al., 2017). PICE is grounded in the field of character education’s scientific knowledge base and adult learning theory. It includes a series of short lectures, small group discussions, individual and team reflections, and experiential activities. Cohort and Team Relationship Building. PICE promotes relationship and team building. This is accomplished through a series of small group activities, collaborative school analysis, and concludes with a full day of school team strategic planning. There is also an orchestrated series of “unity builders” (experiential activities designed to build relationships among all members of PICE cohort). These activities build from fairly simple and nonchallenging activities culminating on day 4 with a long and emotionally intense triadic experience. The targeted outcomes for all this relational work are (1) a network of dyadic relationships among the entire group, (2) a stronger sense of unity within the school teams, and (3) a sense of whole-group community. School Assessment and Strategic Planning. The school assessment work begins with school team reflections following each “unit” of the PRIMED material, with a worksheet for each reflection. Because PRIMED is an acronym for six big ideas (“design principles”), it is organized into six units. All participants are asked, by the end of day 4, to individually evaluate their school using the Character.org Eleven Principles Framework: Cultivating a Culture of Character (https:// character.org/11-principles-overview/). Day 5 is dedicated exclusively to processing the PRIMED reflection worksheets, collating, and processing the team members’ Eleven Principles evaluations, and engaging in collaborative strategic planning derived from these assessments and the school team members’ knowledge of their schools.

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Brief History of PRIMED and Successful Implementations of PICE PRIMED was first presented by invitation at the Defining and Measuring Character and Character Education Workshop at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2017 (https://www.nap.edu/read/24684/chapter/1). In 2018, it was listed as one of five evidence-based approaches in the Final Report of the US Federal Commission on School Safety (https://www2.ed.gov/documents/schoolsafety/school-safety-report.pdf). PICE (the primary translation mechanism for moving the research behind PRIMED to school practitioners) evolved from a St. Louis-based bootcamp for school leadership teams called the Summer Institute in Character Education (SICE) to become the PRIMED Summer Institute in Character Education (PSICE) to the current iteration, PRIMED Institute in Character Education (PICE). Although regularly delivered in St. Louis, PICE has been implemented in other US locales and is currently being implemented in pockets across the globe. PRIMED has been the core of a weeklong institute in Taiwan for a decade, parts of it have also been piloted in Spain, and it is in its first year of implementation in Guadalajara, Mexico (also funded by Templeton World Charities Foundation).

PRIMED in Colombia Coschool SAS is a private for-profit educational service provider founded in 2014. Coschool is currently one of the leading organizations focused on delivering character education professional development and implementation support to pre-K-12 schools and educators in Colombia. With funding from several philanthropic entities, including Templeton World Charities Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and NGOs such as Save the Children and World Vision, Coschool partnered with the US-based creator of PRIMED, the Center for Character and Citizenship, to develop and deliver contextually aligned PRIMED for Character Education. This cross-cultural partnership worked to create and pilot test high-quality educator professional development in two formats: (1) as an asynchronous PRIMED for Character Education course delivered in Spanish to educators in participating schools throughout Colombia, and (2) a near-ideal year-long in-person PRIMED for Character Education professional development and implementation support experience for private bilingual school leadership teams. This PRIMED professional development experience for school leadership teams was designed to be as near to the ideal implementation of PRIMED as possible. It included two components, a 5-day residential PICE to be facilitated by the original PRIMED research team followed by monthly schoolsite-based coaching by the Coschool implementation support experts, as well as other character education experts. In this chapter, we will not report on the implementation and evaluation of the online Spanish-language PRIMED course but will limit our reporting to the school leadership team-based version of PRIMED for Character Education professional development and implementation support.

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Coschool Participant Recruitment Ten pre-K-12 schools were initially targeted for recruitment based on their status as bilingual (English and Spanish) status and prior history with Coschool SAS as an educational service provider. The co-leader of Coschool approached each school owner to invite them to attend an informational webinar in which the American developer of the PRIMED program, Marvin W. Berkowitz, explained the program, the requirement that school heads attend the training as members of the school leadership teams, and answered questions. All interested schools were provided with a memo detailing the evaluation aspects of the program and the data collection requirements. The eight schools that wished to participate submitted applications that identified teams of between 5 and 8 English-speaking school leaders and paid a subsidized participation fee of $3000 USD per school. Although not required, all eight schools were considered well-resourced and academically high achieving in addition to being bilingual private schools. Using matched pairs random assignment, the eight schools were divided into two cohorts. In this chapter, we limit the scope of our reporting to the experiences and perceptions of the first cohort off our school leadership teams (N ¼ 25). It is important to note that the school teams began their participation in the “maskless” world of September 2019 and culminated in their Coschool PRIMED program participation in March 2021 during the “Delta variant” lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Planning an Enhanced PRIMED Institute for Character Education –Colombia (PICE-C) PICE-C had the same three goals: (1) immerse participants in the fundamental concepts and effective practices of character education; (2) provide team-building experiences for the school leadership team members; and (3) support school assessment and strategic planning (Berkowitz, 2021) for implementing character education. PICE-C was also designed to include all the learning activities and experiences of the previously described PICE implementations. Coschool leveled up the professional development with implementation support in three ways: (1) the 5-day school leadership team professional development was implemented as an immersive all-inclusive retreat referred to as the opening retreat; (2) an academic year of follow-up professional development, implementation support, and coaching sessions was provided; and (3) a grand in-person culminating conference to bring all participants together to present their progress and share their experiences with each other, the four Cohort 2 schools, as well as education ministry and funder representatives was planned. PICE-CO Opening Retreat: With the support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation, PICE-C, hosted by Coschool SAS, was delivered in a near-ideal immersive setting. Coschool arranged for exclusive use of a fairly secluded hotel in a small town outside Bogota. All participants lived in the all-inclusive retreat

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setting for the entire work week (Monday–Friday), including the implementation team from the Center for Character and Citizenship (University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA) and the Coschool character education team. The formal 35 h of instruction took place in a lovely and versatile atmosphere as ideally conducive to the highly interactive pedagogical strategies of PRIMED as the American developers could imagine. The exclusive use of the hotel for the PRIMED opening retreat enabled participants to easily and regularly move between the large conference room for short lectures, a central courtyard with numerous table and chair groupings for individual teams to comfortably gather for strategic planning, a lush outdoor area with lawn chairs for whole-group circle time, a hearth and crackling fire-facilitated individual reflection, and a large continuously open dining hall with large tables enabled groups to spread materials out while snacking. Most of the core PICE activities are intentionally designed to build relationships, and the all-inclusive retreat format of PICE-C greatly expanded the relational possibilities of a 5-day professional development experience – it turned every meal into an opportunity to get to know one another across school teams, the American PRIMED Facilitators and the Coschool service providers. The informal off-theclock opportunities for interacting in pairs promoted deeper conversations. The additional time participants spent together in the evenings or as a result of this residential design created a mission-focused comradery as well as spaces for members of different teams to build relationships. It also enabled participants to share fun purely recreational experiences such as marshmallow toasting and impromptu sing-a-longs. PRIMED Follow-Up Professional Development and Implementation Support: With the funding provided by Templeton World Charities Foundation and the educational consultation expertise of Coschool, PICE-C was able to include an academic year of follow-up support customized to the needs of the participating school teams. Monthly on-site consultations were delivered by the Coschool PRIMED coach. The coach provided an accountability buddy to the school leadership teams, identified particular needs, and generally nurtured individual school teams and members as they began to share their learning and to seek buy-in for their PRIMED for Character Education plans from additional faculty, staff, students, and parents. She also began to arrange what might be thought of as just-in-time professional development by appropriate experts, including members of the extended Coschool team, the Center for Character and Citizenship Facilitators, and other experts. The sessions were flexibly conducted: some were in-person, while others were virtual; some utilized English as the primary language, while others used Spanish; some were done with the entire cohort, while others were customized and delivered to individual schools. Indeed, every effort was made to meet the particular needs and capacity of the participants. The role of the school coach was instrumental in supporting the school leadership teams throughout the academic year, and her importance in helping school teams maintain their character education implementation intentions in the face of the COVID-19 crisis cannot be overstated.

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The PRIMED Culminating Conference: This event was originally designed as an in-person celebration that would reunite the original four schools, the American Facilitators, and the extended Coschool staff. The 2-day conference was intended to provide Cohort I schools with the opportunity to formally and informally share their PRIMED experiences with the next TWCF-sponsored cohort of schools, national educational policymakers, researchers, funders, and the media. COVID-19 group gathering and travel bans necessitated a radical rethinking of this plan, and the PICE-C Culminating Conference was rescheduled and redesigned to be held online in March 2021. The American facilitators and Coschool leadership team agreed that the most critical objective of the Culminating Conference was providing Cohort I schools with the opportunity to present their accomplishments to each other and share their experiences and insights with Cohort II so that they could begin their character education journey informed by the lessons Cohort I had learned. It was determined that these objectives could be accomplished using the Zoom videoconferencing platform, with its ability to do large group presentations and small group breakout sessions. Designed and orchestrated by an experienced large group facilitator, the Coschool team, American facilitators, Cohort I, and two school teams gathered online for the first Virtual PRIMED in Colombian Schools Conference.

Evaluating PRIMED Professional Development and Implementation Support Our evaluation strategy is built on Urban et al.’s (2014) model of evolutionary evaluation. Urban et al. make the case that intervention programs and evaluation methods are routinely mismatched and that the associated studies result in lost learning opportunities and wasted resources. The evolutionary evaluation model they present proposes that evaluation goals and methods can and should be matched to the appropriate life-cycle stage of the program being evaluated and that program development and evaluation should be linked as a program moves forward from the initiation phase to the dissemination phase of the program’s life cycle. While PRIMED professional development has been going on for some time with various versions being in different stages of a program life cycle, creation, and delivery of PICE-C are in Phase I-A of both the program and evaluation life cycles (Table 5.1). Given that PICE-C is a greatly enhanced version of the PICE with components that did not exist prior to this project, we deemed it appropriate to examine implementation and participant satisfaction using “post-only evaluation of participants’ reactions and satisfaction” (Urban et al., 2014) with their PICE-C experience. Consistent with this approach, we assessed participants’ satisfaction with the PICE-C immediately following the Opening Retreat at the conclusion of the follow-up professional development and coaching sessions, and following the PRIMED in Colombian Schools Culminating Conference. Data was collected using a PRIMED Professional Development Opening Retreat Satisfaction Survey,

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Table 5.1 Program and evaluation life-cycle stage alignment Initiation

Development

Program evolution Program is in initial implementation(s), either as a brand new program or as an adaptation of an existing program

Phase I-A

Program still undergoing rapid or substantial change/ adaptation or revision, after initial trials

I-B

Scale and scope of revisions or changes/ adaptations are smaller; most program elements are still evolving while a few may be implemented consistently

II-A

Most program elements are implemented consistently; minor changes may still take place as some elements may still be evolving

II-B

Evaluation evolution Examines implementation, participant and facilitator satisfaction. Uses process and participant documentation and assessment and postonly evaluation of reactions and satisfaction. Focuses on implementation, and increasingly on presence or absence of selected outcomes. Evaluation is postonly; outcome measures may be under development with attention to internal consistency (reliability). Examines program’s association with change in group outcomes, for these participants in this context. Uses unmatched pre- and post-test of outcomes, quantitative/qualitative assessment of change. Assessment of measure reliability and validity. Examines program’s association with change in group (and/or individual) outcomes, for these participants in this context. Uses matched pre- and post-test of outcomes, quantitative/ qualitative assessment of change, verifying measure reliability and validity.

Process and response

Change

(continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) Stability

Dissemination

Program evolution Program is implemented consistently; participant experience from one implementation to the next is relatively stable (formal lessons or curricula exist) Program has formal written procedures/ protocol and can be implemented consistently by new well-trained facilitators

Phase III-A

Evaluation evolution Assesses effectiveness using design and statistical controls and comparisons (control groups, control variables or statistical controls).

III-B

Program is being implemented in multiple sites

IV-A

Program is fully protocolized and is being widely distributed

IV-B

Assesses effectiveness using controlled experiments or quasiexperiments (randomized experiment; regressiondiscontinuity). Examines outcome effectiveness across wider range of contexts. Multi-site analysis of integrated large data sets over multiple waves of program implementation. Formal assessment across multiple program implementations that enable general assertions about this program in a wide variety of contexts (e.g., meta-analysis).

Comparison and control

Generalizability

appreciative focus group interviews, and a retrospective pretest. In the following section, we describe the data collection mechanisms and our findings.

Opening Retreat Satisfaction Survey Satisfaction Survey Description and Administration A simple, time, and cost-effective means for evaluating professional development is to survey participants at the conclusion of the learning experience. Surveys are easy to create, simple to administer, and have a relatively high response rate. The practice

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of surveying participants of professional development/training was introduced in 1959 (Kirkpatrick, 1994, Kirpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) and has become the most popular means of establishing whether the participants of professional development felt the conditions created were conducive to their learning and what might be changed in future iterations to improve the learning experience. Accordingly, at the conclusion of the 5-day PRIMED Institute, participants were asked to complete a satisfaction survey to capture their perceptions of the relevance, quality, and applicability of the PRIMED professional development to their specific contexts. Specifically, the PRIMED Training Satisfaction Survey included 35 Likertlike questions covering diverse areas of participants’ experiences with the PRIMED Institute, including language fluency and linguistic concerns, relevance and practicality of PRIMED, the quality of presenters, materials, and activities, as well as impressions of the venue and logistical arrangements. With the exception of the fluency questions, which were rated on a 0–100 slider, all the Likert-like scales ranged from 1 to 5, with anchors varying based on the nature of the questions. For general statements regarding the relevance and practicality of the training, anchors ranged from “1 ¼ strongly disagree” to “5 ¼ strongly agree.” For statements regarding the presenters/facilitators as well as those covering venue amenities and logistics, anchors ranged from “1 ¼ very dissatisfied” to “5 ¼ very satisfied.” For learning activities and materials, anchors ranged from “1 ¼ not at all useful” to “5 ¼ very useful.” In addition to the Likert questions, one ranked-choice question asked participants to rank the six PRIMED components participants in order of the most- to leastinteresting/relevant. One additional multiple-choice question asked participants to select the PRIMED component they would most like to focus on improving in their school. Finally, 10 open-ended questions provided participants the opportunity to give more detailed feedback on their PRIMED training experiences, as well as their existing character education programs and future plans.

Satisfaction Survey Results Overall, participants (N ¼ 16) rated the applicability and quality of the PRIMED Institute quite highly (Table 5.2). Specifically, participants’ mean ratings of the relevance of the PRIMED training (M ¼ 4.88) as well as its practicality to their needs and interests (M ¼ 4.88) were both very high. In addition, satisfaction with facilitators/presenters and the utility of learning activities ranged from a low of M ¼ 4.31 (the PowerPoint presentations) to a high of M ¼ 4.94 (presenters’ knowledge). Moreover, while English-language fluency varied and some participants would have preferred to have a simultaneous translator, in general participants did not find it difficult to understand the English-speaking presenters (M ¼ 1.38). Indeed, participants reported being both highly satisfied with (M ¼ 4.88) and engaged in (M ¼ 4.69) the PRIMED Institute. Ultimately, the satisfaction survey supports the conclusion that participants (1) judged the PRIMED Institute to be culturally relevant, applicable, and useful to their educational work in Colombian schools; and (2) found

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Table 5.2 PICE-C opening retreat satisfaction survey, rated questions, and descriptive statistics (N ¼ 16) Question Min Fluency (0 ¼ not at all fluent to 100 ¼ perfectly fluent) English comprehension fluency 40 English speaking fluency 10 English reading fluency 60 General reaction (1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree) Relevant to my school 4 Practical to my needs and interests 4 Presented at the right level 4 Presenters/facilitators (1 ¼ very dissatisfied to 5 ¼ very satisfied) Facilitator’s knowledge 4 Facilitator’s presentation style 4 Facilitator covered material clearly 4 Facilitator responded well to questions 4 Learning activities (1 ¼ not at all useful, to 5 ¼ very useful) Printed materials 3 PowerPoints 3 Lectures and explanations 4 Icebreakers (at the beginning of the session) 3 Reflections on strengths and opportunities for improvement 4 Closing circle activity 4 Discussion activities 4 Institutional planning activity 4 Audiovisual materials 3 Anecdotes and stories 4 Coschool staff participation (1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree) Enjoyed Coschool staff’s facilitation/presentation style 3 Enjoyed Coschool staff’s facilitation of the evaluative conversations 3 English as primary (Q1, 1 ¼ not at all to 5 ¼ very much so) language (Q2, 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree) Found it difficult to understand because it was in English 1 Would prefer to have a simultaneous translator 1 Amenities and logistics (1 ¼ very dissatisfied to 5 ¼ very satisfied) Room where the lectures were held 3 Hotel rooms 3 Food 3 Snacks 3 Coffee and tea 3 Transportation (if you took the bus) 2 Daily schedule 3 Duration of institute 4 Hotel overall 3

Max

Average

100 100 100

85.88 75.75 88.38

5 5 5

4.88 4.88 4.75

5 5 5 5

4.94 4.63 4.63 4.88

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

4.50 4.31 4.75 4.69 4.63 4.75 4.81 4.75 4.44 4.63

5 5

4.38 4.44

3 5

1.38 1.81

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

4.00 4.56 4.50 4.50 4.56 4.33 4.50 4.56 4.69 (continued)

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Table 5.2 (continued) Question Overall satisfaction

(1st question, 1 ¼ very dissatisfied to 5 ¼ very satisfied) (2nd question, 1 ¼ not at all engaged to 5 ¼ highly engaged) Overall, how satisfied were you with the PRIMED Institute? Overall, how engaged did you feel during the institute?

Min

4 3

Max

5 5

Average

4.88 4.69

Fig. 5.1 Wordle of participants’ PICE-C descriptors

the CCC and Coschool staff to be knowledgeable, effective trainers/leaders of the PRIMED curriculum (Fig. 5.1). Interestingly, participants ranked the interest/relevance of the PRIMED components by accentuating the first alphabet of the acronym. As elaborated in Fig. 5.2, Prioritization was clearly ranked the highest, with Relationships and Modeling clustered together as the next important interest. Intrinsic Motivation was ranked third, followed by Empowerment and Developmental Pedagogy, which were ranked lower in relevance by most participants. Surprisingly, no participants selected Prioritization as the component of PRIMED they would most like to focus on in their schools (Table 5.3). Intrinsic Motivation (n ¼ 5) was the most frequently selected component, followed by Modeling (n ¼ 4) and then Empowerment as well as Developmental Pedagogy (both, n ¼ 3). One explanation for this seeming contradiction may be that while participants felt that Prioritization of character education was the most interesting/relevant component in general; their particular schools, having already prioritized character education to some degree, needed to begin the process of implementing other, student-facing pedagogies like Intrinsic Motivation and Modeling (Fig. 5.3). Indeed, participants’ responses to two of the open-ended questions may support this interpretation. The first asked participants to describe their existing virtue/ character education programs. All of the participants indicated that their schools were already engaging in character formation. Most frequently, participants referenced these local, preexisting school programs in terms of “values” education and “social-emotional” learning. A second question asked participants which aspects

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PRIMED topics ranked in order of Relevance (mutually exclusive ranks from 1-6) Developmental Pedagogy Empowerment Modeling Intrinsic Motivation Relationships Prioritization 0

2

Rank 1

4

Rank 2

6

8

Rank 3

10

Rank 4

12

Rank 5

14

16

Rank 6

Fig. 5.2 PICE-C opening retreat satisfaction survey; frequencies graph for interest/relevance ranked question Table 5.3 PICE-C opening retreat satisfaction survey; frequencies table for focus of improvement question Which of the components of PRIMED would you most like to focus on improving in your school? Prioritization Relationships Intrinsic motivation Modeling Empowerment Developmental pedagogy

Count (N ¼ 16) 0 1 5 4 3 3

Percentage 0 6.25 31.25 25 18.75 18.75

of PRIMED were most challenging to them personally. Intrinsic Motivation, Empowerment, and Prioritization were mentioned most frequently (three times), with the next most frequent, Modeling, being mentioned twice. In short, while some participants still regarded Prioritization as the primary challenge, others saw Intrinsic Motivation, Empowerment, and Modeling to be more important. It is likely that the state (and content) of a school’s existing character education programs informed which components of the PRIMED model participants find most salient to their needs. Other open-ended questions provided additional evidence that participants found the PRIMED training to be relevant and useful in their schools. The word cloud (Fig. 5.1) was derived from an open-ended question asking participants for three

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Components of PRIMED would you most like to focus on improving in your school. 0 6.25 18.75

31.25 18.75

25

Prioritization Modeling

Relationships Empowerment

Intrinsic Motivation Developmental Pedagogy

Fig. 5.3 PICE-C opening retreat satisfaction survey; frequencies graph for focus of improvement question

words they would use to describe the PRIMED training. Relevant and interesting (in orange) were among the words most frequently used to describe PRIMED. These were followed by useful, inspiring, and motivated (in green). In short, while the PRIMED model was developed within the United States, it appears to retain strong applicability and utility in the Colombian context. Interestingly, participants felt that the primary use of English by the CCC presenters was not highly problematic as many participants were fairly fluent in English (MComprehension ¼ 85.88 out of 100). However, the assistance of Coschool staff, bilingually fluent in English and Spanish, was appreciated, and one participant agreed that future trainings should include a simultaneous translator. Certainly, language appears to pose some additional challenges for participants in international projects, though the degree of the challenge will be higher or lower, based, of course, on participants’ familiarity with the language of instruction (in this case, English). Finally, participants were asked about their concerns and the support they needed as they move forward. Responses suggest that some participants expected difficulties in finding time to engage in meaningful character education and relationship building, especially when balancing the academic mission of the schools.

Pandemic-Related Changes to Data Collection Plan In May of 2020, at the conclusion of Cohort I’s first academic year of PRIMED implementation American researchers were scheduled to visit each of the Cohort I schools to conduct (1) a PRIMED School Site Implementation Observation Checklist/Audit and (2) in-person group interviews with the PICE-C school team members.

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Due to COVID-19 lockdowns in both the United States and Colombia, this plan became logistically impossible. Given the degree to which school faculties all over the world were experiencing severe staff shortages, stress and burnout as well as the difficulty, if not impossibility, of finding a common time when the 5–8 home-bound members of each school leadership team were all available, the researcher, in collaboration with the Coschool Coach, investigated the mechanisms for adapting the data collection plan. We sought to minimize the burden of data collection for participating educators in three ways: (1) limiting the number of interviews to be conducted to two, (2) limiting the number of school representatives asked to participate to one per participating school team in each focus group, and (c) employing an Appreciative Inquiry (Preskill & Catsambas, 2006; Shuayb et al., 2009). It is important to note that we did not conduct a full Appreciative Inquiry; instead, we simply took an appreciative approach to framing of questions (Shuayb et al., 2009) in order to elicit participant’s positive stories and examples of their character education initiatives. We felt this was a responsible adaptation that enabled us to meet both our data collection responsibility to the project funder and our ethical responsibility to minimize the additional stress-deficit or problem-focused questions about the early adoption of an educational innovation might produce for participants.

PRIMED Focus Group: Description and Administration The first focus group was conducted on June 3 and included the school head/ principal for each school, and the second focus group was conducted with one of the other leadership team members from each school. Focus groups were held using the software application Zoom. Although the interviewer and participants had met during the PRIMED Institute Training, each interview began with all participants stating their name and school affiliation to help make the transcription of the recording more accurate. Informed consent and assent were reviewed, including a reminder that participation was voluntary, and that the data belonged to the participant and could be withdrawn at any time. Zoom norms, which were somewhat unfamiliar at the time, were briefly discussed. The researcher shared her screen with the interview protocol slide deck and requested permission to record the session. The slide deck contained six slides – each question and associated probes. Each question was read out loud and then passed by name to the first respondent who answered the questions and then called on another participant. There was some degree of chiming in with “Oh yes, I agree” and “Oh I forgot to say that”; however, each school representative answered the question fully before we moved on to the next slide/question.

Potential Differences Between the Expected In-Person Team Focus Groups Versus the Zoom Cross-Team Focus Groups In-person team focus groups have some similarities and some differences with Zoom-based meetings. Similarities first: As they would in a site-visit focus group,

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participants were allowed to expand on their experience and reflect on what and how they wished to share. As with our planned in-person focus groups, we used the preplanned questions, encouraged free and open expression, left “wait-time” when asking questions, were sensitive to those who might be more hesitant or shy, and generally sought to create an inviting and nonjudgmental atmosphere. Likewise, during the Zoom focus group, the interviewer could interject, ask for clarification on terms or other facts, or ask follow-up questions just as they would in-person. Differences between plans and execution: we can only speculate as to how the Zoom focus groups might compare to the in-person focus groups we had planned but could not complete. Where we would have done a separate focus group for each of the teams, under the strained COVID conditions, we did one focus group with representatives from all the leadership teams, and one focus group with teachers from all the teams. The focus groups appeared to work well, and everyone participated in describing their schools’ efforts and openly reflecting on the researcher’s questions. Participant answers were lengthy – with representative answers ranging from 570 words to well over 1000 words each. They shared their personal opinions, the school administration’s opinion, and stories of success and failure. On the negative side, interviewing all the leadership teams together probably limited the number of stories we would hear. Everyone listened as the other participants answered the researcher’s questions. People generally do not wish to be redundant. So, once one group brought up a topic, such as how the trainers used modeling effectively, no one else is likely to do more than agree with what has been said. If we had had the opportunity to do a focus group with each team, we may well have gotten a story about appreciating the modeling in the training from each group rather than one story and several thumbs-up.

PRIMED Focus Group Results Although two focus groups were implemented, the researcher has taken the liberty of drawing examples across these two groups of participants. To more easily allow the reader to differentiate between the role of the speaker, we refer to the school owner/ head/principals as leaders and other school leadership team members as teachers.

Immersive Experience Participants in both focus groups commented on the valuable and unusual opportunity the immersive PICE-C afforded them to be totally focused on important aspects of their schools and what they wanted for themselves, their colleagues, and their students. An educational leader noted the gift of time the PICE offered: “One of the most valuable things for us was to be able to spend five days thinking about character education without the distractions that we normally get in school. Being able to dive in really deeply into things that we’re doing at school, and how we can align. And I think it was a really great team booster for our leadership team, and for our thinking on these

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topics. I think that was really, really valuable . . .. just the opportunity to discuss all those aspects with our leadership team in an uninterrupted way was fantastic.” All participants in both focus groups praised the PICE-C (sometimes referred to as the seminar, training, or Institute) they had attended, recounting a number of strengths. One school leader argued that the success of the program lay in the “coherence in the persons who led the project”, saying, “They live character . . .. walk the talk . . .. and model.” Several school leaders noted the strength of the teaching strategies, with one saying that what most impacted them “was that everything was modeled . . .. I think that was amazing because usually when you go to a training everything is just theory, right?” The importance of having trainers model the values and activities they advocate is a PRIMED principle. One teacher was very empathic in declaring, “Well, I have to say that, of course, I totally agree with everyone here . . . In my case what was really valuable, was the modeling done during the seminar. The modeling was, for me, impressive, it was, ‘Wow! Okay, this is what we’ve got to do.’. . . because we’re role models for our students. So we need to start by doing this.” One leader focused on the way the PICE-C materials enabled their team to see the feasibility of the PRIMED Framework for their team, saying, “This training gave us the idea that it’s not something new. I mean, that it’s almost something that we have, but now we have this structure, and to organize, and prioritize what we need to do . . . That’s why today we feel empowered.” This was accompanied by nods and head bobs from the other school leaders. This sentiment was echoed by the teachers who expressed appreciation for the PRIMED Framework and its adaptability to their particular school contexts saying they were “very impressed by the way . . . PRIMED was not a program that needed to be followed step by step.” Other teachers nodded their heads with one chiming in that “everything that we learned, it was really customized everything, because it wasn’t something you have to follow just like that, like a curriculum . . . that you have to just adhere to it. But we were just taking what was useful for us. So I think that flexibility, for us, we found it very good.” Leaders expressed appreciation for the opportunity to compare experience, with one saying “For me the thing that I really enjoyed the most was that time of sharing experiences with people from other schools.” Another concurred, saying that “the open share experience that we had was amazing.” Another educator appreciated the networking opportunities, saying, “The way the institute was structured – it was a great opportunity, not only for us to build relationships amongst the members of our groups, but also to build relationships with all the other participants.” This then carried over to how they worked when back in their school. “And once I came back from the session and started rethinking about everything that I had learned, I always quoted that Maslow comes before Bloom [meaning safety comes before higher order thinking]. We are [already] a strong academic school. And then . . . we stopped talking about the importance of academics per se, [instead] giving the importance to relationship building between the student and the teacher, and between the leaders and the teachers, and between teachers and teachers. So this was a year of building relationships. And that was what I brought back from [the PRIMED training] that week.”

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Participants’ Examples and Perception of Changes Pre-Pandemic One leader related how the school leadership team returned from the PICE and felt an obligation to model the relational principle of PRIMED in how they shared the learning they experienced at PICE with the rest of the faculty: “I think that with PRIMED, we started building relationships. Then we trained them, [the teachers], the counselors. We felt super, super empowered with the PRIMED model and we made a Professional Learning Community. So people had a lot of laughs, a lot of comments, a lot of positive vibes and energies, and things were totally different.” It seemed that team building during PICE-C was successful. One teacher explained that the teachers that went to the PICE have become more authentic with each other and have extended this to how they interact with students in class: “Nowadays, we start class by asking students, how are they feeling, but really intentional and really deep. Teachers are expressing themselves vulnerable with kids like, ‘Today, I had a bad morning. Things are very different.’” A clear example of a shift toward a more relational and empowering approach came from the leader of a school with a long tradition of what is to occur on opening day each year. As the school leader explained, “We usually start the school year where every little kid, or every student has to sit down and listen to everything that the board of directors has to say. [Then] the teachers start doing a mini-intro about themselves.” In other words, students’ first day of the semester is usually spent passively listening to adult speeches and introductions in neat rows of chairs. Based on the PRIMED principles of empowerment and relationships, the leadership team felt they needed to reconceive the day to be “totally student-centered.” In stark contrast to tradition, the faculty planned a whole day of student interaction rather than one-way communication, “We started doing different activities that involve the kids, and they felt that they were heard, okay? – that their voice was important. That . . . it’s not only academic, it’s also the positive relationships they have among themselves.” Each focus group yielded stories about how the PICE-C had helped them become more relationally connected to their students and how that resulted in a stronger sense of community. The example above of how one school radically reconceived their opening day to better meet the needs of students and teachers was specifically attributed to what they learned in the PICE about how important the beginnings of relationships are, and how important it is to build in time and activities for students to become comfortable and feel seen. The educators who made their opening day 1 filled with interactive activities rather than the usual informational but dry series of lectures said they did so “because we learned that beginnings are really important. And we learned that during the seminar. So we said, ‘Okay. The beginning of the year has to be something totally different from what they have lived during all these years.’ So it was satisfying for us to see. . . those students’ faces and their emotions on this first day of school. So it was really good.” Another example of a PICE-C-inspired school activity aimed at building staff-tostudent and student-to-student relationships was offered during the teacher focus group: “This year we decided to do something different. What about if we just play

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with kids, we just listen to the kids when we get to the school? So when they got to school, we got everybody in the gym. And we gave them like half an hour to talk about their vacation time. They were like, “Okay. What’s going on? We’re not having everything so strict . . .. And it worked so well. The kids were so happy that they felt the difference.” An educational leader explained that the relational focus of the PRIMED Framework and Coschool’s implementation support led to a change in her perspective that enabled a fundamental change in the culture of the school: “This whole thing about thinking about relationships first, and actually knowing that we have to improve the ways we were relating – me as a leader with my principals, and principals with their teachers, and teachers with their students. It really changed the whole process, because we were trying to implement new methodologies in our school, and we had to actually shift into another way of relating to have buy-in from teachers and from students, and from parents. So Coschool and the PRIMED program was very crucial in a moment where the school was actually looking for ways of moving from probably a contrived belief, a contrived culture to a more collaborative one. So for us, that was a major thing. I mean, a major shift in the culture of the school, and really helped us move forward.” All participants mentioned the unexpected opportunity the program created to build relationships among schools – schools which had previously only seen themselves as competitors were sharing strategies and experiences. One teacher expressed surprise at how rewarding and generative the experience of collaborating with other school teams could be and what a rare experience it was: “I think that we’re building something even bigger than just in our schools, thinking of relationships among our students, teachers, the administrative area. But among all the schools that are here right now [on this zoom], because I know and I lived through an experience in which I visited St. George School. It was amazing how they were so willing to help us, so willing to give us the information about how they’re doing things.”

Participants’ Perceptions of the Interaction Between Their PRIMED Initiatives and the Challenges of the Pandemic On March 20, 2020, the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, declared a mandatory nationwide quarantine due to the pandemic. The focus groups described here were conducted on June 3 and 4, 2020, approximately 2.5 months into Colombia’s COVID-19 lockdown. While the six focus group questions intentionally did not make explicit reference to the pandemic and most participants’ answers reflected pre-pandemic events, some participants did offer comments and/or examples of how COVID-19 impacted their PRIMED-related work. In one way or another, all participants in both focus groups expressed the sentiment that the pandemic was having a dramatic and potentially traumatic impact on their school communities. One leader told how Character Education, with its relational emphasis, had come to have “a very important place at school, because the academic issues are

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important . . . but the situation that we are living now [in the pandemic] has moved us to think about us, to think about how do we know ourselves? In crafting their collective response to the situation, her team had to contend with skepticism that teachers would be able to help students feel cared for through a computer screen. They wondered, “How do we connect with others? How do we manage empathy? How do we manage our emotions . . . it’s very important to achieve those skills to live, and to connect the academic issues with the emotions . . . and to talk about that.” Introducing a new relational practice, they sought to make themselves available: “We have a face to face,. . . [asking] where do students need to connect . . . not to learn . . . only to talk. To talk and to share their experiences, and to see [each other and us] through the computer, but to be together.” At the time the focus groups were conducted, the pandemic was 2 months old. One school leader explained, “We started feeling a . . . sense of fatigue, and overwhelm regarding the staff, and the teachers, and everyone at the leadership team . . .. They needed to learn every day something new, and they weren’t feeling good. That sense of overwhelm, they were transmitting that to kids.” In response, the staff surveyed students, getting frightening responses that mirrored their own sense of being overwhelmed. Students said, “We are overwhelmed,” “We have a lot of academics,” “Teachers, they don’t listen. We are just grades.” The school leader reported being surprised by the severity of the situation, saying, in essence: “Oh my God, we need to stop . . . [and] do something different.” They brought in “psychologists and coaches” and “started speaking with our teachers and caring more about them. I mean, we left a little bit the academics on the side, and we started taking care of them.” Another leader told how they had started, naturally, being concerned about the effects of the pandemic on the students. Over time, however, they had come to realize that “we need to care about the people that we have on top of the students, because, if not, inside of the classes they are going to vomit their stress and their lack of tranquility or whatever. So, we started changing the side, because we were always thinking on students, students, students. Now, we switch a little bit and we started caring with teachers.”

Summary of Focus Group Findings In this chapter, we focus on PICE-C participants’ experience and perceptions as to the relevance, acceptability, and feasibility of PRIMED for CE in the school context of private, bilingual, academically focused schools. In summary, we can conclude that certain aspects of their PICE-C experience were particularly salient for these participants: (a) Training – Modeled: Participants were effusive regarding the effectiveness of modeling what we were teaching in the way that we taught it. While this took place pre-COVID, this in-person weeklong training laid the groundwork for effectively continuing to support them from a distance.

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(b) Training – Cohort Collaboration: Several participants appreciated the opportunity to collaborate and discuss CE with educators from other schools. This improved their understanding of CE but also provided a network for sharing their implementation struggles and successes that were far from the norm and which they particularly valued. (c) Program – Flexibility: Participants commented positively on the flexibility of the program, noting that it did not impress unwanted structure on them but rather provided ways to think and suggested options from among which they could pick which worked best for their situation. While this was our intended process, even pre-COVID, this flexibility became even more important as COVID strains pushed aside all nonessential concerns and activities. They could hang onto anything we provided that would keep them afloat and leave anything that seemed too heavy to carry. (d) Program – Relational: Lastly, while the CE training was effective, the shift in relational perspective – from their extreme academic focus and expectations to more appropriately situating academics in a moral and relational school community that more highly valued the well-being of students and colleagues – was also notable. Several participants explicitly expressed their perception that they were better prepared to meet the challenges created by COVID because of their participation in the PRIMED program. They felt the emphasis each school had previously placed on building relationships for character education implementation seemed to have provided a foundation for the extreme challenges associated with moving their programming from the well-understood face-to-face teaching and learning format to a new and often unfamiliar online/virtual environment, a positive outcome that was unforeseeable but extremely significant. Looking across the Opening Retreat Satisfaction Surveys and the follow-up Focus Groups, we feel confident that, at least in terms of this nearly ideally supported academic year of implementation, participants perceived the program as highly relevant, acceptable, and feasible.

PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post (RPP) Test In a retrospective pre–post test (RPP) program or training, participants are asked to simultaneously assess themselves on a given factor at the time of the assessment and at a specific time prior to their participation in an intervention (Nimon et al., 2011). According to several scientific literature reviews (Nimon & Allen, 2007; Little et al., 2020), the empirical evidence for the RPP’s economy, efficiency, and validity as a means of assessing individual-level changes in knowledge, skill, attitudes, and behaviors is superior to the more traditional pre-test, intervention, post-test model. Advocates argue that this method is more accurate, more convenient, adaptable to a variety of contexts, and more acceptable to adult learners than traditional testing.

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PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post Test Description and Administration In this study, we used an RPP to assess participants’ perceptions of their individuallevel understanding, appreciation, and practice of character education and each of the six PRIMED design principles, both at the time of the assessment and when they began the PICE- Culminating Conference, using a Likert-like scale, where 0 ¼ none, 1 ¼ very little, 2 ¼ moderate, 3 ¼ somewhat high, and 4 ¼ strong. While there are no definitive guidelines for how an RPP should be structured, the researcher reviewed the RPP literature and followed the formatting suggestions most frequently and cogently argued, including, (1) providing clear instructions to respondents; (2) using less than seven Likert-type response categories; and (3) asking for the “post/now” response before asking for the “pre/then” response, using formatting to draw the respondents attention to this intuitively backward formatting (Nimon et al., 2011). The RPP was delivered online via the Qualtrics platform. As with all other PICE-C data collection mechanisms, invitations to participate were sent out via email from the Coschool coach.

PRIMED Retrospective Pre–Post Test Results Paired t-tests were conducted on the retrospective data to determine whether respondents (N ¼ 18) believed they had experienced increased understanding, appreciation, and practice of both character education in general and the six individual PRIMED components individually. Results strongly support the conclusion that participants believed they had grown significantly in each of these areas. Indeed, t-tests were statistically significant at the p < 0.001 level for all but one of the pairs, with all but five pairs showing a full point increase or more. The highest differences (>1.30) appeared in the understanding (mdiff ¼ 1.33), appreciation (mdiff ¼ 1.44), and practice (mdiff ¼ 1.33) of Prioritization, as well as in the understanding (mdiff ¼ 1.39) and appreciation (mdiff ¼ 1.50) of Intrinsic Motivation, the appreciation (mdiff ¼ 1.33) of Developmental Pedagogy, and the practice (mdiff ¼ 1.33) of Empowerment. These results appear to align with results from the satisfaction survey, in which participants tended to rank Prioritization and Intrinsic Motivation as the most relevant, as well as selecting Intrinsic Motivation, Empowerment, and Developmental Pedagogy as areas on which they sought to focus in their schools. In short, the results of the retrospective survey provided some evidence of the PRIMED training’s effectiveness in increasing participants’ understanding, appreciation, and practice of the PRIMED Framework. Tangentially, it also offered additional support for the PRIMED Framework’s relevance to Colombian schools as it seems unlikely that participants would have reported increasing their practice of PRIMED if they had found it to be irrelevant or inappropriate to their school contexts (Table 5.4).

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Table 5.4 PICE-C Retrospective Pre–Post (RPP) descriptive statistics and t-test results (N ¼ 18) Construct Understanding

Appreciation

Practice

PICE-C components Character education Prioritization Relationships Intrinsic motivation Modeling Empowerment Developmental pedagogy Character education Prioritization Relationships Intrinsic motivation Modeling Empowerment Developmental pedagogy Character education Prioritization Relationships Intrinsic motivation Modeling Empowerment Developmental pedagogy

Mean Before 2.44 2.44 2.72 1.94 2.72 2.33 1.94 2.89 2.39 3.06 2.00 3.11 2.33 2.06 2.44 2.44 2.72 1.89 2.89 2.11 2.06

After 3.72 3.78 3.67 3.33 3.72 3.33 3.06 3.83 3.83 3.83 3.50 3.78 3.56 3.39 3.67 3.78 3.83 3.17 3.78 3.44 3.17

Difference 1.28 1.33 0.94 1.39 1.00 1.00 1.11 0.94 1.44 0.78 1.50 0.67 1.22 1.33 1.22 1.33 1.11 1.28 0.89 1.33 1.11

t-test t 9.44*** 7.38*** 5.52*** 5.68*** 4.37*** 4.12*** 4.17*** 4.27*** 9.95*** 5.10*** 7.42*** 3.69** 8.02*** 7.38*** 5.91*** 6.23*** 6.22*** 8.10*** 4.53*** 7.38*** 6.97***

df 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17

**p  0.01; ***p  0.001

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to provide an overview of the PRIMED for Character Education Framework, describe the historical PICE goals and the new professional development and implementation support components of PICE-C, and finally present findings from this early exploration of the degree to which participants found the PICE-C acceptable for themselves, relevant to their professional needs, and feasible in their particular Colombian school contexts. The results of this research strongly suggest that significant progress has been made toward the achievement of the three primary PICE-C goals from the perspective of school leadership team members. Results from the Opening Retreat Satisfaction Survey revealed that participants rated the PRIMED Framework’s relevance and practicality very highly, while ratings of the personnel, activities, and logistical supports of the PRIMED Institute received similar plaudits. In the follow-up, focus group participants provided personal opinions of the relevance and concrete examples of the feasibility of PRIMED in their contexts. The success of the relationship building aspect of PICE-C was referred to repeatedly during both

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focus groups, and the pleasure and productivity participants attributed to the relationships they developed with and across teams seemed to generate a relational shift in participants’ way of being their authentic selves with students and parents. The last goal of the PIRC-C was to provide time, support, and accountability for strategic planning and action around character education. Participants’ gains in practice scores on the RPP are reflected in the detailed accounts of changes in school processes and the examples of school traditions that have been replaced. Throughout the openended survey responses and the focus group transcript, the use of the PRIMED language was very visible. While not generalizable beyond the pilot school participants, we found the consistency of results from the three data sources a strong first step in an evolutionary evaluation strategy toward producing a strong evidence base for PRIMED.

References Albers, B., & Pattuwage, L. (2017). Implementation in education: Findings from a scoping review. Evidence for Learning. Berkowitz, M. W. (2021). PRIMED for character education: Six design principles for school improvement. Routledge. Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2007). What works in character education. Journal of Research in Character Education, 5, 29–48. Berkowitz, M. W., Bier, M. C., & McCauley, B. (2017). National Academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine. Approaches to the development of character: Proceedings of a workshop. The National Academies Press. Brown, M., McGrath, R. E., Bier, M. C., Johnson, K., & Berkowitz, M. W. (in press). Meta-analysis of character education programs. Journal of Moral Education. Johnson, K., McGrath, R. E., Bier, M. C., Brown, M., & Berkowitz, B. W. (in press). A metaanalysis of the what works in character education research. Journal of Character Education. Kirkpatrick, D. (1994). Evaluating training programs. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kirkpatrick, D. L., & Kirkpatrick, J. D., (2016). Evaluating training programs. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Little, T. D., Chang, R., Gorrall, B. K., Waggenspack, L., Fukada, E., Allen, P. J., & Noam, G. G. (2020). The retrospective pretest-posttest design redux: On its validity as an alternative to traditional pretest-posttest measurement. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 44(2), 175–183. Nimon, K., & Allen, J. (2007). A review of the retrospective pretest: Implications for performance improvement evaluation and research. Workforce Education Forum, 34(1), 36–56. Nimon, K., Zigarmi, D., & Allen, J. (2011). Measures of program effectiveness based on retrospective pretest data: Are all created equal? American Journal of Evaluation, 32(1), 8–28. Preskill, H., & Catsambas, T. T. (2006). Reframing evaluation through appreciative inquiry. Sage Publications. Shuayb, M., Sharp, C., Judkins, M., & Hetherington, M. (2009). Using appreciative inquiry in educational research: Possibilities and limitations. Retrieved from http://www.nfer.ac.uk/ publications/AEN01/AEN01.pdf Urban, J. B., Hargraves, M., & Trochim, W. M. (2014). Evolutionary evaluation: Implications for evaluators, researchers, practitioners, funders and the evidence-based program mandate. Evaluation and Program Planning, 45(August), 127–139.

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Transcendent Social Thinking in Adolescence A Neuropsychological Perspective on Supporting Youth Spiritual Thriving Rodrigo Riveros and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the Neural Connection Between Biological Homeostasis and Spiritual Thriving . . . . . . . . . Spiritual Meaning-Making in Adolescence Leverages a Sensitive Period of Neural Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adolescents’ Values-Oriented Thinking Grows in Supportive Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodological Considerations for Research on Adolescent Transcendence and Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Adolescents’ brains undergo development that enables and is enabled by emerging capacities for transcendent thoughts and emotions. These newly emerging psychological capacities form the basis for age-appropriate spiritual development because they push youth to move beyond considering only concrete actions and perceptions to deal with the values and broader meaning that social situations invoke. This chapter reviews evidence for brain development relevant to transcendent thought and argues that the neural underpinnings of these capacities present a useful starting point for studying the possible neural basis of adolescent spiritual development. Reviewing evidence that adolescents grow their brains and

Editors’ Note: This chapter is an adaptation of an earlier work. Adapted by permission from Springer Nature Customer Service Centre GmbH: Springer, Adolescent Research Review, Toward a Neuropsychology of Spiritual Development in Adolescence, Rodrigo Riveros & Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, 2021. R. Riveros · M. H. Immordino-Yang (*) University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_6

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selves by actively making meaning in and through supportive social relationships and deeper reflections, we posit that developmentally appropriate spiritual thinking may also grow the adolescent brain. Situating spirituality at the intersection of biological and psychological homeostasis, we argue for the interest and benefits of launching a theoretically grounded interdisciplinary research program investigating the neuropsychological basis of adolescent spirituality and implications for education. Keywords

Adolescence · Brain development · Social emotions · Spiritual development · Abstract thinking · Values education

Introduction Adolescence is a very special developmental period for human flourishing. A sensitive window of brain maturation and psychological development (Steinberg, 2014), the cognitive, social, and emotional growth during this life stage, supports the kind of meaning-making that builds the transcendent values on which enduring spirituality is founded (Good & Willoughby, 2008). Though the contributions of brain development to adolescent thinking and decision-making are an important focus of current research (Casey, 2015), no available neurobiological research directly addresses the relationship between adolescents’ spiritual growth and neural development, or the neurobiological effects of spiritually nurturing relationships and educational opportunities. To begin a theoretical and methodological conversation, this chapter reviews research on the adolescent neuropsychological maturation that is necessary to meaningfully engage in spiritual thinking, and from this hypothesizes ways that spiritual thinking may, in turn, build the adolescent brain. It explains how relevant neurodevelopmental processes are enabled by stable social relationships in which developmentally appropriate social–emotional wellness is nurtured. The chapter concludes that investigating the brain bases of adolescents’ newly developing cognitive and affective capacities for transcendent thinking could provide a starting point from which to launch innovative interdisciplinary research on adolescent spirituality and implications for education. Key to understanding and influencing the spiritual maturational outcomes of adolescence may be examining the social affordances of neurodevelopmental changes in basic drives and motivations that research suggests underlie adolescents’ new capacities to make meaning through transcendent thought. These low-level affective drives power individuals’ survival-related behaviors, including, for example, eating when hungry or sexual attraction, and likely also imbue young people’s forming narratives and identities with a sense of urgency and importance. These drives have increasingly well-studied neurobiological underpinnings, and current research is connecting them to adolescents’ social–emotional meaning-making in the context of social relationships relevant to emotional health (Telzer, 2016). The

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increased plasticity or adaptability of the brain induced by pubertal hormonal changes impacts both these basic drives and their interconnections with higher-level cortical networks responsible for complex cognition and emotion (Larsen & Luna, 2018). Because of these maturational changes, through building advantageous patterns of thinking and feeling, adolescents have the potential to rework the brain networks that undergird intelligence, executive functioning, and mental health, and even to compensate for the neurological impacts of early-life adversity (for a review, see Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Research suggests that adolescents rework the neural connectivity of their brains via deep and meaningful relationships and educational opportunities that support purposeful actions and values-based reflections, as well as healthy behaviors (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). Put simply, adolescents grow their brains and selves by actively making meaning in and through social relationships and deeper reflections, and their meaning-making takes on a new urgency thanks to the pubertal maturation of basic drives and higher-level cortical networks. An interdisciplinary approach to the study of adolescent spirituality, including its neural developmental underpinnings and potential impact on health and well-being, is well aligned with current efforts in other branches of developmental science (Dahl et al., 2018). Across psychology, recent decades have seen a burgeoning of approaches working to integrate psychological with neurobiological levels of analysis, aiming to constrain and enrich theories of the mind by understanding their biological underpinnings (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017). In this vein, new neuropsychological research in healthcare settings is bringing attention to the neural substrates of spiritual changes in children (Werk et al., 2021) and adults (McClintock et al., 2019). Given that the psychological growth associated with adolescents’ spirituality is known to be protective against poor mental health and educational outcomes (Yonker et al., 2012), and given the availability of new tools for probing brain development, the time is ripe to forge an interdisciplinary perspective on adolescent spirituality, and for this perspective to inform educational designs and practices. Considering the primitive state of the field, it is important to proceed in a way that is theoretically informed (Immordino-Yang, 2011a, b). Spirituality has often been defined as the personal search, experience, and response to the perception of the transcendent, sacred, or divine (Pargament, 2013). As such, the experience of spiritual transcendence requires mentally connecting concrete perceptions and actions with broader explanations that invoke sacred values relevant to God, space, nature, the arts, politics, or other domains (King et al., 2020). These connections elicit transcendent social emotions such as awe (Yaden et al., 2016), gratitude (Baumsteiger et al., 2019), admiration, compassion (Immordino-Yang et al., 2009), and moral elevation (Yang et al., 2018). The neural underpinnings of such transcendent emotions are actively engaged across adolescence (Gotlieb et al., 2021). Adolescents’ capacities for experiencing these emotions predict subsequent brain development that is associated in young adulthood with identity coherence, life purpose, and life satisfaction (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). Taking this evidence together, this chapter presents adolescents’ developing capacities for

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transcendent emotions and their accompanying narratives as a fruitful starting point from which to bridge adolescent spiritual and neural development in research. These capacities and narratives, research suggests, rely on growing interconnectivity between low-level brain systems that support basic drives and motivations important for homeostasis, and high-level brain networks that support abstract thinking and emotion, important for spiritual thriving.

On the Neural Connection Between Biological Homeostasis and Spiritual Thriving Like for all organisms, humans’ survival, health, and thriving depend most basically upon maintaining homeostasis, or self-regulation of beneficial life processes. Maintaining homeostasis requires dynamically adapting to changing internal bodily needs and external environmental and social demands (Damasio, 2005). Homeostasis can therefore be described as the foundation of both biological and psychological health. It manifests in dynamic, responsive, behavioral, and psychological patterns that support well-being and stability of life functions, in addition to harmonious relationships within the social and physical environment in which the person lives (Damasio, 1999). Given humans’ strong dependence on social and cultural learning – humans make meaning of the things they witness and experience (Rogoff, 2003) – spirituality can be described, from a neurobiological perspective, as a cultural and emotional motivator for human psychological survival, flourishing, and thriving (Immordino-Yang, 2015). This view rests on the observation that the biological and psychological dimensions of humans’ homeostasis are co-dependent. It is impossible for people to thrive without both physical and social–psychological health (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). Individuals’ physical needs, social needs, and psychological needs must be aligned with each other and with the demands of the world around them for thriving to occur. When people do not have cultural pride, autonomy and stable group membership, healthy relationships, and self-awareness, or when these dimensions of the individual are at odds with the needs of community members around them, they cannot thrive (Levy et al., 2016). The convergence of the biological and psychological dimensions of humans’ homeostasisis facilitated by psychological processes that incorporate the feeling of basic needs and drives into bigger transcendent social narratives – stories that organize and integrate individuals’ or groups’ experiences into coherent conceptual wholes with psychological power (Immordino-Yang, 2011a, b). A prominent hypothesis is that these connections “hijack” subcortical (low-level) circuits subserving reward processing in the service of prosocial behaviors and feelings (Kringelbach & Berridge, 2009; See Fig. 6.1a). Many of these low-level processes are thought to have been repurposed through evolution to serve sociocultural and intellectual processes (Immordino-Yang et al., 2010), potentially including spirituality.

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Fig. 6.1 In an ongoing study, neurological “cross-talk” (functional connectivity) between the basal ganglia and cortical regions involved in abstract meaning-making and emotion is predicted by adolescents’ descriptions of their life goals as values-based and self-transcending in an interview. (a) Regions of the brainstem and basal ganglia (in colors) were functionally identified by their

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The process of building transcendent social narratives is, in essence, meaningmaking. Meaning-making involves imbuing affective experiences, founded on feelings generated by low-level neural circuitry, with personal significance and value. It is the process by which transcendent thoughts come to feel like something vital (Pargament, 2013). In this sense, spiritual thinking is a potent domain of meaningmaking – a fertile domain in which to build thoughts and feelings around the pursuit of survival, health, and thriving for one’s self and one’s community (Park, 2007). Systems supporting survival-related drives, reward processing, and meaning-making converge to form the backbone of individuals’ proclivities toward building transcendent values and experiences, spiritual beliefs (following Damasio, 2005), and ultimately spirituality. From an integrated biological and psychological perspective, this is how spirituality makes one feel alive. Especially in adolescence, the mental power of meaning-making is thought to be supported by the integrity of cortico-subcortical circuits, that is, by the maturation of connections between low- and high-level brain circuits (Roy et al., 2012). Evidence suggests that adolescents’ abilities to build a transcendent life purpose and appreciate the spiritual nature of values rely on the maturation of subcortical brain regions involved in motivational drives (Gee et al., 2018), and in particular on the increasing network connections between these regions and cortical areas that enable newly emerging neuropsychological capacities for complex cognition and affect (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019) and abstract thinking (Ladouceur et al., 2019). As discussed below, current research suggests that the maturation of connectivity between low- and high-level systems is associated with the development of dispositions for values-oriented thinking, life purpose, and civic understanding (Riveros et al., 2018). In relation to spirituality, subcortical regions are engaged during the experience of abstract social and moral emotions that are prosocial and inherently rewarding (Moll et al., 2006), including spiritual emotions such as awe and bliss (Yaden et al., 2017), and emotions based in shared pain or suffering (Eisenberger, 2015). These emotions are important for religious traditional values, such as the experience of compassion (Haidt, 2003). Despite subcortical regions operating below the level of conscious awareness (Venkatraman et al., 2017), their activation spurs and coordinates multimodal cortical activity (Roy et al., 2012). The main cortical regions involved in the processing of narratives and their accompanying subjective experience of social emotions all receive inputs from subcortical systems (Venkatraman et al., 2017). The effect of these inputs is heightening of perceived consciousness – a subjective sense ä Fig. 6.1 (continued) internal “cross-talk” as participating adolescents wakefully rested in the fMRI scanner (note that some highly interconnected core cortical regions were also identified by this datadriven analytic technique). Adolescents who described more values-based goals showed (b) stronger connectivity of the brainstem/basal ganglia (identified in a) to the precuneus (in red) and (c) weaker connectivity of the brainstem/basal ganglia to the anterior inferior and posterior insula. Shown are representative views of the significant clusters, and scatterplots of extracted parameters from 8 mm spheres at the peak of the neural effect. (Data are from Riveros et al., 2018; N ¼ 23; results are thresholded at p < 0.005 with a cluster extent threshold of 164 voxels, corresponding to α < 0.05, controlling for multiple comparisons.) *p < 0.05, *** p < 0.0001

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of being more awake, self-aware, and purposeful (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012). This subjective sense drives the complex ethical, emotional, and cognitive processing that instantiates adolescents’ spirituality, such as thinking about future goals (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007), altruistic behaviors (Cutler & CampbellMeiklejohn, 2019), moral reasoning (Fang et al., 2017), and social values (Sescousse et al., 2013). The cortical regions most central to spirituality and its component psychological processes are likely those involved in the conscious awareness of visceral (internal gut body) states. These cortices are multimodal; they integrate internal bodily feelings, drives, and motivations with conscious thoughts (Barrett & Simmons, 2015), and are centrally involved in the conscious experience of emotions (Craig, 2009) and moral reasoning (Han et al., 2016). In essence, this is why spiritual meaning-making can quite literally produce “gut feelings.” Experiences of transcendence and focused meditation on loving-kindness, for example, universally activate visceral somatosensory cortical regions, most notably the insula (Lutz et al., 2009), which map the state of the visceral body in relation to drives, needs, urges, and motivations contributing to survival, homeostasis, and thriving (Craig, 2009). The functioning of these cortical networks in transcendent moral and social–emotional states is shaped by education and culture (Immordino-Yang & Yang, 2017). The development of these regions reflects both evolutionarily specified structure and social and mental experience (Tost et al., 2015), making them prime candidates for regions impacted by adolescent spiritual growth, as the chapter discusses below. In addition, of particular importance for the growth of spiritual thinking may be the functioning of the posteromedial cortical regions, located along the brain’s midline (Immordino-Yang et al., 2009). The posteromedial cortices together make up the posterior “hub” of the so-called the Default Mode Network (DMN; Raichle, 2015). As a centrally connected hub, the DMN integrates “conversations” across many cortical and subcortical regions of the brain (Parvizi et al., 2006). It is involved in internally directed thinking (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012) and in mentally transcending the here-and-now (Bertossi et al., 2016), for example, to think about long-term and values-based goals (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007), to construct personal memories and a coherent sense of self (Immordino-Yang, 2016), or to think about the future (Vann et al., 2009). Its activity supports experiencing transcendent social emotions such as admiration for virtue and moral elevation (Yang et al., 2018), longterm learning from virtuous people (Gotlieb et al., 2021), and processing sacred values (Kaplan et al., 2016). Unsurprisingly, DMN regions are almost universally implicated in neuroimaging studies of adults’ spiritual (Rim et al., 2019) and transcendent experiences of various types (Miller et al., 2019). Abstract meaning-making can be considered the psychological process that transforms low-level affective drives into the abstract motivations and feelings that lead to thriving. The abstract meaning-making and social emotions that form the psychological basis of spirituality recruit subcortical areas critical for survival (Roy et al., 2012), as well as cortical areas dedicated to complex, self- and socially relevant affective/visceral and cognitive processing (van Elk & Aleman, 2017). Bringing a neuroscientific perspective to bear reveals how spiritual thoughts and emotions can be considered a specialized domain of abstract meaning-making, and as such will

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recruit the very same brain circuits that keep us alive and aware. This interdisciplinary perspective positions spirituality among the basic biopsychological drives motivating human survival and flourishing, and posits that it is the interdependence between low- and high-level brain functions that imbues abstract and spiritual thinking with psychological “power” (Immordino-Yang & Sylvan, 2010). In doing so, this perspective enriches the appreciation of how moral qualities have the psychological power to revitalize us, just as humanities scholars, poets, artists, and civil rights leaders have long claimed (Immordino-Yang, 2015). It also opens the door to considering how developmental opportunities for spiritual growth may therefore have the potential to adaptively support adolescents’ brain growth.

Spiritual Meaning-Making in Adolescence Leverages a Sensitive Period of Neural Growth In adolescence, social relationships promoting meaning-making have an especially strong effect as these relationships are not only sought at this age but biologically “expected” (Schriber & Guyer, 2016). In this developmental period, subcortical circuits, including brainstem regions responsible for basic functions, become increasingly connected with multimodal cortical networks that enable affective and cognitive elaboration for abstract thought (Nelson et al., 2016). This development leads to new proclivities to process social interactions and motivated behaviors in terms of their broader abstract meaning and implications (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012) as youth connect daily life choices and actions to values-based and transcendent meaning-making (Gotlieb et al., 2022). It enables (and even, at times, compels) adolescents to embed their concrete, context-specific experiences and choices into socially framed narratives that transcend the here-and-now (or there-and-then) – a critical capacity for spirituality that also appears to physically grow the brain (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). The neuropsychological trajectory of adolescents’ development for abstract thinking is complex, incorporating newly emerging cognitive, social, and affective capacities. Across childhood and adolescence, there is gradual growth in cognitive performance as a function of age and experience, particularly in executive control, self-regulation, and long-term goal-directed thinking (Suleiman & Dahl, 2017). Layered onto this incremental cognitive trajectory is a relatively abrupt spurt in affective processing linked to the onset of pubertal hormonal changes in early adolescence (Braams et al., 2015). During this time, the salience of social rewards and sensitivity to emotion increase, in particular in domains relevant to adolescents’ identity and social relationships (Steinberg, 2014). This spurt marks a second window of increased plasticity and socially mediated brain growth – that is, a period of brain growth dependent on social relationships, emotional feelings, and patterns of thinking, second in magnitude only to infancy (Larsen & Luna, 2018). These changes predict higher sensitivity to social rewards and affiliations (van Duijvenvoorde et al., 2016) that can make youth psychologically vulnerable and emotions characteristically labile (Ahmed et al., 2015). These changes can also

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motivate adolescents to explore new, more adult-like social roles and understandings, expanding social learning and fostering commitment to new values and beliefs (Telzer, 2016). As the trajectories of adolescents’ neurodevelopment are better understood, some have become interested in the possible bidirectional connection between brain development and adolescents’ formation of transcendent values (e.g., ImmordinoYang & Gotlieb, 2017). This work is predicated on the notion that goals completed in the service of transcendent social values are understood in a more complex and abstract way than are goals framed exclusively in the service of instrumental achievements (King et al., 2021). For example, a teenager may explain that she aspires to become a pediatrician, holding the concrete goal of finishing medical school. She may also go on to situate her concrete goal in a transcendent, valuesbased life goal of helping all children be healthy and flourish. Though her concrete goal is necessary to achieve her transcendent goal, her transcendent goal expresses intentions of achieving something intrinsically meaningful that may also positively contribute to the lives of others (Damon, 2008). To a much greater degree than is true for the building of her concrete goal, the building of her transcendent goal motivates ethical and values-based perceptions, actions, and decisions (Emmons, 1992). Forming and holding transcendent goals likely recruits and possibly also strengthens connections between subcortical, reward systems, and cortical networks capable of abstract thinking (King et al., 2021). Ongoing research suggests that adolescents’ growing abilities to construct abstract meaning may actually predict the growth of their brain (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). The participants in this research are from a community sample of urban low-income adolescents of color – a demographic group who are underrepresented in neuropsychological research. Consistent with hypotheses, an initial study revealed that participants’ proclivities toward formulating transcendent life goals (versus more concrete achievement-oriented goals exclusively) are associated with developmental variability in neural functioning when participants wakefully rest in the MRI scanner (Riveros et al., 2018). Specifically, the more a participant situated their concrete instrumental goals in terms of broader, transcendental, and valuesbased life goals in a private interview, the stronger was the neurological “cross-talk” (intrinsic functional connectivity) between key DMN and basal ganglia regions – cortical and subcortical systems, respectively (see Fig. 6.1b). Conversely, participants’ propensities to build transcendent life goals in the interview were associated with weaker “cross-talk” between the basal ganglia and the inferior and posterior sectors of the anterior insula (see Fig. 6.1c), neural regions involved in the processing of immediate social rewards (Watanabe et al., 2014), and emotional reactions (Sridharan et al., 2008). Importantly, there are hints that the discovered associations impact long-term development. Longitudinally, an additional study found that tendencies toward abstract, social–emotional meaning-making predict psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and identity congruence 5 years later, in young adulthood (ImmordinoYang et al., 2023). Notably, the results are not explained by differences in IQ, suggesting that transcendent goals and these connectivity patterns are not merely

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correlates of general intelligence or verbal ability. And, the findings do not differ by youth’s families’ socioeconomic status (measured both financially by income to needs ratio and in terms of parents’ level of education). Taken together, these research findings offer compelling initial evidence of the benefits of abstract meaning-making for both the brain and the mind (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). Although more work is needed, ongoing studies suggest that adolescents’ formation of transcendent goals may rely on, and possibly develop, functional connections between regions involved in basic motivational processing, and those involved in transcendent narratives and values-based long-term goals (Immordino-Yang et al., 2023). Spirituality could be considered a natural outgrowth and specialization of such reflective thinking, as well as a driver of it – hypotheses that future research should address. Because the brain is shaped by use, actively reflecting on transcendent issues likely strengthens the neural substrate of such thinking over time (Becht et al., 2018).

Adolescents’ Values-Oriented Thinking Grows in Supportive Relationships It has been long known that adolescents’ abstract meaning-making is facilitated by stable, close, and safe social relationships with adults who help youth sort through their thoughts and feelings (Lee et al., 2003). High-quality relationships with adults can provide instrumental resources for integrating the social–emotional and cognitive aspects of youth development (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019), boost adolescents’ motivation to achieve life goals (Oyserman & Destin, 2010), and promote a prosocially oriented sense of purpose (Yeager et al., 2014). Contexts intentionally designed for intergenerational relationships, such as community organizations, religious or school groups, can offer mentoring that helps adolescents reflect on spiritual (Desrosiers et al., 2011) and nonspiritual topics (Damon, 2008). Given adolescents’ need for close personal relationships with adult mentors in the development of life purpose (Damon, 2008), efficacy studies have examined the effects of an intergenerational friendship-through-storytelling intervention on participants’ values-based goals and purpose-in-life (Riveros et al., 2018), (Riveros et al., 2023), (Immordino-Yang et al., 2023). In an 8-week, small-group program (conducted in partnership with sagesandseekers.org), adolescents were supported in building life narratives through meaningful conversations with older adult partners. The program engaged older adults in part because they are more emotionally stable and positively biased than are younger adults (English & Carstensen, 2014). The wisdom gained from these adults’ extensive lived experience (Grossmann et al., 2010) can support adolescents in developing socioemotional skills and skills for self-reflection and broader thinking (Kessler & Staudinger, 2007). Older adults and adolescent participants were recruited from the same communities, including from low-socioeconomic status neighborhoods in urban Los Angeles and from high socioeconomic status areas in Massachusetts. Over 400 individuals participated in the study. Compared to a control condition in which adolescents and older

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adults watched movies together, adolescents who participated in the intergenerational storytelling increased their reported sense of social connectedness and psychological well-being. This effect was stronger for youth who had initially displayed the lowest levels (Riveros et al., 2018). Perhaps more important for the discussion of precursors to spiritual development, youth who participated in the program reported an increased sense of purpose – an effect that was statistically mediated by a shift over time from concrete to abstract and values-based life-goal framing. A similar shift to values-based reasoning was seen in adolescents’ conceptualization of civic participation. Early in the intervention, youth conceptualized civic engagement concretely, describing the main objectives of civic engagement as operationalizing pre-stipulated outcomes and maintaining civility. For example, one participant, “Franco,” expressed: “I want people with differing opinions to get along. There is so much violence and hatred between people.” As the intervention progressed, however, youth moved toward more abstract conceptualizations of civic participation, for example, explaining the need to appreciate others’ perspectives through dialogue and empathy. After the intervention, Franco demonstrated this shift, responding: “I would like for there to be more understanding of differences. There is so much conflict because people refuse to see from others’ perspective.” While Franco’s early sentiment focuses on his desire for people to act nicely, his later statement shows a deeper appreciation of the importance of valuing interpersonal understanding – a considerably more abstract notion. Though this research does not deal specifically with spiritual development, it holds potential implications for the cultivation of youth well-being through spiritual mentoring. Like carefully designed intergenerational mentoring, spiritual mentoring intentionally promotes transcendent conceptions of the social world and proclivities to build narratives that incorporate higher-level meaning (King et al., 2020). In so doing, spiritual mentoring may possibly influence youths’ neurophysiological development as the brain networks hypothesized to be involved in spiritual thinking are the same networks responsible for managing physiological arousal, aspects of cognition and attention, and other capacities important for social and physical health and future learning (van Elk & Aleman, 2017). It is therefore possible that spiritual mentoring can potentially impact not only how adolescents engage in spiritual thinking, but adolescents’ general dispositions of mind, social–emotional functioning, and physical wellness.

Methodological Considerations for Research on Adolescent Transcendence and Spirituality More than individuals in any other life stage, adolescents explore and construct life goals and life narratives designed to carry them into the future (Zarrett & Eccles, 2006). These explorations and constructions organize their budding adult identities and life purpose (Damon et al., 2003) and guide their current efforts in the near-term toward goal-oriented behavior (Nurra & Oyserman, 2018). The emerging mental capacities adolescents recruit for these explorations also position them to reflect on

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the meaning of transcendence and the sacred, and to form long-term spiritual commitments (Good & Willoughby, 2008). Since spiritual development is subjective and experiential in nature, it will be important to develop methods that honor and characterize the deeply personal, social, cultural, and emotional nature of spiritual thinking, in addition to its impacts on observable behavior and decision-making. From a methodological standpoint, it is the effects of transcendent meaning-making, rather than the effects of participation in religious contexts or ideological expertise per se, that an interdisciplinary neuroscientific approach is most likely to help address. The research presented here suggests that it is adolescents’ proclivities toward constructing transcendent meaning that contribute to the maturation of internetwork connectivity between key cortical and subcortical regions involved in cognitive control, prosociality, motivation, and abstract thinking. Taking this into consideration, from an interdisciplinary perspective it will likely prove less informative to study what adolescents know and can do ideologically, and more informative to study how adolescents are forming and reflecting upon spiritual ideas and infusing these ideas into the things that they know and do. A like-minded neuropsychological approach to studying adolescent development is already informing the evidence bases for education (Levy et al., 2016), health (Giedd, 2018), and the law (Minow, 2019). This perspective could also hold insights for developmentally appropriate spiritual programming and mentoring opportunities for youth from diverse circumstances. For example, research has demonstrated the effectiveness of addressing adolescents’ transcendent social values for promoting healthy behaviors and choices (Kang et al., 2017). This work leverages sensitivity to identity-related information (Yeager et al., 2018) to mitigate social influences (Telzer et al., 2018). Though each of these approaches could be utilized without a biological perspective, including neurobiological developmental evidence can give richer insights about when, why, and for whom particular approaches may be most effective (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019), and about how spiritual guidance may support diverse young people or help youth to heal from emotional trauma. Research should capitalize on the fact that adolescence is a unique developmental period of interdependent psychological and neural development (Worthman & Trang, 2018). Considered a sensitive period, adolescence is an inflection point in which spiritual experiences may possibly have a particularly positive impact that research could target (Suleiman & Dahl, 2017). The teenager’s brain is biologically tuned to look for social–emotional and cognitive opportunities to make meaning with close others, and to grow in ways that accommodate these patterns of thinking and feeling (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019). This growth, over time and with practice, develops adolescents’ neurological and psychological propensities to connect concrete actions and perceptions with values, emotional commitments, and broader meaning (Gotlieb et al., 2021, 2022). By focusing on the active process of transcendent meaning-making, future research is poised to address the interdependence of neurological development and opportunities for age-appropriate spiritual thinking.

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Conclusion In adolescence, the brain is tuned to seek out socially valued opportunities to think in ways that produce emotion, and to make deep, socially situated meaning (Immordino-Yang et al., 2019), and new evidence suggests that doing so influences youths’ brain development and young-adult outcomes (Immordino-Yang et al., 2023). In view of this, this chapter has argued that the practice of spiritual thinking, when properly and consistently guided, might provide one means of influencing trajectories of brain development by promoting propensities for abstract cognitive and social–emotional meaning-making. The development of such propensities takes place in culturally grounded, appropriate, safe, and close relationships, and involves supportive opportunities to connect daily activities, choices, observations, and experiences to bigger, systems-level and transcendent narratives (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). Future work should examine and map the possible reciprocal relations between transcendent meaning-making and brain development in adolescence, and the potential to support development through values-oriented programming. Doing so could reveal fundamental insights into the nature and benefits of this rich, uniquely human domain.

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Wellness-Informed Classrooms with Sustaining Climates Foster Compassionate Morality Darcia Narvaez

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ecological Model for Raising Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrative Ethical Education Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Power of Climates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning Climates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Climates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moral Climates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Proposal for Wellness-Promoting Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meeting Basic Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moral Habitat of Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Sustaining Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Wellness-informed education addresses trauma by helping students develop selfcalming routines, trusting relationships, compassion, and an expanded communal imagination. Wellness-informed education supports student development with the components of the evolved nest and holistic education. A wellness-informed sustaining classroom climate provides more than a good learning environment or caring classroom. A sustaining classroom climate provides as much as possible the type of environment under which human mammals thrive. It fosters students’ sense of positive purpose, as individuals and as a group, and a peaceful moral citizenship. It is characterized by collaborative leadership, community fellowship, democratic practice, and enhancement of human potential. In Triune ethics theory terms, students learn to foster the engagement and imagination ethics D. Narvaez (*) University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_7

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while minimizing self-protectionism ethics. In sustaining classrooms, students learn skills for individual flourishing and enabling community flourishing. Keywords

Climate · Wellness · Evolved developmental niche · Integrative ethical education · Ethical skills

Introduction In the recent past, moral and character educational approaches have typically emphasized individual capacities for moral reasoning or good habits. As understanding of human nature has improved, scholars are realizing the intersubjectivity of human behavior, its groundedness in a social fabric, and the importance of both in human development. There is greater understanding of how moral behavior is shaped by context – whether cultural or situational. Positive environments shape individual hopes and movement toward moral self-actualization. This broadening understanding of human behavior has been accompanied by a deepening understanding as well, that is, that cognitive, social, and moral capacities are first shaped by neurobiological development within the context of family and community. When children’s basic needs are met, the result is healthy, flexible neurobiological structures, such as a stress response that is not over- or underreactive. Early-life undercare or other trauma, in contrast, neurobiological structures are impaired, redirecting development toward survival rather than potentiality (Brummer & Thorsborne, 2021). Early-life context and experience influence the nature of the child who enters the classroom, including their sociomoral capacities (Narvaez, 2014). Thus, it is important to be trauma-informed so that children can be helped instead of punished for their misdirected behavior. At the same time, educators need to understand the other end of the spectrum – wellness and thriving – so that they can make those an aim. The latter are the focus here.

The Ecological Model for Raising Children Homo sapiens have been around for at least two million years with the genus Homo for over six million. During this time, humanity evolved a critical system for raising the young, vitally important because children are born highly immature and take decades to fully mature. Humanity’s developmental system, or evolved developmental niche (EDN; Narvaez, 2014), aligns with the maturational schedule of the young. The EDN1 1

The common EDN characteristics identified worldwide include soothing perinatal experiences, lengthy breastfeeding, extensive affectionate touch (and no negative touch), responsive stable support, multiple responsive, caregivers, a welcoming social climate, self-directed social play with multiple-aged playmates, nature immersion and connection, and routine healing practices (see EvolvedNest.org).

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provides companionship care that is needed throughout life but especially in the first six years. Although children attend school after their most sensitive developmental periods, they still need EDN-consistent care to continue optimal development, especially in terms of developing prosocial, compassionate morality. It is important for educators to have in mind what thriving looks like so that they can recognize when it is missing, but also because educators can provide aspects of the nest that school children need. The communities that provide the EDN foster physical, mental, social, and moral thriving (Narvaez, 2014). Thriving includes characteristics such as a quiet mind, a sense of humor, outstanding memory and senses, ability to build habit at will, inner happiness, vitality, trust, a sense of safety, social enjoyment, generosity, relational attunement, and empathic responsiveness (Narvaez & Tarsha, in press; Young, 2019). The EDN components that pertain to school children include a welcoming social climate; affectionate touch and no corporal punishment; opportunities for self-directed social play and learning; secure and responsive relationships with allomothers (nurturers other than mother – the school’s adults); immersion in the natural world to build ecological knowhow, ecological attachment, and respectful relations with the other than human; routine healing practices such as class meetings and conflict resolution practices; and regular joyous group activities such as song games, dancing, and dramatic invention. These are wellness-informed supports that can be integrated into educational practice (Bock et al., 2020; Kurth & Narvaez, 2018; Kurth et al., 2020). Wellness-informed education addresses trauma by helping students develop selfcalming routines, trusting relationships, compassion, and an expanded communal imagination. In wellness-informed sustaining classrooms, students learn skills for individual and community flourishing that includes concern and respect for one another, for community members, including the other-than-human biocommunity. The integrative ethical education model provides the scaffolding needed for transforming classrooms into the supportive environments students need.

Integrative Ethical Education Model2 Environments guide attention, foster specific habits, and channel opportunities. The social fabric of an organization is often called its climate or culture. In this chapter, a wellness-informed sustaining climate is proposed as the optimal culture for moral development and moral functioning. The notion of climate includes relationships, learning structures and aims, self-actualization support, and community bonding. A holistically supportive climate fosters compassionate moral character development, which is summarized by the integrative ethical education model. 2

The project in which the IEE model originated, the Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education Project (CVCE), did not include skills for getting along with the rest of nature. These were added to the skills list in Narvaez, 2014. The original CVCE project materials are available free for download online at https://cee.nd.edu/.

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The Integrative Ethical Education model (IEE; Narvaez, 2006, 2007, 2008) provides a comprehensive approach for fostering moral character in schools and organizations. Grounded in bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and drawing on findings from neurobiology (Narvaez, 2008), anthropology (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005), and social and emotional learning (Elias et al., 2014), IEE’s aim is to foster human flourishing through skill development and novice-to-expert instruction, positive social influences on brain and behavior, resulting in personal and group empowerment. IEE tries to solve many of the issues that arise when educators take on moral character education and presents an empirically derived set of proposals for educators, which are briefly presented here. The first proposal is for educators to establish a secure, caring relationship with the student, ensuring the social context for learning and the mutual commitment to working together and influencing one another (Watson, 2014). Children are born ready for relationship, one of mutual recognition and esteem (Trevarthen & Bjørkvold, 2016). However, relational motivation can become cloaked by experiences of dismissal and despair in babyhood (Narvaez, 2014). In this case, children may arrive at the classroom wounded and wary, in special need of a healing secure relationship with the adults in charge. A caring supportive teacher can foster empathy and caring behavior in students as well as motivation to learn (Wentzel, 1997) by using a developmental discipline approach to helping children learn to be good learners and citizens (Watson, 2014), though it may take extra time for some students (Watson & Eckert, 2018). It is known from social and motivational literature that the classroom climate primes and promotes particular behaviors (Solomon et al., 2002), so the second proposal is to create a sustaining climate that is supportive of ethical behavior and excellence. Educators can ensure that the school and classroom environments are fostering good intuitions – intuitions that promote mastery learning, prosocial relationships, and citizenship development. Climates that help students meet their needs (e.g., for belonging, competence, autonomy; Deci & Ryan, 1985) also foster skills for good character and resiliency (e.g., Benson et al., 1998), thereby encouraging prosocial behavior. High support and high expectations for achievement and behavior produce the best results (Zins et al., 2004). The climate is discussed in more detail below. The third proposal draws on the literature of expertise and schema development, proposing that an apprenticeship model of teaching be adopted to nurture a set of ethical skills in several components: ethical sensitivity, ethical judgment, ethical focus/motivation, and ethical implementation (Narvaez, 2009; Narvaez & Bock, 2009; Narvaez & Endicott, 2009; Narvaez & Lies, 2009). See Table 7.1 for some of the skills by component, emphasizing respect for nature.2 These skills can be integrated into academic instruction. Through four levels of instruction for expertise development (immersion in examples and opportunities, attention to facts and skills, practice procedures, integration across contexts), students build their embodied understanding (intuitions and explicit understanding) of a skill in context. When teachers incorporate ethical skill development and practice into regular academic instruction and school activities, they promote moral capacity building, positively

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Table 7.1 Four ethical processes with suggested skills and subskills Ethical sensitivity Connect to others – human and other-than-human (be civil and courteous, show friendship and care, working with diversity, manage aggression) Communicate well with humans and other-than-humans (express emotion, speak and listen with respect, monitor communication) Take the perspectives of others – human and other-than-human (take different perspectives: justice, mercy, cultural; determine what is happening; perceive moral issues) Control bias (diagnose and overcome personal bias, nurture tolerance, avoid anthropocentrism) Ethical judgment Solve ethical problems, including the natural world in the circle of concern (gather information, predict consequences) Critical reasoning (use sound reasoning, monitor reasoning, be open to paradox) Develop codes and code shifting (honor nature’s laws, determine appropriate codes, choose environments and activities, make good choices) Coping and resiliency (apply earth-centered thinking, develop resiliency) Ethical focus Value community traditions and institutions (understand social structures, practice democracy, cooperate with humans and other-than-humans) Cultivate conscience (overcome fear, be honorable, good stewardship, good citizenship) Respect others – human and other-than-human (cultivate wisdom, show reverence, respect individual dignity of all) Develop ethical identity & integrity (aim to reach your potential, find purpose, persevere in love, cultivate commitment to enhancing others) Ethical action Resolve conflicts and problems (negotiate, make amends, stand up under pressure) Take ethical action (think strategically, get help, respond creatively) Take initiative as a leader (attend to needs of humans and other-than-humans, assert respectfully, mentor others) Work hard (set reachable goals, manage time, be steadfast, develop competence, take charge of your life)

affecting student character development (Narvaez et al., 2004). The goal is to make compassionate moral action so well practiced that it becomes most often a flow of effortless action – wuwei in the Chinese Daoist tradition (Cen & Yu, 2014). The fourth proposal highlights the importance of self-authorship, emphasizing how educators can empower student self-actualization (Baxter Magolda, 2001). Plato pointed out what has become a truism in an individualistic society: character development is a problem of the self – “deciding what to become and endeavoring to become it” (Urmson, 1988, p. 2). Domain-specific self-regulation and metacognitive skills can be coached (Zimmerman et al., 2002) and are necessary for domain success (Anderson, 1989). Students can establish the habit of assessing their psychosocial well-being, including their compassionate morality, and take steps to improve it (Narvaez, 2014; Travis & Callander, 1990).

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The fifth proposal emphasizes the restoration of the ecological network of relationships and communities that support the child’s development. When families, neighborhoods, and schools align their goals and practices for optimal child development, flourishing is more likely to result (Lerner et al., 2003). EDN-consistent education includes multiple relationships that offer positive support and emotional (and when appropriate, physical) affection. Respectful and connected relationships with the other-than-human world (e.g., rivers, forests, wild animals) is also an evolutionary heritage. When applied in a school setting, the IEE approach uses a flexible, collaborative model where educators adapt the research-based framework of skills and noviceto-expert pedagogy to local needs and conditions (see Narvaez, 2009; Narvaez & Bock, 2009; Narvaez & Endicott, 2009; Narvaez & Lies, 2009). The framework is intentionally broad and inclusive so that educators have maximal flexibility in their local adaptations. The initial model was applied in the Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education project (Anderson et al., 2004; Narvaez et al., 2004), where ethical skill development and climate were emphasized. Across participating schools and a comparison school, over a 1-year pre–post evaluation, school climate positively influenced the development of student-reported ethical focus skills: community bonding, citizenship, and ethical goodness (Narvaez et al., 2004). Schools that implemented ethical skill development across their schools (in homeroom/advisory, every academic class, and in school-wide projects) showed positive significant effects on student ethical development, after controlling for climate effects, whereas minimal implementation had little positive effect (Narvaez, 2012). A deeper discussion of the sustaining climate follows. A sustaining climate builds on best practice as demonstrated in mastery learning climates and caring climates, adding the grounding in additional characteristics needed by human mammals for flourishing. See Table 7.2 for a comparison.

The Power of Climates Organizational climates and cultures shape individual perceptions and social behavior (Power et al., 1989; Power & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008). Using a broad definition, the climate encompasses social structures that include the goals and aspirations of the group, overt and hidden systems, as well as the incentives and disincentives that regulate behavior. More specifically, climate has to do with how members of the group work together, treat one another, and encourage and discourage particular feelings and behaviors. Here, climate is defined as a culture of shared expectations, habitual ways of acting and responding that have been explicitly and implicitly supported initially by the leader (educator) and then enforced by the group as a whole. Climates influence multiple aspects of individual and community life, including implicit learning, and attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. Implicit Learning. Humans learn in two basic ways, with the deliberate mind through conscious effort (as in book learning), or with the implicit mind through

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Table 7.2 Comparison of mastery learning, caring, and sustaining climates Mastery Learning Climate How do we learn? Student-focused Mastery-focused Intrinsic rewards Students selfregulate Activities maintain student interest Deep thinking encouraged Clear flexible procedures

Caring Climate Who are we as a community? Management is a form of guidance Shared responsibility for classroom tasks Peer interaction encouraged Students have voice in meaningful decisions Encourage sensitivity to needs and perspectives of others Conflicts handled openly with just and caring procedures

Sustaining Climate (in addition to those of mastery and caring) Who should we be? Democratic practices Individual purpose and selfactualization are central to goals of education Positive group purpose Enhancement of human potential Broad ethical skills supported Leadership development Global awareness emphasized High-profile parenting encouraged Partnerships with local community Nature connection and respectful relations with other than humans

unconscious systems that learn automatically without conscious effort (as with most of learning through life experience). Implicit learning includes the “hidden curriculum” of schools (Jackson, 1968). Through the hidden curriculum, environments “educate” the implicit mind in terms of what actions are successful for getting needs met in that environment (Hogarth, 2001). The mind learns effortlessly from the recurrent patterns in the environment (Frensch, 1998; Reber, 1993). For example, from repeated social interaction with members of their cultural group, children learn how to greet someone, when to share eye gaze, what signals indicate pleasure, and so on (Hall, 1973). These habits become automatized without effort. Most of the human behavior is governed by such implicit, tacit knowledge (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) that forms part of wisdom (Sternberg, 2001). Because of the power of environments, adults who work with children have a great deal of say over what kinds of intuitions and cultural expectations children will develop because the adult designs and supervises the environment. Classroom environmental structures include the overt and hidden systems of rewards and punishment, the goals and aspirations promoted by the environment. The climate that results from the environmental structures plays a large role in how people treat one another, how the group works and makes decisions, and what feelings are allowed. Attitudes, Cognitions, Behaviors. Climates influence member attitudes, cognitions, and behavior in multiple ways. Climates affect what members think about, expanding or narrowing members’ imaginations, fostering or depressing emotional expression (e.g., Can I say what I think?). Attitudes like “boys will be boys” and “everyone gets bullied – you have to learn to stand up for yourself” support certain types of climates. The climate can emphasize dangerous ideas toward other groups such as belief in the superiority or vulnerability of one’s group, or distrust of another (Eidelson & Eidelson, 2003).

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Climates promote particular habits and expectancies that affect the interpretation of events, individual goals, and options for action. Humans are susceptible to suggestion and imitation. This means that if they see someone else do something, they are likely to do it too. Local climates are conveyed not only by social practices but physical properties. For example, when trash is on the ground, rather than in a receptacle, people are more likely to throw trash on the ground. Situations press us to behave in certain ways – for example, wild and crazy at a football game, quiet at a funeral, etc. Climates influence the kind of personality traits members display but also what types of habitual dispositions they develop to begin with. Climates elicit particular behaviors from members often without their awareness. People learn from the reactions their actions elicit in an environment. You don’t guess at an answer if the teacher rebukes you for it or expose your feelings if peers laugh at you for it. You raise your hand when you know the right answer because that is what pleases the teacher. We learn from what is rewarded or punished by those with power. We learn from teacher and peer discourse – what is emphasized or ignored.

Learning Climates Several types of climates have been described and studied in educational settings. The majority of climate research in classrooms has been conducted on the learning climate and its relationship to achievement. The messages that students perceive teachers conveying are related to their cognitive and affective outcomes (Fraser, 1989). When students perceive teachers emphasizing high achievement and competition, students are likely to adopt a performance goal orientation (Urdan et al., 1998). Performance climates emphasize looking good in comparison to others and can have detrimental effects but not always (depending perhaps on whether the goal is to not look bad rather than to look good; Elliot, 1997). In contrast, when students perceive teachers emphasizing understanding, students are more likely to adopt a mastery goal orientation (Urdan & Midgley, 2001). Mastery climates emphasize learning and understanding and bring about positive attitudes toward learning, student engagement, and higher achievement (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Elliot, 1997).

Social Climates Positive classroom climates include caring climates that emphasize community feeling. In such classrooms, students feel greater psychological and physical safety, leading to a stronger sense of belongingness (Anderman, 2003; Ma, 2003). Positive social climates produce fewer behavioral and emotional problems and raise achievement levels (Kuperminc et al., 2001; McEvoy & Welker, 2000); they increase academic achievement among urban students (Haynes & Comer, 1993) and provide a protective factor for boys and high-risk students (Haynes, 1998; Kuperminc et al., 1997).

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Thus, climates influence not only academic motivation but sociomoral development as well.

Moral Climates The relation of school climate to moral development was first examined by Lawrence Kohlberg and his students who began to attend to the climate of schools in the 1970s. When they constructed just community schools, schools-within-schools, they found that the “moral atmosphere” was key to fostering a sense of responsibility to the community and for cultivating moral reasoning in students. Moral climates emphasize fairness and care, and democratic procedures (Oser, 2014). The Child Development Project in the 1980s adopted a caring, just community as a first principle for organizing classrooms (Watson et al., 1989). Caring and just were defined as classrooms where (1) teacher–child relationships are warm, mutually trusting, and supportive; (2) every student’s needs for autonomy, competence, and belonging are met; (3) students have opportunities to discuss and refine understanding about morality that they practice in the classroom; and (4) teachers promote these goals with proactive and reactive techniques that support student behavior in conformance with prosocial values (Watson, 2014). Social and emotional learning practices (SEL) infuse classrooms with skill and attitude development toward treating one another with respect (Elias et al., 2014). Such classroom climates increase prosocial behavior. Characteristics of these three types of climates – mastery learning, caring, and moral – are integrated into a proposal for sustaining climates and wellness-informed classrooms. A wellness-informed classroom is grounded in attending to a broader array of human mammalian needs.

A Proposal for Wellness-Promoting Classroom Children today have lost much of the social scaffolding of the past that cared for and mentored the young – the “village” of care by the community that fostered children’s self-regulation and other key skills for flourishing (Narvaez et al., 2013). Erosion has occurred in all the supports children had in the past other than school: community, religion, family, and culture (Brazelton & Greenspan, 2001). The social environment in the United States has become toxic for child development not only because of the loss of support across the board but also because of the daily “monsters” of family abuse and community neglect (Burke Harris, 2018). Whereas a positive learning climate may have been enough to motivate students 50 years ago and a caring classroom would have been enough to foster moral character 20 years ago, today much more is required as a counterweight to the toxicity and trauma children experience. It is suggested here that children need a sustaining climate that meets a broad array of basic needs, fosters individual resiliency, and strengthens interpersonal relations.

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Meeting Basic Needs Basic needs represent a built-in compass for optimizing a child’s development and well-being. Different theorists have described one or more basic needs, most famously Abraham Maslow (1970) described a list that included safety, belonging, love, and esteem, as well as self-actualization. Other basic needs have been identified by contemporary psychologists, such as autonomy to express oneself and act freely, competence, meaningful purpose, and trust in environmental supports, bodily integrity, affectionate touch (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Fiske, 2003; Narvaez, 2018; Staub, 2003). Most of these basic needs are to be provisioned to young children simultaneously, as occurs when the EDN is the life context (Tarsha & Narvaez, 2023). It should be pointed out that researchers often describe basic needs as individual needs. However, individuals are always embedded in relationships that form the backdrop for their expression and fulfillment. Climate influences how well the individual’s basic needs are met. One teacher writes: “We have all been in classrooms that feel tight and tense. Imagine trying to learn while worrying about pressures, limits, disapproval, and criticism” (Turkanis, 2001, p. 99). Such a climate is unlikely to meet needs for social belonging and autonomy and is likely to provoke resistance or rebellion. We learn how to effectively get needs met in each environment we encounter. If an environment does not provide positive ways to feel a part of the group, then negative ways will be learned. If an environment makes false promises (the discourse does not match practice), then cynicism will prevail and a counterculture may arise. The “developmental assets” approach provides another perspective on basic needs. Assets represent characteristics of individual students and community supports that buttress resiliency (Benson et al., 1998; Wang et al., 1998). Classrooms can foster assets through the IEE practices described earlier.

Moral Habitat of Engagement3 Habitats, the places where humans pass their time, vary in which values and dispositions they foster. This is a critical fact because the values one develops and expresses come from the habitats in which one spends the most time, especially as a child. In the last 10,000 years or so, the common moral habitat has splintered often into inhospitable habitats for the type of moral sense that Darwin (1871/1981) described and the EDN supports. The panoply of habitats apparent today can be sorted according to optimality. Compared to the social habitats of our ancestors that included the EDN, many habitats today are cold and disheartening, promoting suboptimal or even aberrant development (Narvaez, 2013; 2014). Cultural narratives and religious dogma have misshaped some habitats into forms that are counter to human flourishing (e.g., those that encourage punishment and use pain for behavioral control; Prescott, 1996).

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I adopt the term “moral habitat” from John Ozolins (2007), although I define it differently.

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Triune ethics Meta-theory (Narvaez, 2008, 2014, 2016) describes three basic ethical mindsets that humans develop as part of their evolutionary heritage. Each mindset is rooted in evolved brain systems and can be activated by the situation or by dispositional habit. The self-protectionist ethic is a pre-human orientation toward self-preservation through status, territory, rivalry, and similar urges. It can be triggered by threat or be a default disposition for persons who experienced poor nurturing or trauma at a young age. Children who are undercared for or carry unresolved trauma have developed in ways that make this orientation more likely to be activated in classroom settings where things are unfamiliar and there is potential threat to self-esteem. In contrast, an engagement ethic is rooted in a countervailing set of brain systems and experiences. It focuses on social connection and responsiveness to others in the moment. The imagination ethic uses the most recent parts of the evolved brain that includes executive and abstract reasoning functions. It allows us to envision those who are not present, make plans for the future, and coordinate planned action. The imagination ethic operates usually in coordination with one of the other ethics. Optimal structuring of the brain systems involved in the engagement and imagination ethics rely on warm, responsive parenting in early life and other sensitive periods, but their functioning is influenced by the climate or situation throughout life as well. Within the classroom, educators can calm self-protectionism with the aforementioned IEE practices (Narvaez & Bock, 2014). Educators can employ the ethic of imagination (Who should I be? What can we do for others?) to promote and emphasize the ethic of engagement (e.g., How can we show care and respect for one another?). Climates can evoke different emotional systems. Classrooms can be set up to emphasize and activate one or more of the aforementioned ethics. When climates feel unsafe to the individual, they will provoke a self-protectionist ethic in which survival, through dominance or withdrawal, becomes a major focus and priority for action (Narvaez, 2007, 2008). “Boot camp” classrooms (DeVries & Zan, 1994) emphasize obedience and competition, activating the self-protectionist ethic. In these classrooms, it pays to be self-focused and wary. Learning is impaired. “Factory” classrooms (DeVries & Zan, 1994) emphasize academics, minimizing social and emotional learning, leading to detached imagination (without emotional or relational engagement). On the other hand, when climates are caring and positive, they will evoke an engagement ethic in which the individual is able to feel and show concern for others. Such “community” classrooms (DeVries & Zan, 1994) are about relationships and cultivate the engagement ethic when the joy of interpersonal relations is emphasized. Such classrooms foster empathy for others and compassionate response.

The Sustaining Climate Sustaining classrooms offer the closest match to the EDN and meeting basic human needs. In such classrooms, relationships are central but thinking skills are also. Imagination is rooted in engagement. The climate is caring but also rich in positive

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relational discourse (“let’s think about how we can help our neighbor” “what effect does x behavior have on other people’s well-being?”). A prosocial imagination ethic is fostered that allows a person to consider the needs of others and imagine possibilities for action and response. In sustaining classrooms, students learn to foster the engagement and imagination ethics while minimizing self-protectionism. Students learn skills for flourishing and helping others feel safe and flourish also. Emotional Sensitivity: Emotional Signaling, Responsiveness, and Trust. Climates influence emotional intelligence and the degree of emotional presence and heartminded caring. Cold climates suppress and control emotion, encouraging obedience without protest. Warm climates offer social and emotional support to members as they meet the tasks of the day. A warm climate is a human and humane environment. Feelings are accepted. Sustaining climate shares a lot of characteristics with Rogers and Freiberg’s (Rogers, 1983) person-centered classroom in which unconditional positive regard is practiced. In a person-centered classroom, leadership and rule development is shared; all students can help manage the classroom. Teachers help students with self-discipline and intrinsic motivation. Sustaining climates offer a democratic, negotiating approach to tasks. That is, individuals have a say in what they do, what the goals are, and what are good outcomes. Like their interest in the goings on, their emotions are engaged as a matter of course. The individual spirit is not alienated by coercive strategies. Instead, individuals have an effect on the course of the group activities. They have influence, as in a good parent–child relationship (Kochanska, 2002). Democratic classrooms foster student development by allowing students to have an opportunity to make suggestions for structuring the rules and practices of the classroom. Students have opportunities to discuss all sides of controversial topic (Berman, 1997). In a sustaining classroom climate, students are at ease enough to express their thoughts and feelings about basic issues. They are able to engage in discussions in which viewpoints conflict and develop greater social perspectivetaking skills. Such activities also promote moral judgment development (Reimer et al., 1991) and personal efficacy in democratic functioning: “Open-classroom climate generally is related to higher political efficacy and trust, and lower political cynicism and alienation – to more democratic attitudes” (Ehman, 1980, p. 110). Students who practice designing and creating their curriculum are able to “enhance and embellish assignments, discuss requirements and expectations, seek new depth and experiences, and search for meaning and value in projects and classroom studies” (Turkanis, 2001, p. 102). They develop the motivation to “own” their learning generally and feel more capable in making decisions, solving problems and thinking creatively as adolescents and adults (Turkanis, 2001). Purposeful citizenship is fostered by teachers who help students develop a sense of social responsibility (Berman, 1997). Such teachers promote peer interaction within a context that emphasizes cooperation and equality. They allow conflicts to be openly and effectively resolved. They give students a meaningful voice in controlling their environment. They enlarge young people’s perspectives by inviting them to consider the perspectives of others and the good of the group. Of course, there are different ways to be a cohesive group. You can have a democratic

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community but demonize the outgroup – a self-protectionist ethic. Teachers can set up or allow climates to develop that emphasize the self-protectionist ethic (me against you, us against them), the engagement ethic (relational care), or the imagination ethic (inclusive solutions). Sustaining classrooms are globally sustainable and inclusive. That is, they take multiple perspectives into account when planning, thinking of consequences and solutions that meet the basic needs of all. For a successful participatory democracy, Reimer (Reimer et al., 1991) suggested that several conditions must be met. Student interest must be maintained. Issues are raised clearly so that the pros and cons of concrete proposals can be discussed in a clear, flexible procedural order. Students and staff discuss issues together by voicing reasons for their stands and not by attacking one another on personal grounds. Controversy and conflict are welcomed as a way to encourage cognitive and ethical growth. Moral judgment is promoted through discussions of everyday dilemmas and sociomoral problems and what rules to establish, thereby building understanding of the need for agreements and commitment to following them. Democratic citizenship is enhanced through the development of additional capacities and attitudes required for global citizenship. The policy experts in the Citizenship Education Policy Study Project (Cogan, 1997) identified the public virtues and values that a global citizen would need in the twenty-first century to avoid war and other destructive actions. The experts agreed on the following characteristics, in descending order of importance. Each person should (a) approach problems as member of a global society; (b) work cooperatively with others and take responsibility for one’s roles and responsibilities in society; (c) understand, accept, and tolerate cultural differences; (d) think in a critical and systematic way; (e) resolve conflict in a nonviolent manner; (f) adopt a way of life that protects the environment; (g) respect and defend human rights; (h) participate in public life at all levels of civic discourse; and (i) make full use of informationbased technologies. We might include today because of vast social media misinformation: (j) Become media literate. It may be useful to post this list in the classroom or school. Meaningful Development, Enhancement of Human Potential, and Flourishing. Sustaining classrooms centralize flourishing. As the teacher gets to know students, she co-shapes instruction with students in ways that engage and delight them. Humor and joy are not strangers to classroom life. Student holistic growth is central to the goals of the classroom. For example, in a growth-oriented classroom, discipline is not punishment but is coached character development (Watson, 2014). Moreover, the educator helps students develop a sense of positive purpose through ongoing discussions of a good life in the community. Student self-actualization is part of the classroom mission. Individuals develop their unique gifts and talents under the guidance and encouragement of the classroom and school community in response to community need, an Aristotelian idea (Urmson, 1988). The community is drawn into the classroom, whether for developmental support, instructional purpose, or the investigation of community needs that the students can help meet.

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As in traditional First Nation education, students learn to get along with the biocommunity (Medin & Bang, 2014) through learning respectful relations such as the “honorable harvest” in seeking to harvest animals and plants (Kimmerer, 2013). The time is now, in an era of planetary ecological crises, for moral education to help shape ecological intelligence and ability to live sustainably and regeneratively with the rest of the nature (Narvaez, 2020a, b, 2021).

Conclusion Wellness-informed sustaining climates pay attention to meeting basic needs and foster flourishing within the community, including relations with the biocommunity. They integrate democratic practice and discourse, and enhance human potential and compassionate morality. Sustaining classrooms offer places where students are encouraged to self-actualize through the academic tasks at hand. Students learn to integrate positive purpose, citizenship and flourishing as individuals, as classroom members, as global citizens, and as members of the earth community.

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Demonstrating the Value of Values-Based Education What We Have Learned About Learning from the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI) Kris Acheson, Devi Bhuyan, Lindy Brewster, Jerry Burgess, John Dirkx, Steve Grande, Shagufa Kapadia, Ali Kenny, Kees Kouwenaar, Terence Lovat, Jennifer Ma, Wenjuan Ma, Yoshie Tomozumi Nakamura, Thomas Nielsen, Hajime Nishitani, Guanglong Pang, Christina Raab, Craig Shealy, Renee Staton, Lee Sternberger, India Still, John Style, Ron Toomey, and Jennifer Wiley Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values-Based Education Is a Type of Values-Based Intervention That Extends Far Beyond the Classroom to Whenever We Try to Influence Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors . . . . . . . . Values-Based Interventions Such as Values-Based Education Include Both the Teaching About and Teaching of Beliefs and Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI): Empirical Applications in Values-Based Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is the BEVI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Is the BEVI Used? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is the Rationale for the BEVI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BEVI Domains, Scales, and Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Because this chapter is based upon long-term programmatic research and practice with contributors serving in overlapping roles, and draws upon theory and data from multiple initiatives over many years, authorship is listed in alphabetical order rather than level or type of contribution. For purposes of consistency and coherence, aspects of this chapter are derived and/or adapted from (1) Acheson et al. (in press), (2) Shealy (in press), (3) Shealy (2016), and (4) the website for the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI) at www.thebevi.com K. Acheson (*) Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA D. Bhuyan Sheppard-Pratt Psychology, Ellicott City, MD, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_8

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People in High BEVI Full Scale Score Groups Experience and Express Beliefs and Values Differently from Those in Low Full Scale Score Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When It Comes to Beliefs and Values, Structures of Identity and Self May Vary Empirically from Who We Say We Are and/or How We Are Experienced by Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What We Believe and Value Not Only Illuminates Who We Are But Can Also Predict What We Will Do in Our Work, Relationships, and Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overtly Fostering Values May Not Work and Could Even Cause a Backlash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter examines the intersection between Values-based Education (VbE) and research conducted by the author team under the auspices of the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI). BEVI constitutes a mixed methods instrument with potential to ascertain the beliefs, circumstances, and values that underlie the lives of individuals across a wide range of settings and contexts and, hence, are crucial in understanding and effecting optimal teaching, learning, growth, development, and change. As such, the intersection of BEVI with the aims and objectives of VbE offers potential for enhanced understanding and practice. Keywords

Values-based Education · Values-based Intervention · Beliefs · Values · Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory · BEVI · Assessment · Outcomes · Transformative Learning · Equilintegration Model · EI Model

L. Brewster OR Consulting, Virginia, USA J. Burgess Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK J. Dirkx · W. Ma · G. Pang Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA S. Grande · R. Staton James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA S. Kapadia The M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, India A. Kenny LeaderWise, Montana, USA K. Kouwenaar Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands T. Lovat The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia J. Ma Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia

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Introduction Within both scholarly and lay discourse regarding human motivation and change, it is ironic that there is no construct more crucial but less understood than the concept of “values” (e.g., Braithwaite & Scott, 1991; Rokeach, 1979; Schwartz, 2012), a conceptual conundrum that provides a unique opportunity for this indispensable volume on Values-based Education. So, what might be most helpful at the outset of this chapter is to start by putting cards on table, describing what we understand “Values-based Education” to be along with some exemplary approaches that seek to define and measure the value construct. Such emphases are important for many reasons, not the least of which is that VbE is “not a heavy assessment-driven field,” although its scholars and practitioners are “always looking for ways of tracking progress” (T. Lovat, January 11, 2022, personal communication). More specifically, if our goal is to educate for values – that is, demonstrably to inculcate particular “values” in human beings – we must make sense of what “beliefs and values” actually are, a contention that may seem surprising but is actually fundamental. That is because the definitional underpinnings of the literature in Values-based Education, although deeply illuminating and impactful, have been rightly characterized as a “semantic morass” (Berkowitz, 2011, p. 13). To be fair, the problem here is much bigger than VbE. To consider just one example, let us examine the term, “family values.” Underlying our assumptions of what constitute “family values” is a fundamental understanding of what a “family” is – what kinds of groups “family” includes or excludes, and why. At its heart, conflict over “family Y. T. Nakamura The George Washington University, Washington D.C, USA T. Nielsen University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia H. Nishitani Soka/Hiroshima University, Hachioji, Japan C. Raab Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria C. Shealy Western Washington University, Washington, USA L. Sternberger International Beliefs and Values Institute, Washington, USA I. Still Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, Jersey City, NJ, USA J. Style Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain R. Toomey Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia J. Wiley CoreCollaborative International, Harrisonburg, USA

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values” arises because people imagine differently the construct (family) that defines those values (e.g., Gavriel-Fried & Shilo, 2016; Sharma, 2013). More generally, a simple Google search of the word “values,” much less its conceptual cousin, “beliefs,”1 reveals a cacophony of contradictory constructs. This lack of coherence reveals one of the most basic challenges we face as VbE scholars, educators, students, practitioners, and leaders is that the term “values” is so widely used in so many and varied forms, it soon becomes evident that although we talk as though we have a common understanding of what “values” are, this putative contention is anything but. Moreover, the problem is much deeper than semantic, or even conceptual. It is essentially epistemological in nature, in that when talking about “values” – much less “values in education” – we may not know what we do not know or why that lack of knowledge matters. In point of fact, such absence matters profoundly because we cannot effectively “educate for values” if we do not understand what values are and what they are not. For example, values are not beliefs, although they are derivative of them. Moreover, beliefs and values exist in the service of need. And needs are integral to the structure of the human self – and by extension – whether “values-based” change occurs and under what circumstances (Acheson et al., 2022; Shealy, 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wiley et al., 2021). But, we are getting ahead of ourselves and need to back up in order to explain why such understanding is integral to all interventions that are values-based.

Values-Based Education Is a Type of Values-Based Intervention That Extends Far Beyond the Classroom to Whenever We Try to Influence Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors As advocates of depth-based change that cultivate human potential on individual and group levels, we feel an urgent calling and need to inculcate greater capacity to care for self, others, and the larger world (Aurora Network, 2023; Shealy et al., 2012; Staton & Grande, 2017; Cultivating the Globally Sustainable Self, 2022; Toogoolawa, 2022). But, it is one thing to describe exemplary approaches to “Values-based Education.” It is another matter altogether to explain why they do or do not work, and not just theoretically (e.g., why we think they work) or polemically (e.g., why we think they should work), but empirically to demonstrate with real, quantitative data why exposure to VbE – through courses, programs, systems, and institutions – appears to be associated with real change, if not transformation, regarding how, to what degree, and for which reasons human beings experience self, others, and the larger world as they do. However, as we will see, data of this nature require sufficient clarity regarding the underlying constructs upon Here is an example of a Google search of “beliefs and values” conducted on June 16, 2022: https:// www.google.com/search?q¼beliefs+and+values&rlz¼1C1CHZN_enUS967US968&oq¼beliefs +and+values&aqs¼chrome.0.69i59j0i67i433j35i39j0i67j0i512l3j0i433i512j0i512j0i67i433. 3182j1j15&sourceid¼chrome&ie¼UTF-8

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which measures are built and data derived (e.g., Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Shealy, 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wiley et al., 2021). Broadly speaking, Values-based Education (VbE) is a philosophy of education advocating that a community’s collectively identified values should provide the centerpiece for everything that occurs within that community. To VbE scholars, educators, practitioners, and leaders, much of this focus is on the pre-K-12 school environment but, as we contend, and will seek to demonstrate, VbE occurs across multiple settings and populations, all over the world, and should therefore be framed in VbE terms. As such, although VbE often focuses on school environments – which most certainly have been at the heart of VbE – we wish to emphasize at the outset that we, and many of our colleagues around the world, have been engaged in Valuesbased Education, implicitly and explicitly, for many years. That is because VbE is, from our perspective, integral to all Values-based Interventions (VbI) that include the teaching of and teaching about values. As we will demonstrate through multiple examples of our work with the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory, or BEVI (the mixed methods assessment method we use in teaching, research, and practice) and the Equilintegration or EI Model (the underlying theoretical framework that helps predict and explain the acquisition and modification of beliefs and values), it is not advisable to try and engage human value-systems without carefully designed and delivered processes of education of and about values. That is why we conceptualize Values-based Education as integral to the Values-based Interventions we do. For example, VbE plays a key role in Values-based Interventions across the spectrum of our research and practice activities in areas such as engaged and highimpact learning (e.g., Shealy et al., 2015; Wiley et al., 2021), environmental education and education for sustainable development (e.g., Acheson & Kelly, 2021; Kelly et al., 2016), gender sensitivity training (e.g., Pendleton et al., 2016), international and multicultural education (e.g., Grant et al., 2021; Iseminger et al., 2020; Iyer, 2013; Tabit et al., 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015), leadership development (e.g., Dyjak-LeBlanc et al., 2016; Shullman et al., 2022), mental health clinician training, research, and practice (e.g., Burgess et al., 2004; Coates et al., 2016; Cozen et al., 2016; Kenny et al., 2018), and transformative education and learning (e.g., Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Acheson et al., 2022). As we seek to demonstrate, the overarching reasons that values-based perspectives in general – and the EI model and BEVI method in particular – are useful across all of these domains is that they (1) help operationalize key constructs that benefit from greater conceptual and empirical specificity and (2) provide an applied system through which these laudable educational aspirations may be facilitated.

Values-Based Interventions Such as Values-Based Education Include Both the Teaching About and Teaching of Beliefs and Values From our perspective, Values-based Interventions, such as VbE, are best described and delivered at two interdependent levels of analysis: (1) transparently introduced, presented, and explained in a way that maximizes interest, enhances engagement,

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and lowers resistance by the populations we seek to reach and (2) appropriately integrated and sensitively mediated through culturally congruent curricula, programs, media, and processes that are tailored to specific audiences for clearly articulated objectives. The former approach really concerns the teaching about values, whereas the latter approach addresses the teaching of values. As may be evident, of these two components, the “teaching about” values is perhaps less familiar to VbE intervenors since the focus tends more often to be on the “teaching of” values, typically through curricula or programs that are designed to inculcate particular values within a specific context. Many excellent examples of such work are described in this volume (e.g., Lovat et al., 2023). From our experience, the benefit that accrues from also integrating a “teaching about values” dimension into VbI/VbE work – tailored to the age and needs of participants – is that it deliberately invites the recipients of our interventions into a process which is all about them. After all, the ultimate purpose of such work is to engage our audience in concepts, materials, or processes that are – or should be – of deep significance and meaning to their lives, relationships, and activities. So, from our perspective, it behooves us to employ models and methods that do just that, by juxtaposing the content of our “interventions” (e.g., what we are trying to teach, convey, inculcate, transform, etc.) with a meta-level understanding of why it is important to do so. Through this approach, the participant (1) becomes the subject rather than object of values-based work, (2) is explicitly invited to join in as a co-creator and co-collaborator, and (3) feels and sees their own stake in the intervention and why it matters to them personally. It should be emphasized that we do not approach such activities with the expectation that we can teach people “values” as they are understood by scholars who work in these areas (e.g., Rokeach, 1979; Schwartz, 2012). That is, we do not try to “teach” our participants (e.g., students, leaders, clients, etc.) specific values like “respect,” “openness,” “empathy,” etc. As we explain later, that is because the nature of values is largely affective, needs-based, and non-conscious, so the idea that we would somehow create more “respectful,” “open,” and “empathic” human beings by telling them to be – or telling them about – “respect,” “openness,” or “empathy” is contraindicated from a pedagogical standpoint (Acheson et al., 2022; Shealy et al., 2012; Tabit et al., 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015). Instead, values-inculcation emerges over time from pedagogical and experiential processes that mediate outcomes such as greater respect, openness, or empathy (Iyer, 2013). To be clear, it is not that we do not explain what such constructs mean or why they may be valuable; we do. It is simply that we do not have evidence to expect that interventions of this nature (e.g., psychoeducational, sociolegal) are all that effective when we’re dealing with deep-seated and needs-based motivational states in human beings. As cases in point, dismal outcomes of multi-million-dollar initiatives like “Drug Abuse Resistance Education” or DARE, “Just Say No” approaches to abstinence, or the “Three Strikes Rule” vis-à-vis imprisonment in the United States – all of which are demonstrably and unabashedly “values-based” – demonstrate why simplistic understandings of human nature and human behavior so often lead to harmful practices and ineffective policies (Bullock et al., 2022; Shealy & Bhuyan, 2009). As such, in our VbI/VbE work, we focus explicitly on such failures of policy and practice to demonstrate why they were destined to fail precisely because they

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emerged from reductionistic and antediluvian beliefs and values about human beings (e.g., Iyer, 2013). It should be emphasized that such work is, and must be, nonpartisan (e.g., IBAVI, 2022). In other words, we do not privilege perspectives from the left or the right in any given culture or context, recognizing that the tension between left and right is really an ancient and fraught dialectic between “that which was,” “that which is,” and “that which could be.” That is because, Fever dreams on the far right – yearning for a return to some imagined golden age where the status quo vis-à-vis power and privilege was understood as ordained (e.g., notions of “white supremacy” or its earlier incarnation of “white man’s burden”) – may be mirrored by naïve fantasies on the far left that all we need to do is remove the forces of oppression and dominance, and human goodness, fairness, and righteousness will naturally emerge (e.g., efforts to “defund the police”). These nature/nurture dichotomies predate our current local/ global squabbles as well as their Western progenitors (e.g., Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, JeanJaquez Rousseau), and basically cut to the core of our beliefs and values about why we are who we are – and what to do about all of that – as a species. (Laskar, 2013; Shealy, in press)

From the perspective of values-based pedagogies and processes, such matters may seem unduly abstract, but they are anything but. That is because, more than ever, and particularly among young people in this day and age, human beings long to understand why things are the way they are and where we have agency to change the way things are (e.g., Aurora Network, 2023; Cultivating the Globally Sustainable Self, 2022; Lovat et al., 2023; Shealy, 2016; Toomey et al., 2023). In short, from an empirical standpoint, exhorting others to adopt beliefs and values that are associated with whatever version of reality one believes is superior is likely to be a waste of time and energy (e.g., Tabit et al., 2016). At the same time, in our Values-based Interventions, including VbE, considerable evidence suggests that if we strongly emphasize reflecting on and articulating why we believe and value what we believe and value, a wide range of learning, growth, and development outcomes occur, such as deeper self/other awareness, self-reflection, critical thinking, and tolerance for other belief systems. To take one example of many, the Madison International Learning Community at James Madison University is explicitly and deliberately values-based, with the following overarching goals: to have students think and act locally and globally; learn about the relevance of beliefs and values of self, others and the larger world; and cultivate the values and competencies of informed and enlightened global citizens who are prepared to lead productive and meaningful lives. (See https://www.jmu.edu/global/isss/get-involved/madison-intl.shtml; Iyer, 2013)

The Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI): Empirical Applications in Values-Based Education We focused above on conceptual matters vis-à-vis Values-based Education, such as the rationale for considering VbE as a prominent type or form of Values-based Intervention as well as the benefits of juxtaposing the teaching about values with the teaching of values. Although many other issues are worth examining in this regard

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(e.g., see Acheson et al., in press; Shealy, 2016), we turn now to the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory or BEVI – including a description of this mixed methods measure – before examining how the BEVI has been applied across a very wide range of settings and populations over the past few decades as well as attendant empirical evidence of relevance to VbE scholars, educators, practitioners, and leaders.

What Is the BEVI? The BEVI is an accessible, adaptable, and powerful analytic tool useful across multiple populations and settings – from education and research to leadership and mental health – to evaluate, understand, and facilitate processes and outcomes of learning, growth, and transformation (https://thebevi.com/). Based upon decades of research and practice in the United States and internationally – and with excellent psychometric properties – the BEVI asks respondents a series of questions about beliefs, values, and life events that seek to illuminate “who learns what and why, and under what circumstances.” Through 17 empirically derived scales, the BEVI measures basic openness; receptivity to different cultures, religions, and social practices; the tendency (or not) to stereotype in particular ways; self and emotional awareness; and preferred but implicit strategies for making sense of why ‘other’ people and cultures ‘do what they do’. (Shealy, 2005, p. 99)

A grounded theory and mixed methods instrument, including both quantitative and qualitative items, the BEVI was developed on the basis of hundreds of actual “belief” statements from individuals all over the world. The BEVI uses a secure, web-based system that takes about 30 min to complete while generating an array of reports for individuals, couples, families, groups, organizations, and institutions (for more information, see https://thebevi.com/about/).

How Is the BEVI Used? In development since the early 1990s, as of this writing, the BEVI has been administered over 150,000 times across a wide range of countries and cultures. Individuals, groups, institutions, and organizations use the BEVI for a variety of purposes, including • To evaluate learning experiences (e.g., general education, international learning, multicultural courses, growth/development/team-building workshops, etc.) • To understand learning processes (e.g., who learns what and why, and under what circumstances) • To promote learning objectives (e.g., increased awareness of self, others, and the larger world)

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• To enhance teaching and program quality (e.g., which experiences or courses have what impact, and why) • To facilitate growth and development (e.g., of individuals, groups, organizations) • To conduct research (e.g., how and why do people become more “open” to different cultures) • To address organizational needs (e.g., staff/leadership development, assessing organizational climate) • To comply with assessment and accreditation requirements (e.g., substantive assessment) (https://thebevi.com/).

What Is the Rationale for the BEVI? Individuals, groups, institutions, and organization use the BEVI for many reasons, such as the following. First, it is comprehensive, using a mixed methods format (e.g., quantitative and qualitative items) measuring multiple aspects of learning, growth, and development including, but not limited to, basic openness; receptivity to different cultures, religions, and social practices; the tendency (or not) to stereotype in particular ways; self and emotional awareness; and preferred but implicit strategies for making sense of why “other” people and cultures “do what they do.” Second, it is empirically validated and theoretically grounded, with a demonstrable track record of international development and usage across a diverse array of countries and populations, with excellent psychometric properties (e.g., reliability, validity, scale structure) and an integrative and interdisciplinary theoretical framework. Third, it is highly accessible and adaptable, with a secure and online system of administration, which requires about 30 min to complete and provides individual, group, institutional, and cross-institutional report and analysis options, and the ability to add items and/or be used in conjunction with other assessment measures. Fourth, it includes both evaluative and practical applications, which can not only examine processes of change within and between individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, but also facilitate learning, growth, and development through a sophisticated and personally tailored report system as well as the “Beviverse,” an AI-mediated system that allows individuals to “walk into their own self” via their own BEVI profiles within an engaging VR (virtual reality) world. (https://thebevi.com/).

BEVI Domains, Scales, and Items The BEVI is a statistically reliable, well validated, and standardized measure consisting of four interrelated components: (1) a comprehensive set of

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demographic/background items that may be modified for particular projects; (2) a life history questionnaire, which is built into the measure; (3) 2 validity and 17 “process scales,” comprised of 185 quantitative items answered on a four-point Likert-type scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree); and (4) three qualitative “experiential reflection” items (https://thebevi.com/). The most recent iteration of the BEVI – the BEVI-3 – is normed upon a sample of over 10,000 individuals representing more than 100 countries around the world. The 17 quantitative scales and 3 qualitative items on the BEVI are organized under nine separate domains. These domains, quantitative scales, and qualitative items are as follows.

Domain I: Validity Scales Validity Scale 1: Consistency: The degree to which responses are consistent for differently worded items that are assessing similar or identical content (e.g., “People change all the time,” “People don’t really change”). Validity Scale 2: Congruency: The degree to which response patterns correspond to that which would be predicted statistically (e.g., “I have real needs for warmth and affection,” “I take my own feelings very seriously”). Domain II: Formative Variables Background Information: Demographic items regarding a wide range of variables (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, education, nationality, etc.) Scale 1: Negative Life Events: Difficult childhood; parents were troubled; life conflict/struggles; many regrets (e.g., “I have had a lot of conflict with one or more members of my family,” “My family had a lot of problems with money”). Domain III: Fulfillment of Core Needs Scale 2: Needs Closure: Unhappy upbringing/life history; conflictual/disturbed family dynamics; stereotypical thinking/odd explanations for why events happen as they do or why things are as they are (e.g., “I had a wonderful childhood,” “Some numbers are luckier than others”). Scale 3: Needs Fulfillment: Open to experiences, needs, and feelings; deep care/ sensitivity for self, others, and the larger world (e.g., “We should spend more money on early education programs for children,” “I like to think about who I am”). Scale 4: Identity Diffusion: Indicates painful crisis of identity; fatalistic regarding negatives of marital/family life; feels “bad” about self and prospects (e.g., “I have gone through a painful identity crisis,” “Even though we expect them to be, men are not really built to be faithful in marriage”). Domain IV: Tolerance of Disequilibrium Scale 5: Basic Openness: Open and honest about the experience of basic thoughts, feelings, and needs (e.g., “I don’t always feel good about who I am,” “I have felt lonely in my life”). Scale 6: Self Certitude: Strong sense of will; impatient with excuses for difficulties; emphasizes positive thinking; disinclined toward deep analysis (e.g., “You can

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overcome almost any problem if you just try harder,” “If you play by the rules, you get along fine”).

Domain V: Critical Thinking Scale 7: Basic Determinism: Prefers simple explanations for differences/behavior; believes people don’t change/strong will survive; troubled life history (e.g., “AIDS may well be a sign of God’s anger,” “It’s only natural that the strong will survive”). Scale 8: Socioemotional Convergence: Open, aware of self/other, larger world; thoughtful, pragmatic, determined; sees world in shades of gray, such as the need for self-reliance while caring for vulnerable others (e.g., “We should do more to help those who are less fortunate,” “Too many people don’t meet their responsibilities”). Domain VI: Self-Access Scale 9: Physical Resonance: Receptive to corporeal needs/feelings; experientially inclined; appreciates the impact of human nature/evolution (e.g., “I am a free spirit,” My body is very sensitive to what I feel”). Scale 10: Emotional Attunement: Emotional, sensitive, social, needy, affiliative; values the expression of affect; close family connections (e.g., “I don’t mind displays of emotion,” “Weakness can be a virtue”). Scale 11: Self-Awareness: Introspective; accepts the complexity of self; cares for human experience/condition; tolerates difficult thoughts/feelings (e.g., “I am always trying to understand myself better,” “I have problems that I need to work on”). Scale 12: Meaning Quest: Searching for meaning; seeks balance in life; resilient/ persistent; highly feeling; concerned for less fortunate (e.g., “I think a lot about the meaning of life,” “I want to find a better sense of balance in my life”). Domain VII: Other Access Scale 13: Religious Traditionalism: Highly religious; sees self/behavior/events as mediated by God/spiritual forces; one way to the “afterlife” (e.g., “Without religion there can be no peace,” “There is one way to heaven”). Scale 14: Gender Traditionalism: Men and women are built to be a certain way; prefers traditional/simple views of gender and gender roles (e.g., “Women are more emotional than men,” “A man’s role is to be strong”). Scale 15: Sociocultural Openness: Progressive/open regarding a wide range of actions, policies, and practices in the areas of culture, economics, education, environment, gender/global relations, politics (e.g., “We should try to understand cultures that are different from our own,” “There is too big a gap between the rich and poor in our country”). Domain VIII: Global Access Scale 16: Ecological Resonance: Deeply invested in environmental/sustainability issues; concerned about the fate of the earth/natural world (e.g., “I worry about our environment,” “We should protect the land no matter who owns it”). Scale 17: Global Resonance: Invested in learning about/encountering different individuals, groups, languages, cultures; seeks global engagement (e.g., “It is

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important to be well informed about world events,” “I am comfortable around groups of people who are very different from me”).

Domain IX: Experiential Reflection Items The following three qualitative items are included in the BEVI and completed in written format at the conclusion of administration: • Qualitative Item 1: Please describe which aspect of this experience has had the greatest impact upon you and why? • Qualitative Item 2: Is there some aspect of your own “self” or “identity” (e.g., gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious or political background, etc.) that has become especially clear or relevant to you or others as a result of this experience? • Qualitative Item 3: What have you learned and how are you different now? (https://thebevi.com/)2 In light of the above background information on the BEVI, it is now possible to provide international examples of specific findings from various BEVI projects that include an explicit focus on “Values-based Education” with different populations across an array of international settings and contexts.

People in High BEVI Full Scale Score Groups Experience and Express Beliefs and Values Differently from Those in Low Full Scale Score Groups The BEVI has been designed with a reporting system that provides administrators the capacity to examine a wide array of interactions among different variables. Specifically, we can conduct fine-grained analyses by looking at differences and similarities across all of the Background Information items and scales on the BEVI as well as a wide range of analysis, reporting, and AI / VR systems. For example, an administrator may construct a report analyzing (1) cross-sectional data (to see subgroup patterns within a broader population), (2) longitudinal data (to see the impact of interventions on specific subgroups), (3) demographic data (to see the differential impact of variables such as gender, ethnicity, education, income, and nationality), and (4) index data (systems by which scales and/or data are organized in particular ways for reporting purposes, which allow administrators to examine within- and between-group differences for specific cohorts). One of the most powerful indexes on the BEVI is called “Profile Contrast,” an empirically and theoretically derived index based upon the “Full Scale” score on the BEVI. More 2

To read more about various features of the BEVI (e.g., reliability and validity; the report system), please see https://thebevi.com/about/validity/ as well as Shealy (2016) and Wandschneider et al. (2015).

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specifically, Profile Contrast draws upon data from 11 of the 17 BEVI scales to express a composite score that is automatically generated each time someone takes the BEVI (Wang et al., 2020). As such, the Full Scale score really represents the “essence” or “core” of what the BEVI measures via a single score. In the Profile Contrast BEVI index, participants in any given cohort taking the instrument are grouped into thirds – that is, the top, middle, and bottom third of Full Scale scorers. For instance, 30 people who took the BEVI would be automatically calculated by the report system into the top 10, middle 10, and bottom 10 Full Scale scorers. In scholarship and practice, such subgroups are generally referred to as “High Optimal,” “Medium Optimal” and “Low Optimal” responders (Wang et al., 2020). The BEVI scale correlation matrix and other analytic findings over the years have made it clear that these groups differ in important ways with regard to underlying structures of identity and self (Wandschneider et al., 2015). For example, there appears to be a correlation between Full Scale score on the BEVI and length and depth of responses on the three qualitative questions on the BEVI – that is, participants in the High Optimal group are likely to contribute responses with more words and richer content (Giesing, 2017; Wang et al., 2020). A working hypothesis to explain such findings is that the core selves of those in these High and Low Optimal groups are organized differently (e.g., Acheson et al., 2020; Nishitani, 2020; Shealy, 2016). This supposition is supported empirically by the significant differences between these groups that we often see in scores on the 11 BEVI scales that comprise the Full Scale score. Among many other common differences, Emotional Attunement and Self Awareness tend to be higher while Basic Determinism and Gender Traditionalism trend lower for High Optimal groups. These structural differences in self and identity then shape people’s behaviors when they are presented with qualitative questions as they take the BEVI because their capacity and inclination to provide more information of greater depth results from how they are organized at the level of identity and self, which fundamentally differ between the groups (Giesing, 2017; Wang et al., 2020). These differences matter from the standpoint of Values-based Education. In fact, the implications are potentially profound because they indicate that “High Optimal” versus “Low Optimal” participants in VbE interventions are predisposed to experience such interventions in qualitatively different terms, which may interact with the design or delivery of the intervention to produce the outcomes we observe (e.g., greater reported satisfaction on the part of learners, more “change” in directions that are desirable from the standpoint of educators) (Giesing, 2017; Wang et al., 2020). In practical terms, we can see that feedback from participants before, during, and after various experiences (e.g., courses, programs, workshops, etc.) may be shaped as much – if not more – by underlying structures of the learners than by the quality or nature of the intervention itself (Iseminger et al., 2020; Wandschneider et al., 2015). This phenomenon, which is evinced by considerable cross-cultural/cross-country BEVI data (e.g., Acheson & Kelly, 2021; Shealy, in press; Wiley et al., 2021), suggests that we must be careful not to attribute the seeming success or failure of VbIs, or really any intervention, to quality of curricula or instruction alone, because:

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BEVI data from all over the world indicate that when we label someone or something “good,” “bad,” or “indifferent” (e.g., through written or verbal feedback; via surveys, polls, or focus group; through public utterances or private thoughts in our head), such versions of reality (VORs) may be relatively 1) predetermined (e.g., although contingencies affect such processes and outcomes, we tend to think, feel, or behave within our own internalized parameters because we are structured to do so at the level of identity and self), 2) subjective (e.g., our versions of reality may or may not be based upon an objective appraisal of whatever it is that we are experiencing or evaluating), 3) obscuring (e.g., what we say we think or feel may have little to do with “the thing” that is being experienced or evaluated, but may be more about the preservation, maintenance, and representation of our identity/selfstructure), and 4) invalid (e.g., if our goal is objective evaluation, we may have to evaluate the evaluator in order to understand their capacity and inclination for objectively evaluating what they say they are evaluating). (Shealy, in press)

In other words, feedback from learners, broadly defined, must be interpreted thoughtfully and with attention to the complexity of what shapes learners’ reactions to learning experiences. Specifically, what students say they feel when asked about their satisfaction with VbE may or may not be a reflection of the “quality” or “nature” of the intervention, but may rather be “predetermined,” “subjective,” “obscuring,” and “invalid” for the reasons noted above. Fortunately, it is in fact possible to predict empirically how people perceive experiences and to explain theoretically why they do so, which in turn gives educators more confidence in our interpretation and usage of data on the effectiveness of Values-based Interventions such as VbE (Acheson & Kelly, 2021; Shealy, 2016; Wiley et al., 2021). We will illustrate this complex phenomenon with multiyear, multi-institution data from international education. The Forum BEVI project made explicit the serious problem of assuming that intercultural contacts occurring via education abroad will always result in transformation of values or the development of intercultural competence for learners (Wandschneider et al., 2015). Even in international programs and courses where – with the use of a values-focused assessment such as the BEVI – values development is integrated into assessment and pedagogical processes, learners who enter such experiences with different “structures of self” leave with different outcomes. For instance, the Forum BEVI project reported a comparison of the three Full Scale score groups across two BEVI administrations (T1 or Time 1, before an international education experience, and T2 or Time 2, afterward). While the lowest Full Scale scorers moved from a mean of 23 at T1 on the Identity Diffusion BEVI scale to a T2 mean of 10, the direction of change for the highest Full Scale scorers was the opposite – they moved from 9 at T1 to 25 at T2 (Wandschneider et al., 2015, p. 191). As another example, in a meta-analysis of BEVI data conducted by Wang and colleagues (2020), differences in BEVI data emerged when subgroups were compared by gender, nationality, ethnicity, and other demographic variables, with the Full Scale score emerging as a particularly strong differentiator of different types of learners. In other words, the clearest pattern of scale score differences were found not in comparisons between males and females or people from different cultural backgrounds but instead between the highest and lowest Full Scale scorers.

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What insights emerge from such findings? With the Full Scale score on the BEVI, we are able to show how individuals are “structured” at the level of identity and self before, during, and after a specific Values-based Intervention, including VbE, has occurred. • First, students are clearly different in the three Full Scale score groups crosssectionally, both before and after their international education experiences: For example, in the Forum BEVI project lowest and highest Full Scale scorers exhibited significant differences in Identity Diffusion at both pre- and post-test administrations. According to Wang and colleagues (2020), students in the “high” Full Scale score group consistently evince much higher Global Resonance, Sociocultural Openness, Basic Openness, Socioemotional Convergence, Emotional Attunement, and Needs Fulfillment. As such, because students enter and leave learning experiences as a diverse group, effective VbE curriculum design and culturally competent teaching must start with sufficient understanding of who our students are and how they experience themselves, others, and the larger world. • Second, we know from these BEVI studies that VbE and other educational experiences can and do make a difference in students’ value development. As an example, Wandschneider and colleagues (2015) found that Basic Determinism and other BEVI scales related to critical thinking were significantly correlated with number of years of college education as self-reported on the BEVI: the more years in college, the less people “prefer basic/simple explanations for why people are as they are or do as they do” (p. 168). The fact is that many published studies of BEVI results reveal some learning gains as a result of VbI, if not for the whole group, then at least for certain subgroups on particular BEVI scales (e.g., Iseminger et al., 2020; Wiley et al., 2021). These findings should be very encouraging to educators invested in VbE, for they provide evidence that what we do makes a real difference in our students. • Third, and inextricably intertwined with the previous point that VbE can work as intended, is the caveat that, in the end, the amount and direction of change in values as measured by the BEVI is highly mediated by how students are structured at the outset of the experience. To be specific, lower capacity and inclination for change as indicated by a “Low Optimal” score is often strongly associated with a lower degree of change by Time 2, or possibly even regression or movement in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, students who have a higher capacity and inclination for change as indicated by “Medium Optimal,” and especially, “High Optimal” scores at Time 1 are in general more likely to reach intended learning outcomes. Other data from the COIL BEVI project, a multiinstitution initiative to measure outcomes of Collaborative Online International Learning or COIL (see https://www.ibavi.org/content/ibavi-coil.php), also demonstrate this tendency (Nishitani et al., 2022). For example, Lowest Full Scale scorers in COIL courses did not shift in Sociocultural Openness from T1 to T2; at both administrations their mean was 24. The middle group increased in Sociocultural Openness from 79 to 87, and the highest Full Scale score group

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moved from 86 to 92. These trends are variable, however. In the same study, on Basic Openness, students farthest from desired learning outcomes (those in the lowest and middle Full Scale score groups) shifted more than more prepared students – from 14 to 25 and 27 to 38, respectively, as opposed to the relative stasis of the highest Full Scale scores T1-T2 scores of 83 and 84. Overall, then, the effectiveness of VbI/VbE as measured by the BEVI in these studies was highly predicted by who learners were at the outset of the educational experiences. The implication here for Values-based Education is that a “one-size-fitsall” approach will fail to meet student needs because it misses the essential variability within any learner context or cohort. Furthermore, we have found that the gains or successes of some students toward intended values development are often “washed out” by the losses or failures of other subgroups of students (Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2020). This masking of within-group variation in whole-group aggregates makes looking only at group mean scores over time to determine if VbE “works” quite problematic, for whole-group means can easily hide important gains or losses that are happening only for some students – gains or losses that Valuesbased educators must be aware of if they are to effectively address the needs of diverse groups of learners. In the end, no matter which assessment approach is taken, it is essential that VbE educators engage in robust methods to assess where the recipients of their interventions are pre- and post-experiences. Otherwise, it is impossible to make sense of the complex causes of changes we observe, or don’t observe – whether they are due to intervention design, the quality of the intervention, subgroup variability, or other variables (e.g., Acheson et al., in press; Shealy, 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015).

When It Comes to Beliefs and Values, Structures of Identity and Self May Vary Empirically from Who We Say We Are and/or How We Are Experienced by Others As discussed above, we see Values-based Education as encompassing any intervention that includes education about and education for values. When it comes to human engagement and change, then, we do not see a compelling reason to limit VbE to one specific population, such as students in a pre-K-12 environment. By widening the Values-based Education circle, we believe we can deepen understanding of and broaden receptivity to VbE precepts and practices that are so demonstrably needed in our world, both locally and globally (e.g., Aurora Network, 2023; Cultivating the Globally Sustainable Self, 2022; Embracing Education with the Heart, 2023; Toogoolawa, 2022). We turn next to one such domain for VbE beyond the realm of pre-K-12 education – leadership and organizational development – where we also have conducted applied assessment research with the BEVI method and EI model (e.g., Dyjak-LeBlanc et al., 2016; Shealy & Brewster, 2022; Shullman et al., 2022). By way of context, it should be noted that values are receiving increasing attention in the various management paradigms and practices, such as servant

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leadership, ethical leadership, authentic leadership, and transformational leadership (e.g., Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Brown & Treviño, 2006; Cooper et al., 2005; Copeland, 2014; George et al., 2007; Ilies et al., 2005; Shullman et al., 2022; Williams et al., 2021). In general, values-based leadership seems to be rooted in moral and ethical foundations. Likewise, and especially in times of crisis leadership, values are perceived as critical to leaders’ success. When leaders’ values are clear, they are able to clearly communicate what they stand for, and their followers in turn can understand the motivations behind their actions and the decisions they make (Dyjak-Leblanc et al., 2016; Klepper & Nakamura, 2012; Shullman et al., 2022). However, clearly articulating one’s values as a leader may be more easily said than done. Developing this capacity demands an inner journey involving deep and sustained reflection through which is it is possible to increase one’s self-awareness and discover one’s core values (Gardner et al., 2011; Lawler & Ashman, 2012; Michie & Gooty, 2005). These very issues and dynamics were prominent throughout a coaching intervention that leveraged the BEVI to engage in organizational leadership development with an international technology company (Shealy & Brewster, 2022). During the assessment and consultation process, some participating leaders struggled with the cognitive dissonance of engaging in values-based discussions. The intrapsychic and interpersonal struggles of these leaders generated significant organizational conflict, and in some cases even led people to leave the organization entirely. Before we present data that illustrate in concrete detail these underlying dynamics, we provide some information on methodology. Essentially, leaders within this organization were offered by the head of human resources the opportunity to engage in hour-long confidential coaching sessions after taking the BEVI. Although the coaching was voluntary, most organizational leaders accepted the invitation; several even requested additional follow-up sessions. In this approach, individuals received their own individual narrative report after completing the BEVI. Then, coaches asked participants to offer thoughts and feelings they may have had in reaction to their reports. Deeper explanation of BEVI constructs and how the instrument makes sense of beliefs and values, the specific interpretation of their results, a deliberate connection to their leadership role within the organization, and any other questions or implications they wished to explore all followed. Several of the most striking take-aways from the coaching process included (1) how often their perceptions of self were dramatically different from how they were perceived by others, (2) how diverse the group of organizational leaders truly was in terms of beliefs and values, (3) how generally unaware the leaders were of how differently they experienced self and others, (4) how all of this complexity was clearly linked to interpersonal conflicts and organizational tensions, and (5) how difficult it was for leaders to agree on organizational priorities and goals (Shealy & Brewster, 2022). For the coaching sessions, we conducted dozens of different analyses of BEVI data, but here we focus on two scales – Self Certitude and Emotional Attunement – from a “Within Group Comparative Report” to illuminate our arrival at the above five points. When we juxtaposed individual scores for the leadership team on these scales, three fundamental observations became apparent. First, there was enormous

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within-group variability in the group on both scales, with scores ranging from the 1st to the 89th percentile on Self Certitude and the 1st to the 93rd percentile on Emotional Attunement. Second, a negative correlation emerged between individuals across these two scales. In other words, individuals who were higher on Self Certitude tended, overall, to be lower on Emotional Attunement (and vice versa). This pattern is consistent with the psychometric and statistical characteristics of the BEVI as noted in the correlation matrices, factor analyses, and structural equation modeling published in Shealy (2016), Wandschneider and colleagues (2015), and Wiley and colleagues (2021). Third, analysis of these two BEVI scales strongly suggests that, from an organizational standpoint, leaders will likely find it very challenging to find common purposes and ways forward due to the fact that their beliefs, values, experiences, and understanding of self and other all vary so dramatically (Brewster, 2019; Dyjak-LeBlanc et al., 2016; Shullman et al., 2022). It was striking to work with such bright, motivated, and experienced leaders and hear them express in their individual sessions that (1) they saw themselves in ways that were profoundly inconsistent with how others experienced them, (2) they were distressed by being misunderstood by others, and (3) they believed the organization would flourish if others would only function differently. These dynamics were especially pronounced when leaders scored very high or very low on BEVI scales, such as near the lower and upper ends of the wide score ranges for Self Certitude and Emotional Attunement discussed above (Shealy & Brewster, 2022). Our experience with Values-based Interventions indicate that the effectiveness of VbE programs and processes depends on educators’ ability and willingness to assess and address within-group differences among organizational leaders as well as learners. That means engaging in developmental work with faculty and staff in an educational setting so that they can more clearly articulate their values and come to terms with the varied perspectives and experiences that educators themselves bring to the organization. To accomplish this developmental work, we must have access to models and methods by which such differences in beliefs and values may be ascertained. Also necessary is the willingness and the capacity to grapple with how, when, whether, and for whom “issues” must be addressed in order for VbE curricula and co-curricular programming to be successful. If we do not ascertain and subsequently act on these issues appropriately, our Values-based Interventions may well fail without us even knowing why (e.g., Brewster, 2019; Dyjak-LeBlanc et al., 2016; Hoffman, 2012; Lewis, 2002; Shullman et al., 2022).

What We Believe and Value Not Only Illuminates Who We Are But Can Also Predict What We Will Do in Our Work, Relationships, and Lives One of the unique features of the BEVI among psychometric instruments is its distinctive practice, as documented in various publications and even the discussions above, of analysis at both micro (individual or small group) and macro (whole institution or meta-analysis) levels. When we zoom out to explore big data, the

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BEVI reporting and AI / VR system constructs a highly detailed and nuanced profile of group values and subgroup patterns of variation in those values. These profiles are both descriptive of the group and potentially predictive – of how members of the group will behave or of who will join the group in the future, for instance. We can predict with BEVI data, as an example, which students are most likely to study abroad or engage in other elective global learning experiences such as international research projects, virtual exchange or COIL, or service-learning projects (Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2020) and which students are drawn to various areas of study (Nishitani 2020). Beyond voluntary participation, the BEVI is useful to project program retention, for it can be leveraged to predict which students may struggle emotionally and socially and thus potentially leave a program of study. In their report on the Forum BEVI project, Wandschneider and colleagues (2015) described this implication of the data collected by the multi-institutional initiative: It is possible to identify the profile or signature of an institution or organization. The aggregate profile of the BEVI may illuminate how a student body at a given institution or organization tends to see self, others, and the larger world. This profile appears to be relatively consistent across years, indicating that the characteristics of an institution’s student body may be relatively stable and measurable. (p. 202)

As an illustration, consider the contrast between four different universities from around the world on several BEVI scales. These universities – Zamorano in Honduras, Hong Kong Baptist, Georgia State in the south-eastern US, and Hiroshima University in Japan – represent a range of institution types. Some are public and others private; they range from large to small and of course are located within very different local cultural contexts. When we compare BEVI mean scores for these schools, we see that the two small, private schools exhibited nearly identical mean scores on scales such as Gender Traditionalism, Sociocultural Openness, Ecological Resonance, and Global Resonance. In contrast, students at the other two universities in Japan and the United States scored differently on two scales in particular: lower on Gender Traditionalism (reflecting less traditional expectations regarding who males and females ought to be and how they should behave) and higher on Ecological Resonance (indicating more awareness of and investment in environmental issues). Other than institution type, there could very well be other key factors shaping these institutional profiles. For example, Acheson and Kelly’s (2021) detailed analysis of one institution’s profile and the context that shapes it is interesting and helpful. Specifically, in a study comparing different institutional types with the BEVI, two small, private schools both scored high on Religious Traditionalism, perhaps not surprising given the religious contexts of those institutions, contexts which influences stances on gender norms, and environmental issues. Moreover, consider these two schools in comparison with Georgia State, a public institution in an urban setting with a large and highly visible LGBTQ+ community. Among other differences, these students scored much lower on Gender Traditionalism than students in the other two schools (14th percentile for Georgia State students versus

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the 56th and 52nd percentile for the two private schools). In short, it would seem that there are quite striking differences between the profiles of students attracted to these different differences, which – from the standpoint of the BEVI method and EI model – suggest fundamental and underlying values-based differences overall at the level of self and identity for these students, a finding that has been replicated elsewhere (e.g., Nishitani, 2020; Wandschneider et al., 2015).

Overtly Fostering Values May Not Work and Could Even Cause a Backlash In investigating VbI processes of values-based learning, growth, and change with the BEVI over the past decades, educators and scholars have been concerned as much with what does not work as what does work, and why (e.g., Grant et al., 2021; Iseminger et al., 2020; Nishitani, 2020; Shealy, 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015). This focus is revealed most obviously in studies of Values-based Interventions that failed – that is, empirically did not achieve the change in values meant to be cultivated by the Values-based Intervention, course, or program. It is not uncommon, actually, for VbIs not only to fail to inculcate the desired values – in terms of their empirical manifestation – but to “make things worse,” by stimulating learning processes and outcomes that appear to go in the opposite direction of what was intended (e.g., Tabit et al., 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015). This backlash effect can be seen on the BEVI when scale scores that were meant to increase or decrease based on the design of the intervention instead move toward the opposite side of the spectrum (for instance, away from more sophisticated gray-area thinking or toward more rigid and constrained understandings of gender) from Time 1 to Time 2 administrations. Although these findings may initially be discouraging for educators (and potentially for learners as well), “failures” like these can in fact offer a powerful opportunity to analyze phenomena of curricula and instruction – that is, aspects of design and delivery – that are influencing documented changes in beliefs and values. The blessings of these failures, when educators capitalize on the opportunities for innovation they provide, are substantive and evidence-based changes to specific intervention approaches. In addition, over the years these failures have contributed much to the general identification of guiding principles and best practices of values-based assessment research and practice (e.g., Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Cozen et al., 2016; Deardorff, 2015; Hanson et al., 2022; Nishitani, 2020; Shealy, 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2020). An especially stark manifestation of the value of attending deeply to “what doesn’t work and why” is the impact of VbI (e.g., training, workshops, courses, and programs) that are designed to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI)related competencies. Tabit and colleagues (2016) conclude in a comprehensive analysis of BEVI data as well as other programs of applied assessment research and practice that such DEI pedagogies may well “backfire.” Empirically speaking, these VbIs can actually result in lower capacity and inclination to engage, tolerate, or understand different belief and value systems, cultures, or practices, because “urging

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individuals to engage in anti-prejudice thought and activity may inadvertently result in more rigid and stereotyped beliefs about the self, the world, and others” (Tabit et al., 2016, p. 198). This phenomenon is commonly seen when such DEI VbIs are mandatory rather than voluntary. For instance, in a required university course on multicultural identity and communication that was intentionally designed to foster openness to difference and interest in culture, Iseminger and colleagues (2020) found that overall, participants were emotionally activated by the course but that such stimulation did not function as intended for the whole group. Although some demographic subgroups did shift in desired directions on BEVI scales (such as Identity Diffusion and Gender Traditionalism), after this course that explicitly attempted to shape learners’ values, the group as a whole experienced a backlash effect, ending up statistically more likely to think in black and white terms (higher Basic Determinism) and no more likely to be interested in engaging cultures that were different from their own (unchanged Sociocultural Openness). In subgroup analysis, the backlash effect was determined to be the result of score changes in non-optimal directions on the part of male students, White students, and those who self-identified on the BEVI demographics as politically conservative (pp. 6–7). It may be that such students resent or resist explicit instruction that they perceive as critiquing or maligning their current value systems and/or the behaviors of groups with which they identify. We further illustrate this point with the pretest (T1) and posttest (T2) assessment results of a course offered beneath the auspices of the Aurora Network, an innovative higher education consortium in Europe (see https://aurora-universities.eu/). Funded by the European Union, the Aurora Network focuses on four values-based, multidisciplinary and transversal thematic domains: (1) Sustainability and Climate Change, (2) Health and Wellbeing, (3) Digital World and Global Citizenship, and (4) Culture, Identity and Diversity. Developers of the Aurora Network integrated assessment research and practice deliberately into its mission and practices. More specifically, the Aurora Competence Framework (ACF) was designed in order to ensure the effectiveness of courses in terms of personal, interpersonal, and linguistic competencies. The BEVI is one of three instruments included in the Aurora Competence Framework, along with the “Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Scales: Measuring Increase in Competence” (SEISMIC) and “Learning Outcomes in University for Impact in Society” (LOUIS), based upon the American Association of Colleges & Universities Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) rubrics (www.aacu.org/value/). Through the implementation of the Aurora Competence Framework, we already have evidence through the BEVI that the abovedescribed competencies are in fact being successfully achieved (e.g., Style, 2021). Given this background and context of the Aurora Network, the following data illustrate why it is vital in VbE to assess the underlying interactions associated with learning, growth, and development. In autumn of 2021, in an Aurora Network course on Sustainability and Climate Change, the BEVI was administered, as is common, in a pre-/post-test design. As might be expected with a self-selecting group of students in an elective course, the mean scores on Ecological Resonance and Global Resonance BEVI scales were high at the beginning and high at the conclusion.

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Digging deeper into the data, however, we uncovered unexpected and unintended results that would not have been revealed without rigorous and granular analysis of values-based assessment data such as the BEVI offers. When changes on BEVI scales were contrasted by gender, a highly consistent pattern emerged on many BEVI scales, including Needs Fulfillment, Identity Diffusion, Basic Openness, and Self Certitude. Essentially, as compared to females, students self-identifying as male exhibited a backlash in values, decreasing in self-efficacy and satisfaction with their relationships and developmental processes (Needs Fulfillment), increasing in anxiety and confusion about their identities (Identity Diffusion), decreasing in attention to their inner life of thoughts and feelings (Basic Openness), and decreasing in complexity of understanding of social and material constraints on agency (Self Certitude). On most of these scales, females moved in the opposite directions – that is, toward intended learning outcomes. It would thus seem that females were predisposed to be more willing and/or able to benefit from the design and/or delivery of the course than males. In short, “soft skill” competencies important to the Aurora Network appeared to be steady or increasing for female students but decreasing on the whole for male students. Empirically, it seems likely that educational experiences in general, including VbE, are experiencing such failures (i.e., undesirable learning processes and outcomes) all the time and all over the world over to one degree or another. However, we just do not see such outcomes because we are not looking for them via appropriate models and methods of measurement (e.g., Acheson et al., in press; Hanson et al., 2022; Shealy & Brewster, 2022). This “problem” may be especially salient for VbE because such courses and programs are emotionally laden, with content and experiences that inexorably evoke the unique beliefs, values, histories, needs, and potential of those who are on the experiential end of such pedagogies and processes. The dynamic is that much more fraught when content is designed and delivered to provoke discomfort – as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI-related courses and workshops so often are – whether intentionally or not (e.g., Tabit et al., 2016). For values-based educators and interventionists in particular, it is important to appreciate that human beings do not like being told what to believe and value not only because we feel “imposed upon,” “coerced,” “shamed,” or whatever affective state accompanies such an experience. We also do not like it because such VbIs activate internalized structures that are psychologically and physiologically integral to our experience of identity and self, which have been laid down within us over time in ways that are most likely to meet our core needs – to the degree they actually can be met – given the formative variables, adaptive potential, and contingencies that have been our lot in life, for better or worse (Shealy, 2016, in press). In short, when we tell people what to believe and value – explicitly and/or implicitly – we are forcing others to encounter internalized structures of identity and self that they may not even know are there. That may be a good thing. Certainly, education is all about learning, growth, change, and ideally, transformation. But, as the above results indicate, we need to understand and take responsibility for what we are actually doing, especially as values-based educators and interventionists. In this

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regard, comprehensive, process-oriented, and depth-based assessment can be a very powerful method to help us first do no harm, while also cultivating greater capacity in us to be caring, effective, and responsive agents of change (e.g., Acheson & Kelly, 2021; Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Nishitani, 2020; Shealy & Brewster, 2022; Tabit et al., 2016; Wandschneider et al., 2015; Wiley et al., 2021).

Conclusion We have covered a lot of ground in this chapter. Essentially, we are synthesizing decades of theory, data, and application that – from our perspective – not only demonstrate the value of Values-based Education, but why this international field and profession can and must go global in the best and broadest sense (Lovat et al., 2023; Shealy et al., 2022). In partnership with our sister organization, the International Beliefs and Values Institute (https://www.ibavi.org/), we are as committed as ever to understanding and facilitating greater capacity and inclination across the primary domains that constitute the BEVI method and EI model: (1) formative variables; (2) fulfillment of core needs; (3) tolerance of disequilibrium; (4) critical thinking; (5) self-access; (6) other access; and (7) global access (https://thebevi.com/). As international work with the BEVI attests, these seven domains prove to be relevant and insightful across four major sectors of inquiry and practice: (1) Education and Learning, (2) Leadership, Organizations, and Training, (3) Research and Evaluation, and (4) Mental Health and Wellbeing. In the final analysis, for us, the aspiration to “go global” is rooted in our conviction, grounded in considered evidence, that we can and must do a much better job of reaching and raising the next generation of human beings (e.g., Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Hawkes, 2014; Ikeda et al., 2022; Lovat et al., 2023; Shealy et al., 2022; Toogoolawa, 2022). But even as we go about this work, we know and see that the oft-cited cliché – “children are our future” – is anything but. Rather, it is an ineluctable and empirical reality that our species must learn how to cultivate “sustainable selves,” and do so deeply and rapidly, both locally and globally (e.g., Aurora Network, 2023; Cultivating the Globally Sustainable Self, 2022; Embracing Education with the Heart, 2023). That is because The old ways have failed. We are running out of time. We know it, we see it, we feel it. We may well survive, but not as we are now. Our species is in the middle of a transition, from an analogue state of consciousness that has, for aeons, held us in its jealous grip – where, by and large, we knew who men and women were, believed in the gods of our fathers, trusted our institutions, had faith in our leaders – to a digitally and spiritually indeterminate void. We long to fill this vacant space at the core of our being, but with what? All of the shiny things, painted facades, manufactured drama, old and new chemistry, vacuous talk, and perfect escapes, these distractions fail to fill the emptiness within. Until we come to terms with who we are, deliberately meeting our local needs and global potential, we will drift ever closer to our collective edge, yearning alone from each other, and apart from ourselves, lost in an artifice of misspent creation. (Shealy, in press)

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There is another way, another path, another future. In particular, as this chapter and volume illustrate, we actually know – through rich and rigorous theory, research, and practice – how to “cultivate the capacity to care” for ourselves, each other, and all living things (Acheson & Dirkx, 2021; Hawkes, 2014; Lovat et al., 2023; Shealy et al., 2012; Toogoolawa, 2022). Values-based Education can and must play a key role in this regard. But as we have sought to demonstrate, the potential and promise of Values-based Interventions in general, and VbE in particular, would benefit greatly from much deeper attention to models and methods that can “get at” and “make real” the core of Values-based Education: why we are who we are and whom we may become. Ultimately, such pursuits are simultaneously complex and basic, as the following and concluding case study illustrates, from Dr. Jennifer Wiley: People are not always aware of their beliefs and values. As such, they can sometimes become unsettled or distressed when they see themselves reflected in the words or observations of others. Many years ago, I was hired to evaluate an intercultural course that was being introduced by a US study abroad provider in several locations around the world. For three semesters, I collected focus group data and, with the support of Dr. Craig Shealy, BEVI data, in order to triangulate the impact of the course on U.S. study abroad students in three different sites. On one of those data collection visits in Chile, Craig and I encountered a situation where it was clear from the BEVI data that one of the thirteen participants had a profile very different from their peers. We discussed how to approach the group debrief ahead of time in order to prevent anyone from feeling “outed” in front of the group. As I welcomed them into the brightly lit classroom of the large Catholic university where they had been studying all semester, however, plans shifted. No sooner had Craig said the words, “BEVI data suggest one of you may be different from the group in some ways, but please don’t out yourself,” than a young woman shot up her hand, waving it vigorously saying, “It’s me, it’s me, I know it.” Chuckles and smiles rose in the group and someone volunteered, “Yep. She’s a Conservative, but she is our Conservative.” The young woman (we’ll call her Maya in order not to disclose her identity) who had raised her hand nodded in agreement as an enthusiastic grin spread across her face. I acknowledged the belonging that had apparently developed between groupmates over the experiences they had shared as US students in Chile, and then I distributed individual BEVI narrative reports to each student and gave them time to digest their reports. Voices faded into sounds of papers shuffling and minds churning. When I brought their attention back to the group and Craig asked what they thought of their reports (cautioning them to avoid details from the report), Maya’s voice rang out first as she pushed her BEVI report away from her like a kid who didn’t want to eat her peas. “That’s not me,” she proclaimed. “It says I’m a Liberal.” Craig paused a moment and asked her to elaborate. Maya brought her report up to her face and read, “. . .in terms of cultural and political matters, you are likely to be described as accepting, open, liberal, and progressive.” She looked up at me, arms folded across her body, “That’s not me.” The other students in the room waited to see us wrangle Maya into a label that didn’t fit, but Craig gently asked her to share a little more about what it felt like to read the report. Stories spilled out of her about her experiences at church and her parents’ involvement in the Republican party. She shared about the challenge it had been to come to Chile to learn Spanish and how she might never have been friends with the “Liberals” in her study abroad group if she were back at her university. But, the shared experiences had brought out their commonality. At that point, other group members jumped in and started a discussion of “Liberal” in the US versus “liberal” in the Chilean context. As they made sense of their own results, I watched Maya become quiet and slowly slide lower and lower in her chair. As we came to the end of the time allotted for the debrief and focus group, I put my hand on Maya’s forearm and said, “Hey, you got quiet on me. Would you like to share anything else?”

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She pulled herself upright in her seat and sighed. "No one at home is ever going to understand this." Her voice was quiet but resolved. As she opened up more, it became clear that she had realized she was not anymore the person she thought she was back in the US, and she was trying to make sense of that in the moment. She had chosen to study Spanish in Chile, not Spain with the rest of her peers. She easily made friends with a group of students who wore "Liberal" as a badge of honour. And, she had learned about the role of the US in Chile’s history which led her to question her notion of the US as a noble, benevolent superpower. In a few short moments, Maya realized the threat that this new self awareness might have on her belonging at home. She despaired – not that family and friends back home could not really understand her experiences in Chile, but that she wouldn’t belong there anymore if she shared her thoughts and new awareness. This was a poignant lesson for me as a researcher and educator: How can we mindfully prepare learners to see themselves more clearly, knowing the consequences that selfknowledge might have on other needs?

Jennifer’s closing question is among those we ask ourselves and each other every day. We know there is much more to learn and do. So, to all of our kindred scholars, educators, practitioners, and students – current and future leaders in the indispensable field and profession of Values-based Education – come share your voice and shape our work. We welcome the opportunity to seek answers together with all of you.

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Embrained, Embodied Values: Pedagogical Insights from Developmental Neuroscience Minkang Kim

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Return to a Kohlbergian Notion of Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Biological Basis of Moral Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Predictive Brain Making Moral Evaluations: Evidence from EEG Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shaping Moral Values in the Brain: How Parenting and Values Education Contribute . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Despite much evidence to the contrary, there remains a strong body of opinion within education that moral values are a social construct, that moral decisionmaking is largely a product of deliberate, conscious reasoning, and language is the main medium of moral reasoning. Against a backdrop of recent “social justice” theory that eschews science, this chapter calls for a reappraisal of moral values and adopts a scientific evidence-based approach in claiming that much moral decision-making occurs below the level of conscious awareness and is prior to conscious deliberation. In particular, the author’s own electroencephalogram (EEG) findings and those of other researchers show that the brain’s response to a moral dilemma normally occurs within 200–300 milliseconds, well before conscious reasoning kicks in. This chapter also presents scientific empirical evidence supporting the notion of a brain that is essentially predictive and that embrained, embodied moral values subconsciously initiate our moral responses. Furthermore, experimental and intervention studies with young children, using EEG, provide evidence that persistent, active, and long-term engagement in value practices can reshape and modify the brain’s evaluation processes, both M. Kim (*) The School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_9

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consciously and subconsciously. This discussion has important implications for educational research focused on values pedagogy and the cultivation of student’s moral values. Keywords

Values · Developmental Neuroscience · Embrained · Embodied · Pedagogy

Introduction There seems to be an emerging narrative that moral values education has hitherto primarily been concerned with trying to produce “nice people,” when it should instead have focused on issues of “social justice.” For example, the Introduction to the 2021 annual conference of the Association of Moral Education (AME) stated that “It is not enough to simply produce nice people who adhere to traditional cultural values so long as our societies treat people unjustly on the bases of gender, race, ethnicity, social class and ability” (AME, 2021). This is surprising because AME was previously very closely associated with Lawrence Kohlberg and his concern for social justice, arising out of the dread of the Holocaust and his quest for a moral response (Lapsley, 1996). The Kohlbergian paradigm can be criticized for its rationalist account of moral reasoning and decision-making as deliberative and conscious (Kim & Sankey, 2009), but it was not about creating “nice people.” Rather, it was concerned with combatting the insidious social and moral relativism of much scholarship in Kohlberg’s day (Lapsley, 1996). Moral relativism has reappeared with vengeance in our day, in the activist scholarship that The Economist (2021) referred to as “the illiberal left,” which propagates a strident post-modern, exclusive, and tribalistic (Chua, 2018a, b) relativist agenda within universities, which reduces everything to race, gender, and identity (Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020), though to be fair to AME, their statement included social class and ability in the list. This “activist” movement is permeating education, to the extent that “some students and faculty today seem to think that the purpose of scholarship is to bring about social change, and the purpose of education is to train students to more effectively bring about such change” (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, p. 254). Typically, it tolerates no criticism and aggressively attacks (“cancels”) “prominent individuals who have spoken against Social Justice, often unwittingly” (Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020, p. 222). It disregards scientific evidence as just another narrative it can conveniently ignore, and “views evidence and reason to be the cultural property of white western men” (p. 192). It appropriates the language of “social justice” as a subversive tool for its own legitimization. Amy Chua (2018a, b) notes that within America, where much of this thinking originated in the 1980s and 1990s, it constituted an inversion in left-wing political thinking, from the universalism and inclusion of 1960s and 1970s, as exemplified by John Rawls’ (1971) Theory of Justice and the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, toward tribalism,

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exclusion, and division. “As a result, many on the left have turned against universalist rhetoric” (Chua, 2018a, b). Moreover, central to this new exclusivity is the claim that “out-group members cannot share in the knowledge possessed by in-group members (‘You can’t understand X because you are white’; ‘You can’t understand Y because you are not a woman’: ‘You can’t speak about Z because you are not queer’)” (Chua, 2018a, b). In response, this chapter calls for a return to what unites us, both biologically and as members of the same homo sapiens species, rather than what divides us socially. It begins by briefly re-visiting Kohlberg’s notion of social justice and advocates his liberal (though not rationalist) notion of moral values in education. It will then question the largely unquestioned assumption that education is a “social science,” which empowers the propagation of these ideas in education. Instead, it will propose that education is a distinct discipline that is, or should be, informed as much by biology (and particularly neurobiology) as it is by putative social “theory.” To this end, the chapter highlights the evolutionary and biological origins of moral values (Churchland, 2011) and explores the notion that moral values are necessarily “embrained” (Kitayama & Salvador, 2017) and “embodied” (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017). The main aim of this chapter is to argue that scientifically grounded “values pedagogy” (Toomey et al., 2010) in schools, supported by sound scientific educational research, has much to offer education in providing a context where critical debate can flourish, within and across diverse social groups, as a means of realizing equitable and just communities. And, it should be noted, this advocacy of scientific research in education, including moral education, is not by a white Western man, American or otherwise, but by an Asian, Korean woman. Korea has a deep and ongoing commitment to education and a long tradition of science, going back to King Sejong (1397–1450), well before the onset of the seventeenth-century Western “scientific revolution.”

A Return to a Kohlbergian Notion of Social Justice The AME’s Introduction, referred to above, benignly states “Concerns for social justice are a global issue and addressing these concerns should be an integral part of moral education” (AME, 2021). Well, of course, but it rather depends on what one means by “social justice.” A first important step in reclaiming moral values from the grasp of present-day critical theorists, or should it be “cynical theorists” (Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020), is to affirm that a Kohlbergian notion of “social justice” has been at the core of moral values education worldwide for a very long time, not only in so-called “western” nations, but also and perhaps more emphatically in the East, in China, Korea, and Japan, for example. There is, therefore, considerable parochialism in the AME assertion that gender, race, and ethnicity are of overriding global concern–arguably none are prominent issues in the East. Furthermore, Lawrence Kohlberg (1981) stressed the notion of “morality as justice” which was incorporated into moral values education, not only in America but also internationally. The morally good person was conceived not as being “nice” but as “one who reasons

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with, and acts on the basis of principles of justice as fairness” (p. 623) or who recognizes “basic moral premise of respect for other persons as ends, not means” (p. 412). Arguably, instead of the current obsession with gender and identity (Furedi, 2021), we would do much better to reclaim Kohlberg’s concern to combat the rise of moral relativism. And, in our day, perhaps, instead of focusing on the individualism of gender and identity, our concern should first and foremost be rescuing the planet from the peril of global warming and over-population. We would also do well to recognize that for vast swathes of people trapped in debilitating poverty the key issue is survival, not gender or identity, those concerns in their current guise are social constructs that largely stem from Western affluence. Turning to education, a major problem, not just for moral values education but education as a whole, is a widespread belief that education is primarily if not exclusively a “social science” (Friedenberg, 1951). Thus, for example, we read that social science “informs effective, efficient and equitable education policies,” drawing on “a broad range of diverse social science disciplines, including economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics” (Baron, 2017). The claim that education is primarily a social science might be contrasted with the view of distinguished develop mentalist, Jean Piaget, that teaching or “pedagogy is like medicine in that it is a craft that is founded or should be founded on sound scientific principles” (Piaget, 1949). The analogy with medicine can be extended further in that both medicine and education are directed toward practice, in the case of education pedagogical practice focused on children’s learning and development, and both constitute “a moral practice” (Pring, 2001), directed toward ends that are deemed to be inherently good. Any reappraisal of moral values and their place in education should recognize that while education may usefully be informed by social science disciplines such as economics, psychology, and sociology; nevertheless, those disciplines do not define education, nor should they constrain it. Education as a distinct discipline is necessarily directed toward solving the problems of educational practice, in particular how best to enhance children’s learning and development, including their moral learning and development. And, because all learning occurs in the brain (Dehaene, 2020; Kim & Sankey, 2022), education policy, research, and practice have to engage with brain biology. One clear example of failing to ground education practice in brain biology has been the disastrous attempt to teach reading without teaching phonics, based on the misconception that children learn to read “naturally,” in the same way they learn to speak, which is simply false (Castles et al., 2018; Dehaene, 2009, 2020). Our understanding of moral values (and hence moral values education) should similarly be informed by an interweaving of the social and the biological sciences, especially brain science, as I will elaborate shortly. However, this move brings some bad news. As soon as one incorporates brain science into the study of education and education research, one is soon having to grapple with the scientific finding that much of our thinking, including our moral thinking, is occurring subconsciously, not in the Freudian sense of being repressed, but simply not available to conscious introspection (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). The significance of this for educational research that uses self-report methodologies should be immediately clear; researchers are asking participants to account for

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thoughts and actions introspectively, when that data are not consciously available. Actually, in the field of moral psychology, this limited accessibility of decision processes when justifying one’s moral conviction is often called “moral dumbfounding” (Haidt & Bjorklund, 2008; Haidt & Hersh, 2001). When applied to pedagogy, this implies that teachers should be constantly aware that much thinking and learning are occurring subconsciously (Kim & Sankey, 2022; Sankey & Kim, 2013). In regard to moral values education, the subconscious nature of much moral thought severely undermines the rationalist claim (and Kohlbergian assumption) that moral decision-making is a matter of conscious, rational, deliberation. Moral action frequently results from a quick, subconscious, intuitive response to perceive moral injustice (Haidt, 2012; Kim et al., 2021; Sankey, 2006). Thus, to take the well-known trolley dilemmas (Foot, 1967; Greene et al., 2001) as an example, which asks respondents to consciously decide on moral preferences in extreme situations, the answer should be that one has no idea what one would do when faced with such a dilemma. The subconscious nature of much moral decision-making also immediately problematizes the rationalist assumption that the main medium of decisionmaking is language. This is not to deny that moral reasoning can be, and perhaps often is, a matter of conscious, rational, deliberation when contemplating intended action and, in that case, it will involve language. However, EEG analysis shows that when responding to immediate moral violations, there is much more happening in the head within fractions of a second than rationalists might introspectively imagine (Leuthold et al., 2015; Sarlo et al., 2012; Van Berkum et al., 2009). We return to this EEG evidence shortly, after first examining the biological basis of moral values. For clarification, it should be noted at this point that when referring to “values” in this chapter, including cultural values and moral values, it is generally taken to mean “guiding principles, beliefs, sensitivities, held and displayed by individuals or groups in respect to how they relate to and deal with others and the world” (Sankey & Kim, 2016, p. 118).

The Biological Basis of Moral Values So far, this chapter has mostly been written in the third person, but moral values are a first-person concern so let me briefly use the first person. I am well aware that what I am about to say about the biological grounding of moral values and have already said in claiming that all learning occurs in the brain, will meet with some strong resistance from those who find the ideas uncomfortable. I meet it all the time and I am often sympathetic; the way science is presented can be unnecessarily lacking in humanity (Kim & Sankey, 2022). But I also have to admit I am genuinely baffled; we are biological creatures and if learning is not occurring in the brain, then where is it occurring? Is it thought to be somewhere else in the body or is it assumed to be disembodied? Moreover, in some of the literature and in papers received for peer review, I come across the notion of “mindfulness” and I wonder what concept of mind is operating in the notion of mindfulness? I hasten to add that I am not

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advocating scientific “reductionism” and certainly not “eliminativism” (Churchland, 1986). As a dynamic systems theorist, I am strongly opposed to both, but, on the other hand, I am not a dualist, I think mind/brain dualism is philosophically and scientifically untenable. Whatever we mean by “mind,” it is necessarily a product of the brain. So, are those who advocate mindfulness actually advocating brainfulness? I’m not sure. Having just rejected Patricia Churchland’s (1986) advocacy of reductionism and eliminativism, her 2011 book Braintrust: What neuroscience tells us about morality, provides an insightful scientific account of the revolutionary origins of moral values. A quite similar argument is offered by Derek Sankey (2018) in a paper which applies the neurobiology of trust to schooling. Both authors draw an important distinction between moral norms and moral values that is often muddied in the literature. Churchland argues that moral values are “more fundamental than rules” (Churchland, 2011, p. 9) and that: “Moral values need not involve rules, though they sometimes do” (p. 10). Her core argument is that across species “Moral values ground a life that is a social life” (p. 12). These values originated with the homeostatic imperative to care for self. Churchland says, “In the most basic sense, therefore, caring is a ground-floor function of nervous systems. Brains are organized to seek well-being, and to seek relief from ill-being” (p. 30). “Whatever kind of central nervous system creatures possess; its main function is keeping the organism alive and functioning. That remains the primary biological function of our embodied and environmentally/socially embedded human brains” (Sankey, 2018, p. 185). Given the homeostatic imperative to care for self and the neural processes involved, especially the role played by the neuropeptides oxytocin (OXT), over evolutionary time care for self was extended in some species (particularly mammals and some social birds) to care for offspring, such that the brain perceives a sense of danger to offspring as a danger to one’s self. Thereafter, in some mammalian species, care for self and for offspring “extended further to encompass kin or mates or friends or even strangers, as the circle widens. This widening of other-caring in social behaviour marks the emergence of what eventually flowers into morality” (Churchland, 2011, p. 14). Thus, she argues, “the values rooted in the circuitry for caring – for well-being of self, offspring, mates, kin, and others – shape social reasoning about many issues: conflict resolution, keeping the peace, defence, trade, resource distribution, and many other aspects of social life in all its vast richness” (p. 8). Brains are embodied in the most basic sense that they are an organ of the body and their primary function is the maintenance of metabolic balance (homeostasis) throughout the totality of the body. It stands to reason, therefore, that the work of the brain in all of its totality is embodied, including its ability to perceive (through bodily senses), conceive, and act, both generally and morally. It has long been accepted that perception is embodied, but “conception – the formation and use of concepts- has traditionally been seen as purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our abilities to perceive and move” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 37). However, what is this notion of the “mental,” if it is not understood as a product of the brain or, from a strictly monist position, that it is the brain? Although it is way

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beyond the scope of this chapter to get entangled in monist/dualist debate, that can be found elsewhere, for example in Maslin (2001), the point being raised here is that, “From a biological perspective, it is eminently plausible that reason has grown out of the sensory and motor systems and that it still uses those systems or structures developed from them” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 43). In other words, conceptualization and thought, including moral conceptualization and thought, being products of the embodied brain, are themselves thoroughly embodied. However, conversely, it equally implies that conceptualization and thought, including moral conceptualization and thought, are thoroughly embrained. There is no separate social or cultural realm of experience that exists independently of experiencing brains. Without brains, there would be no experience. Despite a long tradition of separating the social and cultural from the neurobiological in cultural psychology (e.g., Nisbett, 2004), leading cultural psychologist Shinobu Kitayama now argues, “no longer is it possible to demarcate the domain of culture as separate from biology and ignore the latter in the analysis of the former. . . the brain is the quintessential biological organ” (Kitayama & Park, 2010, p. 125). The key point is that “recurrent, active, and long-term engagement” in cultural practices can “powerfully shape and modify brain pathways” (Kitayama & Uskul, 2011, p. 421). As children and young people engage with everyday practice in family and schools, and receive consistent feedback on their thoughts and behavior, “they will contribute to a cumulative change of the neural networks” (Kitayama & Salvador, 2017, p. 844). This process will shortly be exemplified with two recent studies with preschool-aged children, but first a brief word about the notion of the predictive brain and error detection and how it is measured in research, as a necessary background.

Predictive Brain Making Moral Evaluations: Evidence from EEG Studies Contrary to much conventional, cognitivist belief, our brains are not waiting to receive sensory inputs from the world. On the contrary, brains are constantly, actively attempting to make sense of the world, by predicting what will unfold, and then updating these predictions as the situation demands (Clark, 2013), informed by a wealth of past experience held in memory (Barett, 2017a). This continuous updating in the predictive brain is initiated by what is called “prediction error,” which is “a mismatch between the sensory signals encountered and those predicted” (Clark, 2013, p. 183) that is instantiated in the brain through a very large number of feedback loops. The process is also evaluative. In the context of research, when using the electroencephalogram (EEG), for example, this activity is recorded in terms of “brain waves” that are displayed on a computer screen. However, this is not simply recording a stimulus–response activity in the brain, rather, as Rauss et al. (2011) suggest, neural signals, such as those captured by EEG are “related less to a stimulus per se than to its congruence with internal goals and predictions, calculated on the basis of previous input to the system” (p. 1249). In other words, the EEG is

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allowing the researcher to view the predictive-error feedback process in the brain, in real time. This is the focus of much on my own current education research, using EEG in school-based projects (Kim et al., 2021). The methodology used in many such EEG studies (including those conducted by my research team) records what are called Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). The “potentials” are electrical, the “potential for current to pass between two electrodes” (Luck, 2005, p. 102). This technique was first discovered in the 1930s and began to be used in the 1960s, but it was not until the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century that it became widely employed as a research methodology. EEG had fallen into decline by the 1990s, in the wake of other new measuring techniques such as MRI and fMRI, but it was restored as the use of ERPs was further developed. As Steven Luck (2005) explains, “in its raw form. . . EEG is a very coarse measure of brain activity, and it is very difficult to use it to assess the highly specific neural processes that are the focus of cognitive neuroscience” (p. 4). However, by using a time-locked design that allows researchers to record neural activities from the onset of specific event or stimuli, it is possible to extract “electrical potentials associated with specific events” (p. 4). Event-related potentials (ERPs) studies consistently show that the error feedback process in the brain begins within 200 to 250 milliseconds of the onset of a stimulus and prior to conscious awareness. The conscious response kicks in around 400 milliseconds. When the ERP methodology is applied within the context of moral values research, researchers are able to monitor the subconscious and conscious reactions in the brain to moral dilemmas (for example, see Kim et al., 2021). This includes the brain’s response when participants observe an event that is congruent (or incongruent) with the moral values that participants uphold (Leuthold et al., 2015; Sarlo et al., 2012; Van Berkum et al., 2009). For example, in one study, participants were invited to read several morally laden statements (e.g., “Euthanasia is acceptable”) while their neural response was monitored by EEG. A person’s evaluation as to whether euthanasia is acceptable or not is informed by many different aspects, including personal experiences of observing sufferings of others and long-standing religious belief. What is remarkable is that our brain makes an informed value evaluation of such a statement subconsciously and swiftly, within some 200 to 250 milliseconds. Hence, when a person, who firmly believes euthanasia violates divine law, for example, reads a statement such as “euthanasia is acceptable,” a broadly distributed positive deflection, called P2, is elicited by the onset of the target word “acceptable.” When reading the statement, processing mechanisms within our brain “generate predictions about upcoming words” (Shain et al., 2020). However, when the target word “acceptable” clashes with the prediction informed by one’s held value system, prediction error arises and its extent is visible as a positive deflection (Van Berkum et al., 2009). Neuronal activities arising from prediction errors are similarly observed in the neural responses of young children, way before they have acquired reading and literacy skills. This finding problematizes the rationalist assumption that the main medium of moral decision-making is language. When preschool aged children watch

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cartooned images of social behaviors (e.g., helping others vs. harming others), prediction errors stemming from an implicit evaluation process are observed by researchers using EEG after seeing a target image (Cowell & Decety, 2015; Kim et al., 2021; Meidenbauer et al., 2018; Wu & Kim, 2019). As in the studies with adults, a positive, subconscious P2 deflection is observed when a young child who has an aversion to harming others watches images of one cartoon character intentionally kicking another child’s LEGO castle, for example. Thereafter, after some 500 to 650 milliseconds after viewing the value-inconsistent cartoon image, another positive-going deflection (called a late positive potential, LPP) is observed (Cowell & Decety, 2015; Kim et al., 2021; Meidenbauer et al., 2018; Wu & Kim, 2019). This is indicative of the conscious and sustained appraisals that also involve emotion regulation, found in the rationalist accounts of moral reasoning; however, EEG evidence reveals that this follows an initial prediction error response that is subconscious. Although the way the brain functions is the same for all humans (and a very large swathe of other animals too), what the brain produces is individual difference – simply because the brain is molded by experience and no two individuals have the same experiences. Indeed, as John Geake observed “no two human brains are, have ever been or ever will be, identical. This applies to identical twins” (Geake, 2009, pp. 46–47). The magnitude of prediction error recorded for each individual will differ (sometimes markedly) from that of others, even when engaging with the same morally laden situations. Indeed, empirical evidence shows that some people exhibit very little prediction error even when engaging with violations of widely recognized universal values. A recent preschool-based EEG study (Kim et al., 2021) found that this lack of prediction error in young children, when viewing cartoon characters inflicting harm/ distress to another, correlates with a lack of spontaneous intervention into third-party moral transgression in real-life situations. In this study, some 3- to 6-year-old children exhibited significantly reduced prediction error (indexed by P2), compared to their peers, when viewing cartoon characters harming another. When those same children were situated in an experimental context where they witnessed an adult intentionally damaging a library book (public property), they did not intervene to stop such behavior. However, those who showed a larger prediction error response in the EEG study intervened when witnessing that third-party transgressions, by questioning the adult (why are you doing that?), commanding to stop tearing the page out of the book, or telling the adult explicitly why the behavior is wrong. This finding suggests that children’s immediate subconscious reactions are not a mere “gut-feelings” that are subsequently (linearly) filtered by conscious higher-order reasoning, rather they are intelligent responses that feedback (non-linearly) into constant, ongoing cycles of prediction, perception, and moral action. Indeed, what we often refer to as a “gut-feeling” is more likely a conscious visceral, intuitive sensing of the subconscious predictive/fire back process (sensing something is right or wrong) based on past experience (Barett, 2017b; Friston, 2012).

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Shaping Moral Values in the Brain: How Parenting and Values Education Contribute Experimental and intervention studies with young children, using EEG, are also providing evidence that persistent, active engagement in value practices can reshape and modify the brain’s evaluation processes. These findings provide evidence that parenting and values pedagogies are operating at a neurobiological level, modifying and augmenting what I have elsewhere called an inborn “predilection to value” (bias toward positive value preferences) found throughout the natural world (Kim & Sankey, 2009), which becomes evident soon after birth and continues through early childhood (Sankey & Kim, 2013). For example, in a study with infants and toddlers (12–24 months old), what researchers referred to as parent’s “justice sensitivity” (in the Kohlbergian sense) was predictive of infants’ and toddlers’ event-related potentials (ERP) differences in the perception of helping versus harmful scenes (Cowell & Decety, 2015). Furthermore, in the previously mentioned study conducted in a preschool with 3- to 6-year-old children (Kim et al., 2021), children of parents, who are alert to their treatment of others and respond with guilt when feeling they have taken advantage of others, showed a more pronounced early neural responses to third-party harm. Also, children of those parents were more likely to partake in overt “costly” intervention behavior when witnessing an adult damaging another’s property. Children’s intervention behavior observed in this study (Kim et al., 2021) is particularly significant in that a significant proportion of the 3- to 6-year-old children who participated in the study actively enforced moral values on others when their own personal interests were not at stake, and even when potential retaliation was anticipated. There has long been a general recognition by philosophers (Rawls, 1971), moral psychologists (Kohlberg, 1984; Hiadt, 2012), and behavioral economists (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003) that morality is a corrective against “self-interest” and toward maintaining cooperation within society. In that regard, children’s thirdparty moral interventions observed in this recent study show the early ontogeny of moral values and sensitivities that transcend the “ethical egoism” of some illiberal educational approaches that would focus children’s attention onto their own welfare, gender, and identity (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019; Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020). Findings from these developmental studies with young children, using EEG, provide tantalizing preliminary evidence that parents’ moral values are literally being “embrained” as discrete moral sensitivities in their children, enabling their rapid subconscious discernment between what is morally acceptable or unacceptable. These subconscious, implicit embrained sensitivities modulate children’s behavior when facing morally salient real-life situations, and there is every reason to hypothesize that they continue throughout adulthood. Moreover, it should be emphasized that the moral values and sensitivities identified in these studies are directed away from self to the needs and interests of others – precisely the direction taken in the evolutionary development of human values, as noted above. The research claim that moral values and sensitivities are being laid down in the brain at both a conscious and subconscious level has clear implications for values pedagogy; it cannot be left to chance; it has to be systematically cultivated in young

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brains. Elsewhere, in a jointly written paper I have suggested that moral sensitivity can be viewed as “a form of connoisseurship”(Sankey & Kim, 2016, p. 121) a tacit sensing (Polanyi, 1966) and “discernment that can be refined and cultivated through constant practice and rehearsal” (Sankey & Kim, 2016, p. 125). I have also noted that “in education there has been a longstanding view that moral learning need not require dedicated curriculum time; rather it can form part of the hidden or implicit curriculum” (p. 125). However, I argue that though this may be helpful, it is not sufficient, moral values and sensitivities “require explicit teaching and learning; they can’t just be caught, they need to be taught, they need constant rehearsal. . .. And the importance of rehearsal is emphasized in neuroscience in regard to the plasticity of learning and memory, where repetition in the firing of neuronal connections strengthens the connections, whereas those not strengthened by repetition become weakened or pruned” (p. 125). Much more research is needed. Two main priorities of the work undertaken by my research team at The University of Sydney, Australia, are first, whenever possible, to get into the natural setting of schools and preschools to conduct the research, rather than in a lab and, second, to orientate the research toward solving the problems of educational practice, in particular how best to enhance children’s learning and development, including their moral learning and development. One clear message arising from this research is the relatively short time it takes to enhance children’s moral sensitivities, when using carefully planned intervention strategies. For example, when conducting research in a primary school in Korea, not long after the devastating Japanese Tsunami in 2011, carefully planned values pedagogy was able to help children view this disaster not through the eyes of the predominantly antiJapanese media in Korea, but rather with care, concern, and compassion for the victims (Kim & Chang, 2014). This study shows that if children are situated in a safe environment where they can open up and test their prejudices, they can move away from “group-based conventional reasoning” and employ “moral-based reasoning” (Kim & Chang, 2014, p. 297). Changes to the neural dynamics that subserve other-oriented concerns can also be prompted by educational intervention within a relatively short period of time. One intervention study (Wu & Kim, 2019) conducted in an Australian preschool has demonstrated that a carefully planned empathy education component in early childhood education can change very young children’s “automatic evaluativecategorisation” which is essential when engaging with other people in social situations. In this study, children in one preschool were invited to play a tablet game that was specially designed for this study that guides children to (1) attend to and perceive emotionally salient events in stories; (2) actively share the emotions of the characters in stories; and (3) take others’ perspectives, reasoning why a given emotion arises within given contexts (Wu & Kim, 2019). Empathy pedagogies employed in this study were systematically translated from developmental neuroscience research (Decety et al., 2016; Malti et al., 2016; Preston & de Waal, 2017), in order to cater for particular developmental needs of preschool-aged children whose ability to recognize, discriminate, and understand others’ emotion is changing rapidly.

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Teachers of this preschool reported that children who engaged with the empathy learning game became considerably more observant to peer’s emotions, compared to children who did not participate in this intervention. Also, EEG data collected from children showed that, after engaging with the empathy learning, children’s attentional resources became more readily available when encountering others’ antisocial or harming actions. According to previous studies (e.g., Decety et al., 2016), if such neural resources are mobilized (not “precluded”) when perceiving others’ distress, the person is more likely to show empathic concern and act to improve the welfare of the person in need. Therefore, this small change in children’s brain induced by the intervention is paramount in “sowing the seeds of empathy in young minds” (Wu & Kim, 2019, p. 341), enhancing children’s moral discernment or connoisseurship, understood as the guiding principles, beliefs, sensitivities, they hold when relating to and dealing with others and the world, particularly the dire needs of many marginalized and socially underprivileged groups.

Conclusion If, in the twenty-first century, we are to understand ourselves as human moral agents acting in the world, and if we are to convey this into contexts of educational pedagogy and research, we need to stop pretending that science has nothing much to offer. In particular, it is important to counter the claim that everything can be reduced to issues of race, gender, and identity (Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020), conceived as “social justice” and viewed as a purely social phenomenon. In contrast to this strident post-modern, relativist and anti-scientific agenda that has pervaded many western universities, particularly in the US and UK, this chapter has advocated the return to a broad, anti-relativist, Kohlbergian notion of social justice and a liberal notion of moral values that is thoroughly consistent with sound scientific evidence. To that end, this chapter has suggested we would do well to start by recognizing that education is not reducible to being a “social science,” rather it is a distinct discipline that draws on relevant multidisciplinary evidence, including neuroscientific evidence, in order to solve the problems of educational practice, especially how best to enhance children’s learning and development, including their moral learning and development. A broader, more multidisciplinary account of education as a discrete discipline in its own right, in that it is focused on educational practice, will open moral values education or, as I would prefer, moral values pedagogy to the realization that human moral values are grounded in biology, in terms of their evolutionary origins and also in that way moral values are embodied in the brain – moral values are embrained. The main assumption underpinning this chapter is that scientifically grounded educational research and a scientifically-informed “values pedagogy” have much to offer teachers and students in schools, not least in providing a context where critical debate can flourish, within and across diverse and sometimes divisive social groups, as a means of realizing truly, caring, equitable, tolerant, and just communities.

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Sankey, D. (2006). The neuronal, synaptic self: Having values and making choice. Journal of Moral Education, 35(2), 27–42. Sankey, D. (2018). The neurobiology of trust and schooling. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(2), 183–192. Sankey, D., & Kim, M. (2013). A dynamic systems approach to moral and spiritual development. In J. Arthur & T. Lovat (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of education, religion and values (pp. 182–193). Routledge. Sankey, D., & Kim, M. (2016). Cultivating moral values in an age of neuroscience. In C. W. Joldersma (Ed.), Neuroscience and education: A philosophical appraisal (pp. 111–127). Routledge. Sarlo, M., Lotto, L., Manfrinati, A., Rumiati, R., Gallicchio, G., & Palomba, D. (2012). Temporal dynamics of cognitive-emotional interplay in moral decision-making. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24(4), 1018–1029. Shain, C., Blank, I. A., van Schijndel, M., Schuler, W., & Fedorenko, E. (2020). fMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 138, 107307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107307 The threat from the illiberal left. (2021). The Economist (London), 440(9261), 7–8. Toomey, R., Lovat, T., Clement, N., & Dally, K. (2010). Teacher education and values pedagogy: A student wellbeing approach. David Barlow Publishing. Van Berkum, J. J. A., Holleman, B., Nieuwland, M., Otten, M., & Murre, J. (2009). Right or wrong: brain’s fast response to morally objectionable statements. Psychological Science, 20, 1092–1099. Wu, L., & Kim, M. (2019). See, touch, and feel: Enhancing young children’s empathy learning through a tablet game. Mind, Brain, and Education, 13(4), 341–351.

Consciousness, Culture, and the Place of Psychospiritual Capacities in Cultivating Values

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Tobin Hart

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spiritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Capacities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consciousness and Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Ways of Knowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter will first briefly consider the what and why of spirituality; that is, what do we mean by spirituality and what does it offer the consideration of values? As worldview and as a process of development, spirituality provides foundational aspirations and underpinnings for the cultivation of values. Further, drawing from material ranging from the wisdom traditions to contemporary neuroscience, this chapter uses the concept of the psychospiritual, two dimensions both seemingly paradoxical and intimately intertwined. As inner capacities, the psychospiritual points to innate potentialities that may remain underdeveloped yet increasingly appear essential for human flourishing, serving as an important counterweight especially to the influence of emerging technology on human consciousness and society. These capacities enable ways of knowing and being that act as implicit precursors and foundations for values. Identified and cultivated they provide inner art and technology to navigate an increasingly complex and challenging world. Most simply the argument is that if you want to develop dynamic, mature, self-sustaining values – those that support individual and societal well-being – psychospiritual capacities are essential. T. Hart (*) University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_10

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Keywords

Values · Consciousness · Culture · Spirituality · Psychospiritual capacities

Introduction It is not that we want to sleep our lives away. It is that it requires a certain amount of energy, certain capacities for taking the world into our consciousness, certain real powers of body and soul to be a match for reality. (Richards 1989, p. 150)

Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1962) once commented that approaching peak experiences, one of his primary interests, directly is a like trying to hunt for happiness, it is best not done directly. Maybe this is similar for values. That is, self-sustaining, mature values can be difficult to inculcate directly from outside in; they have to be equally seeded from the inside and approached, at least to some extent, indirectly. There are plenty of ethical commandments suggesting the path to goodness or civility, but great souls throughout time show us that mature virtue arises not simply from adhering to a script but from a dynamic interior capacity. And those capacities are both innate and cultivated, developed in a dialectic between inside and out. It is meaningful to speak of these as psychospiritual capacities as they address interrelated dimensions recognized across time and culture of what it means to be fully human. These capacities are potentialities, while often underdeveloped, essential for human flourishing. These can act as implicit precursors, foundations, and powers – even serving as a kind of matrix or womb – through which values manifest. Identified and developed they provide the inner art and inner technology to help navigate an increasingly complex and challenging world. We do honorable service to make explicit and create the conditions for the values we want to share and nurture; they provide mirrors, aspirations, models, and organizing pillars for individual and social behavior, and when infused in curriculum, they provide welcome touchstones. But mature values are a dynamic, complex, living, interactive process. They are relatively absolute – fairly universal across ages and cultures – and they are also absolutely relative – culturally, developmentally (e.g., Kohlberg, 1981), and situationally variable. I might go so far as to say that values are scaffolded by and can manifest as an organic byproduct of certain capacities of knowing and being. Invoking Maslow’s dictum, I want to approach the formation of values from an oblique angle and from the inside out. One of those angles of approach is the spiritual. In what follows I will describe how the inclusion of the spiritual may be useful for understanding human consciousness and values, and extend that to recognize the interwoven nature of the psychological and spiritual. Some examples of core capacities are named alongside an updated understanding of consciousness and cognition, concepts that support the development of capacities and are consistent with a psychospiritual orientation.

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Spiritual The deepest questions about being human – including values, identity, flourishing, and, increasingly, survival, are questions that inevitably mingle with what we think of as the spiritual. We can consider values and capacities without invoking the word spiritual but there are some worthwhile reasons to name it, especially today, including the notion that these values are generally consistent with and derived from those found in the wisdom traditions themselves. At this moment in history, including the word spiritual in consideration of values helps to do a couple things. First, it makes room for those most profound moments and impulses of existence. It welcomes the innate drive for meaning, the fascination with mystery, the consideration of what feels sacred as central to our humanness. Those things associated with spirituality: meaning, connectedness, transcendence, awe as so forth as well as remarkable well-documented transformative experiences themselves, seem universal throughout time and culture and thus important to understanding human existence. Including the spiritual as normative gives us remarkable exemplars, aspirational potential, and permission to honor and reflect on our own and others direct subjective experience, especially as it relates to values. To include spirituality does not require any ontological commitments; it is not necessary to believe in one thing or another, it is about recognizing the apparent universal impulses and lived experiences that, though sometimes hard to articulate, are nevertheless central to humanity. Secondly, contemporary life is increasingly influenced by technology that has the potential to significantly impact human consciousness. Awash in the tsunami of information, alongside remarkable technological breakthroughs that enable: instant access to nearly everyone and everything, gene splicing, remote control warfare, the manipulation of information, and much more, we are increasingly reliant on the influence of algorithms and artificial intelligence without really ever choosing it. These are undeniably powerful tools that are shaping our lives, our thought and even our brains. Beyond the sheer volume of information generated and the remarkable and increasing ubiquity of their presence, and thus our reliance on them, these tools are based largely on categorical organization, algorithmic editing, decision trees, and calculated probability – a particular way of processing information – powerfully useful to be sure. However, human thinking and experience also involve bodies, context, images, beauty, metaphor, imagination, emotion, that incorporates contact along with category. We are at least as much resonant beings – humming with what we encounter – as we are rational beings – calculating our sense of the world. To understand human experience through machine learning enables worthwhile efficiencies, pattern recognition, and breakthroughs in plenty of domains but runs the risk of overwhelming and overriding other ways of being and knowing. Machine learning attempts a simulacrum of human being, but it is not human. I will return to this consideration of knowing below. It is worth noting that such technology, while enabling us to do all sorts of remarkable things, has not made us more ethical, compassionate, or humane; instead,

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the world appears more anxious, depressed, and distressed. Thus, some other perspective, an equally powerful one, is needed as a counterweight to technology as a de facto driver of contemporary society and self. Including the spiritual (and the psychological) anchors the depth of humanness as one such counterweight. In general, when the term spiritual is used, it points to questions of meaning and existence, connection and unity, sacredness, transcendence and immanence, and an opening or expansion of consciousness in some way, for example, toward greater compassion or awareness. There are many ways to frame the spiritual: Tillich’s (1951) ground of being, or as a transcendent realm or consciousness, as the divine immanence infusing all things, a quality of presence or awareness, the relationality of Buber’s (1970) I and Thou, the nonduality of all existence, or even as physicist David Bohm’s (1980) Implicate Order. Spirituality and religion are often conflated. Religion is a systematized approach to spiritual growth formed around doctrines and standards of behavior. Religions were generally inspired by spiritual insight – “the word in the heart from which all scriptures flow” – according to Quaker William Penn (1945, p. 14) and developed in order to spread that insight through various teachings, rituals, and rules of conduct. To be “religious” implies some adherence to those standards and practices. Spiritual moments are described as direct, personal, and often have the effect, if only for a moment, of waking us up, expanding our glimpse of who we are and what our relationship to others and the universe is. Spiritual experiences can serve as benchmarks and catalysts for growth. These are frequently described in mystical terms (e.g., James, 1982) – often as a unitive moment or a revelatory insight. The spiritual is likewise invoked in small everyday moments: a child hugs us tightly and our heart opens; we breathe in the softness of a spring day and our own hardness softens with appreciation; we assume a loving attitude instead of a defensive posture and in so doing heal a wounded relationship, or maybe we witness a moment of courage in overcoming some obstacle and feel the rising current of possibility. These are not other than human but instead the most human of qualities. The ancient Greek understanding, and they were and are not alone with this idea, is that the sacred manifests not as something other than us – something distant and transcendent – but instead through us (Hadot, 1995). The point was and is to cultivate our full humanness so that we might be a better conduit for expression of the divine through our thoughts and deeds in community. Spirituality may be seen both as a worldview and as a developmental process. A worldview shapes the way we see the world and touches the big questions of existence. Our answers to these questions affect our values and thus the way we live in the world. Today, the doctrines of materialism and objectivism tell us that only what we can observe and measure is real. The modern mind separates the self from the world, gradually differentiating us from it. However, in so doing the modern world has become disenchanted, to use Max Weber’s (1946, p. 139) term, merely inert matter available for our utility and domination. By contrast, in one way or another, a spiritual worldview locates the individual in a multidimensional and, taken a step further, sacred universe, it reenchants the world, returning us as part

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of a living universe. Cultural historian Thomas Berry (2000) argues that our evolutionary opportunity is to shift from seeing the world as a collection of objects to experiencing it as a communion of subjects. In addition to a worldview, spirituality is also described as a process of development. It has been considered as the top of the developmental ladder as well as a particular branch or line of development such as cognition. The crest of this process has been called liberation, transformation, enlightenment, awakening, and selfrealization. It is also recognized as integration and wholeness – the more of our self and the world we can integrate into our being – claiming our shadowy parts, expanding the orbit and depth of our compassion – the greater our development. The world’s sacred traditions tell us that the process ultimately unfolds in the direction of love and wisdom or is captured with the enduring depictions of the good, the true, the beautiful; modern language recognizes both self-actualization and selftranscendence as part of this process. Spirituality simultaneously pushes toward creation and communion – paradoxically toward increasing diversity and toward a sense of indivisible, indestructible unity. The psychological is familiar these days, recognized as: habits of mind and action, sense of self and relations, conscious and unconscious processes, neurobiological and socially imprinted animating forces, the rhyme and rhythm of feelings, and the way our bodies and minds mingle and manifest in and with one another. Trauma and secure early attachment, biology and conditioning, social relations, culture, and circumstances, all shape our psyche. The process of opening to the world and to ourselves requires both the psychological and the spiritual; when viewed together, these can often seem paradoxical. The psychological develops our will, and the spiritual asks us to be willing. The psychological strengthens our sense of self, and the spiritual asks us to be selfless. The former helps us differentiate and individuate, and the latter invites us to lose our self-separateness. Without their integration, we can have trouble getting out of our own way and never embody the values or other potentials that serve self and society. It is here that the need to develop various psychospiritual capacities is justified. These inner powers – capacities – open consciousness and thus enable us to engage the world deeply. The world opens and is revealed to us to the extent that we can open and receive it. This is a kind of physics of the unfolding mind. Again, we could have this discussion without invoking the word spiritual, but naming it opens a space for depth, open-ended emergent possibility, ethicality, and consideration of ways of knowing. Against a backdrop of machine learning, mechanistic instrumentality as well as consumerism and materialism our holistic, human nature is served with ways of knowing that stay open, alive, and embodied. The greatest power of using this concept is to carve out space for the implicit, the unseen and unknown, metaphor, meaning, profundity, wonder, subjectivity, imagination, diversity, and possibility so that we can move deeply into the mystery of consciousness with resonance and rationality, and not settle for a tidy simulation of human being.

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Capacities Just as there have been plenty of worthwhile values-oriented approaches, there are thoughtful capacities-focused approaches. In the context of education, some have referred to these as non-cognitive skills emphasizing such things as perseverance and grit as opposed to exclusive emphasis on academic knowledge and skills (e.g., Tough, 2013). The large umbrella of social–emotional learning is a prime example of capacities-based orientation and has been taken up in a wide variety of worthwhile initiatives. For example, The Roots of Empathy program (Gordon, 1999) based out of Canada is designed to address the need for civility and care by emphasizing a single core gateway capacity through a novel approach to empathy training in elementary schools that brings mothers and their newborns into the classroom. The Passageworks Institute in the United States is explicit about core values while emphasizing relational skills marked by rites of passage in community and derived from Kessler’s (2000) work, The Soul of Education. CASEL, Consortium for Social Emotional Learning (2021), provides a collaborative network emphasizing five primary capacities: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, decision-making. There are initiatives emphasizing other types of capacities. For example, the field of Contemplative Teaching and Learning which, from early years to university, focuses centrally on the value of intentionally shifting awareness in particular ways toward developing interior qualities. This may involve approaches such as the use of silence, mindfulness, various meditation methods, reflection, and service. Functional goals typically include helping students to find internal calm, counteracting the influence of such things as buzzing technology and reactivity borne of trauma or chaos, as well as opening the possibility of fresh ways of seeing the world, useful in everything from relationships to classroom work. At its most instrumental, this recognizes that mindset is an important precursor for learning academic skill sets. For example, an ability to downregulate an agitated emotional state may enable more effective learning. Two hubs for this type of work are the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (2021) and the Contemplative Science Center (2021) at the University of Virginia, which emphasizes K-12 schooling. Of course, there have been plenty of progressive initiatives for a very long time, but Holistic Education, a broad umbrella for “whole-person” learning, has emphasized a wide range of capacities and values. In general, this orientation emphasizes what it means to nurture full humanness, from academic skills to spiritual considerations, frequently recognized as physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual domains. The recently renewed Holistic Education Review (2021) provides a center for a broad array of relevant perspectives. Elsewhere, I have organized and operationalized psychospiritual capacities around the enduring ideas of the Good (Heart), the True (Wisdom), the Beautiful (Presence), and, Creation (Voice/Expression). Those qualities of the Heart include compassion, empathy, feeling, connecting; Wisdom involves discernment, possibility, guidance, clarifying; Presence requires sensing, focus, witnessing, opening, and

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Voice draws from originality, imagining, will and willingness, and calling (Hart, 2014b). The Learning for Well Being Foundation (2021) identifies nine core capacities: Relaxing, Listening, Observing, Inquiring, Reflecting, Embodying, Empathizing, Subtle Sensing, Discerning Patterns. This work is geared for both public and private schooling initiatives and consistent with a psychospiritual perspective, for example, invoking the term “soul.” For the most part, these capacities and qualities, like our senses, are considered innate – natural compassion, curiosity, and so on. But like our senses they may be occluded by our experience; we may lose easy access to a sense of peace or sense of unconditional love, for example. Or instead of being covered over, like the senses, they may remain undeveloped, unrefined, and unexplored – never really blossoming into their full, nuanced potential. For example, our first and most frequent invocation to students is often to “pay attention” but unless we consider what attention is and what the various ways and means to deploy, sustain, open, and focus alongside recognizing the impact on attention of: trauma and drama, motivation and emotion, neurology and technology, we may not be developing the capacities needed for the agency that enables not only learning and success but also the flexibility and power to manifest values. This is where the work of psychospiritual capacity building lives.

Consciousness and Cognition The main activity of schooling is thinking. Yet there is plenty of evidence and argument that thinking is a more complex and integrated process than conventional assumptions and practice has implied. An enriched understanding of consciousness and cognition supports the development of various capacities that in turn scaffold values. In the field of cognitive psychology, front-edge theory is referred to as 4e Cognition – enacted, embodied, extended, embedded. Rather than passively receiving the world, there is constant interaction between mind, body, and environment; enacted implies that we shape the world we see, a more constructivist approach we might say. Extended suggests that consciousness stretches out beyond the body–mind into the environment. Embedded recognizes that we exist within a context, embedded in culture and locale. Embodied tells us we know through our bodies. This is too superficial a depiction, of course, but it does give a sketch of a theory of mind that challenges the prevailing Cartesian dualism and the detached, self-generating consciousness that remains a dominant superstructure for educational theory and practice. If our mind, our consciousness, our thinking process is enacted, embodied, extended, and embedded, then the challenge is to reunite body and mind, world and self in a new integration. This opens up thinking beyond a self-contained, abstract activity and thus invites capacities for recognizing and drawing from a wider and interconnected process.

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Another angle of understanding the mind is the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology. Siegel (2016) offers a definition of mind as an “emergent, selforganizing, embodied, and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” This last aspect of “relational” adds an important dimension to knowing that has been largely unrecognized in the model of thinking as individualized information processing. We are always a self-in-relation and the qualities of those relations impact our being and our well-being. Neuroscience recognizes a “social engagement system” (Porges, 2011) that involves a network that includes the Vagus nerve, gut, heart, and brain, essentially providing evidence that we are hardwired for social connection. The renewed interest in Attachment Theory first articulated over 50 years ago (Bowlby, 1988; Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991) tracks with the rising recognition of how mind is shaped by connections with others. That is, sound early attachment – attuned care, communication, and responsiveness from primary caregivers – engenders the development of capacities that shape and enable how we meet the world. Such skills nourished by sound attachment and essential for well-being include the ability to: attune to others, balance emotions, respond flexibly, consider moral awareness, empathize, and draw from bodily intuitions. It is easy to recognize how such skills can serve and enable particular values such as care for others or a sense of peace or balance. Beyond the impact of early attachment, it appears that even if attentive warmth and care were lacking in early years, those same capacities can develop as an outcome of attuned care from another person such as a teacher, friend, therapist later on in development. What may be even more interesting is that it appears that if we are able to attune effectively to our own interiority through contemplative practice, we can build those same capacities (see, e.g., Siegel, 2010). Still another aspect of an expanded view of thinking is that of creativity, a high end of cognition. Werner (1957) recognized that enriched thought is not simply higher abstraction but what we might better term integration. He introduced the concept of microgenesis, in which during each interaction with an idea or an object we recapitulate the same developmental sequences that characterize development through the lifespan. In response to a task, we may first have a sensory-motor reaction, then a vague, global bodily sense, then a feeling, and maybe eventually a crisp idea. He argues that it is this incorporation of and flexibility through these other layers – microgenetic mobility – that enriches and vitalizes cognition. For Werner, the ability to access or “regress” to this more “primitive” processing – vague hunches, gut feelings, other bodily sensations, intuitions, and pre-conceptual images, actually engenders greater potentials. Many approaches to cultivate contemplative and creativity-oriented capacities recognize the need to get out of our own habitual ways of thinking. Werner concluded that “The more creative the person, the wider their range of operations in terms of developmental level, or in other words, the greater their capacity to utilize primitive as well as advanced operations (p. 145).” A variety of phenomenological accounts of scientists, artists, and psychotherapy clients suggest that their process of breakthrough and insight often emerge in a fashion that supports Werner’s ideas and thus makes a case for bringing those gut feelings, vague imaginings, and the like back to the process of learning if we consider creative

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thought as important not only for scholastic achievement but especially for the individual and collective challenges our world faces. Over the past 50 years, there has been increasing evidence and argument that thinking is a more embodied process than our common modernist, brain-exclusive model has implied. Approaches to embodied cognition (e.g., Damasio, 1999; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Varela et al., 2017) opens thought beyond an exclusively skull-encapsulated activity. In the 1980s, neuroscientist Candace Pert found something in the last place a good brain scientist would expect to find it at the time. Her research uncovered neuropeptides and their receptor sites, presumed to exist only in the brain and considered central to thinking, in the gut. It begged the question of whether the gut and perhaps other parts of the body were capable of thinking too. As Pert (2002) concluded, “I can no longer make a strong distinction between the brain and the body” (p. 16). Today, we recognize that there is a highly complex, bidirectional gut–brain system, referred to as the Enteric Nervous System, impacting affect, motivation, and higher cognitive functions including decision-making (Mayer, 2011). The knowing body also extends beyond just the gut. For example, according to the Radical Active Cognition (REC) model, “the hand [is]. . .an organ of cognition” (Hutto & Myin, 2013, p. 47). “According to REC, there is no way to distinguish neural activity that is imagined to be genuinely content involving (and thus truly mental, truly cognitive) from other non-neural activity that merely plays a supporting or enabling role in making mind and cognition possible.” (p. 12) We also know that the heart, the biggest electromagnetic generator in the body, plays an influential role in our human experience (e.g., Heartmath, 2021). Most traditions talk about opening the heart in some way, hinting at a way of being and knowing that is non-categorical, non-calculative, embodied, and interconnected. Many traditions consider the heart as the center of knowing, and of course, the metaphor of the heart is so central to human experience and implies the centrality of emotion, relation, care, desire, and more. Though the modernist era has tended to isolate thinking as an individual, abstracted, brain process, contemporary understanding reveals this as wholly incomplete. We are beginning to put our parts back together: mind and body, gut and brain, hand and head, which exist not separate from one another as Descartes implied, not even as connected as early mind-body medicine understood, but as a complex, interactive unity (Dreher, 2003). As such the capacity of interoception to attune to bodily “felt sense” (Gendlin, 1982) provides essential source for more robust cognition and with it a greater understanding of self and world. In addition to becoming more attuned to the body, embodiment means integrating the abstract and the concrete, idea, and action through hands-on activity and in the context of our daily life (Hart, 2017). Contemporary evidence and theory for mind and thought as relational, embodied, emergent, and fundamentally more dynamic than machine learning, provides a more accurate representation of how our minds work, and thus underscores the value of

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developing capacities to access enriched and expanded sources of knowing and being, relevant both for the individual navigating the world and for effectively developing values in others.

Two Ways of Knowing A central underpinning of the capacities (and values) themselves is the way we know. It is not just what we know but especially how we know that drives understanding, values, and actions. One additional way to frame an understanding of consciousness and capacities is through two fundamental ways that the mind attends to the world. There are myriad variations to be sure and certainly plenty of other ways to slice this rhetorically, but this may be useful today for understanding how ways of knowing underpin and engender particular values. One way we will call categorical. This knows the world through abstraction, through separating it from us, through taking apart to understand. In a sense, everything is reduced to parts, to lowest units that are differentiated, cataloged, calculated. It reaches its apex in metaphor of computer zeros and ones. Categorical awareness narrows in to focus on detail and seeks precision, objectivity, and presupposes certainty. It simplifies and represents, proceeds linearly and sequentially, generalizes, and calculates value. Schooling tends to emphasize this way of knowing. The other knowing is through contact instead of category. Its style is direct, relational, embodied, and recognizes wholes and connections. This way of attention enables a broader view, one connected with the world and the body, scanning for changes in the environment. This knowing picks up implicit meaning and metaphor and is able to read faces and other cues of individuals instead of simplified, predetermined, and generalized categories. Knowledge through contact is evolving, implicit, and indeterminate since it always exists in relationship to something else and is not ever fully graspable. (Hart, 2014a). Iain McGilchrist (2009), drawing from a vast body of neuroscientific and phenomenological data, makes a compelling case that these ways of knowing have neurological substrates corresponding to the anatomically distinct hemispheres of the brain. Though logic, language, creativity, and most other complex functions involve interaction across brain and body regions, the evidence supports the idea that left and right hemispheres of the brain, generally speaking, process differently. They are involved with two fundamentally different ways of relating to the world. The left largely enables that categorical, narrowed, separate, discriminative focus while the attention of the right is broad and flexible, able to recognize connected wholes as opposed to the left’s individual parts. These seem perfectly designed to complement one another and both ways of knowing are essential to human understanding. The problem is that their essential partnership has come unhinged. One of McGilchrist’s primary insights is that categorical consciousness does not have the capacity to integrate the more contact-full way of knowing. By its very

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nature, it cannot process or value in wholes or draw material from the body and senses so readily. On the other hand, the right is largely integrative and naturally incorporates the data from the left and is thus positioned to serve as the dominant driver of consciousness. Because of the powerful rise of categorical consciousness reinforced through objectivism and reductionism and the education that both derives from and reinforces it, the consciousness associated with the right has lost its primacy; the left is running the show. Inevitably, the show it can see is limited, an abstracted or virtual view of the world but one assumed to be real and complete. The result is what Leonardo da Vinci warned about 500 years ago; he called it an abridged or “abbreviators” approach to knowledge. da Vinci warned that this abbreviators way of knowing “does damage to knowledge and to love” (Capra, 2007. p. 12). He began to see that the flourishing openness of the early renaissance mind was being conscripted and restricted by a narrowing of thinking; Philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1992) argues that from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries there was a particular turning away of earlier Renaissance values. The intellectual fashion became more rigid and dogmatic and reason itself became narrower, no longer respecting context or appreciating diversity to the same degree. Through the domination of this way of knowing, in Rene Descartes’ (1994) words, “[we have rendered] ourselves the lords and possessors of nature” (p. 45). But in gaining that power we risk losing something else. As powerful and valuable as this is – and there is absolutely no denying its influence and worth – we are recognizing the limits and unintended consequences of this way of knowing. It tends to leave us and the world fragmented, out of context, and out of balance. There are other accounts of the dual nature of mind that fall roughly along the same lines. For example, we hear reference to masculine and feminine aspects of knowing and being. In Chinese philosophy, two distinct ways of being are represented as the familiar yin and yang, dependent and embedded in one another. In ancient yogic theory, two channels of energy – Pingala and Ida – spiral up the spine, and when in balance combine to open a third channel of energy – sushumna. The point is that these general distinctions are recognized as fundamental aspects of consciousness across traditions and times. Ultimately, the most important consideration is not what these functions are called or where they are identified anatomically. The essential significance is in recognizing the distinct ways that we attend to the world and just how that shapes what we see and how we behave. Education, along with most attempts to improve it, is embedded in an operating system and an implicit meta-value that validates one aspect of knowing but has devalued the other side. However, this other knowing moves us, gives us context, it may even transform us but we cannot measure or manipulate or manage it in the same way and thus, in a modernist backdrop, it has been largely overridden. The challenge for this age is not just about more information and faster connections, more differentiation and domination, but to find a way to bring together the bits and the bytes in living the integrated life in a world of global interconnection so that we, as da Vinci warned, stop doing injury to knowledge and to love. If our

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education and our consciousness are to be a match for this century, this is where the trail of knowing leads. The greater the external technology, the greater the need for internal technology – inner capacities and qualities intertwined with values, to help navigate and occupy human space, lest it be occupied by something else, drawn downstream by marketing wizards, constant electronic stimulation, titillating distraction, consumerism, or other tokens for our attention. Scaffolding the development of values involves rebalancing these ways of knowing, these other capacities of being. We have focused on the function that takes things apart, that meets the world at arms-length, that works off categories and abstractions, that calculates value, and assumes certainty. We also want and need to meet it up close and in person, to sense it in our bodies, to recognize wholes and not only parts, to feel awe and mystery, to be moved, find context, meaning, and beauty, so that the bits and bytes make sense. We do not need to just categorize our life; we need to enter it. Core values show us a doorway, capacities help us to move through it. A values-oriented approach and a core capacities approach are complementary, intertwined, and can bolster one another. Our collective and individual thriving requires a worldview – values – appropriate to the times but we also need a world presence, we might say – the powers of being and doing in the world so that we might live out the values we hold dear. And that presence is powered by supportive community and worthy aspirations on the outside and the depth and power of psychospiritual capacities on the inside. Our flourishing as individuals and as community requires certain “real powers of body and soul to be a match for reality” as M.C Richards says in the epigram that beings this chapter. These are the inner arts and inner technologies essential to place a claim on the meaningful life, helping us to find our way.

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Descartes, R. (1994). A discourse on method: Meditations and principles. J. M. Dent. (Original work published 1637) Dreher, H. (2003). Mind-body unity: A new vision for mind-body science and medicine. Johns Hopkins University Press. Gendlin, E. T. (1982). Focusing. Bantam Books. Gordon, M. (1999). The roots of empathy: Changing the world child by child. The Experiment. Hadot, P. (1995). Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Ed. A. I. Davidson, Trans. M. Chase). Blackwell. Hart, T. (2014a). The integrative mind: Transformative education for a world on fire. Rowman & Littlefield. Hart, T. (2014b). The four virtues: Presence, heart, wisdom, creation. Atria. Hart, T. (2017). Embodying the mind. In J. P. Miller & K. Nigh (Eds.), Holistic education: Embodied learning. Information Age Publishing. Heartmath. (2021). https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/ Holistic Education Review. (2021). https://centerforholisticeducation.org/?page_id¼1022 Hutto, D. D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing enactivism: Basic minds without content. MIT Press. James, W. (1982). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Penguin. Kessler, R. (2000). The soul of education: Helping students find connection, compassion and character at school. ASCD. Kohlberg, L. (1981). The philosophy of moral development: Moral stages and the idea of justice. Harper & Row. Learning for Well Being Foundation. (2021). https://www.learningforwellbeing.org/ Maslow, A. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. Van Nostrand. Mayer, E. A. (2011). Gut feelings: The emerging biology of gut–brain communication. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12(8), 453–466. McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. Yale University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Humanities Press. Penn, W. (1945). as cited in Aldous Huxley, The perennial philosophy. Harper & Row. Pert, C. B. (2002). The wisdom of the receptors: Neuropeptides, the emotions, and body mind. 1986. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine Consciousness, 18(1), 30–35. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton. Richards, M. C. (1989). Centering in pottery, poetry, and the person (2nd ed.). Wesleyan University Press. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam Books. Siegel, D. J. (2016). Mind: A journey to the heart of being human. W. W. Norton. Tillich, P. (1951). Systematic theology (Vol. 1). University of Chicago Press. Tough, P. (2013). How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character. Houghton Mifflin. Toulmin, S. (1992). Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity. University of Chicago Press. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (2017). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. The MIT Press. Weber, M. (1946). Class, status, party. In H. Gerth & C. W. Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Oxford University Press. Werner, H. (1957). The concept of development from a comparative and organismic point of view. In D. B. Harris (Ed.), The concept of development. University of Minnesota Press.

Values, Education, Self, and Identity

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Selfhood: History and Conflicting Conceptualizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Esteem as an Educational Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Growth Mindsets as a Self-Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Remarks: Is Self-Realism an Option in the Present Day? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Values education has come a long way during the last three decades. Increasingly, educators agree that schools should transmit values rather than merely teach about or clarify values. Trends such as character education and social and emotional learning have replaced Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental approach, and “the self” has emerged as an independent source and focus of value. Nevertheless, values education continues to be a divisive field. After a brief review of recent trends, I turn attention to the self, tracing its history back to Aristotle and the Stoics, with stopovers in Descartes and Hume, until this construct reached its current anti-realist zenith as “self-concept” in social psychology and education. I offer the discourses on self-esteem at the turn of the century and the still ongoing discourse on “growth mindsets” as examples of the topicality, pervasiveness, and appeal of the self-concept construct as it relates to education. I finally ask what would have to change in educational theory if we returned to a more realist view of selfhood, and/or accorded the construct a more modest role in educational theorizing than seen, for example, in current “identity politics.”

K. Kristjánsson (*) University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_11

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Keywords

Values Education · Self · Identity · Kohlberg · Aristotle · Descartes · Hume

Introduction1 During the last three decades or so, drastic shifts have occurred in approaches to the nature and role of values education. For one thing, it is hardly called into question any more that schools need to transmit values, as distinct from simply teaching about values. Wolf-cries of “indoctrination” have lost their bite, or been silenced by society’s need to impose at least a minimal structure of common “core values” upon an increasingly fractured and heterogeneous populace. Minimalist justifications of values education in schools (e.g., Hand, 2018), which would have been heaven-sent for values educators in the 1980s–90s, now feel like relics of a bygone age, surplus to requirements; for why harp on the obvious? For another thing, values education tends to be understood less than before in terms of a particular school subject; more in terms of a general value-imbued enrichment of students’ learning experiences pertaining to every school subject, through which values are “caught” and learned to be “sought,” rather than simply “taught.” In practical terms, this means placing values at the center of the school’s ethos and hoping that values and teaching quality form a “double helix” of academic and personal achievement (see, e.g., various articles in Lovat & Toomey, 2007, where this new trend was already in evidence). If we focus more specifically on values education qua moral education, we have also come a long way since the 1980s. In 1985, Teachers College Press published an overview of “contemporary approaches to moral education” (Chazan, 1985). The approaches ranged from Durkheim’s socialization view and Kohlberg’s Kantianinspired cognitive-developmental approach, to Wilson’s rational utilitarianism, value-clarification models, and the views of those who reject any formal moral education whatsoever. Writ large, none of those approaches would count as “contemporary” in today’s climate. The anti-moral-education guard has been reduced to a few scattered mavericks, the idea of the mere clarification of existing values has more or less imploded, and the aspirations of those who simply wanted moral education to “apply” insights rubberstamped by this or that abstract moral theory (be it Kantian or utilitarian) have taken a downward turn, to be replaced by more agent-centered and context-sensitive hands-on approaches. Today’s manual of “contemporary” approaches would be likely, therefore, to include chapters on character education (inspired by virtue ethics, as retrieved by late twentieth-century thinkers), positive education (inspired by positive psychology, which did not originate until the beginning of this century), social and emotional learning (inspired by the ideal of emotional intelligence from the end of the twentieth century), as well as care ethics, 1

The beginning of this chapter and some if its subsequent conceptualizations draw upon my chapter ‘Valuing the Self’ in the first edition of this Handbook. However, more than half of the present chapter is comprised of new material. For a more detailed take on the historical and conceptual nuances of selfhood in philosophy, psychology, and education, see Kristjánsson (2010).

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citizenship education, human rights education, peace education, and so forth. The recommended methods would include service learning, habituation, and role modeling of moral exemplars, alongside an increased emphasis on the arts, emotion education, metacognitive reflective/critical thinking, and practical wisdom (Kristjánsson et al., 2021). Can one trace a pattern in those shifts and turns? Perhaps the general pattern is (happily, in the present view) away from the theoretical toward the practical and (more regrettably, in the present view) away from the social toward the personal, although the recent emphasis on citizenship or “civic” education and the focus on environmental values, such as sustainability, mitigate that latter trend somewhat. This pattern goes hand in hand with another latter-day shift in approaches to education in and about values, broadly understood, which will form the linchpin of the remaining discussion. We can call it the “inward turn”: the exaltation of selfhood (usually referred to simply as the self or even identity) from a mere subject of value – a value-recorder if you like – to an object of value: an object to be prized and valued independently, esteemed, respected, nourished, and protected. Without first valuing oneself or one’s “self,” as the theory goes, one cannot learn to value other things. This assumption may not seem novel; even Aristotle posited that other-love presupposes an ability to love oneself (1985, pp. 252–256 [1168a5–1169b2]).2 In recent times, however, the idea of selfvaluing has assumed a life of its own, taking on new forms and dimensions, with significant ramifications for values-educational practice. In the following section, I trace the historical trajectory motivating this new selffocus and some of the conceptual complications that it involves. This exploration is then followed by two sections in which I give examples of how the self-discourses of late have impacted upon educational practice: on the one hand, the focus on selfconcept (or, more narrowly, self-esteem), and on the other hand, the emphasis on so-called “growth mindsets.” I end with some reflections on how historical vicissitudes in thinking about selfhood have motivated today’s “identity politics” and “cancel culture.” I also speculate about if and how possible moves away from the idea of young people’s essentially fragile and fluid self-concepts, back to an older, more realist, and modest conception, might manifest themselves in the educational arena.

Selfhood: History and Conflicting Conceptualizations Philip Larkin’s often-cited quip that “sexual intercourse began in nineteen-sixtythree [. . .] between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban and the Beatles” first LP’ is insightful albeit not entirely historically accurate.3 The same goes for the common contention that the concept of “selfhood” or “the self” emerged only in early-modern 2

Almost all the contemporary approaches to values education, such as character education, positive education, social and emotional learning, and citizenship education, trace their origin back to Aristotle, some way or another, albeit to different books in his corpus (Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics). This explains the pride of place given to his views in this chapter. 3 This is taken from Larkin’s poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’, see, e.g., https://www.wussu.com/poems/ plam.htm

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times in connection with the concern for subjectivity that characterized the Renaissance and subsequently the Enlightenment period. What is true is that term “selfhood,” as a noun referring to an entity with distinct ontological-cum-psychological features, describing what a person is “really deep down” as an individual, came into use only from the seventeenth century onwards (Taylor, 1989). Its emergence coincided with the proliferation of new normative constructs such as “autonomy” and “authenticity” that, similarly, had an origin in much older ways of thinking but were not fully developed until the dawn of modernity. Plato and Aristotle would for example have found it difficult to make sense of the contention that Greta Thunberg has taken an autonomous decision to be – and found her authentic voice as an – environmental activist, although both theorists were deeply concerned with finding the general purpose (telos) of human life. That said, Aristotle, for one, theorized profusely about the characteristics of “oneself” in ways that are amenable to translation into modern self-talk. For example, he referred to his close personal friend as “another himself” (1985, p. 246 [1166a30–33]; cf. pp. 260 and 265 [1170b6–7; 1172a32–34]) in a way that could lend itself to a conceptualization, not available in antiquity, of “interdependent selfhood” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Even more explicitly and presciently, Aristotle made a distinction between people by dividing them into four categories: Some people are (morally) worthy of great things, and others are not; and some people know to which of those two categories they belong, and others do not. The possible combinations of those two criteria (objective worthiness and self-knowledge) then create four possible character types that Aristotle analyzed; and he concluded that those who are objectively worthy, and realize it, form the ideal type (1985, pp. 97–104 [1123a33–1125a35]). Without engaging in unreasonable conceptual acrobatics, it would be possible to convert this distinction into a modern-looking one between “self” and “self-concept/identity” (see below). Most conspicuously, Aristotle identified a personality type, much discussed in modernity, of the person who suffers because of an unreasonably low view of her own worth, which he called “pusillanimity” (nowadays known more widely as “low self-esteem”). However, here is where the analogy with modernity comes to an abrupt end; the view – so entrenched in modernity – that maybe who one is deep down is nothing but the idea of who one is (namely the sort of anti-self-realism that I define presently) would have been utterly foreign to Aristotle. Later, the Stoics came up with the idea that what matters for the good life is not what really happens to you (which you can do very little about, according to their deterministic metaphysics), but rather what approach you take to the goings-on in your life. Stoicism has been experiencing a revival in modern times (Sherman, 2021), especially through its current incarnation as cognitive behavioral theory, with a focus on resilience as a survival skill. However, like Aristotle, the Stoics did not frame their teachings in terms of a distinct self-theory. Somewhat paradoxically, the period of early-modern philosophy involved both the creation of the modern concept of selfhood and its deconstruction. Metaphysically speaking, Decartes’s “cogito ergo sum” identified a distinct novel agency at the core of human personhood. Descartes took Aristotle’s faculty of accurate selfknowledge, so to speak, to an un-Aristotelian extreme by making all knowledge dependent upon self-knowledge. Also contrary to Aristotle, he considered the self to

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be a simple, single, permanent, non-material entity, immediately accessible to introspection at any moment, the experience of which undergirds the only certainties we can ever have in life. Locke then identified the core of selfhood in the continuity of self-consciousness over time, and various other Enlightenment thinkers made substantive use of this new self-construct as representing the very locus of individuality (Taylor, 1989), which had suddenly become such a prized commodity. However, Enlightenment empiricism, especially as represented by David Hume, turned out to be self-defeating with respect to this newly found construct of the self. Introspection reveals, according to Hume, no singular, substantive unity in the plurality of impressions that comprises consciousness. The alleged “self” is nothing but “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” However, strong our natural propensity to imagine that flux of impressions as emanating from an underlying, unchanging unity, the idea is nevertheless fictitious – a figment of the imagination without intellectual basis. Substantive selfhood requires something “invariable and uninterrupted,” but there is simply no such substance beneath all the difference in what his contemporaries called “the self” (Hume, 1978, pp. 251–255). It would take me too far afield from the topic of the present chapter to continue to trace this history of the professed realities (or unrealities) of selfhood. Suffice it to say here that already, post-Hume, we had all the ingredients of the four main positions on the self that have continued to compete for allegiance into the present era. Let us call them hard self-realism, soft self-realism, soft anti-self-realism, and hard anti-self-realism (see Kristjánsson, 2010, Chap. 2, for the full details). All positions presuppose that, conceptually at least, it is possible to distinguish between a realist objective self versus self-concept or identity (in a psychological sense) as the set of our conceptions about, and attitudes/feelings toward, this self. Think of the realist self as the hard furniture in the room of our psyche and self-concept as a mirror in which this furniture is reflected. To simplify the positions somewhat, hard realists hold that only the objective self (the furniture) ultimately matters for selfhood: morally, psychologically, and educationally. What we happen to believe about the self will hinder or helps true self-understanding, but it does not really change who we are. Self-knowledge denotes, for the self-realist, harmony between one’s self and self-concept; self-deception denotes disharmony or discrepancy. For instance, I may consider myself strong willed and really be strong willed, or I may consider myself weak willed and really be weak willed. In either case, I could be said to possess selfknowledge. Alternatively, I may consider myself strong willed but really be weak willed, or consider myself weak willed and really be strong willed. In either case, I would be self-deceived. According to soft self-realism, the objective self exists, but so does self-concept, and qua mirror in the room it is also part of the furniture it mirrors. This is basically the old Aristotelian picture projected above: The flourishing well-adjusted agent (morally, psychologically, and epistemologically) both has a solid well-formed self and an accurate mirror in which to view it. This position may seem to create a vicious regress: What mirrors the mirror if that is also one piece of the furniture in the psyche? To respond to this quandary, complex responses are required about how the self-concept is Janus-faced, both inward and outward-directed, with part of it

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looking at and evaluating the rest of the furniture, but another part being part of the furniture that it mirrors. This solution is typically couched in terms of the double role of the so-called self-conscious emotions, such as pride and shame, as being part of both self and self-concept (Kristjánsson, 2010, Chap. 4). However, elaborating upon the intricacies of that philosophical position are outside the current purview. Seen through the prism of anti-self-realism, the so-called furniture in the room is just a chimera. There is nothing stable and solid to be found there (as noted by Hume). All there is to what we call selfhood is just the collection of conceptions we have about it, namely our self-concept, which then includes various sub-aspects such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect,4 depending on our contextdependent inward perspective. You are simply who you think you are: the mirror. A soft version of this view accepts its main premise but adds the caveat that the reflections in the mirror can be deemed better or worse depending on their internal coherence. Thus, a consistent and coherent self-narrative is better than an incoherent, haphazard one, at least for the pragmatic reason that the former is easier to live by. For a complex set of historic-ideological reasons, which involved the demise of various forms of essentialism and realism within ontology and ethics, anti-self-realism – originally of the soft kind but later, with the upsurge of postmodern ontologies (Gergen, 1991), of the hard kind – became the dominant paradigm within social science (Pajares & Schunk, 2002). This is especially true of fields such as social psychology and most of modern mainstream education discourse; personality psychologists, however, still stick to some variety of self-realism, based on the existence of more or less fixed personality traits (most notably, the Big-Five). William James was the first psychologist to study the self systematically, and it was he who created the notion of global self-esteem (see next section). Interest in the self, as in other “internal constructs,” took a dive in psychology during the heyday of behaviorism from the 1930s–1950s. Humanistic psychology, however, “rediscovered” the self, and it has since been the object of acute academic and public attention. The anti-self-realist construct of self that is so dominant, for example, in contemporary educational discourse is rarely called by that name. It is simply referred to as “identity”; hence, the rise of recent “identity politics” where the anti-realist assumptions are extended to things such as sex as self-ascribed gender, or your race as whatever racial designator you happen to identify with, rather than anything having to do with your genetic make-up. The complex philosophical assumptions undergirding this view of selfhood are rarely invoked, however. At best, this pattern of thinking is assembled under the somewhat vague umbrella term “attribution theory.” According to that theory, people tend to act in line with the attributes they consider themselves as possessing, whether or not they actually possess those attributes, and the explanations which they like to give of their own behavior (see, e.g., Dweck, 1999, for educationally salient applications, as explained in a later section). Self-realists will question whether self-respect is really part of self-concept – that it can be shoehorned into this particular psychological construct. The problem there is that self-respect is not essentially a belief concept. Although the belief that one can do things makes one self-confident, the belief that one has strong self-respect does not make one self-respectful, any more than the belief that one is a good driver makes one a good driver.

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Anti-self-realism goes hand in hand with a paradigm of young people as essentially fluid and fragile beings. On the positive side, this paradigm has led to a much deeper appreciation of the powers of the attitudes that we harbor toward young people and of the attitudes about themselves that they gradually internalize. Moreover, it has heightened interest in, and sensitivity to, the malleability of young people’s selfhoods and their faculty to choose and take on new values, roles, and identities. In that sense, this paradigm has been educationally liberating. On the other hand, it has also turned out to be liable to illiberal excesses, often referred to through opprobrious terms such as “snowflake generation,” “cancel culture,” and “wokeness.” I return to some evaluations of current anti-self-realism in education in the final section of this chapter. However, first it will be instructive to offer a couple of brief examples of how it has played out in educational theory and practice.

Self-Esteem as an Educational Value What is the scientific status of self-concept? Have psychologists succeeded in locating something singular in the prodigious plurality of sundry notions that nest around the self of everyday experience? If by that we mean whether or not they have identified a natural-kind concept, the answer is obviously no. If the claim is the more modest one, however – that they have specified a cluster concept with reasonable defining features, general intuitive appeal, and at least some prima facie explanatory force in making sense of everyday human experiences – I think we should give the psychologists the benefit of the doubt. Notice that this acceptance of conceptual serviceability does not imply that self-concept in general or some particular facets of self-concept, such as global self-esteem, can automatically be granted a powerful mediating influence on human behavior. The common claim that a “positive” self-concept is fundamental to educational achievement, psychological health, and rewarding relationships amounts to no more than a slogan in the absence of empirical investigation. What propagated the sudden groundswell of interest – among psychologists and educationists – in people’s beliefs about themselves in the second half of the twentieth century? Two explanations are true but trivial. This interest coincided with certain research paradigms within psychology and it harmonized with dominant themes in the folk psychology of the period. Yet these explanations merely move the question up one level: What motivated the appeal of those paradigms and of this folk psychology? One possible explanatory route is that of a conspiracy theory; the selfmantra is then seen as part of an explicit or implicit conspiracy by self-help gurus, quack therapists, and unscrupulous politicians to feather their own nests. This is essentially the explanation given in Furedi’s Therapy Culture (2004) and in Rose’s earlier diagnosis of “psy culture” (1996), inspired by even more sinister and wideranging Foucauldian musing about “technologies of the self” and how those are used to exercise power over the masses (Foucault, 2020). Yet it fails as an explanation to the extent that it does not account for the origin of the great need that “psy culture” or “therapy culture” seem to have met. Recall that many other ideas were also up for grabs at the time, but it was the one about the dangers of a vulnerable self-concept that sold.

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My own preferred explanation is not as juicy as the conspiracy ones. I think the halo effect of self-concept, in its various incarnations, was mainly caused by its professed power to exert a positive influence on young people. The greatest torchbearers of the ideal of “boosting self-esteem,” for example, have been practically minded psychologists and well-meaning educators, concerned with finding ways of improving young people’s mental health and educational achievement. The vast majority of psychological and educational studies conducted under the banner of self-concept during the last 50 years or so have actually been about one facet of it only, global self-esteem – defined as the ratio of one’s perceived achievements, across the whole of one’s life, to one’s aspirations – and its expected correlations with various educational and socio-moral factors. The initial hypothesis was that high global self-esteem is positively correlated with (and even causally connected to) educational achievement and pro-social behavior, hence the urgent need to enhance self-esteem at school and in the home. I take it that readers are aware of the grandiose claims that were made in the name of this overarching hypothesis (see, e.g., Branden, 1969) and the copious research that has been conducted to establish such correlations. Warning signs had long been raised within social science circles, by both educationists and psychologists, about the dangers of allowing students to acquire self-esteem on the cheap (learning to esteem that which is potentially unworthy of esteem), and about the small step from high self-esteem to self-obsession, selfcenteredness, and plain old selfishness (Damon, 1995; Stout, 2000; Pajares & Schunk, 2002). Yet few people took those warnings seriously until fairly late. We can take comfort in the fact that psychology has proved to have quite an ability to self-correct: to deconstruct its own constructs when they fail to pass the test of empirical serviceability. This is essentially what happened in the early part of this century with the notion of global self-esteem, at least as far as its educational ramifications are concerned. As amply demonstrated in a 2003 meta-analysis, satisfaction with the global ratio of one’s perceived accomplishments to aspirations has few educational correlates, positive or negative. Academic performance does not require students to love and esteem themselves in general. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that very high global self-esteem is, if anything, connected to anti-social and risky behavioral tendencies rather than pro-social and healthy tendencies – perhaps because of the sense of invulnerability that it evokes in people who think of themselves as close to perfection (Baumeister et al., 2003). This much-cited metaanalysis more or less killed off the interest in global self-esteem in mainstream psychological circles. Someone could complain that the obsession with global selfesteem has wasted enormous resources on a fool’s errand, given the 11,313 abstracts in PsycINFO 1985–2006 that dealt with or included a reference to the concept. But the methodological point is simply that an intuitively appealing idea – the idea that one’s global estimation of one’s successes has a significant impact on educational achievement and general behavior – has turned out to be untenable. The only way to learn that was through careful scientific experimentation. And there, William James’s construct of global self-esteem proved enormously useful, if not useful in exactly the way that James and most subsequent theorists had predicted. Simultaneous to, but mostly independent of, the decline in self-esteem research in psychological circles in the first decade of the twenty-first century, lively discussions

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took place about the concept among philosophers of education. Although that discourse is now a bit dated, it is still worthy of readers’ attention (Cigman, 2001, 2004; Smith, 2002, 2006; Kristjánsson, 2007; Ferkany, 2008). The upshot of the philosophical discussion was that the healthiest kind of self-esteem would be the reasonable/accurate one that Aristotle recommended in his prescient version of what we would nowadays label soft self-realism. Yet there is a sad twist to this whole story of the demise of what has been called the “self-esteem industry.” Educators have been rather slow at taking notice of developments in educational psychology and educational philosophy, and a quick Google search of the webpages of many kindergartens, primary, and secondary schools in the U.K., for instance, still brings up the cursed and discredited educational value of “boosting self-esteem,” as if nothing has happened in academia since the 1980s. Every cloud has a silver lining; and although the educational value of high selfesteem turned out be close to zero (or even in some cases a minus number), this finding cannot be generalized to the whole of self-concept. Another facet of selfconcept is what Bandura (1997) calls “perceived self-efficacy,” but simply means, in less academic parlance, domain-specific (as opposed to global) self-confidence: for instance, one’s self-confidence in being able to master a new language in the future. This notion is logically distinct from self-esteem, be it global or domain-specific. There is no contradiction in believing firmly in one’s ability, if one tries hard enough, to succeed at learning a new language even though one has little self-esteem as a foreign-language speaker here and now. Conversely, one may lack confidence in further ventures at language learning, although one is pleased with one’s current ability at speaking a foreign language. Bandura’s research seems to have shown that self-esteem and self-confidence are not only logically but also empirically distinct. Indeed, considerable empirical research supports Bandura’s original armchair hypothesis that one’s confidence as, say, a maths student does predict achievement in such related areas as maths tests, although confidence in one domain does not extend into other domains (Bandura, 1997). In sum, self-concept has, since the middle of the twentieth century, acquired prominent status as a target not only of values education narrowly understood but the cultivation of education-enhancing values more generally (especially though developing self-esteem and self-confidence in various guises). In this section, I have tried to unravel some of the complexity of these particular facets of self-concept, as well as exploring contrasting opinions on their uses and usefulness.

Growth Mindsets as a Self-Theory One of the most popular educational theory of late – interestingly among practitioners no less than academics – is Carol Dweck’s theory of growth mindsets. She defines it as a “self-theory” (Dweck, 1999) and rightly so; it is a fairly elaborate antiself-realist theory (see further in Kristjánsson, 2010, Chap. 10). Underlying Dweck’s theorizing is a social-cognitive approach to motivation and self-regulation, according to which people’s self-beliefs and values create meaning systems (“implicit theories”), within which people define themselves and operate,

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leading different individuals to react in radically different ways to identical situations. In particular, people’s self-concept (via self-beliefs about the extent of their ability to control situations and personal capacities) influences their motivations to engage in personal change. Some of those meaning systems are psycho-socially adaptive, others maladaptive (Dweck, 1999, pp. xi, 138, 144). More generally, Dweck’s methodological framework is part of the earlier-mentioned attribution theory in psychology, which assumes that people act in accordance with the attributes they consider themselves to possess. Dweck’s findings indicate that one can divide people into two groups according to the implicit self-theories they embrace. People with an “entity view” consider their personal attributes to be fixed, stable, and resistant to change. People with an “incremental view,” on the other hand, consider their attributes to be relatively malleable and amenable to change. “Incremental theorists” relish challenges and are “mastery-oriented”; they like to master tasks that are one increment more difficult than the ones they have accomplished so far. “Entity theorists” are, in contrast, saddled with a disabling self-view that feeds on a diet of easy successes. They are constantly worried about the level of their fixed positive attributes and need repeated verifications of their abilities. They are “performance-oriented”: like to repeat earlier performances over and over again, but are suspicious, if not positively scared, of new challenges. The entity view thus creates emotional vulnerability and learned helplessness. Most parents and teachers think it is important to praise children. Dweck puts a damper on the valorization of praise. What we need to do is to praise effort rather than ability. If we praise ability – by telling children that they are talented or gifted, for instance, or even worse, by offering vacuous unsubstantiated praise – we inculcate in them an entity theory: “Try to appear smart, do not risk making mistakes.” Instead, praise should be specific and directed at mastered tasks. This is, in Dweck’s view, particularly true in the case of girls, who already get too much approval for just being “good”; boys are by nature more risk-oriented and receive more praise for effort – which helps them later in life. Similar to praise, criticism should be item-specific, for if you criticize children for global characteristics, you instill in them a sense of contingent self-worth (1999, Chaps. 15 and 16). Using praise and blame constructively is thus a major factor in cultivating an incremental self-concept, amenable to positive self-change. Dweck does not explicitly reject objective truth about who we are deep down. She places little stock, however, in the difference between fact and fiction when analyzing our attributes; what matters is how we perceive of them (as static or dynamic). She has no patience with the fact that one’s IQ score is, as a matter of fact, relatively stable and reliable; or that personality traits, such as those explored in Big-Five research, and self-constituting emotional dispositions tend to show little fluctuation. If one expresses those truths in response to her questionnaires, one will simply be deemed to have a maladaptive mindset. In general, she does not distinguish clearly between the view that some of our attributes are difficult to change (which is no doubt true) and that some of them are impossible to change (which is probably false). Both views will fall under the rubric of a damaging “entity theory.”

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My aim in invoking Dweck’s theory here as an example is not to pass any definitive theoretical judgments about it (cf. however, Kristjánsson, 2010, Chap. 10). I am simply presenting it as a case in point about the current pervasiveness and appeal of anti-self-realism in education. It would have sounded bizarre to someone like Aristotle, for example, that simply the way you phrase you praise of children’s educational process can have a lasting influence on how they understand themselves and exert an equally lasting influence on any future progress they can make. I cannot avoid noting here that two recent meta-analyses of Dweck’s theory have identified mixed results, at best; and where a positive effect has been recorded, it was weak (Sisk et al., 2018). When I have conveyed this message to teachers – who typically hold Dweck in very high regard – their typical response has been that it is no wonder growth-mindset interventions do not lead to (further) positive outcomes. Teachers have, namely, taken Dweck’s message on board to the extent that they are already overwhelmingly growth-mindset educators, and the effect that any new intervention can have is, at best, to gild a pre-existing lily. This response may indicate that the anti-realist mindset theory has reached the status of being virtually irrefutable by any academic evidence. More generally, it seems to signify that antiself-realism has truly become bred into the bones of contemporary educators.

Concluding Remarks: Is Self-Realism an Option in the Present Day? A lone survivor of the war between self-realists and anti-self-realists has been the ideal of self-understanding, which seems to be touted equally within both camps. Although few educators would take exception to the claim that self-understanding is a fundamental education value, we should recall that this claim is not incontestable. Renowned writers such as Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O’Neill have toyed with the idea of self-deceptions and unrealistic pipe dreams as “vital lies” that enable the average person to avoid self-contempt and existential despair. Like blinders on a horse, self-deceptions may help us move forward unhampered by distress. Although there may at times be some truth in the Rousseauean dictum that an educator has no more right to tell students things that they do not want to hear than not to tell them things that they want to hear, I would argue that the general point about people’s need for self-deceptions underestimates the enticement and self-transformative value of objective truth, as well as people’s capacity to cope with distress when truth turns out to be unsettling. It is no coincidence that “informed consent” and truth-telling have become ground rules in the health sector. Even John Stuart Mill, that uncompromising advocator of happiness as the ultimate moral goal, wrote a long chapter in On Liberty (1972) entirely in praise of truth and its value in human life (and the disvalue of trying to suppress it). It is true that young children are not always ready to hear the truth about everything, including themselves. However, I see no reason for educators to shirk from seeing self-understanding as a valid general aim of education in general and values education in particular.

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Yet, once again, there is a complication here that relates to different self-theories. Self-realists read self-understanding as being about the true correspondence between self-concept and one’s true underlying self, with the former tracking the latter correctly. Anti-self-realists have a more difficult task in making sense of the idea of a discrepancy between the two, and the resulting self-alienation, because they do not believe in any underlying self that can be tracked correctly or incorrectly. Alienation for them becomes, unlike alienation in Marxist or early-modern theories, not alienation from who you really are, but rather some sort of alienation within the self-concept – which appears paradoxical from the standpoint of hard anti-selfrealism but does make sense within a soft anti-self-realist model, such as Bruner’s (2004). The anti-self-realism that is so pervasive in contemporary educational discourses can only be understood against the backdrop of a more general paradigm of the vulnerable, fragile child (Walker et al., 2015) – or what is sometimes referred to derogatively as the “student as a snowflake.” If the ontological assumptions motivating the so-called culture wars of late are traced back to their roots, those wars are waged between self-realists and anti-self-realists. “Woke-ness” can be defined, then, as acute sensitivity to challenges to people’s own professed self-concepts (qua “identities”) and to any “oppressive” and “offensive” suggestions to the effect that those identities might not track correctly the underlying self. That said, recent polls in the U.K., at least, have indicated that the majority of ordinary people do not understand the word “woke” and that an even larger majority have no interest in the “culture wars.” Nevertheless, those continue to be waged within academic circles and among the chattering classes at a level of fierceness which indicates that neither camp would be open to something like an Aristotelian soft self-realist conciliation, according to which both self and self-concept matter, psychologically and educationally. My main worry about the current culture wars is the effect they are having on a wider range of educational agendas than those commonly pursued under the label of “values education” on a narrow understanding. The most pernicious influence is on traditional discourses about social justice as an educational value: a value written into the mission statements of many university-level education departments. Rather than being about the promotion of the common good, and equitable access to it, “social justice” has been turned into a synonym for “identity politics” of various narrowly circumscribed kinds – losing sense of the big political picture (Arthur et al., 2021). This has been to the detriment of the interests of people both on the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most radical consequence of the culture wars about self and identity has been the narrowing down of discursive spaces on university campuses: A “cancel culture” motivated by voices who typically self-define as “liberal” but would make the liberal philosopher par excellence, John Stuart Mill, turn in his grave. The self-realist versus anti-self-realist debate, which began as a fairly obscure academic debate in the early Enlightenment period, has thus taken on new proportions in recent times that inform any approach to the idea of schools and universities as sites of values and education into values. I, personally, yearn for a time when slightly less attention is paid again to

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questions of self and identity – but more to a wider range of socio-political issues having to do with unequal access to educational opportunities – and when, at least, a soft self-realist position is not automatically taken as an indication of a reactionary standpoint on values. Meanwhile, the tentative answer to the question posed in the title of this final section must be negative. Self-realism does not seem, for the time being at least, to be an option in the current discourses about values in education. What would have to happen for that to change? As noted earlier, there does not seem to be much appetite in educational circles for Aristotle’s golden-mean soft self-realist position. It is controversial whether there is much that individual theorists, or even whole schools of thought, can do about this current state of affairs. There is something in the spirit of the times that calls for an inward gaze at a fragile self in flux. We will probably have to wait for this era to end before the discourses on values in education can return to a more classic, more realist, and more conciliatory approach.

References Aristotle (1985). Nicomachean ethics (T. Irwin, Trans). Hackett Publishing. Arthur, J., Kristjánsson, K., & Vogler, C. (2021). Seeking the common good in education through a positive conception of social justice. British Journal of Educational Studies, 69(1), 101–117. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman & Co. Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1–44. Branden, N. (1969). The psychology of self-esteem: A new concept of man’s nature. Nash Publishing. Bruner, J. (2004). Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691–710. Chazan, B. (1985). Contemporary approaches to moral education. Analyzing alternative theories. Teachers College Press. Cigman, R. (2001). Self-esteem and the confidence to fail. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35(4), 561–576. Cigman, R. (2004). Situated self-esteem. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(1), 91–105. Damon, W. (1995). Greater expectations: Overcoming the culture of indulgence in our homes and schools. Free Press. Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press. Ferkany, M. (2008). The educational importance of self-esteem. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(1), 119–132. Foucault, M. (2020). Power: The essential works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984. Penguin. Furedi, F. (2004). Therapy culture: Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. Routledge. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. Basic Books. Hand, M. (2018). A theory of moral education. Routledge. Hume, D. (1978). A treatise of human nature (L. A. Selby-Bigge, Ed., 2nd ed., ed. by P. H. Nidditch). Clarendon Press. Kristjánsson, K. (2007). Justified self-esteem. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(2), 247–261. Kristjánsson, K. (2010). The self and its emotions. Cambridge University Press. Kristjánsson, K., Fowers, B., Darnell, C., & Pollard, D. (2021). Phronesis (practical wisdom) as a type of contextual integrative thinking. Review of General Psychology, 25(3), 239–257.

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Lovat, T., & Toomey, R. (Eds.). (2007). Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect. David Barlow Publishing. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. Mill, J. S. (1972). Utilitarianism, liberty, representative government. E. P. Dutton & Co. Pajares, F., & Schunk, D. H. (2002). Self and self-belief in psychology and education: An historical perspective. In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement (pp. 5–22). Academic. Rose, N. (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge University Press. Sherman, N. (2021). Stoic wisdom: Ancient lessons for modern resilience. Oxford University Press. Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571. Smith, R. (2002). Self-esteem: The kindly apocalypse. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(1), 87–100. Smith, R. (2006). On diffidence: The moral psychology of self-belief. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40(1), 51–62. Stout, M. (2000). The feel-good curriculum: The dumbing down of America’s kids in the name of self-esteem. Da Capo Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Harvard University Press. Walker, D. I., Roberts, M., & Kristjánsson, K. (2015). Towards a new era of character education in theory and in practice. Educational Review, 67(1), 79–96.

Value-Embedded Learning and the Interoceptive, Predictive Brain

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Notion of Value-Embedded Learning (VEL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VEL and the Australian Values Education Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From Values to Value and Back Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VEL Is Not EVT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Value, Emotional Salience, and the Learning Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wellbeing, Homeostasis, and Interoception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Bayesian, Predictive Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VEL, the Embodied, Embedded, Predictive Brain and Educational Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Over the past 15 years or so, there has been a growing and pervasive sense within brain science that we are standing on the cusp of a major paradigm change that puts notions of “value” and “wellbeing” at the very core of self-organizing brain dynamics. At the close of the twentieth century, the work of Gerald Edelman laid the foundations, with his insistence that neural processing is guided by a selective process that is attuned to recognize value and salience. Value is thus biologically imposed in the brain, by the brain. Building on this foundation, Karl Friston has been a leading voice, in a growing chorus of voices, advocating the notion of a Bayesian predictive brain, while Antonio Damasio and Lisa Feldman Barrett have emphasized the centrality of the biological processes of homeostasis and interoception, concerned with wellbeing. These potentially transformative insights are providing a very new understanding of humans as thinking, feeling, D. Sankey · C. Duncan (*) The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_12

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learning, acting beings. This chapter explores these new ideas and indicates how they are incorporated into the notion of value-embedded learning (VEL), which emphasizes how value and emotional salience are embedded in student learning and wellbeing, and how that is applied in educational brain science research. Keywords

Value-embedded learning · Brain science · Predictive brain · Interoceptivity · Student learning · Student wellbeing

Introduction Here is a question. When, in the fullness of time, human beings create artificial brains on a par with the complexity of human brains, will these “brains” necessarily be imbued with value and emotional salience, and able to make value choices? Notice, this question is not asking whether it is possible or desirable to program moral values into artificial intelligence machines, or whether it is possible to build and program a “moral choice machine” (Schramowski et al., 2020), it is not a question about computer programming at all. Rather, it is a fundamental question about how human brains work and what it means to be human. Whether, for example, value and emotional salience are playing a necessary role in brain functioning and whether this has something to say about the nature of emotional wellbeing and the moral values we espouse. If so, moral values are not simply a sociocultural construct, as some would insist, but are also biologically grounded (Churchland, 2011) and an emergent property of highly complex brains (Sankey & Kim, 2016). It also suggests that human wellbeing and flourishing are somehow inscribed into how brains work (Damasio, 2018). Could it be, for example, that human brains necessarily exhibit a selective value bias (Edelman, 1987; Friston et al., 1994), which directly or indirectly provides a necessary (though not sufficient) foundation for human moral values? Is human brain functioning inherently directed toward wellbeing and flourishing (Barrett, 2017a; Damasio, 2018) and is it also fundamentally predictive with continuous feedback, moment by moment (Clark, 2015), so not “reactive” as conventionally believed? And, if human brain functioning is necessarily imbued with value and emotional salience, as that initial question on artificial brains intimates, then perhaps it is time to reformulate Alan Turing’s test for artificial brains, his “imitation game.” Not, as Turing proposed, whether artificial brains exhibit intelligent behavior on a par with human actors, but whether, in order to be on a par with human brains, artificial brains should unambiguously exhibit an emergent ability to make value choices that are not programmed-in, but emerge as a product of their complexity. Within the context of education, these preliminary thoughts and questions about the way brains work have important implications for how we account for human learning and development, including moral learning and development. We have elsewhere referred to the notion that learning and development are imbued with

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value and emotional salience as value-embedded learning (VEL) (Duncan et al., 2021). In this chapter, we endeavor to bring these various ideas into a collective whole. We start with education and with learning and development, as we begin to unpack the concept of VEL. We then work our way toward the cutting-edge notion of the interoceptive, predictive brain with feedback, which forms the bedrock of VEL, before returning to the application of VEL in brain imaging educational research.

The Notion of Value-Embedded Learning (VEL) To come straight to the point, the concept “value-embedded learning” entails “a philosophically non-reductive and biologically plausible account of the dynamic relationship between value, salience, and emotion in the learning process, and how value might best be ‘afforded’ in the learning environments of classrooms and schools” (Duncan et al., 2021, p. 8). The notion that learning (and development) is fundamentally imbued with value and emotional salience, that it is value embedded, provides an alternative to conventional “motivation theory” and “Expectancy value theory” in education that are products of cognitive psychology, but are now displaying shelf-life fatigue (Duncan et al., 2021). VEL is posited on the claim that there is a dynamic relationship between value, salience, and emotion in the learning process, that most if not all learning that occurs in schools and classrooms is inherently value embedded and it is also deeply affected by the nature of the learning environment and what that affords the learner (Gibson, 1979). As the American National Academy of Sciences has observed, since the start of this millennium, “researchers have continued to make important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments” (NASEM, 2018, p. 1). The core assumption of VEL is that all learning occurs in the brain and that brains are inherently embodied (Immordino-Yang, 2016), meaning that they are biologically integrated into the body. They are also physically, socially, and culturally embedded (Kim & Sankey, 2022). Thus, if we are to understand learning and development, both generally and especially in educational contexts, “it’s a brain in a body in a world that matters” (Smith, 2009, p. 82). In keeping with a dynamic, complex systems account of learning and development, VEL is philosophically nonreductive (Thelen & Smith, 1994; Kauffman, 2008), it offers an emergentist account in which the whole organism is more than the sum of its parts. In the processes of learning and development, the “whole system acquires qualitatively new properties that cannot be predicted from the simple addition of those of its individual components” (Gazzaniga, 2011, p. 134; Sankey & Kim, 2016). Novelty arises from complexity in dynamic, emergent, nonlinear, selforganizing, “dissipative systems” (Prigogine, 1997, p. 66) that exist far from thermal equilibrium. The emergence of novelty is evident in the dynamic patterns of gene activities in developing organisms (Kauffman, 1995), the behavior of ant

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colonies, the functioning of human brains (Solé & Goodwin, 2000), and the “conscious experience that we refer to as ‘mind’ or the self” (Kim & Sankey, 2010, p. 88). VEL also provides a biologically plausible account of learning, in which social and cultural factors involved in learning constantly intermingle with neurobiological processes occurring in the brain. Needless to say, if one chooses to maintain that moral values are a purely human, social, and cultural construct, invoking issues of brain functioning when discussing moral values will likely appear irrelevant, especially if raised in the context of education (e.g., Smeyers, 2016). For some philosophers even the notion that learning occurs in the brain will be anathema. As one anonymous journal reviewer told us quite recently, “The idea that learning occurs in a brain and is necessarily the product of a brain is reductionist, pseudo-scientific and false. . . learning is not an activity of a brain, but of a person, mediated by a teacher and often in a classroom in the company of other persons.” Ironically, this dualist separation of the learning person from their brain was made in support of the antireductionist stance of VEL, though VEL does not invoke dualism.

VEL and the Australian Values Education Program The emphasis in VEL on the relationship between value, emotion, and learning is not entirely new. The seven-year Australian Values Education Program (AVEP, 2003–2010) had led the way. AVEP not only developed a National Framework (DEST, 2005) through which all Australian schools could model and teach values in a planned and systematic way, it also assembled a broad spectrum of evidence that what it called “values pedagogy” (Lovat et al., 2011a, b) improves the “whole educational endeavour of the school” (Lovat et al., 2011a, p. 179) and increases “academic diligence” (Lovat, 2017, p. 93) and student wellbeing (Clement, 2010). AVEP also adduced evidence to support the role that emotion, sociality, and moral development play in the development of cognition. Learning in schools is not just a cognitive endeavor, partitioned from the affective domain of social and emotional development, moreover, it needs to take place in a “morally ambient” learning environment. AVEP was thus echoing Reid’s (1986) insight that teaching needs to forge closer connections between the “propositions” of knowledge and the “disposition” of the learner (Reid, 1986). Furthermore, it argued this should be underpinned by “a disciplined approach to the application of neuroscience to educational practice” (Lovat et al., 2011a, p. 46), applying insights garnered for neuroscience without the distortion of neuromyths. The relationship between cognition and affect, and between learning, emotion, and student wellbeing identified in AVEP are also appropriated into the concept of VEL, as is the importance of the learning environment. However, whereas AVEP recognized the relevance of neuroscience to educational practice, in VEL it is operationalized into practice, in brain imaging research, where it provides a conceptual framework for interpreting neuroscientific data that is garnered, for example, in studies using the electroencephalogram (EEG) in school-based research, as

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discussed shortly. VEL also emphasizes the need for a nonlinear account of learning and development, in contrast to conventional linear stage theories that have predominated in education. It also narrows the focus from values in education and the teaching of moral values, as in AVEP, to the essential role that “value” plays in academic learning and wellbeing. In doing so, it emphasizes the relationship between value, salience, and emotion in the learning process (Edelman, 1987, 1989; Thelen & Smith, 1994).

From Values to Value and Back Again The conceptual shift from “values” in AVEP to “value” in VEL fully acknowledges that these two terms are conceptually different, though there are clear overlaps, not least in that both are directed to what matters. Values may take various forms (environmental values, religious values, and national values) but can broadly be defined as “guiding principles, beliefs, sensitivities, held and displayed by individuals or groups in respect to how they relate to and deal with others and the world” (Sankey & Kim, 2016, p. 118). It should also be emphasized that, insofar as this chapter is concerned with “moral values,” it is not concerned with moral norms or rules. Normative morality is a human social construct, whereas moral values such as care, compassion, and empathetic concern are rooted in evolutionary biology (De Waal, 2009; Churchland, 2011) and massively predate humanity. Moral values are “more fundamental than rules” (Churchland, 2011, p. 9), and “need not involve rules, though they sometimes do” (p. 10). Churchland (2011) charts the emergence of moral values in evolutionary time, arguing that they originated with the biological necessity to care for self, without which no organism could survive. Within the brain, care is modulated by the peptide oxytocin, which is a very basic and evolutionarily very old peptide. In some creatures, including birds and early mammals, care for self was extended to care for offspring, a threat to offspring becomes a threat to self. One can readily witness that each year, in the care afforded by mother ducks to their ducklings. Over time, care for self and young was extended to mates and other members of the close community. This widening of care, from self to others, requires trust, which is also modulated by oxytocin in the brain. Churchland views trust as a value, but we suggest trust is not itself a value but rather “the precondition for a social life. Without trust, a caring, sharing, considerate, compassionate, empathetic social life would be impossible” (Sankey, 2016, p. 184). The values that individuals espouse are valued, they matter, they have value, and that means they will have been instantiated in the brain as part of a dynamic relationship between value, salience, and emotion in the learning process. Neurobiologically, therefore, there is a close relationship between “value” and “values.” Brains work by making value choices by selecting what is salient and meaningful and this necessarily involves feelings and emotions. This pattern of interplay between value, salience, feelings, and emotions occurring in the normal functioning of the brain is harnessed in the process of making moral choices. It is entailed in what

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we mean by empathy, the ability to morally situate ourselves in the predicaments of others and to do so with care and a compassionate concern for their wellbeing.

VEL Is Not EVT Having emphasized the role that “value” plays in learning, it is important to briefly pick up a point made earlier and differentiate the concept of VEL, grounded in dynamic systems theory and neurobiology, from the notion of “expectancy value” in psychology (Duncan et al., 2021). Expectancy value theory (EVT) has been the dominant explanatory construct in studies of motivation in learning since the late 1950s (Wigfield et al., 2019). EVT presupposes a theory of mind that is rational and computational (Byrnes, 2001), where the “value” a student “expects” to derive from a learning task is cognitively mediated by a detached, disembodied mind. The notion of an embodied and embedded brain in VEL therefore stands in stark contrast to the cognitive and computational underpinnings of EVT, with its linear, modular view of mind and the separation of perception, cognition, and action. Central to this shift is a move away from a notion of the mind comprising schemas and representations that mirror the world, toward the dynamics of brain plasticity and the notion of a Bayesian brain that is predictive with continuous feedback, which functions primarily to maintain wellbeing. That shift, we suggest, begins to provide a biologically plausible account of brain function, in contrast to the Cartesian, mechanistic, and dualist (hardware/software) account that has underpinned cognitivism.

Value, Emotional Salience, and the Learning Brain The first substantive steps in understanding how brains work biologically were taken at the start of the twentieth century, particularly the pioneering work on brain cells by Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1979–1930), whose first job was a barber and then a cobbler. In the 1930s, a Canadian schoolteacher and school principal Donald Hebb (1904–1985), who became disenchanted with the strictures of the school curriculum in Quebec, turned to neuroscience and added important detail on the synaptic functioning of brain cells (neurons). Hebb’s postulate continues to provide the basis of current neuroscience research. Most learning that occurs in schools is Hebbian learning. Without direct empirical evidence (that only came in 2009), Hebb postulated: When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased. (Hebb, 1949, p. 62).

In short, Hebb is suggesting that a persistent and repeated stimulus is required to induce change and plasticity (hence learning and memory) in the brain. That is why

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“practice makes perfect,” as all good teachers know. In 1987, the pioneering work of Gerald Edelman added seminal detail to Hebb’s original insight. Some connections are strengthened and form a myriad of neuronal pathways in the brain, while other connections wither and are pruned, which Edelman argued results from a process of neuronal group selection (similar to Darwinian natural selection) with its focus on change within evolving populations. Edelman noted that the profound complexity of the human brain results from the massive population of neurons (some 86 billion in each human brain) and the resultant possible firing patterns that affords, a number so large it’s unimaginable. Experiences that are accorded value, that resonate with salience and meaning are strengthened at the synapses, whereas those that are not valued are weakened and may eventually perish (Edelman, 1987). Little wonder, then, that we learn and remember best what we find meaningful and value, though that may be positive or negative (e.g., when witnessing terror, resulting in what is now diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]). Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) comes with important clarifications. First, the “evaluative” process driving selection is primal. The brain is sensing preferences at a very basic level, for example, nutrients are good and should be absorbed, toxins are bad and should be avoided, even bacteria are making these primal value choices (Kim & Sankey, 2009). They are indicative of what Kim and Sankey identify as a predilection to value inherent within the natural world (Kim & Sankey, 2009). Also, the brain’s sensing of value is mostly subconscious, so it is not consciously deliberative as in the notion of “expectancy value,” in conventional motivation theory. Moreover, Edelman’s notion of selection, based on value and salience, is incorporating feeling and emotion into the thinking and learning process, which is in stark contrast to the Cartesian notion that human rational thought is a supremely logical process and the brain is essentially a “logic machine” – a notion which guided early cognitivist attempts to produce artificial brains. That project was doomed once it became clear, in the last decade of the twentieth century, that logic cannot capture the real processes of human thought – our brains are nested in the world around us and our feelings and perceptions play a crucial role in the dynamic dance of human cognition (Devlin, 1997). And, whether we are ready to admit it or not, human rationality is necessarily laced with emotion (Damasio, 1994). The Cartesian and Enlightenment notion of the objective, detached, scientific thinker, devoid of emotion had finally hit a rock. Nevertheless, there remained the possibility (for some an ardent hope) that the human brain is employing superior cognitive processes (“executive functioning” no less) that somehow turn our base perceptions into higher-order intelligent functioning, which subsequently direct our distinctly human behaviors. Andy Clark calls this the three-stage “passive, input dominated view of the flow of neural processing” (Clark, 2015, p. 2) and he suggests it is fundamentally flawed. Notice the specter of a superior Cartesian logic machine lurking in the background of the passive, input-dominated account of brain functioning espoused by cognitivism. Basically, this cognitivist three-stage account is starting the wrong way around, elevating our conscious human experience and belief in the

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superiority of human intelligence (as exemplified in the Turing Test for AI, noted above), when we would do better to focus on the main evolutionary function of the “embodied brain” and what it is actually doing.

Wellbeing, Homeostasis, and Interoception Our conscious experience is so important, so precious, we are lost without it. And, because consciousness is so obviously associated with the brain (it is lost in coma, for example), it is easy to assume that the main function of the brain is directed toward consciousness and conscious learning. But it isn’t, consciousness is a by-product of complexity (Kim & Sankey, 2010) and the primary function of the brain is monitoring the body condition, ensuring all is kept in metabolic balance, maintaining what is called homeostasis (Damasio, 2018), through a process called interoception (Barrett, 2017a, b; Damasio, 2018). In other words, the main business of the brain is ensuring survival and wellbeing; homeostasis “ensures that life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing” (Damasio, 2018, p. 25). The main purpose of interoception is surveillance, conducting “a massive snooping and reporting job whose goal is to let the brain know what is going on elsewhere in the body so that it can intervene when needed and appropriate” (Damasio, 2018, p. 57), and that requires a learning brain that develops as it learns. It also requires a feeling brain, feelings “provide important information about the state of life, but feelings are not mere ‘information’ in the strict computational sense” (Damasio, 2018, p. 104). Rather they manifest as conscious experiences, we experience feelings of contentment or discontent, apprehension or assurance, anxiety or calm, wellbeing or ill-being as a moment-bymoment streams of evaluations (valuings) of how we are and how things are in our world – our sense of wellbeing. Feelings are baseline experiences and should be distinguished from emotions that are more complex states, such as disappointment, fright, anger, or disgust, which are not experienced continuously but arise in response to specific events, musings, or memories, for example. Nevertheless, feelings and emotions are interrelated. Feelings are a product of interoception, the embodied brain’s surveillance system, and interoception is also “one of the core ingredients of emotion, just as flour and water are core ingredients of bread” (Barrett, 2017a, p. 56). Without being consciously aware of it, the brain is constantly busy, monitoring heartrate, breathing, hormonal balance, and so forth, and it is highly responsive to perceived internal imbalances and perceived external threats. Our senses are on high alert, and what we consciously experience as feelings and emotions are a result of that ongoing subconscious surveillance, day and night. The brain is sensing, perceiving, but not randomly, it knows what it is looking for based on what it has previously experienced – fluctuations of heartrates are deviations from past heartrate. Based on previous experience the brain is busily predicting what is to be expected and will only act when it senses a deviation from what is expected. The question arises whether this process is restricted to the brain’s internal

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surveillance, or does it provide a clue to how the brain is working when perceiving the external world? In other words, is sense perception (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) performing a massive surveillance job, informing our predictive brain about what is going on in the world?

The Bayesian, Predictive Brain According to the “passive, input dominated view of the flow of neural processing” (Clark, 2015, p. 2), mentioned above, perception provides the brain with information from the environment which is then processed in higher cognitive regions of the brain and subsequently directs action. This suggests a relatively “slow” brain, too slow perhaps to respond to immediate danger as it deliberatively processes and sorts out random perceptions. It also suggests that the brain is passively waiting to receive a stimulus from the outside world that will trigger appropriate neurons into action. This is what the nerve calls in our muscles are doing, waiting to be stimulated, but nerve cells in the brain are different from those in muscles. They do not need an external stimulus to trigger a reaction, rather the brain’s vast array or neurons and neuronal networks are constantly signaling to each other in busy conversation, a process known as intrinsic brain activity. “These neural conversations try to anticipate every fragment of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch that you will experience and every action you will take” (Barrett, 2017a, p. 59). Prior to the arrival of an input signal from our perceptual senses, “proactive, predictive systems in the brain” (Kim & Sankey, 2022) are already “predicting its most probable shape and implications . . . all they need to process are any sensed deviations from predicted states (known as prediction errors) that thus bear much of the information-processing burden, informing us of what is salient and newsworthy within the dense sensory barrage” (Clark, 2015, p. 2). Over the past 15 years or so a growing number of brain scientists investigating how the brain works, especially those who are interested in creating artificial brains, have advocated that the notion of the predictive brain will provide the breakthrough they have been looking for. One such is Karl Friston, at University College, London, who suggests that the brain makes Bayesian probabilistic inferences about the world that it is perceiving, a kind of “best guess” informed by past experience. Friston says that “to understand the Bayesian brain one needs to understand connectivity and the distributed processing that it supports” (Friston, 2012, p. 1231). He begins by asking a question, “why does the brain have (axonal and synaptic) connections? Many other functionally specialised organs like the liver or blood do not have a delicate connectivity, so why does the brain?” (Friston, 2012, p. 1231). From the point of view of the Bayesian brain, he says, the answer is quite straightforward. Connectivity is supporting distributed processing, which is making Bayesian inferences about the causes of its sensations. To do that, it “must have a model of the causal relationships (connections) among (hidden) states of the world that cause sensory input. It follows that neuronal connections encode (model) causal connections that conspire to produce sensory information” (Friston, 2012, p. 1231).

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Friston is referring to Bayesian statistical modeling, so not the kind of “representations in the mind” advocated by cognitivism. Briefly, Thomas Bayes (1701–1767), a contemporary of Isaac Newton, produced a theorem to calculate the probability of a given event, based on a prior knowledge of factors or conditions that might be related to the occurrence of that event, and “how probabilities are to be changed in the light of new evidence” (Chalmers, 1999, p. 175). So, the brains of “naturally intelligent systems (humans and other animals)” are doing surveillance, keeping a constant watch and making Bayesian predictions “trying to predict streams of sensory stimulations before they arrive” (Clark, 2015, p. 2). Prediction loops in the brain are on constant lookout for prediction error, which the brain then corrects, either by “updating top-down predictions to bring them into alignment with the incoming data, or by updating the incoming data to bring it into alignment with the top-down predictions” (Williams, 2018, p. 121).

VEL, the Embodied, Embedded, Predictive Brain and Educational Research Bayesian predictive processing is providing a “new integrative framework for understanding perception, action, embodiment, and the nature of human experience” (Clark, 2015, p. 21). Barrett goes so far as to say we are “in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of emotion, the mind and the brain – a revolution that may compel us to radically rethink such central tenets of our society as our treatments for mental and physical illness, our understanding of personal relationships, our approaches to raising children, and ultimately our view of ourselves” (Barrett, 2017a, p. xv). Not surprisingly, therefore, this “revolution” in brain science, and the corollary of the Bayesian brain as “hypothesis testing” (Friston, 2012, p. 1231), has fundamentally important implications for the role of feedback in formal learning contexts such as schools. If the human brain is indeed an organ of continuous correction and “disambiguation,” signaling matches and mismatches, then these “sensory [feedback] exchanges with the environment” (Friston, 2012, p. 1233) appear to be the primary and critical modes by which students in schools learn to check and recalibrate their prediction errors, or their “generative model of the world” (Williams, 2018, p. 15). In terms of the interrelationship between value and learning, these “sensory exchanges with the environment” are inherently “tuned” and “valenced” by what Barrett describes as the “salience network,” a network of “degenerate neuronal groups” subconsciously detecting and selecting “which prediction errors to pay attention to . . . and therefore worth the cost of encoding and consolidation” (Barrett, 2017b, p. 12). We can employ the notion of “latching onto the world” to sense the “deviations from predicted states” (Clark, 2015, p. 2) as a consonant metaphor for the “affordant” role the school learning environment plays in the testing and minimization of error predictions, or in other words, in learning. The model of the Bayesian predictive brain, that repositions perception as active and continuous inference, promises an integrative framework to understand cognition and mind in terms of

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the dynamic functional integration of the human brain: those processes of top-down error prediction and bottom-up sensory perception which selectively collaborate to make the qualia of experience “valuable” (Hebb, 1949; Edelman, 1997), “meaningful” (Freeman, 2000), and continuously “inferential” (Friston, 2012). If Barrett is correct in her assessment, cited earlier, that we are already in the midst of a revolution that will change our scientific understanding of how human brains work “and ultimately our view of ourselves” (Barrett, 2017a, p. xv), it will surely result in major changes in how we understand student leaning and development in education and, importantly, how we understand the students themselves as functioning brains that are inherently imbued with value and emotional salience. Within education, every teacher appreciates that feelings and emotions pervade schools and classrooms and have multiple manifest causes arising from the flow of daily interpersonal exchanges. However, emotions may also arise within and from the process of learning itself. We all know that we learn through trial and error, that mistakes are often a springboard to learning success, but how often in schools are classrooms safe places to be wrong (Sankey, 1999), safe, not only for students to be wrong but also for teachers to be wrong? To what extent is error celebrated in most classrooms, to what extent is it deemed to be failure? And, if it is failure, how is that impacting student wellbeing? And, much more pointedly, what is happening in the brains of students that are inherently imbued with value and emotional salience, when faced with error, if error is taken to be failure? Take, for example, the role of assessment in education. There is a lot of talk about “assessment for learning,” but one seldom, if ever, hears about “assessment for failure.” Yet, for very many students, educational assessments induce strong feelings of perceived failure and can lead to considerable anxiety, which clearly impacts their sense of wellbeing. One well-known cause of anxiety in schools is related to the learning and assessment of mathematics. Previously, it has been believed that “mathematics anxiety” develops in junior high school or at the end of primary school, more recent studies show that math anxiety emerges as early as the first years of primary schools (Ramirez et al., 2013). Generally, and internationally, there is a correlation between maths anxiety and maths performance, though in countries with the highest mathematics performance (i.e., Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea), mathematics anxiety displayed by 15-year-old students is above the level of OECD average (OECD, 2013). However, beyond using this kind of data to record the extent of anxiety in learning and assessment, little is known about how these feelings are occurring in the brains of students when undergoing assessments, and indeed when involved in the totality of learning in schools. In order to access that kind of data, researchers need to get into schools with brain recording technology, and also the conceptual and methodological tools that can probe the brains of students as they learn and when they are engaged in assessment tasks. One such school-based study (Duncan, 2021) using the electroencephalogram (EEG) was conducted as a doctoral research project within the research team led by Minkang Kim at The University of Sydney, Australia, in 2020. It involved a total of 49 Year 9 (15-year-old) students completing a NAPLAN mathematics task. (NAPLAN is an annual assessment of the literacy and

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numeracy skills of every Australian student in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9.) The study aimed to operationalize the concept of value-embedded learning by comparing two types of error feedback. Students in the experimental group received immediate feedback to incorrect answers that was value embedded (immediate, salient, and future focused), whereas in the control group students received error feedback that was nonvalue embedded (immediate, factual, and neutral). The detailed and technical EEG data from this study is beyond the scope of this chapter but, basically, the finding suggest that value-embedded feedback appears to have measurable effects on students’ emotional reorientation to subsequent questions. The immediate response to negative feedback (error) occurs within 200–300 ms of receiving feedback, which means it is prior to conscious appraisal, but the process of reorientation in the face of error is conscious (from around 600–1000 ms). A significant difference between the experimental and control groups was consistently recorded, in both early subconscious detection of error and late phase of conscious appraisal and regulation of emotions. These tantalizing findings suggest that modulating prediction error is key to creating value-embedded learning environments. With regard to error feedback, the findings have two clear implications for how changes to the structure and salience of feedback afforded in learning and assessment environments might enhance student learning. The first is that value-embedded feedback could (arguably should) be employed in national assessment regimes and general assessment practices, as part of the summative assessment process – thus blurring the distinction between summative and formative assessment. Second, error feedback in everyday classroom environments could be more appropriately timed and valenced than is often the case. In short, developing attentive policy and practice stances to the “management of error” in school settings requires an overarching and neurobiologically informed strategy, in order to better connect instructional practices with the emotions triggered by feedback from error. Clearly, however, more research is urgently needed that employs the twin notions of value-embedded learning and the interoceptive, predictive brain in educational contexts, to better understand the affordant role that value and emotional salience are playing within the context of student learning and assessment in schools, and how they impact student wellbeing. To summarize: This chapter has explored the role of value and emotional salience in how brains work and how, in educational contexts, that is captured in the notion of value-embedded learning. As human beings we function as highly complex, selforganizing, embodied brains, embedded within multiple physical, social, and cultural environments that variously impact our wellbeing. Through a continuous, predictive sensing and feedback process called interoception, the brain constantly monitors the internal state of our being in order to achieve metabolic balance or homeostasis, necessary for human survival and also human flourishing. It is now increasingly recognized that these same predictive processes of interoception and the maintenance of homeostasis are operating in how we perceive, comprehend, and act in response to the external world. Human wellbeing and flourishing are thus inscribed into how human brains work. The moral values we hold, which inform our moral decision-making, are similarly

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instantiated in the brain as part of a dynamic relationship between value, salience, and emotion in the learning process. Brain cells (neurons), unlike other cells in the body, are massively interconnected and this allows brains to learn and develop. Connections between neurons are variously strengthened or weakened as a result of a selective process that is driven by perceive value and emotional salience. Experiences that are accorded value and that resonate with emotional salience are strengthened at the synapses, whereas those not valued are weakened or pruned. Given the role of value and emotional salience in brain function, within evolutionary history moral values likely arose when care for self was extended to offspring and then to mates, kin, and eventually others, which required trust. If so, care and trust provided the evolutionary foundation for the emergence of moral values, in some animal species and eventually humans.

Conclusion Now back to our initial question: In light of what has been discussed in this chapter, when human beings create artificial brains on a par with the complexity of human brains, will these “brains” necessarily be imbued with value and emotional salience and able to make value choices that are not programmed-in, but emerge as a product of their complexity? The quick answer is that, at this stage, we simply don’t know, but if human brains are using proactive interoceptive, Bayesian predictive processes, with error feedback, as described in this chapter, much of that can be replicated artificially, at least in principle. The basic requirement is a system of connectivity that, to cite Friston again, “is supporting distributed processing, which is making Bayesian inferences about the causes of its sensations” and, to do that it requires “a model of the causal relationships (connections) among (hidden) states of the world that cause sensory input” (Friston, 2012, p. 1231). So far, so good, but what about notions of “value” and “salience” within the predictive process? Again, the answer is positive, and for this we can return to Gerald Edelman and the work on what is now called neurorobotics that was conducted at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, which Edelman directed. An informative account of the innovative work on neurorobots at The Neurosciences Institute is provided by Jeffrey Krichmar (2018). During the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of this century they produced a series of progressively complex robots (Darwin I–Darwin XII), which had anatomical features that resembled biological neural networks that mirrored the role of selection, driven by value and salience, in the brain. These robots learnt from experience and produced goal-directed navigational behavior without being preprogrammed. For example, Darwin X (Ten) was a brain-based device with a “highly detailed model of the hippocampus and surrounding areas that supported spatial and episodic memory” (Krichmar, 2018, p. 5). The robot’s task was to navigate a dry maze similar to the kind of water maze used with rats. Krichmar recalls that “Similar to a rat, the robot was able to create routes to the hidden platform. During its experience, place cells emerged in the simulated hippocampus. He also notes “What made this work special was the

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sheer size of the network (100,000 neurons and 1.5 million synapses), which had to run in real-time” (Krichmar, 2018, p. 5). As noted above, novelty emerges from complexity in dissipative systems that exist far from thermal equilibrium. The emergence of “place cells” in the simulated hippocampus in Darwin X replicated those produced by evolution in the hippocampus of rats, though it is surely significant the complexity of Darwin X with 100,000 neurons hardly compares with the brains of rats that have some 21 million neurons. The key point is that “there is plenty of evidence that artificial organisms can be designed so as to operate intelligently and even surpass the intelligence of the human organism” (Damasio, 2018, p. 202). But our initial question was not about intelligence, it was asking whether artificial “brains” will necessarily be imbued with value and emotional salience, and able to make value choices? Or to put it another way, will increased complexity in artificial brains eventually lead beyond the replication of intelligence to the emergence of moral values as place cells emerged in Darwin X and as conscious self-awareness emerged in evolution, in some “higher” species, such as apes, dolphins, elephants, and humans? Damasio suggests that a “robot with homeostatic features would be a step in that direction” (Damasio, 2018, p. 208), but what he sees as missing is the central role that feelings and emotions play in human brain functioning. He also points out that “there is no evidence that . . . artificial organisms, designed for the sole purpose of being intelligent, can generate feelings just because they are behaving intelligently. Natural feelings emerged in evolution, and they have remained because they have made live or die contributions to the organisms lucky enough to have them” (Damasio, 2018, p. 202). And, there’s another related problem, the predictive, interoceptive homeostatic brain is focused on the survival and wellbeing of its “self,” whereas moral values and moral decision-making are directed toward the plight and wellbeing of others. If Churchland is correct in what was said, above, the key to that transition was a long march in evolutionary history when the survival imperative to care for self was extended first to care for offspring, then care for mates, and, in many species, care for other members of the close community and eventually others. Care for self is thus the beginning, not the end of human moral values. A homeostatic, interoceptive, predictive artificial brain might replicate conscious self-awareness and, if it is endowed with a selective bias toward value and salience, that might well provide a necessary basis for replicating human values. But unless that leads to the emergence of feelings, emotions, and empathetic concern for others that allow it to conceive and act on value choices, would we (should we) really be willing to concede that it is functioning on a par with human brains?

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The Development of Ecological Values: Cultivating Children’s Spiritual Relationships with the Natural World

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spirituality’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Community’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Spiritual Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nature’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Spiritual Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nature’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Existing Field of Environmental Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Current Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case 1: Mapleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case 2: Tabiona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross-Case Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human Subjects Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CSE Private School Fellows Report Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The overall aim of this multiple-case study is to better understand how K-12 independent schools (“schools”) in the United States support the development of ecological values in students. Specifically, this study examined how schools cultivate a connection between children and adolescents (“students”) and the natural world (“environment”) by exploring the interplay between this connection and (1) the school community (“community connectedness”) and (2) personal sense/belief about spirituality. The aim is guided by key research questions, L. Foley (*) · A. Chapman · L. Miller Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_13

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which include the following: (Q1) How do schools in the United States cultivate a connection between students and the natural environment? (Q2) Why do schools cultivate a connection between students and the natural environment? (Q3) What is the interplay between the natural environment and the school community? (Q4): What is the interplay between the natural environment and personal sense/ belief about spirituality? The proposed study will conduct a secondary analysis on data previously collected as part of a parent study. Representative data from 2 of the 20 schools in the parent study will be analyzed for the purposes of this multiple-case study. Emergent themes and results from cross-case synthesis will be explored as they relate to environmental education that is spiritually formative as a component of overall healthy development. Keywords

Spirituality · k-12 education · Adolescents · Environmental education · Values

Introduction Healthy development in childhood and adolescence lays the groundwork for wellbeing and thriving in adulthood (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2019). In this context, healthy development means building the necessary cognitive, emotional, and social skills to become a healthy prosocial adult (Casey, 2019). Numerous factors known to promote healthy child and adolescent development have been well documented in the literature and include components such as sufficient sleep (Paruthi et al., 2016; Kopasz et al., 2010), proper nutrition (Hollis et al., 2020; Bryan et al., 2004), exercise (Rasmussen & Laumann, 2013; Hills et al., 2007), and play (Ginsburg, 2007). Within this field of developmental science, scholars have also examined the phenomenon of spirituality and its role and impact on child and adolescent developmental processes (Roehlkepartain et al., 2006; Miller, 2015; Erikson, 1968). Empirical research suggests that spirituality promotes healthy child and adolescent development, with early childhood considered to be a period of spiritual emergence (Benson et al., 2003; Coles, 1990). This emerging spirituality becomes particularly salient during adolescence, where it plays a significant role in identity formation and development (Lerner et al., 2006), which is the main developmental task of this period (Levy-Warren, 1996). Although spirituality is an innate human capacity (Hay et al., 2006; Benson et al., 2003; Newberg & Newberg, 2008), it has to be nurtured and developed throughout the course of life (Fowler, 1981; Lerner et al., 2006; Kendler et al., 1997; Koenig et al., 2008). Spirituality is often conceptualized as an awareness within the individual of a sense of connectedness between the self and the rest of the world, including other people and the environment (Skamp, 1991). Given its role in healthy development, it is important to understand how spirituality can be cultivated in children and adolescents. Thus, a vast body of research has examined the factors and processes that influence spiritual development in youth (King et al., 2014; Benson et al., 2012). One factor that has been identified as influential in the development of

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personal spirituality in children and adolescents is the environmental context of the child or adolescent (Benson, 2006), or the community of which they are a part. Specifically, connectedness to community (referred to herein as “community connectedness”) has been identified by some as a key component of spirituality for youth (de Souza & Hyde, 2007). One place where youth can experience community connectedness is through the school that they attend (Rowling, 2008). Adapted from the definition by Dove and colleagues, community connectedness within the school, for the current study, is defined as how school systems cultivate and promote networks and students’ feelings of belonging within the school community (2018). Another influential factor in the development of personal spirituality is exposure to and contact with nature (Schein, 2014; Kellert, 2006). Direct experiences with nature can invoke feelings of wonder and awe (Hart, 2006; Shiota et al., 2007), which for children and adolescents can be gateways to spiritual experience (Hart, 2006). Not surprisingly, schools, which have historically been communities that support the development of the whole child, offer many opportunities for students to engage and be in relationship with nature, as many schools view nature as an integral component to whole child education. The cultivation of this relationship with nature within the K-12 school setting is addressed, to date, through the field of environmental education (“EE”) (Smith & Knapp, 2011). EE refers to education taking place in a natural or classroom environment, that teaches students about the environment and its challenges, with the aim of instilling attitudes and actions promoting environmental sustainability (Barrable, 2019). EE programs today vary in form, but can include single-day programs, facilitated by an external vendor, or multiple-year programs that are assimilated into the school curriculum and include elements from both the classroom and the outdoors (Wheeler et al., 2007). Similarly, EE can also take the form of after school programs that are facilitated by nonprofit organizations. The majority of existing EE programs today successfully teach students about nature, through focusing on ecological education, environmental stewardship, youth, and community development; however, very few EE programs actually teach students how to be in relationship with nature. For instance, although environmental stewardship is a type of relationship between students and the natural world, most EE programs approach environmental stewardship through an anthropocentric, or human-centered view, toward the relationship between humanity and the natural world (Hoffman & Sandelands, 2005). From this perspective, interest in preserving the environment is for the sole purpose of serving the interests of mankind (Bourdeau, 2004). The type of relationship that EE programs should be trying to cultivate between students and the natural world is aligned more with how many indigenous peoples view themselves in relationship to nature. This indigenous perception of ecology is referred to as kincentric ecology. At the core of this model is the belief that humans “live interdependently with all forms of life” (Salmon, 2000, p. 1331). Through this lens, individual health (spiritual, physical, social, and mental) is dependent on harmonious living with the natural world (Salmon, 2000). Consequently, approaching EE through a similar lens of interconnectedness and interdependence should also foster the spiritual development of children and adolescents and simultaneously help cultivate community connectedness within the school.

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Given what currently exists in the field of EE today, there is room for expansion in ways that are spiritually supportive. Many standard EE programs are unsuccessful in cultivating a true relationship between students and the natural environment because they fail to meet the developmental needs of the child or adolescent, specifically the need for individuation and identity formation, spirituality, and connectedness to community. The developmental needs of children and adolescents need to, and can, be addressed, as the linchpin of EE. For children and adolescents, this means learning about themselves as part of nature and through relationship with nature. This study will examine two K-12 EE programs where students come to know themselves in deep relationship with nature through a process of spiritual development, community formation, and immersion in the outdoors. The formation of strong bonds, both in community (Desrosiers et al., 2011; Kelley et al., 2007) and in nature (Trigwell et al., 2014), lays the groundwork for the development of personal spirituality. It is hypothesized that through this transformative personal journey, nature will become a part of the student’s personal and spiritual identity, and eventually, the student will come into a felt awareness that nature is home. Ultimately, the deep developmental growth of the child and adolescent may occur through the discovery process of an EE program, which occurs as the child and adolescent comes to know themself as part of nature. The overall aim of this multiple-case study is to better understand how K-12 independent schools in the United States support the development of ecological values in students. Specifically, this study examined how schools cultivate a connection between children and adolescents (“students”) and the natural world (“environment”) by exploring the interplay between this connection and (1) the school community (“community connectedness”) and (2) personal sense/belief about spirituality. Emergent themes and results from cross-case synthesis will be explored as they relate to environmental education that is spiritually formative as a component of overall healthy development.

Background Spirituality’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes Of particular importance is how spirituality relates to the broader developmental work of childhood and adolescence. In this context, spirituality is defined as an inner sense of relationship to a higher power (i.e., God, nature, spirit, the universe, the creator) that is loving and guiding (Miller, 2015). Foundational to this understanding is the belief that children are born with an innate capacity for spiritual connection (Wane et al., 2011). The evidence for this intrinsic human capacity lies in human biology (Benson et al., 2003). More specifically, there is a vast body of research and theory that argues that the human brain is structured to support human engagement in religious and spiritual experiences (Joseph, 2001; d’Aquili & Newberg, 1993; Newberg & d’Aquili, 2000). Similar to other lines of development, this emerging spirituality can be nurtured and supported by people and by the surrounding environment (Koenig et al., 2008; Button et al., 2011). If nurtured and supported in childhood, spirituality can prepare

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the child for the essential developmental tasks of adolescence including individuation, identity development, emotional resilience, character development, and the pursuit of meaningful work and healthy relationships (Miller, 2015). Adolescents are trying to determine their place in the world and how they relate to it (Erikson, 1968; Hamman & Hendricks, 2005). One of the main developmental tasks of this period is identity formation (Levy-Warren, 1996; Erikson, 1968). Identity formation occurs through the context of relationships (Nawaz, 2011), as adolescents work to establish their individual (Erikson & Erikson, 1998) and spiritual identities (Templeton & Eccles, 2006) while simultaneously learning how to form mutually satisfying and fulfilling relationships with peers, friends, and family (Collins & Laursen, 2004). Through this process of relational development and community formation, adolescents learn how to be both independent and one in community. During this critical period of identity development, spirituality has been conceptualized as providing a relational system offering the adolescent security and reduced anxiety, a meaning system to address the adolescent’s existential questions and an identity-motivation system organized around spiritual goals and values (King & Roeser, 2009).

Community’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Spiritual Development In examining the factors that contribute to spiritual development in youth, a vast body of literature has emphasized the important role of a sense of connectedness to community (de Souza & Hyde, 2007; Rowling, 2008). The significant role of community in spiritual development is not a novel idea. In describing the link between community and spirituality, Dokecki, Newbrough and O’Gorman reference how, in indigenous populations, spirituality is experienced in and through relationships with people and nature and also informs the indigenous view of community, which includes their people (past, present and future generations) and the land that they inhabit (2001). Dokecki and colleagues continue to argue that spirituality provides the foundation for community (2001). One salient community for children and adolescents, that has also historically played a significant role in child and adolescent development, is the school (Roeser et al., 2000). Youth spend more time in school than in any other environment (Monahan et al., 2010). The school community offers the people and place for youth to experience connectedness through relationships with peers and adults within the school community (Monahan et al., 2010). Not surprisingly, schools have also been conceptualized as sites of spiritual development for youth (Revell, 2008; Adams et al., 2016).

Nature’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Spiritual Development Another significant factor that contributes to the spiritual development of youth is nature (Schein, 2014; Louv, 2008). Exposure to and contact with nature can be spiritually formative for both children and adolescents (Louv, 2008). For instance,

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playing in nature can elicit feelings of wonder in children (Schein, 2014). Fuller argues that the experience of wonder is one of the defining elements, and principle sources, of spirituality (2006). Nature can also provide experiences of transcendence (Bethelmy & Corraliza, 2019) by evoking a sense that there is something greater than the individual (Louv, 2008). In his research examining the spiritual experiences of children, Hoffman found that many transcendent childhood experiences occurred in nature (Hoffman, 1992). The transformative power of nature and its role in spiritual development can be further understood through Johnson’s (2002, p. 29) essay in the International Journal of Wilderness, where he identifies six spiritual benefits of nature: (1) the enduring, (2) the sublime, (3) beauty, (4) competence, (5) experience of peace, and (6) self-forgetting. In describing how nature evokes each of these transformative experiences, Johnson begins by explaining that through nature humanity encounters the “enduring” and has the opportunity to directly experience those cycles and structures that are ancient and timeless. These direct experiences then open opportunities for humanity to experience power and mystery through the immensity of natural structures like mountains, rivers, glaciers, and the vast ocean. He continues to explain that through their power and ability to invoke awe, these structures can feel almost God-like and allow for the experience of the “sublime,” or the awareness of humanity’s inherent weakness and vulnerability in comparison with the forces of nature and the wilderness landscape. This humbling can then lead to increased presence, as human aspirations, imperfections, and frustrations are in some ways absolved in the grandiosity of the natural landscape. Johnson argues that the experience of “beauty” that is felt in the natural landscape helps to cultivate a feeling of spiritual peace and comfort. Furthermore, the challenges endured in the wilderness, when successfully overcome, can lead to feelings of empowerment, capability, and worth, which result in experiences of “competence.” (Johnson, 2002). Johnson describes the “experience of peace” that is so often felt in the wilderness as a by-product of these aforementioned experiences: Identification with the enduring aspects of nature, minimization of ordinary concerns before nature’s sublimity, physical removal from the sources of everyday anxieties, experience of beauty, feelings of competence, and the attention-focusing effect of the challenges encountered all contribute to the mental calm so often found in wild-nature. (Johnson, 2002, p. 31)

Finally, Johnson explains that all of the aforementioned benefits lead to the final benefit, “self-forgetting” or the ability to, in some capacity, abandon the individual ego and surrender to the natural world (Johnson, 2002).

Nature’s Impact on Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes In addition to its many spiritual benefits, exposure to and contact with nature supports overall healthy child and adolescent development (Taylor et al., 2006). Nature has been shown to support the healthy physical (Fjortoft, 2001) and

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emotional development of children (Louv, 2008). Play in natural environments has been shown to improve motor development in children: a study of kindergarten students who engaged in free play for 1–2 h daily in the forest next to their school showed significantly better improvement in motor ability, especially in balance and coordination, compared to children who engaged in free play for 1–2 h daily on the traditional outdoor playground. These findings show that the physical diversity in a child’s play landscape, offered by a natural environment like a forest, enhances opportunities for a child’s learning and development (Fjortoft, 2001). Further, a study by Wells and Evans found that the presence of nature nearby a child’s home moderated the impact of life stress on the child’s psychological well-being in a sample of 337 rural children in grades 3 through 5. Children with more nature around their home reported lower levels of psychological distress, as measured by symptoms of behavioral conduct disorders, anxiety, and depression (2003). Similarly, research has shown that nature also supports the emotional development of adolescents. A critical component of healthy adolescent development is the ability to self-regulate (Farley & Kim-Spoon, 2014). A study of adolescents in Finland found that many participants preferred to go to natural settings after arguments, setbacks, or after experiencing difficult emotions. These findings suggest that natural environments can serve as places of self-regulation for adolescents (Korpela, 1992). As previously discussed, identity development is another critical task of the adolescent period (Kroger, 2005). Engaging in activities that promote personal and character development contributes to the adolescent’s process of identity formation. Immersion in nature, through participation in outdoor wilderness programs, has been shown to be influential in personal and character development through improving self-confidence, self-esteem, independence, autonomy, and initiative in a retrospective study of youth (Kellert, 1998). For example, in reflecting on their experience participating in an outdoor wilderness program one participant expressed the following: Participating (occurred at) a pivotal point in my life. It gave me the opportunity to take a risk. It strengthened my sense of self. It gave me a feeling of purposefulness, self-respect, and strength that I had never had before. When you have confidence in yourself it affects every aspect of your life (Kellert, 1998, p. 217).

The Existing Field of Environmental Education Given the critical role of nature in overall healthy child and adolescent development, including spiritual development, it is important to understand how schools, a place where children and adolescents spend the majority of their day, help to foster this connection between students and the natural world. In K-12 education, this is addressed through the field of environmental education. The present field of environmental education has been created through the interweaving of various fields of education including nature study, conservation education, outdoor education, and experiential education (Wheeler et al., 2007). Wheeler and colleagues define

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environmental education as “a learning process that increases knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges; develops the necessary skills and expertise to address these challenges; and fosters attitudes, motivations, and commitments to make informed decisions and take responsible action” (2007).

Method The Current Study The proposed study will conduct a secondary analysis on data previously collected as part of a parent study. Representative data from 2 of the 20 schools in the parent study will be analyzed for the purposes of this multiple-case study.

Data Collection Data were collected by conducting one to two-day site visits to each school. These site visits were curated by a selected faculty member, designated as the school “fellow,” and were designed to showcase the spiritual life of the school. Data collection methods included the following: (1) face-to-face individual interviews and group discussions (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015) with key school personnel (including teachers, faculty, staff, and parents); (2) general observations (Angrosino, 2007) (including but not limited to, classes, student groups/activities, faculty meetings, campus life, school culture, and extracurricular activities); and (3) desk review of reports and documents (Creswell, 2016), (including organizational documents, such as strategic reports; and public documents, such as publications, blogs, videos, and articles). When the school site visits were complete, each fellow was asked to submit 22 qualitative multi-part questions, in the form of a report, on the spiritual life of their specific school (see Appendix A). Data Analysis Phase I. Purposeful sampling methods (Emmel, 2013; Patton, 2002) were used to select two schools from the original sample for inclusion in the present study. Cases were selected based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) the first author and lead researcher attended the site visit and/or visited the school prior to the site visit; (2) the school was identified by the first author, in consultation with the faculty advisor, as having environmental education programming embedded within the overall curriculum; and (3) the school had a sufficient number of references, more than 14 combined, coded as either “nature” or “nature consciousness” from the original qualitative data. The codebook defined nature as “exposure to outdoors or other natural environments” (Ryan et al., 2010) and defined nature consciousness as “schools facilitating opportunities to form deep, lived relationships with nature and with all life.” Based on these criteria, the schools selected for the current study included Mapleton and Tabiona. Phase II. The data analysis, relevant to the current study, involved three primary stages: (1) managing and organizing the data; (2) reading data and memoing for emergent ideas; and (3) describing and classifying codes into themes (Creswell &

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Poth, 2018). At least two coders coded each text document using NVivo qualitative analysis computer software. Given the exploratory nature of the parent study, data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Researchers first employed open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Glaser, 2012) to identify and define the concepts that emerged in the data. Later, selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was utilized as the transcripts were reread and selectively coded for data relating to new codes that were developed. Following these two rounds of coding, the research team came to unanimous consensus on the emergent themes through regular, detailed discussions about the meaning of the data (Saldaña, 2021; Sandelowski & Barroso, 2006). Phase III. A multiple-case study design (Yin, 2018) was selected as the qualitative approach to inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Sandelowski & Barroso, 2006) for the current study.

Findings Case 1: Mapleton School at a Glance Mapleton is an independent, co-educational, 9–12, nonsectarian boarding, and day school located on the East Coast. Mapleton serves 310 students, of which 16% are students of color and 30% receive financial aid. There are 80 faculty members, of which over 80% hold advanced degrees. The average class size is 12. The student-toteacher ratio is 4:1. Environmental Education at Mapleton Environmental education at Mapleton is conceptualized through the lens of environmental stewardship, community service, and, ultimately, spirituality. As two of the school’s core values and as integral components of its mission statement, the ethos of the school is embedded in environmental stewardship and community service, which, for Mapleton, are lived expressions of spirituality. One faculty member describes this when writing about the school’s mission statement, which includes environmental stewardship and service: “. . .the mission is a lived experience of spirituality.” She continues, Ours is a lived mission in which spiritually supportive practices are woven into the fabric of our culture and pedagogy. Therefore, spirituality, as expressed through curiosity about all life, deep knowing, respect for one another, self-giving, and gratitude, is at the core of our community practice. Students, faculty and all other stakeholders experience this through programs and curricula. . ..The intention is to create welcome and inclusivity across all constituents, so that the lived experience of Mapleton’s mission continues to be open to all and binds us as a broader, interconnected community.

At Mapleton, environmental stewardship and community service are not limited to a specific class or auxiliary program, but rather are through lines that run through everything the school offers, including curricula, programs, student life, discipline,

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community service, and community building initiatives. There are four notable programs that are fundamental to the school’s environmental education programming: the community service program, the zoo, the farm, and the recycling program; however, this portrait of Mapleton will focus primarily on the on-campus zoo, as it is a unique component of the school’s approach to environmental education.

Connections to the Greater Community through Nature Mapleton teaches the values of community and service by requiring all students to actively engage in community, primarily through service. Student engagement with the natural world often occurs through these service opportunities. Four community service periods are scheduled into the weekly schedule. To fulfill their service requirement, students have the opportunity to engage in more than 45 services that primarily serve the Mapleton campus and community; however, during their first year, students are required to work one season each at the on-campus zoo, the recycling program, and at the on-campus farm to fulfill this community service commitment. The community service curriculum is intentionally designed to provide students with foundational experiences in environmental stewardship. For instance, in describing why the school requires all freshmen to complete a rotation at the zoo, the farm, and the recycling program a faculty member said the following: And the idea was that these were three sort of founding principles about stewardship of the natural world that kids were able to get through here without ever experiencing prior to that. And we said boy just seems like they ought to at least experience this. They might not like it, they may do it once and they may run. But at least we’ve introduced them to the idea. And so that began about five years ago and that is true for all our freshman. So they come in and they do these three rotations.

Beyond this requirement, one-third of the student body chooses to continue work in each of these three settings. The hope is that through community service students will have the opportunity to experience responsibility and take leadership opportunities. Although many schools have a community service requirement for graduation, the structure of Mapleton’s program, which orients service toward the school community, allows for students to form relationships with peers, faculty, and staff and thus helps to facilitate feelings of connectedness to the school community.

Building Relationships with Animals The zoo, which is located on the Mapleton campus, was founded in the 1930s. At that time, the zoo served two objectives, to provide an environment where students could take care of animals, and through that process, provide a setting where they could simultaneously learn biology. The zoo houses more than 150 animals and eight endangered species and provides opportunities for students to work directly with wildlife. The zoo has been accredited by the AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) since the 1980s and maintains a full-time zoo staff of adult faculty, in addition to the students who work there.

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Expanding beyond its initial objectives, the zoo now exists as part of the school’s science program, community service program, and as part of the overall curriculum of the school. The purpose of the zoo is to foster (within its students) an appreciation for wildlife, cultivate stewardship of the natural world, and encourage service to others through engagement with living animals, through affiliated academic classes, and through research. Student responsibilities at the zoo include animal husbandry, or caring for a specific animal or a group of animals; preparing animal diets; assisting with zoo maintenance; and assisting with the creation of new exhibits. Students are also exposed to veterinary medicine. Throughout the course of 1 year, a student will be assigned to three different animals to gain breadth of experience with the animals at the zoo. Through their work at the zoo, students gain firsthand experience engaging in wildlife conservation work, including work with endangered species. One of the most important aspects of this work is providing the setting for students to form real connections with the animals. One faculty member describes this in further detail: What I believe and what I’ve been pushing for years . . .. that to truly get students to buy into stewardship and conservation of the natural world they’ve got to make a connection somehow. And in today’s world that connection is harder and harder to form. Students do spend more time learning about nature on the internet and on all these various shows that present wildlife. Beautiful cinematography, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the same as being in the same room with an animal that just pooped and you’ve got to shovel it up. Or an animal that’s sick and dying, or an animal that just gave birth and everything’s rosy and it’s great. Those are connections that get formed between a person and another living being that really make the difference.

Through hands-on experience, students learn about the natural world and are able to connect to it in an authentic and profound way. For example, as part of their husbandry, students are responsible for feeding their animal(s) twice daily, including on the weekends, and maintaining their animal’s living environment. These experiences can also be spiritually formative for adolescents as they provide opportunities for students to experience power and mystery, that can accompany witnessing birth and death; awe; peace; beauty; competence; and self-forgetting (Johnson, 2002). An effort is made to cultivate connectedness between the student and the animal that they are responsible for in various ways, one of which is equating the comforts of the animal’s living environment to the comforts of the student’s living environment. One faculty member who works at the zoo describes this process: Well, usually I pitch it this way: I say, “Look, you’re going to go home to your room tonight. I’m going to have taken all your bedding away and I’m going to spray water on your bed, and by the way you don’t get any clothes tonight. You’re just going to have to go to sleep tonight on your wet bed. And I want you to think about how that’s going to feel. . ..you’re not going to feel very happy about that, right? So, I want you to think every time you leave, does my animal have a fresh bed of hay? Is everything clean?” All those things that we want them to do. But instead of just saying, “Here’s the list of what you do, now do it,” giving them a reason to understand why it’s important to do it from their perspective. They want their nice

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cozy pajamas. They want the heat to be on. They want the bed to be soft. There’s things that they can understand in that sense because we’ve put it in their terms.

This authentic connection between students and animals is partially formed through giving students’ real responsibility. Allowing students to be responsible for these animals provides them an opportunity to engage in meaningful and impactful work. The lens of environmental stewardship and community service is also used to further strengthen this connectedness between students and the greater community of life. For instance, the zoo educates students around the cyclical events of birth and death in a unique way. Every year, the zoo broadcasts a live great blue heron nest to the public: We broadcast a live great blue heron nest that happens to nest in the middle of the zoo and have for the last. . . since 2009. Last year, everything is going gangbusters. We’re four hatched eggs into it and one unhatched egg. The parents are doing their job feeding the babies. We just during the day watched a nice feeding. Everything’s going great. We have a chat room so there’s lots of viewers. About 2:00 in the morning on camera, because we have infrared light so the camera can see, the herons can’t, so that’s fine. A great horned owl swoops in, knocks the mom off the nest, comes back a little while later, kills all the babies and eats them. So horrific for the watchers. Really really upset, really terrible. Of course, it’s the end of our little show that we’re putting on. So we’re working through a lot of telling people, “You have to understand this is nature. These are not our herons. It’s not our owl. This is Mother Nature. It’s just playing out before our eyes.” Normally, Mother Nature plays out behind the scenes and we don’t always see it, but this is real life, this is what happens. And one viewer got it right, or understood at least. She said, “This really is sad but if we were watching a great horned owl nest and mom brought this food back, we would think that’s the best mom going out there.” That food had to come from somewhere.

The viewing of the great blue heron nest allowed students, and members of the local community, to learn about the duality of nature, nature’s life cycle, and food sourcing through an immersive experience. Furthermore, this broadcasting, and the zoo’s other broadcastings, are community wide events: Our various broadcasting cameras are definitely used a lot “in-house” as well as being broadcast to the greater audience on the web. Footage is most significantly used in the Animal Behavior class, but it is available to everyone and is used at different times depending upon teacher interest, curriculum, and something interesting going on other than the usual on the camera feed. Nature can be harsh and sometimes those moments provide the biggest opportunities to teach. For example we have had siblicide in Great Blue heron nests and this is often the first time students have ever heard of such a thing. It’s actually pretty common in nature, but television often gets sanitized down.

The idea that students had the opportunity to discuss this and other events with their peers and teachers, and also within the context of their classes, helped to foster a sense of connectedness to the school community. This practice also illustrates how environmental education at Mapleton is a through line, occurring both inside and outside of the classroom environment.

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For Mapleton, part of fostering a connection between students and the natural environment, and part of assisting students in understanding the duality of nature, comes through conversing with students around these topics. One faculty member, from the zoo, describes this approach in further detail: Our class is community service but we see students in a lot of different avenues, so depending on our situation and what we’re doing, we have the ability to talk to students about this stuff. It just depends on the students and their interest and when you see them. Fortunately, we can sometimes get them to have really deep conversations about all of those things.

These conversations not only educate students but can also help to foster school community and individual spirituality through a relational approach. For example, Dokecki et al. (2001) reference how, in indigenous populations, spirituality is experienced in and through relationships with people and nature and also provides the foundation for community. Similarly, deep conversations between faculty and students around environmental topics provide opportunities for relationships to form between students and faculty members and provide a setting for students to explore their personal relationship with the natural environment. This relationship with the natural environment is further explored through the care of zoo animals. These relationships, with faculty and with zoo animals, are the building blocks of community at Mapleton. Ultimately, through their work at the zoo, students are provided with multiple opportunities to engage in meaningful work that is authentic and are placed in an environment that cultivates leadership, responsibility, curiosity, stewardship, service, and spirituality.

Connectedness to Community The zoo, and the lens of environmental stewardship, is also utilized to cultivate connectedness to community through creating opportunities for students to feel valued through hands-on work outdoors. Zoo Squad is an optional offering for students who want to further engage with the zoo or for students who want a PE alternative. Through intentional activities, designed for students to experience both challenge and success, students are able to experience what it means to feel like a valued member of the community: So we have something in the afternoons called Zoo Squad, which is a sports alternative. We tend to see students that are either very interested in the zoo, or are but, sort of odd balls that don’t quite fit in the traditional sports program. You know they’re not big team players, or they’re not really skilled athletes. And so we inherit a lot of those students. And that little rail fence there, was built by a couple of students and I, who, the students really had no idea what they were going to do, how they were going to build a fence. But I said, “No, we’re gonna build a fence and it’s gonna look okay.” As we were going and building the fence, they got more and more confident, and really in the end, they were quite proud of their accomplishment. But we do a lot of hands on stuff like that with the kids, who this is their first experience at it. And so it kind of gives them a place to hang their hat, and to feel there’s something that they can show off.

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Aside from being a sports alternative, Zoo Squad provides opportunities for students to overcome challenges within wilderness settings and experience feelings of competence, which can be spiritually formative (Johnson, 2002) for youth.

Spiritual Connections in Nature Stewardship is further reinforced through the physical campus of Mapleton, which provides many opportunities for student engagement with the natural environment. As one faculty member stated, “No doubt, our 800-acre campus, with marshlands, woods, fields and streams, is itself an ever-present gateway for environmental awareness.” Simply immersing students in the natural environment helps to build connections between students and nature. One faculty member describes why Mapleton prioritizes this immersion in nature for its students: I think a lot of times we fail at getting people out into nature enough, which is one of our bigger initiatives with 9th graders. We have put together really a good program, at the very least to force them out into nature. A small percentage of them are there all the time anyway so that’s easy. But a bigger percentage of them, and seemingly a growing percentage, really have never been out in nature. They’ve never gone just watching birds. They haven’t been out in the dark where there’s no manmade lighting. We force them to do that. In their bio classes, they get in the marsh and get sopping wet and dirty and collect samples. And they’ve never done that. None of them.

Aside from engaging in the opportunities that nature provides (such as bird watching and collecting samples), the school prioritizes immersion in nature for its students to help cultivate a connection between students and the natural environment. This immersion in nature often helps to cultivate an awareness of the impermanence of the natural environment, knowing that it could disappear if it is not taken care of by human beings. The school attempts to foster this awareness of impermanence through cultivating authentic connections between students and the natural world. For example, at the zoo, students form real relationships with animals who are endangered, and thus, students are forced to acknowledge nature’s impermanence each day through their work with endangered species. One faculty member describes his own experience of feeling this awareness of impermanence, which he also hopes to foster in his students: Just being out in nature again is like being in the zoo. You draw connections to nature that you know could go away. We have two dogs; we’re constantly walking them in the woods and fields. It’s a gift. It’s really a beautiful space, and to have that space go away would be a sad thing.

Immersion in the natural environment, experienced through Mapleton’s campus, also allows for experiences of awe and wonder, which can be gateways to spirituality (Hart, 2006). One alumni describes her experiences of awe when she is reflecting about her time at Mapleton: “I am thankful for a campus and surrounding landscape that is so exquisite, it still takes my breath away.” When a current student was asked about her favorite places to go on campus to find peace, she noted:

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There are so many of them. I really love Smith Hill, especially at sunrise. . ..It’s a hill just kinda down the road. You can just kinda see it as you drive off of campus. But the view from up there during the sunrise is really beautiful, because you kinda see the sunrise over the mountains, but also kinda reflected on the marsh area. So it’s really beautiful.

She continued, “Just being on the cross-country trails is really nice, just taking a walk on them through the woods is really relaxing.” These examples illustrate the awe, wonder, and experiences of relaxation and peace that are often found through student engagement with and immersion in the natural environment, which are all influential in the formation of individual spirituality.

Summary Mapleton fosters a connection between students and the natural environment through programs and curricula in order to cultivate environmental stewardship; to foster connectedness to community, including the school community, the local community, and the greater community of life; to instill values of service; and to provide opportunities for students to develop individual spirituality. For Mapleton, environmental stewardship is a lived expression of spirituality and the natural environment provides opportunities for students to experience awe, wonder, beauty, peace, and competence, as well as provides a setting that fosters connectedness to the school community. Ultimately, these experiences help nurture individual spirituality as students come to view themselves as interdependent parts of the greater community of life.

Case 2: Tabiona School at a Glance Tabiona is an independent, co-educational, 9–12, nonsectarian boarding, and day school located on the West Coast. Tabiona serves 259 students, of which 51% are students of color and 29% receive financial aid. There are 60 faculty members, of which 73.5% hold advanced degrees. The average class size is 11. The student-toteacher ratio is 6.5:1. Environmental Education at Tabiona Environmental education at Tabiona is conceptualized through the lens of outdoor education. Outdoor education is embedded within the school’s philosophical approach and mission statement. Philosophically, the school’s founder sought to educate students around how to live for their own greatest good and for the wellbeing of their fellow citizens. To this end, they believed that a valuable education should teach self-reliance, concern for others and the principles of honor, fairness, kindness, and truth through a rigorous academic curriculum that is augmented with challenging activities in outdoor and wilderness settings. This philosophy informs the school’s mission, which seeks to train young men and women in the art of living through augmenting the school’s rigorous academic program with lessons learned from taking care of a horse and from experiences in the wilderness.

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There are two notable programs that are fundamental to the school’s environmental education programming: an animal program that focuses specifically on horses (herein referred to as “the Stallion Program”) and the Outdoor Program, which includes week-long camping trips at the beginning and end of every year. The school’s environmental education programming is further strengthened through the school’s proximity to wilderness settings, through its physical campus, through the school’s faculty and staff and through the school’s academic curriculum.

Building Relationships with Animals Tabiona’s Stallion Program is an essential component that underlies the school’s approach to fostering a connection between students and the natural environment. In describing the Stallion Program, one faculty member said the following: One of the most unique aspects of the Tabiona experience is our Stallion Program. Every freshman is required to ride throughout their first year, and in so many ways, this program captures a great deal about our culture. We seek to create a culture of adventurousness, comfort with risk-taking and failure, and respect for nature and the Tabiona community.

The Stallion Program at Tabiona is required of all freshmen, although many students choose to continue riding throughout their 4 years at Tabiona. The majority of students have never ridden before they arrive for their first day of school. For example, one student, who played on Tabiona’s baseball team, reflected on the experience of learning how to ride at Tabiona with no previous experience: I had never ridden, so I didn’t really know how it was going to work. I was kind of diving headfirst into the unknown, if you will. But it was great. The teachers really help you digest all of the knowledge that is thrown at you and a huge part is that my best friends and I were going through the same exact thing, and that made it a lot easier.

During the first week of the fall semester, all freshmen are paired with a horse and they are required to ride and care for their horse for the entirety of freshman year. Student responsibilities regarding their horse include mucking their horses’ stall before class in the morning, learning riding skills and riding their horse in the afternoon, and feeding their horse every evening. At the beginning of the year, students learn to ride through partaking in organized riding lessons before crafting an individualized training regimen, which is tailored for each student to prepare them for the school’s annual horse event. The school’s annual horse event is one of the school’s central traditions where Tabiona students, including freshmen and many upperclassmen, compete in various horse races including barrels and poles, the rescues race, ring spearing, and the silver dollar pick-up. Students are celebrated and cheered on by current Tabiona families, alumni, and school visitors as well as faculty and staff. In many ways, Tabiona’s Stallion Program is designed to foster connectedness to community. In describing the overall sense of community at Tabiona, one student said the following:

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If you ask anyone involved with Tabiona what the most special part of Tabiona is, chances are they will probably say something regarding the community. A student body that is welcoming and close-knit, a faculty that is directly involved with the student body, and a network of alumni through generations all are a testament to this strong community.

The Stallion Program helps to cultivate the peer-to-peer relationships that help form the foundation of this community. One student describes her experience as a freshman in the Stallion Program by saying that the Stallion Program “is quite the bonding experience for the freshmen class. . .throughout the year, freshmen learn a lot from each other and from their horses about perseverance, responsibility, and patience.” For example, when a student oversleeps, it is common that one of their peers will wake them up after noticing that their stall is not clean. There is a felt sense that the students are in the experience together. Another student describes the “bonding” that is experienced through the school’s riding program: Riding is usually said to be an individual sport, and at most places it is, but at Tabiona, riding is a bonding experience that culminates at the school’s annual horse event, when we all race each other and go through obstacle courses. Seeing the difference between the timid and inexperienced freshman we were in November and the confident and skilled riders that raced in May was a triumphant and fulfilling experience. I felt so proud of us all.

This sense of camaraderie around riding is felt among the entire freshmen class and can be motivational for many students when faced with the challenge of riding. One student describes this: “Learning to ride was a difficult, frustrating, and often emotional journey. . .what motivated me to get back on my horse were my fellow freshmen, who had fallen off their horses just as I had and gotten right back on.” This example illustrates how experiencing challenges in nature, alongside your peers, can not only foster connectedness to community but also teach character strengths such as resilience, perseverance, and grit. Horse Packing is another component of Tabiona’s Stallion Program where this sense of community continues to be fostered through horse camping experiences, where small groups of students and adults pack up their horses and burros with supplies and leave for a long weekend in the backcountry. Each freshman student goes on a weekend horse packing trip during their first year. During this experience, students learn the proper knots, techniques, and safety protocols for packing a horse or burro for a multi-night trail ride. Additional opportunities for student horse packing trips occur throughout the year. In describing one of these horse packing experiences, one student said the following: The entire freshman horse camping program leads to the freshmen learning again that, hey, it doesn’t matter who I am, what background I come from, we’re all in this together, we’re going to smell after a few hours on these horses, but that’s where most of the fun comes in.

This student’s reflections illustrate how in many ways nature is an equalizer, stripping students of typical identifiers, such as race, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation, which in turn provides an environment for authentic connection,

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which is an essential component of community. Furthermore, students are again provided an opportunity to connect with the natural world. To this end, students also learn about relationships through their experience riding horses, not just about their relationships with their peers but also about their relationship with their horse. One student described this: “My horse taught me that I shouldn’t be down when I make mistakes and that this a team effort. She taught me that relationships matter.” Often, horse riding and wilderness trips merely provide the setting for which students can form meaningful relationships, with each other, with their teachers, and with nature. A faculty member describes the interconnected relationship between the school’s environmental education programming, a sense of community and spirituality: “Implicitly, our Outdoor and Stallion Programs both foster spirituality in the sense that they emphasize the value of community and an intimate connection with nature.” At times, spirituality is felt through the relationships that form within the community. As described by one faculty member, As an educator at Tabiona, a “deep way of being” is to look into the eye of a student you’re working with and feel that you’re really communicating. That you’re in the act of both listening and being listened to. That you’re sharing in that sense of awe of the universe. Sometimes the “universe” isn’t the great starfield in the sky but instead the human spirit we all share. Tabiona has a “spirituality” of relationships.

This deep relationality contributes to a sense of connectedness to community and illustrates how the school’s environmental education programming influences how community members understand and perceive relationships.

Spiritual Connections in Nature At Tabiona, students often find spirituality through their experiences in the natural environment, whether that is through engagement with nature by means of required outdoor activities, through experiencing the school’s physical campus, through learning about the natural environment in the classroom, or by feeling in relationship and in community with their peers and/or teachers while in nature. In describing what students at Tabiona believe about spirituality’s place in education, one faculty member wrote the following: In general, if spirituality is a “deep way of being where one feels connected to all life and has awe and reverence for the universe,” then our students say that they most often find a sense of spirituality in being immersed in the natural beauty of Tabiona’s campus, through the Stallion Program, and during camping experiences. But while an appreciation and reverence for nature is an obvious element in any Tabiona education, our students also find a “connection to all life” in the way that we foster a close-knit community among the wide variety of people on campus (students, faculty, staff, faculty children, etc.). Finally, as limited as we are by the so-called “Tabiona bubble,” students are also very mindful of all the “life” that is happening beyond their gates and strive to bring awareness of those things to campus. Many of our clubs try to raise awareness about the experiences of people across the country and around the globe. . ..The majority of our students (75+%) also engage in some form of community service during their time at Tabiona, and in doing so, honor the connection between all humans and show concern for the needs of others. It seems to me

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(as a former student and current teacher), that our student body has valued all of these elements of their education for a long time and continue to think that these experiences have an essential role to play in their development.

This immersion in, and connection with, the natural environment is further reinforced through the physical campus of Tabiona. In describing the physical campus of Tabiona, and how its proximity to nature impacts the climate of the school, and permits student engagement with the natural environment, one faculty member said the following: In [name of city], it is sunny just about every day of the year, and our literal climate certainly affects the more metaphorical “climate” of our school. All our classrooms and dorm rooms have exterior doors and all-school assemblies are held in an outdoor amphitheater; thus, our students spend a large portion of their time physically outside. This, combined with the fact that students are required to participate in a sport every day after school, means that our students live relatively healthy, active lives immersed in the outdoors. Our campus lies at the edge of [the forest], and this proximity to wilderness (and our immersion in it through riding and camping) lends the whole campus an air of natural ruggedness.

Furthermore, through the experiences of the Stallion and Outdoor Programs, students continue to be regularly immersed in nature and, consequently, are invited to form a relationship with the natural environment and through that relationship, cultivate individual spirituality. One faculty member describes this when she says the following: An emphasis on spirituality is primarily evident in our close connection with the natural world (horses and mountains, etc.), our strong emphasis on community and our values-based education. Our Stallion and Outdoor Program requirements, as well as our location on the edge of [the forest], ensure that a student is often immersed in the natural world and invited to develop a relationship with and reverence for nature.

Tabiona has many advantages over other schools in regard to proximity to greenspace; however, in many ways, it is the adults at the school that help to foster connectedness between students and the natural environment and assist in creating spiritually formative experiences for the students. To this end, the school also aims to cultivate and/or strengthen a relationship between its faculty members and the natural environment. Not surprisingly, the faculty and staff at Tabiona share a love for the outdoors. As one faculty member stated, “Many of our faculty have a deep connection with the natural world, a respect for the planet/universe, and an interest in honoring our connection with all of humanity.” This is not accidental, as the school’s hiring process intentionally recruits those with this profile and also those who care about community. This same faculty member continues: To some extent, our unique faculty “requirements” ensure this. The requirement that all faculty members camp with our students deters some applicants and attracts others, but in part because of this requirement, the adults that do accept a position at Tabiona either already have or quickly cultivate a love/awe/reverence of the outdoors. Secondly, the requirement

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that teachers be fully immersed in dorm life ensures that the faculty who come to Tabiona care deeply about investing in community.

Aside from the requirement that faculty camp with students, professional development for new faculty is intentionally designed to instill and strengthen the connection between new faculty members and the natural environment. New faculty training includes a backpacking trip as part of new hire professional development. One faculty member describes this: “For new faculty, the week is especially intense. . ..PD actually begins the previous week with a 4-day backpacking trip in the [mountains], and then continues with all kinds of meetings/ trainings related to life at Tabiona.” For Tabiona, cultivating a connection between students and the natural environment begins with cultivating this same relationship with its faculty. Students can also experience spirituality in the classroom through learning about the natural environment. One student, who had become very involved in the school’s Astronomy Program, said the following in reflecting around spirituality’s place in education at Tabiona: In astronomy, you learn how expansive the concept of time is which makes you realize your place in time is a very small point. But you get an appreciation for everything that has come before and everything that will come after. This is highlighted in astronomy, but you then think about it in other classes too. For example, when I’m worried about something, I see these things as not as important in the grand scheme of things.

This example illustrates how fostering a connection between students and the natural environment can also occur through curricula, within the classroom, and how this connection can simultaneously lay the groundwork for students to develop spirituality. This student is experiencing what Johnson (2002) would refer to as the “sublime,” as she becomes acutely aware of her place in the vast universe, and as her worries are in some ways absolved in what she perceives to be the grandiosity of time and the universe. In reflecting on this same question, another student focused on the physical campus of Tabiona: There’s something about this valley. It makes me want to. . .well I’ve gone to church somebut every time I go onto the field before a football game, I become spiritual. There’s just an energy here that’s weird. Quite honestly, there’s just something here. At the football field, I say the Our Father and it helps me put my thumb on something because there’s something here. I don’t think there’s something that we do, there’s just something about this valley.

This student is describing two of Johnson’s (2002) spiritual benefits of nature, the enduring and beauty. The enduring is experienced through the student’s immersion in the valley, and engagement with a natural structure that is ancient and timeless. The student experiences the beauty of the valley and becomes “spiritual” which Johnson (2002) would refer to as an experience of spiritual peace elicited by the beauty of nature. Another student, who experienced the beauty of nature through a sunrise during one of Tabiona’s global studies trips, said the following:

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One of my favorite moments was visiting the temples at Angkor Wat at sunrise. Our entire group woke up around 4 o’clock in the morning and shuttled over to the temples in a couple of tuk-tuks, which are like little motorcycle drawn rickshaws. After completing the necessary steps to enter the temple, we arrived at Angkor Wat just in time to see the sun rising behind the temple. We were absolutely mesmerized; just seeing the beautifully carved temples in the awe of the sunrise is something I will never forget. Visiting the temples at sunrise felt so special, and I knew how lucky we were to have experienced it. To me, international travel is not about visiting some place new just to take photos and share them on social media, it is about gaining a deeper understanding of our global community and, perhaps, even a deeper understanding of yourself.

For this student, witnessing the sunrise was an experience that invoked awe, which for Johnson (2002) can be spiritually formative, as it allows for the experience of the “sublime,” or the awareness of humanity’s inherent weakness and vulnerability in comparison to the forces of nature and the wilderness landscape. Furthermore, the student’s reflections illustrate a yearning to learn more about themself and more about the greater community of life. Understanding interdependence and appreciating humanity are both important spiritual concepts. Another student reflecting on spirituality’s place in education at Tabiona said the following: We’re actually centered around spirituality because if you look at the programs we’re known for (horses, camping, rock climbing) we’re really focusing on the connection between you and nature-whatever nature means. You are learning to be part of nature instead of dominating it and learning to become one with the world. . .And also, because we’re small, the community is very personal and you get to know everyone around you-which is spiritual because spirituality emphasizes the connection between minds and souls.

This student’s experience reflects their belief that individual spirituality is fostered by a deep relationship with both nature and community. Furthermore, the student feels that the school intentionally cultivates spirituality, a connection between students and the natural environment, and community through the school’s outdoor programming. One key component underlying the relationship between nature and spirituality is the awe that nature can evoke. In reflecting on her experience partaking in Tabiona’s summer wilderness education program, one student said the following about one of the camping trips she had attended: This program has impacted my life significantly. By being exposed to the natural world in a way that I had never been exposed to it before, I learned how vital being in nature is to humans, especially teenagers. There are two memories from my time there this summer that perfectly enunciate this: The first was probably the second or third day of the trip, we were all playing camouflage (we had just eaten a magnificent lunch). I realized that I was having more fun then, just playing with them, than I had had in awhile, because I seriously hadn’t just played in awhile. Sure teenagers goof off all the time, which of course is fun, but we also get caught up in this seriousness, and the need to feel mature and adult-like. I hadn’t realized how much we needed to just play again, and we were playing outside. Quite literally just running around in the woods, without any distractions from electronics and without needing to feel like we had to fit in someplace. The second memory was on the last day of the trip,

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when we were back at camp. I was sitting by the stream, looking out at the meadow. The birds were singing, the grass was dancing, the wild flowers smelled sweet, the trees were standing happy and strong, and the mountains were looking as magnificent as ever. I suddenly had a strong urge just to be more a part of it, so I quietly crept across the brook and sat under a willow, distancing myself from the people. It was then that I saw a doe, and her two tiny fawns. They couldn’t see me, but I just sat there and watched in awe. I still think about that day all the time, and truthfully ever since then I’ve had a constant, nagging urge to be back. Being at that place makes me feel whole, and while backpacking and getting dirty may not be everyone’s thing, I honestly believe that everyone needs what it provides.

Experiences of awe can be gateways to spirituality. This student’s reflection illustrates how she experienced awe while immersed in nature, and the value that she believes nature provides for young people.

Summary Tabiona cultivates a connection between students and the natural environment through programs and curricula, specifically the Stallion Program and the Outdoor Program. This connection is further strengthened through the school’s proximity to wilderness settings, including the school’s physical campus. Additionally, the school also invests time and resources in choosing faculty who align with the school’s vision of environmental education. The school invests in its environmental education program because it is a lived expression of Tabiona’s mission statement and the school believes that cultivating and nurturing this connection, between students and the natural environment, is a valuable component of adolescent development. Furthermore, Tabiona believes fostering this connection, between students and the natural environment, to be essential in educating young men and women to reach their full potential and to be good citizens. One faculty member describes how the school’s co-curricular requirements accomplish these ends: Our co-curricular requirements (week-long camping trips at the beginning and end of every year, the freshman horse program. . .) are all a testament to the ways in which we push the students to participate in the activities stated in our mission statement that we believe have value and enable our students to become their best selves.

To this end, the environmental education programming at Tabiona is intentionally designed for students to learn valuable life lessons, to foster traits of good character, to cultivate connectedness to the school community and to the greater community of life, and to nurture student’s individual spirituality.

Cross-Case Analysis Through cross-case analysis, the two cases are examined according to the common themes that emerged as a result of conducting the individual case studies and writing the individual case reports. Four themes were prominent: (1) right relationship with nature, (2) care for creation/service to the natural world, (3) cultivating spirituality

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through nature, and (4) fostering school community through experiences in the natural world. These themes were present to varying degrees across the two environmental education programs.

Right Relationship with Nature Animals Many environmental education programs incorporate animals to some degree. In the cases of Mapleton and Tabiona, the ultimate goal is to cultivate a relationship between the student and the animal(s) and this is primarily accomplished through assigning the student animal caretaking responsibilities. Through animal caretaking the intended aim is that students will form a bond with their animal and will also learn important values such as responsibility, perseverance, trust, respect, and patience. Mapleton and Tabiona intentionally create the setting for students to form real connections with their animal(s) through required programs that give students real responsibility. These programs go beyond ordinary caretaking in that they create the setting for students to learn not only that their animal depends on them, but that they too can also depend on their animal. For Mapleton, students are provided with the opportunity to build relationships with animals through their work at the on-campus zoo. Whether through their responsibilities of animal husbandry, preparing animal diets, assisting with zoo maintenance or through their work in creating new zoo exhibits, students gain firsthand experience engaging in wildlife conservation work as part of a required community service rotation. The students’ various animal caretaking responsibilities provide them with numerous opportunities to build relationships with animals on a daily basis. At Mapleton, the student takes on the role of caretaker in the student–animal relationship; however, these relationships help to inform the student’s worldview. For Tabiona, students are provided with the opportunity to build relationships with animals through the school’s Stallion Program, which is required of all freshmen. Similar to Mapleton, Tabiona students do have certain caretaking responsibilities; however, the relationship between the student and the horse is more of a partnership, where each learns and grows from the other. Through their experiences with their horse students learn about perseverance, responsibility, and patience. Horse Packing is another component of the school’s Stallion Program. Through these experiences, students have the opportunity to form authentic personal relationships with their horses. Students learn the benefits of cultivating an intimate connection with their horse. When this connection is strong, students feel as though they are able to effectively communicate with their horse while riding. They learn that putting energy and effort into their personal relationship with their horse benefits their riding relationship with their horse.

Care for Creation: Service to the Natural World Service to the natural world was a common theme across the two environmental education programs. For Mapleton, the school fosters this service to the natural

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world through their zoo, farm, and recycling program, which are all required as part of the school’s community service program. The school requires that all students participate in these services because Mapleton believes that stewardship and service to the natural world help to foster a student’s individual spirituality and simultaneously cultivates connectedness to community. This active engagement in community helps students cultivate relationships and learn important values, such as respect, integrity, stewardship, service, and curiosity. The school believes that these things ultimately prepare students to live lives of meaning and consequence. For Tabiona, service to the natural world is primarily cultivated through the school’s Stallion Program. Students are assigned various caretaking responsibilities, which include mucking their horse’s stall before class in the morning, learning riding skills and riding their horse in the afternoon, and feeding their horse every evening. Through the care of their horse, the school hopes to teach students important lessons about life and also aims to cultivate self-reliance, concern for others, honor, fairness, kindness, and truth.

Spirituality In many ways, the two schools utilize their environmental education programs as platforms to cultivate individual spirituality in their students. This is primarily achieved through creating opportunities, within these environmental education programs, for connection, to include connection with self, peers, animals, the natural environment, the school community, the local community, and the greater community of life. Spirituality is conceptualized as a “deep way of being where one feels connected to all life and has awe and reverence for the universe.” Thus, intentionally designing environmental education programs to allow for authentic and meaningful connection, across various constituents, creates a strong foundation that can serve as the gateway to spirituality for children and adolescents. This individual spirituality may be further strengthened when environmental education programs encourage student reflection around their own experience and guide students to become aware of their own emotional response to that experience. In addition to connection, this process of reflection on experience and emotional awareness become critical components of student spiritual development. For Mapleton, the natural environment is utilized as an ideal setting to cultivate individual spirituality in students. This is accomplished primarily through intentionally creating opportunities for deep and meaningful connection, not only through immersion in the natural environment but also through actively working to get students into the natural world, and into meaningful relationships with their peers and faculty members. This helps to cultivate authentic connections between students, the natural world, and those within their school community and provides students with opportunities to experience awe, wonder, and peace. For Tabiona, individual spirituality is cultivated through deep relationship with both nature and community. Students find spirituality through immersion in nature (through the school’s campus and the surrounding wilderness area), through the Stallion Program, during camping experiences, through learning about nature in the classroom, and through the school’s close-knit community. As part of this spiritual

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development, students also learn how to become a part of nature rather than learn how to dominate it. This helps to strengthen individual spirituality as students experience a sense of connectedness between the self and the natural environment as they come to know themselves as one interdependent part of the greater community of life.

Fostering School Community through Experiences in the Natural World For both schools, community was a major component of the environmental education programs. For Mapleton, working at the zoo, the farm and the recycling program were all ways that the individual could meaningfully contribute to their community and also connect with other members of their school community. For Tabiona, the Stallion Program and the Outdoor Program were intentionally designed to cultivate school community through individual relationships and shared experiences in the wilderness. Ultimately, these two schools intentionally cultivated community to provide students with opportunities for deep and meaningful connection to self, others, and the environment. This connection then provided a solid foundation for the cultivation of individual spirituality.

Discussion The results illustrate that the environmental education programs described herein are intentionally designed to meet the developmental needs of adolescents. Specifically, these programs aim to nurture students’ innate spirituality through providing opportunities for connection, to the self, others, and to the environment. These moments of intentional connection simultaneously help to foster connectedness to the school community while assisting in the process of student identify formation and development. Ultimately, students in these programs come to know themselves as part of nature and in relationship with nature. Many environmental education programs are successfully designed to facilitate personal growth and to cultivate a relationship between students and the outdoors; however, these programs often lack the deep spiritual ethos that is at the forefront of the two aforementioned schools. Many programs lay the groundwork for the formation of individual spirituality, through outdoor immersion programming, but could deepen their approach to environmental education if certain concepts from these two cases were integrated into their existing programming. For example, in addition to immersion in the natural environment, these programs could prioritize creating opportunities for students to form meaningful relationships with their peers and faculty members, which may assist in spiritual growth and development as well as foster connectedness to the school community. One potential limitation of the current study is selecting two privileged independent schools as the cases. These schools have greater access to financial resources, student bodies comprised of youth from higher-income households and greater proximity to green space in comparison with many under-resourced and highpoverty schools. Thus, findings from the current study may not be directly applicable

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to these under-resourced and high-poverty schools, where students face many structural barriers that continue to promote racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to green space (Dai, 2011). Despite these limitations, the results from these two cases are promising and can be utilized by the field of environmental education that occurs within many K-12 school settings. These findings identify critical components that should be included in the design of an environmental education program that aims to be spiritually formative as a component of overall healthy development. These critical components include fostering a personal relationship between students and nature; the cultivation of environmental stewardship through opportunities to provide service to the natural world; developing school community through experiences in the natural world; and nurturing a student’s innate spirituality by intentionally creating opportunities for deep and meaningful connection to self, others, the natural environment and the greater community of life. This framework provides schools with an opportunity to leverage their environmental education programming to assist in student identity formation and development, nurture individual spirituality, and foster connectedness to school community.

Human Subjects Research This research was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Teachers College, Columbia University, study number 21–337

Appendix A CSE Private School Fellows Report Template As Fellows of the CSE, we invite you to engage with the following materials during the upcoming months: (1) the template (described in detail below), (2) addendum items, and (3) the school culture survey. When you attach addendum items, please label them with one or more of the headings listed below (Mission & Philosophy, Strategic Plan, School Culture, Community Building, Faculty & Staff Training, Approaches, and Curriculum). This work plan is designed to support all of the materials that were harvested during the CSE school site visits. If you could return this work plan and all of its components by November 16, 2018, it would be greatly appreciated. We extend our sincerest gratitude for your work on this initiative. CSE Fellows Work Template: I. Mission & Philosophy Mission Please state your mission statement. Please provide examples of how your mission statement is known and lived within your school community.

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Philosophy What do students at your school believe about spirituality’s place in education? Please give examples and stories. What do the adults at your school believe about spirituality’s place in education? Please give examples and stories. What do other stakeholders (parents, alumni, board members, etc.) believe about spirituality’s place in education? Please give examples and stories. Strategic Plan Please include any relevant areas of your strategic plan (public overview) and consider sharing any relevant information related to spirituality, ethics, and/or service. Please share any initiatives and priorities related to spiritual development within your strategic plan (directly or tangentially). How well is your strategic plan known and understood by all stakeholders? School Culture Please give a brief description of your school culture and climate. Please describe the predominant place of spirituality within your school culture. Please give relevant stakeholders the attached survey. Please share any anecdotal materials in the addendum that would help us better understand your school. Community Building Please share programs and practices that foster spirituality within your school community. Please feel free to add details and/or attach additional materials in the addendum. Faculty & Staff Training Please describe any formal faculty and staff training at your school and attach relevant addendum items (agendas, handbooks, retreat schedules and activities, service days, professional development policies, and practices). Please discuss frequency of faculty and staff training. Please describe any informal faculty and staff, training/mentorship that occurs at your school if any. Approaches With consideration to the individualized feedback sheet that you received, please include descriptions and relevant addendum items related to key programs, practices, and approaches to the implementation of spirituality in education within your school community. Please share how you directly support spiritual and ethical development in students. How does your school handle conflict and mistake-making? Please add a story or anecdote. Curriculum While many of your courses are spiritual in nature, we are particularly interested in curriculum that is specifically designed with spiritual awareness and growth in students as one of its primary purposes and has a spiritual pedagogical through line.

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Please offer a brief description of any curricula you include and provide relevant addendum items specific to spiritually infused curriculum (syllabi, unit plans, sample lesson plans, etc.). Please be sure to include courses listed on your school’s individualized site visit sheet. Please ask faculty to share stories (of any length) where they are deeply moved by a spiritual moment, connection, and/or relationship with students. Please disidentify these stories. The purpose of these stories is to help people understand the possibility for spirituality in relationship to education.

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Transforming the Theory and Practice of Character Education

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A Case Study of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues James Arthur and Tom Harrison

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Jubilee Centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example Project 1: Character Education in UK Schools (2012–2015) (Arthur et al. 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example Project 2: Youth Social Action and Service (2015–2017) (Arthur et al. 2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example Project 3: Phronesis; Developing a Conceptualization and an Instrument (2018–2020) (Kristjansson et al. 2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example Project 4: Cultivating Cyber-Phronesis (2021–) (Harrison & Polizzi, 2021) . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter focuses on the pioneering work of the Jubilee Centre – an interdisciplinary research center focusing on character, virtues, and values in the interest of human flourishing. Launched in 2012, the Centre promotes a moral concept of character, underpinned by neo-Aristotelian philosophy, in order to explore the importance of virtue for public and professional life. The Centre is a leading international informant on policy and practice in this area and through its extensive range of research projects contributes to a renewal of character virtues in both individuals and societies. The chapter will explore how the Centre has addressed critical questions about character and virtues in education and how it has sought to build and strengthen character virtues in the contexts of the family, school, community, university, professions, voluntary organizations, and the wider workplace. J. Arthur (*) · T. Harrison University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_14

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Keywords

Character · Character education · Virtues · Jubilee Centre · Aristotelian philosophy

Introduction International research centers, working on multi-million-pound studies, are not simply formed – they grow out of a sustained period of research and practice. The foundations of the Jubilee Centre were grounded in research undertaken by James Arthur over the last 20 years, much of which was the focus of a chapter in the first edition of this Springer handbook (Arthur & Wilson, 2010). We start this updated chapter by briefly revisiting the research undertaken prior to 2012 as it sets the scene for the research undertaken over the last decade by academics working at the Jubilee Centre. Education with Character: the moral economy of schooling (Arthur, 2003) was the first book in the UK to be dedicated wholly to an understanding of character education for over 50 years. It was the arguments made in this book that paved the way for a sustained period of research on character education in the UK, primarily funded by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF). The first grant from JTF involved a two-year study which led to a report published in 2006: Character Education: The Formation of Virtues and Dispositions in 16–19 Year Olds. The research sought to explore how 16- to 19-year-old students understand virtues and values and what they perceived to be the main influences on the formation of their own character. This led to securing a further grant to run a more ambitious program of research entitled “Learning for Life: Strengthening Character in UK Civil Society,” which was launched in October 2007. Learning for Life was not an official research center, but still employed a number of Research Fellows to assist in carrying out the research in four specific phases of education: (a) The Development of a Character Perspective in Early Years Education; (b) The Continuity of Experience with regard to Values in the Transition between the Primary and Secondary Phases of Schooling; (c) The Character Formation of Young People in Schools 14–16; and (d) Values in Higher Education and Employment 18–24. The research from this phase is collected in the publication entitled Of Good Character (Arthur, 2010) and at the time represented what was the largest study of character education in the UK to date, involving – both formally and informally – responses from over 70,000 participants. The major part of the research involved an extensive empirical investigation – by means of semi-structured group discussions/interviews and semi-structured individual and group questionnaire surveys – of the thoughts on values and character education of young people in different parts of the United Kingdom, across the entire spectrum of formal education and beyond. It therefore covered children of nursery age, the early and later stages of primary education, secondary education, further education, tertiary education, and into employment.

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The Learning for Life research in all cases sought to explore descriptively the current situation with regard to character development in different locations. It also sought to investigate character education through interventions that place a central emphasis on character formation. The research combined qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate and map out the issues in character education in each phase of schooling, as the field was light in this area. The research moved from descriptive to evaluative methods as it assessed the moral education policies in schools. It also employed some prescriptive research by testing our interventions, which introduced new ideas and proposals to address some of the issues that had arisen in character education. The Learning for Life research led on to funding for projects that sought to test the theory in school settings, including the “My Character” project (Arthur et al., 2014a) that examined the idea of “future-mindedness” and the “Knightly Virtues” program (Arthur et al., 2014b) that consisted of a taught program for 9- to 11-year-olds, using selected stories to teach character. The theoretical, empirical, and practical knowledge developed during these phases were fundamental to the JTF making a multimillion pound grant to establish the Jubilee Centre.

The Jubilee Centre The Jubilee Centre was launched at the House of Lords on May 16, 2012. From the day it was established, under the directorship of James Arthur, it set out to be a pioneering interdisciplinary research center focusing on character, virtues, and values in the interest of human flourishing. The Centre’s aim was to promote a moral concept of character, primarily underpinned by virtue ethical theory, in order to explore the importance of virtue for public and professional life. From the outset, the Centre sought to strengthen character virtues by: • addressing critical questions about character; • promoting, through rigorous research, the development of good character in education, business, and society, both in the UK and internationally; • building and strengthening character virtues in the contexts of the family, school, community, university, professions, voluntary organizations, and the wider workplace. It was clear from day one that if the Centre was to achieve these ambitious aims that the worlds of the researcher, practitioner and policymaker need not be three different worlds, but could interact with one another for mutual benefit. It is for this reason that over the last decade the Centre focused on relationship-building with decision-makers within the academy, government, business, and civil society. The starting aim was to alter the prevailing conception of character and virtues education in schools, in higher education, in the professions, and in communities more broadly, across the UK.

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The initial motivation for creating the Centre was to promote, through rigorous research, the importance of character in British society. The approach involved both basic and use-inspired research and primarily involved undertaking systematic studies directed toward fuller knowledge and understanding of character and virtues in public life, with specific application always in mind. However, some elements of the research were motivated by the application of research findings to practice. From the outset, the Jubilee researchers recognized that education is an “applied, multidisciplinary field” and that use-inspired research within it pursues use and influence. Traditional routes for academic publication and dissemination, via publications in peer-reviewed journals, and presentations at national and international academic conferences were prioritized. However, the Centre also had the resources and staff to disseminate to a wider, non-academic audience – an approach that was a central thrust of the activities from the outset. Both the research and practical work was guided principally, but not exclusively, by Aristotelian virtue ethical philosophy, which is concerned with how to live well in a world worth living in. It is about how people acquire and act reflectively on well-chosen habits in order to flourish as human beings. One of the chief aims of the Jubilee Centre was to advance research underpinned by virtue ethical philosophy. Virtue ethics, as an alternative to deontological and utilitarian theory, had been experiencing a resurgence since the publication of Elizabeth Anscombe’s influential article Modern Moral Philosophy (Anscombe, 1958). The revival of virtue ethics within the research, policy, and practice domains was generally optimistic – as it suggested that life can get better and that the individual can achieve coherence and flourishing in life through a search for the common good. Included within this movement were ideas from positive psychology and well-being advocates, and by 2012, there were a number from the political left and right who cited Aristotle as a key influence on their politics of virtue. This all matched the ethos on which the Jubilee Centre was built: that character and virtues can be developed through “the contexts of the family, school, community, university, professions, voluntary organisations and the wider workplace.” From the outset, the Centre believed that virtues such as courage, justice, honesty, compassion, selfdiscipline, gratitude, generosity and humility are critical to individual excellence, contribute to societal flourishing, can be exercised within all human contexts and are educable. The Jubilee Centre was founded on the belief that a new emphasis on these virtue qualities in schools and in professional education was needed. Three defining arguments shaped the work of the Centre. First, that good character has multiple benefits for individuals and society. This first argument reasoned that the virtues which make up character enable us to enjoy rewarding and productive lives and that the more people with good character the healthier our society. Care was taken not to couch this argument in merely instrumental terms, by highlighting the intrinsic worth of a virtuous life. In the professions, it was argued that integrity, as well as knowledge, is vital. It was also reasoned, at the start, that the virtues could be found in all the great faiths, but equally that they are not restricted to religions. The second defining argument stated that character can be taught, learnt, and

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reinforced, and needs to be placed at the heart of education. The key to this argument was making a strong case that character education was about empowering young people, not limiting them. Character Education helped give them the judgment to make the right decisions. The third held that the Jubilee Centre would engage in cross-disciplinary and innovative research, work in partnership with schools and the professions, and promote the importance of good character against a society that had grown increasingly skeptical about the moral integrity of both the professional classes and politicians. At the heart of the Jubilee Centre’s work is the research projects and resulting reports on different aspects of character education. Each research project began with systematic reviews, critically appraising and collating all available relevant studies in character and virtues education, both in Britain and internationally. Each project also started by identifying the practice needs for evidence and worked with practitioners from the outset to refine the research questions. Only after this initial process was research undertaken, often in partnership with practitioners, utilizing a range of research designs, methods, and instruments. Below we provide an overview of four of the many flagship research projects undertaken by the Jubilee Centre over the last decade to demonstrate the breath and impact of the research.

Example Project 1: Character Education in UK Schools (2012–2015) (Arthur et al. 2015) A major focus of the Centre’s research is on investigating the place of character education in schools. The Centre has surveyed pupils and teachers, designed and trialed interventions, and evaluated provision in schools across the UK. Character Education in UK Schools was a three-year project undertaken between 2012 and 2015. It is well understood that schools play a critical role in the formation of young people, shaping the character of their students. However, at the time, not much was known about the current state of play in character education within Britain. The research project represented one of the most extensive studies of character education ever undertaken, including over 10,000 students and 255 teachers in schools across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Research techniques consisted of a mixture of surveys, moral dilemmas, and semi-structured interviews. Over 3 years, the study explored: • The current situation in character education, both in the UK and internationally • How developed British students are with respect to moral character and the extent to which they are able to understand and apply moral virtues, especially those aged 14 and 15 • How teachers in the UK understand their role in terms of students’ moral and character development • What helps or hinders the development of children’s characters according to teachers in UK schools

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The study found that with the right approach, it is possible for many kinds of school to nurture good character: The Centre’s researchers explored the characteristics of the UK schools, whose pupils were, on average, best and least able to respond to a series of moral dilemmas. Different types of schools appeared in both groups, including state and independent, faith and non-faith, large and small, those with high and low percentages of free school meals (FSM), and those with varying Ofsted ratings. The schools in both groups were spread across the UK, showing no real trends in terms of geography or size of school. Findings also showed that a concern for the development of a child’s whole character is central to good education and practice. In interviews carried out by the Centre, over half of British secondary school teachers (54%) and 80% of primary school teachers said that their school already had a “whole school approach to character building.” Furthermore, 59% of primary school teachers believed that their school placed a “very high” priority on moral teaching. However, there are weak links in the education system, which suggest that moral education needs to be prioritized within a greater number of British schools. The Jubilee Centre asked British students participating in this research to respond to a series of moral dilemmas and select the best and worst justifications for their chosen action from a list. Many students taking the moral dilemma tests appeared to approach the dilemmas from the perspective of selfinterest. On average, participating students had less than a 50% match (42.6%) with the preferred responses to the moral dilemmas, as selected by an expert panel. Students struggled to identify why they would take a certain action (justification) more than deciding what that action would be (40.5% match with an expert panel). It was also interesting to note that girls (47%) significantly outperformed boys (37%) when faced with these moral dilemmas. The Jubilee Centre’s findings also contradict some widely held beliefs about the types of activity that build character. For example, contrary to the widely held public belief that sport builds character, British students claiming to participate in sporting activities did not perform better than those who said they did not practice sports when asked to respond to moral dilemmas. However, students who said they were involved in music or choir or drama outside of school performed better than those who said they were not. Overall, this research suggests that there may be gaps in the current system in terms of attempts to develop a child’s whole character, not just their academic skills. For example, 80% of teachers interviewed by the Jubilee Centre stated that the British assessment system “hinders the development of the whole child.” In other words, the current system can hold back the development of a child’s moral character. The majority claimed that exams have become so pervasive in schools that they have crowded out other educational goods. Only 33% of teachers stated that they had specific or additional training in moral or character education, yet 60% stated that they had to teach a subject relating explicitly to the development of the whole child (i.e., citizenship). Some of the key recommendations from the research went on to inform future research and curriculum development projects. The first recommendation was that members of school staff should be trained in developing character, and each school should have at least one teacher (preferably more) who is especially passionate and

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knowledgeable about character education and directly involved with its implementation. This, however, is unlikely to be sufficient without an effective school leadership team that is also concerned with character education. Since the study, the Centre has developed multiple resources to support schools to train their staff in character education, including MOOCs and an award-winning free online CPD. The second recommendation was that schools ought to have a character education policy that will be influential across all staff. We created the Framework for Character Education in Schools (2013, revised in 2017) to help schools fulfill this recommendation. The third recommendation was that because students require more direct help moving from motives of self-interest toward moral orientations concerned with others, this is an aspect of character development deserving of emphasis in schools. Over the last decade, we have created multiple curriculum resources to help students with ethical decision-making – these have been developed for primary, secondary, college, and university levels as well as focusing on particular dimensions of their lives, such as the digital world. The final recommendation was that schools should assess their own efforts toward the development of students’ characters. In response to this, we created a schools’ evaluation handbook for character education (Harrison et al, 2016).

Example Project 2: Youth Social Action and Service (2015–2017) (Arthur et al. 2017) The Centre has conducted several studies into the practice of youth social action and how young people can make acts of service into a lifelong habit. The starting point was that engaging in meaningful social action can have a recognized “double benefit” to both the recipient of the social action and the individual undertaking it, for the positive development of character. The belief was that service to others is an important virtue for children and young people to develop. This study was based on data gathered through a questionnaire with 4518 16–20-year-olds in the UK and supported by life history interviews, about which factors are associated with young people who have made a habit of service. A young person with a habit of service was defined in the study as someone who had taken part in service in the past 12 months and confirmed they would definitely or very likely continue participating in the following 12 months. This research was the largest known study of its kind. Key findings included that young people with a habit of service are more likely than those without a habit of service to: • have started participating in service at a younger age: those who first get involved in service under the age of 10 were found to be more than two times more likely to have formed a habit of service than if they started aged 16–18 years; • be involved in a wider range of service activities and participate in them more frequently; • identify themselves more closely with exemplars of moral and civic virtues;

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• have parents and friends who are also involved in service, and in particular, in the same kinds of activities as them, with friends being a more important influence than parents; • believe they have the time, skills, opportunity, and confidence to participate in service; • have service embedded in their school/college/university environment; • be able to reflect on their experience of service; and • recognize the double benefit of service – that it brings benefits for themselves and others. Since the research was published, the findings helped those in the voluntary sector plan and deliver youth social action programs that supported young people to cultivate a habit of service. The findings also furthered academic understanding in the fields of character and citizenship education about the concept of service and how involvement in service may be measured, as well as enhancing understandings about what constitutes a habit of service.

Example Project 3: Phronesis; Developing a Conceptualization and an Instrument (2018–2020) (Kristjansson et al. 2019) The Jubilee Centre has undertaken sustained research, over the last 10 years, on the Aristotelian concept of phronesis – popularly translated as practical wisdom. According to Aristotelian character developmental theory, young people who have acquired the right moral traits through habituation and role modeling need gradually to develop the intellectual virtue of phronesis, to guide their decision-making; otherwise, their moral life will be fragmented, uncritical, and lacking in intrinsic value. The upsurge of interest in neo-Aristotelian forms of character education has thus led to a renewed interest in understanding the workings of phronesis. At the same time, social scientists, educationists, and professional ethicists have turned their attention to the role that phronesis plays in the education and practice of professionals in fields such as teaching, medicine, nursing, law, and business, as well as to the more general role of phronesis in helping agents to navigate their social worlds. Despite some consensus on the nature of phronesis as an integrative, intellectual meta-virtue, no rigorous measurable conceptualization of phronesis exists, and no psychological instrument has yet been designed to measure it. That said, instruments to measure wisdom more generally may offer some potential overlaps, as well as measures of meta-cognition and critical thinking. However, these tend to be grounded in philosophical assumptions different to those underpinning phronesis. The Centre has sought to address the mismatch between the interest in phronesis and serious attempts to specify and evaluate it. The study was motivated, firstly, by the hypothesis that Aristotle may have been on the right track in suggesting that phronesis bridges the gap between moral knowledge and action in duly developed moral agents (typically referred to in contemporary moral psychology as the “gappiness problem”). No one to date has,

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however, explored this hypothesis empirically. Secondly, that it is incumbent upon Aristotle-inspired psychologists and educationists to take on the task of designing an instrument that measures phronesis and its development, as well as to test the aforementioned hypothesis by seeing how well phronesis predicts moral behavior and how it fares vis-à-vis other candidates. Such instrument design requires the preliminary conceptual work of operationalizing the construct of phronesis. Studies, particularly in recent years, have explored the conceptual contours of phronesis and proposed a new four-componential model based on four functions of phronesis as constitutive, integrative, drawing on a blueprint of the good life and overseeing emotion regulation. Further empirical pilot studies (one conducted with an adult sample and the other with an adolescent sample) have been undertaken to test this model via a newly designed Phronesis Inventory. The studies were conducted to i) investigate whether the proposed phronesis model is a suitable frame through which to investigate the relevant features of morality and their relation to prosocial behavior; ii) discuss and contextualize the new conceptualization and instrument in the context of current research in moral psychology; and iii) ideally pave the way for further practical research and recommend next steps for academics and practitioners interested in phronesis. The findings from the research included a critical review of the literature that established that the proposed four-componential construct of phronesis is well grounded in Aristotle’s own texts and goes beyond them by drawing on research in modern moral psychology. Specifically, it captures the core functions that phronesis scholars have typically considered this virtue to perform. Further findings from the pilot studies found that the hypothesized phronesis model fits the data well. Previously validated measures that were predicted to be good approximations of the components of the phronesis model were found to structurally relate to the predicted latent components in all but one case. Most importantly, the latent components were found to be structurally related to a predicted latent phronesis variable and, promisingly, this variable was found to predict the latent prosocial behavior variable. Furthermore, the findings also suggested that the proposed phronesis model may have validity in both adult and adolescent samples, which has important implications for solving the “gappiness problem.” Research in the center continues to investigate both the four-component model and develop instruments to measure it in various settings and with different populations.

Example Project 4: Cultivating Cyber-Phronesis (2021–) (Harrison & Polizzi, 2021) A particular focus of the Centre’s work in recent years has been on character, virtue, and phronesis in the digital world. For many children, the Internet has improved their lives; it has offered them opportunities for entertainment, work, socialization, and active participation in society. It has also bought new risks for children growing up in the digital age, including, most prominently, privacy constraints, misinformation, identify theft, inappropriate content, online abuse, cyberbullying, and grooming.

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In an age in which children are both the most vulnerable and the pioneers when it comes to using the Internet the Jubilee Centre believed it was important to understand how the technology contributes to or diminishes human flourishing. There has been a broad range of research, from different disciplinary perspectives, that has considered the impact of the Internet on children. Few studies, to date, have adopted a neo-Aristotelian character lens as the theoretical underpinning for their investigations. An initial study with 13- to 16-year-olds and parents collected data to investigate the intersection between character, virtue, wisdom, and being online. Findings from study with 13- to 16-Year-Olds • The virtue that most adolescents wanted most their friends to show on social media was wisdom, with 38% choosing this as one of their top two desired qualities. • Overall, most 13- to 16-year-olds reported that they would react to an abusive post on the Internet in ways that are morally engaged (74%) (e.g., by sending a nice message to the person insulted to check how they feel (19%)) rather than morally disengaged (26%) (e.g., by forwarding it to others in their school (1%)). • The explanations that most adolescents chose in support of their morally engaged reactions were virtue-based (68%) (“because it is the kind/thoughtful thing to do” (37%) as distinct from utilitarian (21%) (e.g., “because the same thing might happen to me” (13%)) or deontological (11%) (e.g., “because of the rules of the social media company” (6%)). Findings from study with Parents • The ability to make wise decisions is the quality that parents in the UK most want their children to show online. 56% of parents chose “making wise decisions” as one of their two top qualities. The second most important quality to parents is showing good manners and respect to others (43%). • Parents in the UK prioritize cultivating character and virtues (44%) over trying to teach children about the consequences of the online actions (27%) or making rules (19%) when managing their children’s Internet use. • While 65% of parents in the UK are happy with the extent which their children’s schools adopt rules to protect their children from online risks, less parents are happy with how their children’s schools teach their children about the consequences of their online actions (60%), and the extent to which they teach about good character, wisdom, and virtues in relation to the Internet (58%). • 77% of parents think that schools should make more efforts to teach about good character, wisdom, and virtues in relation to the Internet. The findings from the study provided the justification for new research into how cyber-wisdom might be educated in 13- to 16-year-olds. This is a research project that is currently being undertaken by the Jubilee Centre in schools across the UK.

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Conclusion In the four examples of research briefly described above, the Jubilee Centre has undertaken significant studies with a large number of participants in a diverse range of settings. What unites all of the research is a focus on how character, virtue, and practical wisdom might be cultivated in the interests of enhancing individual and societal flourishing. Based on these projects and the many others undertaken over the last decade, the Centre has established itself as a leading research resource and has increasingly become a source of solutions for teachers and professionals. It has effectively become the “go-to” center, with thousands of enquires each year and, as a result, many international visits from researchers to the Centre. It is important to stress in the conclusion to this chapter the impact the research undertaken over the last decade (as well as that which preceded it) has had on practice. The intention in all the research projects has been to turn the focus away from producing narrow studies, read only by other specialists. It is for this reason the Centre has run hundreds of workshops, training events, and professional development sessions all over the UK and internationally, attracting thousands of teachers, professionals, and other stakeholders to develop their knowledge and skills. This user-inspired research has sought both to discover new knowledge and to enable society to put that knowledge to beneficial use.

References Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). Modern moral philosophy. Philosophy, 33(124), 1–19. Arthur, J. (2003). Education with character: The moral economy of schooling. Routledge. Arthur, J. (2010). Of good character. Imprint Academic. 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. 521–548). Springer. Arthur, J., Harrison, T., Kristjánsson, K., Davidson, I., Hayes, D., & Higgins, J. (2014a). My character: Enhancing future-mindedness in young people – A feasibility study. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Arthur, J., Harrison, T., Carr, D., Kristjánsson, K., & Davison, I. (2014b). Knightly virtues: Enhancing virtue literacy through stories: Research report. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Arthur, J., Kristjánsson, K., Walker, D., Sanderse, W., & Jones, C. (2015). Character education in UK schools: Research report. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Arthur, J., Harrison, T., Taylor-Collins, E., & Moller, F. (2017). A habit of service: The factors that sustain service. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Harrison, T., & Polizzi, G. (2021). A cyber-wisdom approach to digital citizenship education: Insights from adolescents and parents. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Kristjansson, K., Darnell, C., Fowers, B., Moller, F., & Pollard, D. (2019). Phronesis; developing a conceptualisation and an instrument. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham.

Promoting a More Sustainable and Inclusive World

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Wellbeing in a World of Crises Ragny´ Þo´ra Guðjohnsen, O´lafur Pa´ll Jo´nsson, and Sigru´n Aðalbjarnardo´ttir

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Children’s and Young People’s Wellbeing in the Modern World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sustainability and Sustainability Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sustainability Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Listening to Young Children’s Voices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perspective-Taking Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Children’s and Young People’s Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emphasis on Democracy and Children’s Rights in Educational Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Measures Taken in Iceland to Ensure Children’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ombudsman for Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rights Respecting Schools and Child-Friendly Municipalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Closing Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss pressing questions regarding sustainable development and children’s wellbeing. We depict two scenarios. One portrays children who are led down a dangerous path of climate change and live under in secure circumstances, experiencing violence, neglect, abuse, and military recruitment. The other depicts parents, schools, social services, societies, and the global community, willing to turn things around by emphasizing children’s human rights and wellbeing in a broad sense. We deal with these issues within an interdisciplinary frame, underlining the meaning of social, psychological, and health threats as well as children’s secure economic conditions. The knowledge of protective and risk factors for children’s wellbeing must guide us during that process. Parents R. Þ. Guðjohnsen (*) · Ó. P. Jónsson · S. Aðalbjarnardóttir University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_15

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and guardians are responsible for upholding children’s rights, caring for their development, and seeking services for them if needed. School practices and leisure activities must embed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, offering children opportunities for democratic discussions and participation. Nurturing children’s values, critical thinking, and perspective taking prepares them for their role in an inclusive, sustainable world. They need space to influence their own lives and society. We conclude with examples of changes in Iceland’s governmental policy and practices, which are steps in implementing the convention. Keywords

Sustainability · Children’s and young people’s participation · Human rights · Education

Introduction In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught. (Baba Dioum, 1968)

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Swedish scholar and educator Ellen Key (1909) published the book The Century of the Child that would later influence the ideas on the rights of the child. She described “the new century [as being] represented as a small naked child, descending upon the earth, but drawing himself back in terror at the sight of a world bristling with weapons, a world in which for the opening century there was not an inch of free ground to set one’s foot upon” (Key, 1909, p. 2). Key’s publication of the book was a mark of optimism – the twentieth century should become the century of the child. In a way, it did; the century witnessed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) become the international convention with more signatory countries than any other. However, it was also the century when two world wars did not leave an inch of free ground to set one’s foot upon in various regions of the world. The UNCRC (1989) lays out certain principles that should guide people and governments in safeguarding this vulnerable population of children against the cruelty of the world in which they are born. It is also a way of acknowledging the vulnerability and laying out certain principles to guide those in power to make children’s lives better, or rather, to define what it takes to live the dignified life of a child. To lead a dignified life, it is not enough to be protected against the cruelty of the world; the child must also be listened to, have an influence on one’s environment, and take part in the community where one was born, rather than simply being a bystander waiting to grow up. Article 12 of the UNCRC stresses this active role of the child and portrays the child as not simply a weak and vulnerable being but also one who has a mind of one’s own (Lundy, 2013). Now, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, we may wonder whether it will eventually be the century of the child – or perhaps in what sense it might be

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referred to as such. The challenges that we face are not only those of war and terror that Key (1909) wrote about over a century ago, although present generations are still plagued by such barbarism. On top of this, there are challenges that are, in a way, both more mundane and more horrific. The climate crisis threatens not only peace and stability but may also undermine the very conditions for human life on the planet – without “an inch of free ground to set one’s foot upon” (Key, 1909, p. 2). Dignified life, whether of children or adults, is also threatened by another perspective, namely the encroachment of technology, big data, and international corporations on human autonomy and democracy. These challenges, or rather crises, not only force people to cooperate globally to protect people’s wellbeing, but they also require rethinking about what wellbeing means in the first place. In the face of these crises, the UN (2015) put on its agenda the extensive UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which align strongly with human rights, as well as refer to the importance of strengthening human wellbeing at all levels. Of the 17 goals, the first 10 concern factors that are either constitutive of wellbeing or directly related to it are: (1) no poverty, (2) zero hunger, (3) good health and wellbeing, (4) quality education, (5) gender equality, (6) clean water and sanitation, (7) affordable and clean energy, (8) decent work and economic growth, (9) industry, innovation, and infrastructure, and (10) reduced inequalities (UN, 2019, p. 29). Crucial aspects of the SDGs are the goals toward active participation that are needed to follow upon the other goals, as well as the emphasis on cooperation. In this chapter, we focus on how children’s and young people’s wellbeing and human rights serve as the foundations for the abilities to grow as persons and take part in developing sustainable communities.

Children’s and Young People’s Wellbeing in the Modern World Wellbeing is a multifaceted construct that has been defined and measured in diverse ways, depending on the context in which it is used (Tov, 2018). In their systematic review, Pollard and Lee (2003) have found that children’s wellbeing has been defined under five distinct domains: economic, physical, social, psychological, and cognitive. In each domain, wellbeing is measured with specific indicators that may either be subjective or objective, positive or negative (deficit indicators). An interdisciplinary focus on children’s wellbeing as citizens has become clearer with each passing year, especially now that action is needed worldwide due to urgent and serious challenges related to diseases, climate change, famine, threats to democracy, and wars (Clark et al., 2020; World Health Organization [WHO], 2021a). Economic challenges to children’s wellbeing are staggering; in 2019, it was estimated that 356 million children under 18 years old lived in extreme poverty (World Bank Group, 2020). Although the situation before the COVID-19 outbreak had greatly improved since 1990 (UNICEF, 2016, p. 2), matters have now regressed as poverty rates have risen for the first time in 20 years. Likewise, education gains from the last 20 years were partly wiped out, with the livelihoods of women and

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young people bearing most of the negative impacts (Fiala et al., 2021; UNICEF, 2021a). Challenges to children’s wellbeing are not limited to the less developed parts of the world. In affluent countries, children’s wellbeing can be endangered as well, with marginalized groups, ethnic minorities, people living with disabilities, and immigrant families being the most vulnerable (UNICEF Innocenti Research Center, 2007). Besides, children suffer more than adults from economic crises (Clark et al., 2020; Fiala et al., 2021; Mood & Jónsson, 2014), and their rights are at risk of being violated due to economic setbacks (Jeans, 2017). This has been evident in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of children living in multidimensional poverty increased by one million (UNICEF, 2021b). To account for such challenges to wellbeing, UNICEF (2021b) has moved away from a single-dimensional measure of wellbeing to multiple dimensions when measuring child poverty. It does so by referring to children’s actual access to goods and services that are essential for their development and for the advocacy of their rights under the UNCRC (1989): housing, health, nutrition, sanitation, water, and education. Children and young people currently face various global health and wellbeing challenges. It is estimated that two million children under the age of five will die of undernourishment in 2022 (Rauhanen, 2021). Health expenses and health coverage systems vary enormously among countries and regions. This means that different models are used to cover health care costs. Weak health care systems in lowerincome countries force poor households to pay high out-of-pocket expenses for their needed services, leaving them worse off in terms of both finances and wellbeing (Krishna, 2010). Securing universal health coverage in these areas is therefore necessary and guided by human rights principles (Nelson, 2021). At the same time, approximately 23% of the children in more developed countries are classified as overweight or obese (WHO, 2019), often related to negative self-image and body dissatisfaction, as well as psychological distress (Bray et al., 2018). Young people’s changed lifestyles, increasing smartphone use, and less face-to-face communication in higher-income countries have been related to increased odds of stress, poorer sleep quality, and rising prevalence of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety (Sohn et al., 2019). Depression is now being a leading cause of disability among young people worldwide (WHO, 2020). Young people’s substance abuse disorders (UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2021) also negatively affect their wellbeing and prevent them from being active members of society. Traumatic experiences during childhood undermine the foundations for lifetime wellbeing and productivity (Di Fabio & Rosen, 2018). Several studies have reported harmful effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – such as domestic violence, neglect, or sexual, physical, and emotional abuse – on future health and wellbeing (Felitti et al., 1998; Hughes et al., 2017; Kinner & Borschmann, 2018) as well as school success (Blodgett & Lanigan, 2018).

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Females are more likely to have higher ACE scores; according to the WHO (2021b), almost one out of four 15- to 19-year-old girls who has been in a relationship has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner. The risk factors for higher ACE scores also include non-white ethnicity, low educational level, and low socioeconomic status. Prevention of childhood trauma is therefore one of the most pressing issues facing the world, as exposure to multiple ACEs is related to a wide variety of negative outcomes that are harmful to wellbeing (Petruccelli et al., 2019). Recently, research has also focused on the relation between ACEs and young people’s dysfunction in society and the fact that these individuals are more likely to get in trouble with the law (Van Duin et al., 2021) and to have problems with finding and keeping employment (Scales et al., 2016). Various protective factors and risk factors are related to how young people fare in their adult lives (Steinberg, 2001). Childhood studies have emphasized the significant role of parental styles and how being raised by parents who are supportive and warm, demand mature behavior, emphasize dialogue, and listen to their children’s voices is a protective factor for their wellbeing (Baumrind, 1991), communication skills, education (good grades), self-esteem, self-regulation, and mental health. It is a preventive factor as well, minimizing the risks of school dropouts and substance use (Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2019). Other parental styles can be risk factors, such as being uninvolved, absent, or indifferent to fulfilling their children’s socioemotional and behavioral needs; setting strict rules and using punishment or imposing no rules at all; and being either too child driven or too parent driven (Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2019; Baumrind, 1991). Schools and teachers also play a significant role in children’s life (e.g., Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2007). For example, a school is regarded as the most stable social institution for children who have lived unstable lives (Spencer, 2006). A school, in cooperation with parents and communities, can serve as a protective factor for children and young people who are refugees by nurturing a more inclusive environment and positive student interactions (Zych et al., 2019). School safety (Kowalski et al., 2014) and a welcoming school climate (Guo, 2016) can therefore be protective measures against bullying. Various intervention programs in schools show promising findings, where students who take part in such programs show more improvements in their competencies and skills than students in comparison groups. The school community’s and the teachers’ opportunities to promote their educational visions are essential in this regard (e.g.,Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2007, 2010; Berkowitz, 2021; Nucci & Ilten-Geer, 2021; Power et al., 1989). Informal educational and leisure activities can also serve as protective factors for children’s wellbeing (Sigfusdottir et al., 2020), as well as other ecosystem elements such as good neighborhoods, social welfare systems and health services as well as culture supporting human rights (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Considering this and the “need for meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet” (Raworth, 2017, p. 22), we need to keep in mind the whole picture of the child’s wellbeing.

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Sustainability and Sustainability Education Although the UN SDGs address social issues no less than natural or environmental issues, sustainability education has its historical roots in environmental education, a field of education that became an important item on the international policy agenda with the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UN, 1972), published after the conference, states: Education in environmental matters, for the younger generation as well as adults, giving due consideration to the underprivileged, is essential to broaden the basis for an enlightened opinion and responsible conduct by individuals, enterprises, and communities in protecting and improving the environment in its full human dimension. (Principle 19, p. 5)

Five years later, in 1977, the UN organized a conference specifically on environmental education in Tbilisi, Georgia. The role of education is discussed at length in the Tbilisi Declaration (UN, 1977) – the final report of that conference. Although the concept of sustainability had not entered the scene at that time, the conception of environmental education was broad, including both social and political issues. Environmental education should be integrated into the entire system of formal education at all levels to supply the necessary knowledge, understanding, values and skills needed by the general public and many occupational groups, for their participation in devising solutions to environmental questions. (UN, 1977, p. 12)

The report continues: The ultimate aim of environmental education is to enable people to understand the complexities of the environment and the need for nations to adapt their activities and pursue their development in ways which are harmonious with the environment. In this way, it adds a new dimension to the efforts being made everywhere to improve living conditions. Environmental education must also help create an awareness of the economic, political, and ecological interdependence of the modern world, so as to enhance a spirit of responsibility and solidarity among nations. (UN, 1977, p. 12)

Despite the strong emphasis on the environment and the conference’s explicit focus on environmental education, the final report also highlights the importance of values education: Environmental education . . . should be centered on practical problems and be of an interdisciplinary character. It should aim at building up a sense of values, contribute to public well-being and concern itself with the survival of the human species. (p. 19)

The language changed drastically in a report prepared by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), Our Common Future (known as the Brundtland Report), with the terminology revised from “environmental education” to “education for sustainable development.”

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Sustainable Development The phrase “sustainable development” rose to prominence with the publication of Our Common Future (UN World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). The concept was defined in terms of a balance between current and future needs of humans: Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (§27)

The concept of sustainable development from Our Common Future was further explained as development that balanced three distinct fields: economy, society, and environment. This is illustrated in a picture where these three fields are represented by three overlapping circles, and the space of sustainable development is located in their intersection (Fig. 15.1). The concept of sustainable development from Our Common Future has been called “weak sustainability” and subjected to various criticisms. One criticism concerns the concept’s focus on needs or even acceptance of current needs as a baseline. This seems to promote the status quo or is at least less revisionary than many think is necessary. Another criticism questions the interplay among the three fields in the concept. People have asked how one might depict the economy as largely outside both society and the environment. Thus, Sterling (2001, p. 32) argues that “socio-economic systems must be regarded as subsystems of the encompassing biophysical system,” leading to a picture where the economy is located within society and society within the environment. The concept of sustainability, as shown in Fig. 15.2, has been referred to as “strong sustainability.” This concept is more realistic and has led to more revisionary views of society and the economy, where the natural capacity of the earth has been incorporated into the fundamental theories in each field. The concept of sustainable development from Our Common Future demarcated a research field that was best described as multidisciplinary. It drew on theories and concepts from different fields, without integrating them or developing new concepts Fig. 15.1 Concept of sustainable development, defined as the intersection of the three fields

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286 Fig. 15.2 Concept of sustainable development, defined as development where the economy is within the boundaries of society, and society is within the limits of the environment or nature

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or theories that challenged the classification of the fields in question. Moving toward strong sustainability, the disciplinary boundaries began to be blurred, and concepts and theories from ethics and political philosophy, such as “intergenerational justice” (Broome, 1994; Meyer, 2021), became part of the theoretical landscape. After the turn of the twenty-first century, the field is now better described as interdisciplinary, with the disciplinary boundaries often difficult to detect and new concepts being developed that do not fit in any of the traditional fields. The Stockholm Resilience Center (2016) has presented the 17 UNSDGs as forming a “wedding cake,” where they fit within the structure of the nested circles of strong sustainability (Fig. 15.3). However, strong sustainability might not be robust enough or perhaps not deep enough. Strong sustainability certainly demands a revision of the way we think about both society and the economy, giving prominence to concepts such as natural capital and ecosystem services in economics and calling for radical changes in both production and consumption. The shortcoming of strong sustainability becomes evident when we see that the gross unsustainability of current ways of living concerns not only the production and consumption of goods and the development of infrastructure and social institutions, but also requires a thorough revision of the way we feel and the things we value – and how we value them. The issue here is aptly captured in what Jónsson and Macdonald (2021) refer to as the challenge of conflicting values: The comprehensive, distributed project of aiming for sustainable living on a small planet, densely populated by humans and non-human living organisms, is a project infused with fundamental philosophical questions. It is not about finding a way for many to survive but for all people to lead the good life. It is not about sustaining the way things are at present but about sustaining a different world, one in which everyone has a fair chance of living the good life. This will only be possible if humans learn to live in harmony with each other and the non-human world. Put this way, aiming for sustainability is not only aiming for a moving target, but aiming for a target that we have not yet seen. (p. 8)

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Fig. 15.3 The UN Sustainable Development Goals, represented as nested circles according to the concept of strong sustainability (Stockholm Resilience Center, 2016)

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b The limits of nature The good life

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Fig. 15.4 (a) The concept of sustainability defined as the good life not extending beyond the limits of nature. (b) Unsustainability is represented by the good life crossing the limits in one or more places

Viewing the challenge of sustainability in this way, the concept of strong sustainability –and the corresponding picture of nested circles – does not do justice to what is at stake. The concept that we suggest is simpler by being defined in terms of only two basic concepts: the good life and the limits of nature (Fig. 15.4).

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This understanding of the concept of sustainability, which we can refer to as “sustainable wellbeing,” and the corresponding pictures of sustainability and unsustainability, laid the foundation of the sustainability policy of the University of Iceland in 2012 (Macdonald et al., 2012). Sustainable wellbeing is simpler than the concept of either weak or strong sustainability as it is defined in terms of only two concepts. However, it is also more complex since the concept of the good life encompasses not only economic and social issues but also moral issues; it is thoroughly normative. The Stockholm Resilience Center’s (2016) interpretation of the SDGs in the form of a wedding cake (Fig. 15.3) represents sustainability as a transdisciplinary field of practice and research. Sustainable wellbeing (Fig. 15.4) goes further in integrating the diverse aspects of sustainability, resulting in a transdisciplinary field where a new holistic approach is being formed.

Sustainability Education Already in Our Common Future, strong emphasis is placed on education as a means of achieving sustainable development. In the foreword to the report, Gro Harlem Brundtland writes, “The changes in attitudes, in social values, and in aspirations that the report urges will depend on vast campaigns of education, debate and public participation” (UN World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, Chairman’s Foreword and §107 of the overview). Although the emphasis is strong (the word education is mentioned 78 times in the report), it is usually framed in instrumental terms and in ways that Sterling (2001, pp. 14–15) refers to as first-order learning. Due to the current educational paradigm, Sterling maintains that such education is too unsustainable: So, while ‘education for sustainable development’ has in recent years won a small niche, the overall educational paradigm otherwise remains unchanged, Within this paradigm, most mainstream education sustains unsustainability – through uncritically reproducing norms, by fragmenting understanding, by sieving winners and losers, by recognizing only a narrow part of the spectrum of human ability and need, by an inability to explore alternatives, by rewarding dependency and conformity, and by servicing the consumerist machine. (p. 14)

Although written in 2001, these words still apply (sadly) today. Continuing from this criticism of the conventional paradigm, Sterling (2001, p. 15) makes a distinction among first-, second-, and third-order learning and change: First-order change and learning take place within accepted boundaries; it is adaptive learning that leaves basic values unexamined and unchanged .... By contrast, second-order change and learning involve critically reflective learning, when we examine the assumptions that influence first-order learning ....

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These kinds of learning take place within the accepted educational paradigm. Although second-order learning may be critical (for instance, as called for in various sections in Our Common Future), the very paradigm is not challenged. Thus, Sterling (2001, p. 15) highlights the need for learning at an even deeper level: At a deeper level still, when third-order learning happens, we are able to see things differently. It is creative and involves a deep awareness of alternative worldviews and ways of doing things. It is, as Einstein suggests, a shift of consciousness, and it is this transformative level of learning, both at individual and whole society levels, that radical movement towards sustainability requires.

In a report titled Mapping Education for Sustainability in the Nordic Countries, published by the Nordic Council of Ministers (Jónsson et al., 2021), these three levels of learning are described as follows. First-order learning values compliance, where students are “expected to comply with the values, practices, and evaluations of relevant knowledge already present” (p. 7). Second-order learning values criticality, where students are “encouraged to be critical of the first-order learning that takes place within the system” (p. 7). Third-order learning values radicality, where “students are encouraged and given space to not only be critical of the values and practices within the system but also to challenge those values and practices, pushing for new possibilities even against entrenched norms” (p. 7). In the report, educational policy and teacher education in the Nordic countries are scrutinized from the perspectives of these three orders of learning and change. Although the Nordic countries often take pride in being at the forefront of education and sustainability, there are few signs of third-order sustainability education. Moreover, although social and political issues are certainly part of the educational concerns under the banner of sustainability, “it is still the case that when sustainability education is discussed, an environmental perspective is most often taken” (p. 63). In 2019, an extensive survey on sustainability was conducted among the youth in the Nordic countries. The Nordic Council of Ministers published the findings in the report, Nordic Youth as Sustainable Changemakers: In the Transition to Sustainable Consumption and Production (Ravnbøl & Neergaard, 2019), revealing that young people seem more critical in this respect than the politicians and the policymakers in the region. The sustainable changemakers do not see sustainable consumption and living as a sacrifice and prefer to highlight the positive aspects and personal benefits. Highlighting the positive sides of sustainable lifestyles could serve as a counterculture to current habits of consumption, waste, food, and transportation. The sustainable changemakers could be seen as role models, portraying not only how people can live sustainably but also how they can actually lead a better life. (p. 23)

The view of the youth here aligns well with the ethical concept of sustainability, where the core of the issue is the conception of the good life that can be contained within the limits of nature.

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Listening to Young Children’s Voices Important aspects of the ability to live in society with others include understanding and honoring values such as mutual respect, responsibility, equality, justice, empathy, and care (e.g.,Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2010; Berkowitz, 2021). Research has shown varying levels of individual competencies to make decisions in favor of sustainable development (UNICEF, 2014). At home, in school, and in recreational educational settings, significant opportunities arise to nurture young people values as part of promoting their social, moral, emotional, and civic growth.

Perspective-Taking Ability One of the profound competencies that the abovementioned values call for is the perspective-taking ability, that is, the capacity to place oneself in others’ shoes, both cognitively and emotionally. In other words, honoring these values calls for social competence and skills, which refer to the developmental human capacity to differentiate and coordinate various perspectives by understanding the relations between one’s own thoughts, feelings, and wishes and those of others (Selman, 1980). Such competence is claimed to be a basic skill in social thought and action, demonstrated in the ability how individuals understand and make meaning of social, moral, and civic issues and how they function in human relationships (Habermas, 1979; Kohlberg, 1984; Mead, 1934; Selman, 1980). In his early research, Selman (1980) has traced how the perspective-taking ability develops among children and adolescents. In short, the main developmental levels are impulsive/egocentric, with no consideration of the perspective expressed; unilateral/one way, with only one person’s perspective expressed; reciprocal/reflective, with each person’s perspective expressed cooperatively but separately; and collaborative, with mutuality expressed in the coordination of the persons’ perspectives. To cite an example of each level, in solving interpersonal conflicts, children or adolescents may suggest a solution to their advantage (egocentric) or act on a real-life situation by walking away (impulsive); express their side without taking others’ perspectives into account (unilateral); explain their point of view to give others the opportunity to react, but one perspective remains dominant (being either submissive or assertive; reciprocal); and collaboratively discuss the different perspectives for coordination (collaborative). As elementary school children grow older, they show progress from impulsive forms of social competence and skills to reciprocal forms, with elements of even collaborative forms (e.g., Selman, 1980; Aðalbjarnardóttir & Selman, 1989). The perspective-taking ability is reflected in people’s thoughts and actions in various situations in daily life. For example, perspective taking has been found beneficial for people’s willingness to participate in democratic discussions, where many arguments are considered and help individuals to actively imagine others’ experiences, perspectives, and feelings (Muradova, 2021).

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Here is an example of how adolescents’ thinking can differ in terms of a developmental point of view: Some adolescents from the same grade wanted to have some influence within their school and were asked why. Student A emphasized the importance of being “valued; otherwise, one wouldn’t sometimes feel good.” Student B felt that “it would be fun to be on committees” and added, “I would like to be able to change the social life in the school.” Student C said that he wanted to have an “impact [on] other people’s opinions” and be able to “bring forward my interests and implement them. If one does not have a say, then nothing might happen in the things you are interested in.” Student D found it “very giving to have an influence” on “justice” issues: “Like talking about women’s rights and being able to explain them. Then one feels that one is somehow approaching what is right.” When listening to their responses at face value with a developmentalist’s ear, Student A appears to pay attention to his own advantages in having an influence (“being valued” to “feel good”), while Students B, C, and D refer to benefits for both themselves and others. B refers to a specific impact (“social life in the school”) which “would be fun.” C mentions pursuing her interests in general terms and wants to see them implemented, as well as having an impact. In that way, she emphasizes how important it is to be active, which is considered a broader perspective than B’s. D enjoys having an impact, especially on general justice concerns. Simultaneously, she places her concern in a specific context (fights for women’s rights). Accordingly, her thinking reflects a broad view in her emphasis on justice, a stance that seems to go beyond the school community. She feels that she has a role to play and wants to take action (explain women’s rights), experiencing that she is on the right track in her contribution. Accordingly, D seems to have a broader perspective than the others. To better understand children’s and adolescents’ thought processes and actions, such as those concerning different viewpoints and conflicting perspectives about various issues at home and in school, it would be helpful to listen to their utterances and perspectives and look for their capacity to differentiate and coordinate various points of view. Moreover, using thematic lenses in exploring their thinking (i.e., what they are concerned about and why) is important in trying to understand how they make meaning of their worlds. As we listen to young people’s voices and promote their growth, the various issues for discussion and activities with them could concern social, moral, emotional, and civic topics related to sustainability, climate change, various human rights, and the meaning of democracy to name a few urgent issues.

Children’s and Young People’s Participation Since the 1990s, the field of youth civic engagement has been coming of age, and both global organizations and local sites have increasingly been more attentive to this interdisciplinary field (Decent Jobs for Youth, 2020; Sherrod, 2010). Among other disciplines, political science has increasingly been linked to developmental psychology, resulting in a broader conceptualization of civic engagement.

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At the turn of the century, the discussion on young people’s diminishing societal interest (Damon, 2001; Putnam, 2000), civic knowledge (Kahne & Sporte, 2008), interest in politics and elections (Galston, 2001; Milner, 2002), and care for community wellbeing (Pryor et al., 2007) became widespread. The theoretical discourse on young people’s decreasing civic engagement and increasing individualistic traits expanded at the same time (Malahy et al., 2009; McPherson et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2011; Twenge & Foster, 2010). Considerable concern has also been directed at citizens’ declining memberships in political parties, trade unions, and social movements (Dalton, 2013). However, recent findings on civic engagement indicate that young people are far from being less concerned or less willing to participate in civic life but want to relate to it in their own way (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Hooghe et al., 2016; Ravnbøl & Neergaard, 2019). Their engagement does not appear to be as regular as previously, and changes in participation types are visible. Decreasing voter turnout has been widely addressed; political party membership has been declined as well (Blais & Rubenson, 2013; Bolzendahl & Coffé, 2013; Donovan et al., 2005; Halldorsson & Onnudottir, 2019). Some young people also choose to be standbys as monitorial citizens (Amnå & Ekman, 2015; Hustinx et al., 2012). At the same time, young people have become more drawn to noninstitutionalized (Hooghe et al., 2016) and alternative forms of participation (Kahne et al., 2015), such as more critical forms (Norris, 2011) and different community-based projects, instead of institution- or duty-based civic behaviors (Copeland, 2014; Flanagan, 2013; Martin, 2012; Shulman & Levine, 2012; Sloam, 2013; Stolle & Hooghe, 2011). The youth have also increasingly referred to scientific argumentation in their civic campaigns (Zummo et al., 2021). Good examples are Greta Thunberg’s (2019) advocacy on climate change and Malala Yousafzai’s (2013) pursuit for female education, but both refer to science and ethics in their dialogue. Episodic volunteering based on independent short-term projects has also become quite popular (Cnaan et al., 2021). Digital tools have become new loci for civic actions as well (UNICEF, 2020; Verger, 2012). For instance, Facebook and Twitter provide opportunities for political practices (Frame & Brachotte, 2016), where people’s statuses and arguments on news links have become important elements of public political discussion. Furthermore, social media have become important links in humanitarian assistance and human rights advocacy (Zimmerman, 2012). They bring citizens closer to global issues (Parham & Allen, 2015) and provide instruments for activists to protest or present political messages (Zuckerman, 2015). These newer means of participation have become more accepted overtime, yet questions are raised on whether participation in these platforms fits the definitions of civic participation (Frame & Brachotte, 2016). Scholars have addressed some of the aforementioned changes and argued that they might be rooted in civic value changes in advanced democracies (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Dalton, 2008), as well as changing citizenship concepts (Norris, 2011). Young people choose self-expression values (Inglehart & Welzel, 2010; Welzel, 2013) and increasingly highlight individual freedom and more informal engagement networks (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013). Young people’s political

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participation and civic orientation are thought to be embedded in these newer norms (Blais et al., 2000; Bolzendahl & Coffé, 2013) and life goals (Twenge et al., 2012), leading to an expanding group of young people choosing the newer civic engagement forms (Hooghe & Oser, 2015). By doing so, they are reshaping how politics are played out (Amnå & Ekman, 2015; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Kahne et al., 2015). Children’s and young people’s participation opportunities should also lie in ordinary settings, enabling them to be involved in discussions and decisions related to their own wellbeing in daily life, such as at home, in school, in leisure activities, and in health care settings (Westberg et al., 2022). Among other researchers, Collins (2017, p. 15) has pointed out that despite the large body of literature and various actors and organizations that support the role of child participation, significant challenges have hindered its implementation in practice. She argues that in child protection practices, it is all too common to find only rare and even “tokenistic” opportunities for higher-level participation and having real impacts. In their systematic review, Larsson et al. (2018) examined children’s participation in different interventions related to their health and wellbeing. The interventions included those related to diet, physical activity, substance abuse, sexual and reproductive health, mental health, violence, stress, and social skills. Their findings showed that participatory approaches were most often used in school settings, but the levels of children’s participation varied. Hardly any of the children were offered opportunities to participate in policymaking on what wellbeing services are needed or to have a voice in their treatment plans; they were mostly involved as informants.

Emphasis on Democracy and Children’s Rights in Educational Policy The twentieth century was a time of profound transition in federal governments’ role of increasingly protecting children’s rights, part of which involved children’s opportunities to be active participants in society (Guðjohnsen & Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2017; Jónsson, 2018). Adopted in 1989 by the UN General Assembly, the UNCRC was ratified in Iceland by United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Act (no. 19/2013). This act includes the recognition that children have independent human rights and should be guaranteed special protection, for example, regarding their welfare in the fields of education, health, and social affairs. In Iceland, as well as in other Nordic countries, since the 1970s, there has been a strong emphasis on welfare systems focusing on investment in childhood and family issues (Karila, 2012). Nordic legislation and working methods on children’s issues have been developed in interdisciplinary cooperation among these nations (Andersen et al., 2011). The report, “Children and young people in Nordic countries – Interdisciplinary policy of the Nordic Council of Ministers, 2016–2022” (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2016), is a policy statement on children and young people (0–25 years), emphasizing that decisions concerning their lives must be made with their interest in mind (p. 13).

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The Icelandic educational system has gradually adjusted to this growing emphasis on children’s rights. After Iceland gained full independence from Denmark in 1944, issues concerning political, economic, and cultural independence were reflected in debates about education, leading to a thorough revision of the educational system with a new comprehensive law in 1946. Promoting the new law, in 1946, the Ministry of Education stated that the educational system aimed at generating “equality, freedom and fraternity in a more comprehensive sense than our nation has previously experienced” (Matthíasdóttir, 2011, p. 294). Although the 1946 legislation was justified, partly with reference to democracy and political rights, the law itself neither mentioned democracy, democratic citizenship, or human rights nor challenged conventional educational practices or teacher authority (Halldórsdóttir et al., 2016). The next thorough educational reform in Iceland occurred with the Education System Act (55/1974), which stated that the main goal of compulsory education was to prepare students to live and work in a democratic society. The law emphasized children’s right to receive assistance when they have learning, emotional, and social difficulties, as well as disabilities. With the passing of time, the language has become more positive and inclusive, first with special concern for students with disabilities, partly influenced by The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (1994), and later expanding the concerns with special mention of children who are socially or culturally disadvantaged, such as those whose native languages are not Icelandic. Although democracy and inclusion have been the expressed concerns of the educational system since the 1970s, human rights did not constitute more than a minor topic in compulsory education until 2011, when new curriculum guide for pre-, primary, and secondary school education were published, in which “Democracy and human rights” were one of the six pillars at all educational levels (see, e.g., The Icelandic National Curriculum Guide for Compulsory Schools, 2011). A new law on public education was enacted in 2008 (Compulsory school Act no. 91/2008) just before the economic collapse that hit Iceland particularly hard. The law reflected the spirit of the times prior to the collapse, fueled by extreme consumerism, individualism, and neoliberalism. This was reflected in the law when school management, privatization, and individualized learning outcomes were discussed and as well with the absence of communal and moral aims of education. The economic collapse caused great turmoil in Iceland, leading to a completely different approach, where the neoliberal perspective of previous decades was challenged, and democracy, equality, human rights, and sustainability were made the fundamental concerns of the educational system for children and young people aged 2 to 20 years (Jónsson, 2018). The emphasis on children’s opportunities to be active participants in school is also more noticeable in the 2008 education act, where children are entitled to introduce their viewpoints about schoolwork during school meetings. Emphases on democratic practices have increased as well, and students are increasingly given opportunities to take part in classroom discussions and debates.

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Findings of the study “Young people’s civic awareness in a democratic society” showed that the students who felt that they received opportunities to take part in democratic classroom discussions in school were more likely to be active in the school community (Aðalbjarnardóttir & Harðardóttir, 2012; Aðalbjarnardóttir & Hardardottir, 2018). Moreover, the students were more likely to have positive views toward immigrants. During individual interviews, they cited some reasons why they considered it important to take part in classroom discussions – to name a few, to explore and respect the different perspectives of others and develop their own, to enhance independent and autonomous thinking, and to allow everyone to have a voice. The underlying theme was how important it was to discuss and respect diverse ideas and opinions and human rights. Another important finding of the same study indicated that the better the students felt that they had been prepared in school by experiencing democratic practices and understanding the meaning of democracy, the more likely they would have positive views about active civic engagement (Guðjohnsen & Aðalbjarnardóttir, 2017).

Measures Taken in Iceland to Ensure Children’s Rights The Ombudsman for Children In 1995, the Office of the Ombudsman for Children was established (Ombudsman for Children Act no. 83/1994), with the main role of guarding and promoting the interests, rights, and needs of all children, according to the UNCRC (1989), and ensuring that authorities, individuals, and associations fully comply with the convention. According to Icelandic law, individuals are children until they reach the age of 18 years (Majority Act 71/1997). According to Ombudsman for Children Act (no. 83/1994) with subsequent amendments, children and adults can send inquiries to the ombudsman, who can then request information from authorities and institutions for them (§4). The ombudsman can also provide guidance on available measures and which authorities to approach for assistance. Since its establishment, the Office of the Ombudsman has brought many reminders to the government, related to legislation and decisions concerning children, and has offered proposals for necessary reforms. The emphasis is always on seeking consultation with children in these processes, and in 2009, Children’s Advisory Group for the Ombudsman was established (§2). The role of the group is to give the ombudsman advice on children’s matters and work on projects that promote children’s and young people’s awareness about their rights. Group members also attend meetings, conferences, and events where children’s issues are discussed. It is ensured that the advisory group reflects a diverse group of children. The 2018 amendment of the Ombudsman for Children Act (no. 83/1994, §6a) provided that ombudsman shall every other year hold a Children’s Assembly. Its purpose is to empower children and strengthen their participation in democratic discussions on matters concerning them but also to ensure their influence on policy

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and decision-making. Certain key questions are under discussion in each assembly. At the end of the assembly conclusions are drawn, and in continuation they are presented to existing government. The first Children’s Assembly was held in November 2019, and the 150 children who took part were chosen through a random selection from the national registry, with all municipalities represented. The assembly addressed this main question: What is the most important for children in our society? The participants were grouped together at tables with 5–6 children, and everyone wrote down on yellow stickers the issues that they found pressing. They then organized these stickers, identified certain themes, and finally singled out three issues that they wanted to continue discussing in the second round. During the two-day event, the children also had the opportunity to discuss issues of their own choice among themselves, as well as with ministers, parliament members, and representatives from the labor market and nongovernmental organizations, among others. At the end of the assembly, their conclusions were presented to the government. The Office of the Ombudsman also manages the SDGs Youth Council, which has been operated in Iceland since 2018. The Youth Council (UN SDGs, n.d.) consists of 12 members, aged 13–18, from across the country, and holds six meetings every year and an annual meeting with the government. The council’s main aim is to raise awareness of global goals and sustainable development, both among young people and in society as a whole. It is intended to give young people a platform to discuss and raise awareness of UNCRC (1989) and global goals on sustainable development in a critical and solution-oriented manner. The council also plays an observer role in the working group for SDGs, whose functions include monitoring the status of the implementation of the SDGs’ targets and setting forth proposals for future arrangements.

Rights Respecting Schools and Child-Friendly Municipalities In 2016, UNICEF (n.d.-a) launched a development project in Iceland, in collaboration with three schools, one leisure center, and one community center. The project aimed at examining whether school and leisure work and the wellbeing of children and young people could benefit from the implementation of the UNCRC (1989). The ideology underlying the project is rooted in UNICEF’s rights work in the UK, called the Rights Respecting Schools Award (RRSA). Around 5,000 schools in that country and an increasing number of schools outside the UK have earned the right to call themselves “Rights Schools” or work toward such a goal (UNICEF, n.d.-b). In Sebba and Robinson’s (2010) study on RRSA schools in the UK and Canada, longterm data from 12 schools and cross-sectional data from 19 schools were examined. Participants were students, school staff, and parents. Findings revealed that participants felt the RRSA project had (i) increased their knowledge and understanding of the UNCRC, both of their own rights and others locally and globally as well as their responsibilities;(ii) improved relationships between students, between staff, and between students and staff, appearing in less bullying and easier conflict resolving;

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(iii) increased positive attitudes toward diversity and inclusivity, including attitudes toward fellow students with disabilities, behavioral or emotional problems, and from a range of ethnic, race, and religious backgrounds; (iv) increased student participation in school decision-making by being in committees and councils; (v) increased students knowledge of how to present their suggestions; (vi) improved students learning engagement and learning outcomes; and (vii) further supported existing projects and initiatives in the schools, for example, related to citizenship, environmental protection, and health. The results also showed that certain challenges still need to be addressed, such as by: (i) informing absentee teachers, school staff, and visitors about the ideology of the RRSA; (ii) correcting prejudices and misleading comments based on stereotypes; and (iii) giving students opportunities to participate in decision-taking on schoolwork other than practical matters, such as the organization of outdoor areas. Guidelines for the Icelandic RRSA project are summarized in a handbook by Eriksson and Fryknäs (n.d.).The main aim of the project is to build “a democratic environment by systematically cultivating knowledge, skills and attitudes that help children to become critical, active and qualified participants in modern society.” Emphasis is placed on increasing knowledge and awareness of children’s rights, creating opportunities for children to be involved and make their voices heard. Also ensuring a channel for their views to be considered and making sure children are informed about final decisions (p. 11). The environment should be characterized by participation and cooperation that relies on equality and respect (p. 5) and children who need special support in daily life should receive it at different levels. The project is intended to support both existing projects and emphasis on the institutions and the criteria set out in laws and regulations on school and leisure activities (p. 9). It thus creates an opportunity to further strengthen the basic elements of education in accordance with The Icelandic National Curriculum Guide for Compulsory Schools (2011): literacy, creativity, health and wellbeing, democracy and human rights, sustainability, and equality. Rights councils in all participating institutions are composed of children of all age groups, employees, and guardians (p. 13) and they oversee the implementation of the project with management and supervisors (p. 26). The development of the Child-Friendly Municipalities (CFM) project started in Iceland in 2016, in collaboration with the Ombudsman for Children and the same year UNICEF (n.d.-c) launched the Rights Respecting Schools project. Further implementation of the CFM project began in 2019, with an agreement between UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Affairs. The project then got a new name, ChildFriendly Iceland, aiming at ensuring systematic implementation of the UNCRC and its consideration in policymaking and decisions both at state and municipality level. The main emphasis is on increasing knowledge and understanding of children’s equal rights and opportunities given for active participation. Municipalities can apply for participation if there is a cross-party agreement. Next, the status of rights in a municipality needs to be assessed, which is done through several types of data collection. Accordingly, education about children’s rights is organized for both the municipality’s staff and children. Then, an implementation plan is prepared for the municipality to become child friendly. This means

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that the municipality commits itself to implementing the UNCRC (1989) and working systematically according to the ideology of the project, which focuses on the following: requirement for everyone to know children’s rights, best interests of children, no discrimination, respect for children’s views, and life, survival, and development. An action plan must be set forth and accepted by the Youth Council, UNICEF, and the local government. Subsequently, the implementation starts, and in continuation, an assessment. After this, the municipality can apply for recognition as a Child-Friendly Municipality. To keep its status, a regular status assessment is made, and the municipality needs to inform the evaluation body what changes and interventions are being working on. To further strengthen the implementation of the UNCRC, a parliamentary document (no. 1702/2020–2021) on A Child Friendly Iceland was approved by the Icelandic parliament. An action plan for 2021–2024 is already being followed, which includes establishing a government agency for child protection, with the main aims of coordinating services for children and working on their welfare (Government Agency for Child Protection Act no. 87/2021). The institution’s main roles are to “provide and support services for the benefit of children and to promote quality development, following the best knowledge and experience at any given time” (Article 3).

Closing Remarks In our ever-changing world, it is crucial to examine, in a more holistic way, what sustainable living means and how it could be possible for all humans. In some parts of the world, there are enough resources to address current challenges. In other parts, the resources exist, but there is little or no political will to use them to benefit the public. Additionally, the resources might have existed but have been exhausted or destroyed due to combats, natural disasters, epidemics, political turmoil, overexploitation, or other causes, making sustainable living out of reach. Global climate change has intensified these dire conditions. Rising temperatures and sea levels, extreme weather, air pollution, food scarcity, and disease vectors are already threatening children’s daily existence, safety, education, and health – in short, their wellbeing. Sadly, 10% of the global population suffer from extreme poverty, where everyday living is a struggle for existence. The entire world needs to unite in taking responsibility for reversing unsustainable developments and aim toward a world where every person’s wellbeing is not only possible but also achievable. Children must be protected and cared for but must also be given space and opportunities to influence their own lives and the society where they were born. Parents and guardians are responsible for upholding children’s rights, nurturing their development, and seeking assistance and services for them if needed. Social services, as well as international agencies, are also responsible for protecting children’s safety, health, and wellbeing, with particular attention to the welfare of children in vulnerable situations.

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To move things forward, these sustainable goals need to be implemented in national plans and strategies, but sometimes that is not enough. At the end of this chapter, we describe the governmental measures that have been taken in Iceland to transform wellbeing as a policy item into the lived experience of children. The Office of the Ombudsman for Children plays a vital role in advocating children’s rights and offering a forum for children to be heard by authorities. To support the implementation of the UNCRC (1989) ideology in children’s immediate environment, the Child-Friendly Municipalities and the Child-Friendly Iceland projects were set up, with the aim of bringing together people who work with children and young people, and thus further promote their wellbeing. The Rights Respecting Schools have further strengthened the emphasis on working on children’s rights, effective communication, empathy, and citizenship, and on promoting better school communities. As behavior is culturally and socially embedded (Steg et al., 2015), it is urgent to use the democratic, child-centered approaches at all stages of education, from birth to adulthood. In this way, we might be able to break down the strong adult barriers that often prevent children and young people from making their voices heard. It can also give them the courage to step in and suggest necessary improvements relating to their wellbeing as they perceive it. In recent years, we have seen such initiatives, when young people have stepped forward and used school strikes to encourage climate action, social media campaigns against violence, demanded a different consumption culture by encouraging green apparel buying, and created new understandings of the good life (Loukianov et al., 2020). This gives hope for cultural changes, characterized by young people’s altering attitudes and support with sustainable development and lifestyle. Formal and informal education should cultivate the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to promote sustainable and meaningful living. Climate change is not only a challenge to sustainable development, but it is also a human rights issue, as the consequences of climate change at times deprive people of their most basic rights, such as security, shelter, education, work, clean water, and food (Roemhild & Gaudelli, 2021). In this chapter, our focus has been on children and young people as they are the future adult citizens. Will we lead our children down this dangerous path of climate change and insecure circumstances, with risks of abuse, neglect, violence, and military recruitment? Alternatively, are we going to secure children’s rights, give them a platform, and urge them to join us as agents of necessary changes? In short, will we continue on this path of destruction, or shall we manage to turn things around and make the twenty-first century the century of the child? The young people might have an easier time catching the fast throws flung at them from the previous century. To make it possible, as the generation currently in power, we need to nurture young people’s development and wellbeing, give them space to seek solutions, and offer them opportunities to make real changes. We must offer them a seat at the table, but we might also have to accept their demand that the same table needs to be thrown out. By doing so, there is hope for a sustainable world.

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Creating Compassionate Futures Values-Inspired Education

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James Biddulph

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vision 1.0: A New School with a Mission to “release the imagination and celebrate the art of the possible” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Enabling Space: Relationships and Ethos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living the Values: Fostering Agency, Criticality, and Celebration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vision 2.0: Educational Possibilities – An Imperative for Hope and Sustainable Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter is the story of one school, in one new district in the ancient city of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. It is a story of people, educators, teachers, teaching assistants, school support administrators and leaders, children, and their families; together forming what it means to be, to learn, and to live at our school. Keywords

Values education · Compassion · Cambridge Phenomenon

J. Biddulph (*) University of Cambridge Primary School, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_16

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Introduction I start with a confession. What follows in this chapter was inspired by a child who used to attend the school where I am the Executive Head teacher. His name is Tom.1 He is autistic. He is insightful and sensitive. It was during one of his daily visits to my office that he told me that, “the adults need to do more to help us understand who we are and how to learn and live better together so that the planet will survive.” His genuine clarion call was the final catalyst in a period of deep thinking, critical reflection, and co-authoring of more hopeful narratives that arose (and were much needed) following the locked-down tragedies in 2020–2022. This chapter is the story of one school, in one new district in the ancient city of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. It is a story of people, educators, teachers, teaching assistants, school support administrators and leaders, children and their families; together forming what it means to be, to learn, and to live at our school. There are three parts to the chapter: first, an introduction to the history and purpose of the school – the Vision 1.0. This is followed by examples of how the values-led approach were enacted – introducing the importance of relationshipmaking, reflexivity, and educator agency. The third part presents the post-COVID, future-making mobilization in the creation of new ideas – the Vision 2.0.

Vision 1.0: A New School with a Mission to “release the imagination and celebrate the art of the possible” Cambridge is a small city on the edge of the Fens in the East of England. It is home to its world-famous University. It has an international reputation for excellence. Over the last 50 years there has seen an “astonishing flowering of ideas in Cambridge, many generated in University departments and often in areas of information technology that have given rise to growth and economic prosperity in the city and the surrounding area” (Rallison & Gronn, 2016). What has come to be known as the “Cambridge Phenomenon” has in turn become a significant challenge for the University itself. Due to the historic city’s congestion, in order to maintain its high standards, the University realized that it needed to support the wider infrastructure of the city to make it a place of choice to live, work, and research. One area earmarked was the University farm to the northwest of the City center. This area is now called Eddington. The vision for the new development is set out on its website: The vision for Eddington is to create a place that is sustainable, long-lasting and ambitious, offering a high quality of life to enhance both the City and University of Cambridge. Eddington and the wider North West Cambridge Development seeks to secure the University’s long-term future and contribute to the City’s growth by providing homes for key workers, students and the public in a vibrant place to live. 1

His and other children mentioned herein have pseudonyms to ensure their anonymity.

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This development will ultimately include: • • • • • • • • • •

1500 homes for University and College staff 1500 private houses for sale Accommodation for 2000 postgraduates 100,000 sq./m of academic and research and development space of which up to 40% may be private research with University connection or Research Institutes Community facilities including the University of Cambridge Primary School, Storey’s Field Centre, health center, Sainsbury’s supermarket, and local shops A hotel A care village Sustainable transport provision including cycle ways Sports facilities and playing fields Public open spaces

(retrieved on 15 February 2022 from https://eddington-cambridge.co.uk/about-us/ our-vision-and-history). Key to the strategy was the opening of a primary school. The University of Cambridge Primary School is the first University Training School in the United Kingdom. What does this mean? And what is the unique quality of a training school linked with a University? In our application for approval to open, we stipulated four dimensions of the school in which, operating as a research center, it would: 1. undertake basic and applied educational research to facilitate the uptake of research-informed classroom-level and school-level practices, and 2. co-ordinate research by colleagues from academic units in Cambridge with specialist expertise and interests in enhancing the development and well-being of children, and, with the Faculty of Education and partner schools, it would: 3. facilitate the exchange and transfer of basic and applied research knowledge of education, to help build overall national capability for primary school improvement, and 4. provide a hub for teacher education programmes and dissemination of professional knowledge, to help shape national standards of teaching and learning practice. (Gronn, 2016: p. 52) The vision started with a loose design similar to John Dewey’s laboratory school in Chicago. However, the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School was not a training or practice school, and in respect of research, it functioned primarily as a center for the application of research, rather than the generation of it. The UCPS had a different purpose: stemming from its three-fold provision of nursery and primary school education (for children aged 4–11), its offering of teacher education

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classroom placements for trainee teachers and teacher professional learning, and its leadership in conduct of research. The notion of research informed education, where educators engage in research practices, inspired the concept. It was Maxine Greene’s “social imagination” (Greene, 1998) that focused on the school’s curriculum design. Throughout the process of opening and running the school, one burning questioned was asked again and again: what do we want our children to be like when they are forty years’ old (essentially what societies are we developing)? We realized that whatever the answer to that question was, we would need to work backward to identify and define the foundational steps upon which this longitudinal aspiration could be achieved (Coltman & Rolls, 2020). After many “soundings” with parents, teachers, the University researchers, and children, we settled on the concept of global compassionate citizens: people who were kind, had good knowledge and understanding, with a sense of criticality developed through dialogic pedagogies, and who would want to contribute to making their communities and world a better place. Innovators Professor Pamela Burnard and school leader Michelle Loughrey confirmed a vision in which creativities and open-hearted willingness to advance thinking and practice were key that: “educating children to be positive, healthy, engaged, active global citizens who are prepared for uncertainty has become more relevant because of the complex societal challenges of global health crises, climate change, disruptive geopolitical matters and increased inequalities” (Burnard & Loughrey, 2022: p. 3). Our thinking came from educational theorists because we wanted to frame our thinking in a robust way. We considered answers to the questions about the purpose of an education and, importantly, the value of a democratic education. Maxine Greene’s work especially resonated, bringing to light the responsibility of educators to find ways to re-position perspectives through an active engagement with open-space-making. In Releasing the Imagination (Greene, 1998), Greene advocates that teachers model the provocation to learners to pose their own questions and “name their worlds” (Greene, 1998, p. 58). She focuses on inclusion, asking big questions, considering alternatives, developing a mindset to release the possibilities inherent in the human imagination – to improve each child’s opportunities to enjoy a happy, connected, choice-rich, and contributing human life. Influenced by Maxine Greene, we desired a value-laden world, holding “faith onto learning as an act by which we have a stake in the wide horizon of human possibility” (Baldacchino, 2009: p. 57). We were also inspired by the first Learning without Limits study (Hart et al., 2004) and subsequent Creating Learning without Limits (Swann et al., 2012), realizing that principled action and leadership that can enable inclusive learning for all children and teachers. These principles aligned with those of the Cambridge Primary Review, the largest study into primary education in the United Kingdom since the 1960s and focused on the importance of developing: • Trust • Co-agency • An ethic of “everybody.”

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Creating Learning without Limits (Swann et al., 2012) identified seven key leadership dispositions for building an inclusive culture of challenge and success; in setting up the school, we created policies to inform practice that attended to these dispositions. In particular, the emphasis on dispositions that led to greater professional agency and learning were desired (Swann et al., 2012, p. 88): • • • • • • •

Openness to ideas, to possibilities, to surprise Questioning restlessness, humility Inventiveness creative responses to challenges Persistence courage, humility Emotional stability taking risks and resistance Generosity welcoming difference Empathy mutual supportiveness

We eventually defined our aims as founded on three pillars of ambition, innovation, and inclusion: • Ambitious: everyone will be encouraged and enabled to achieve and attain highly; • Innovative: the learning community will benefit from belonging to a research and teacher education community both within the school itself and as part of wider University and school partnerships; • Inclusive: diversity will be welcomed in a caring environment where everybody will be valued. Underpinning these core pillars, we settled on five values to determine not only what we would do in school but also how we would do it. We developed these five virtues or values that would guide our policies and approach to teaching and learning, behavior management, and various other practical matters. They were: • • • •

Empathy: listening carefully to others, learning together for the benefit of all; Respect: treating everyone with dignity; Trust: building relationships with a shared vision; Courage: developing resilience, determination, and releasing the imagination to develop possibility-thinking attitudes; • Gratitude: acknowledging one another with good manners, with thoughtfulness and consideration for each member of our community, and the contribution they make.

An Enabling Space: Relationships and Ethos As a new school, we were creating new spaces for learning; literally as we built the school infrastructure and metaphorically as we engaged in educational discussion within our school gates (Biddulph, 2016). In fact, we used metaphors throughout our

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discussions. For example, we invited our team to bring metaphors about spaces they remembered as key learning moments in their own lives or to consider images as metaphors for our work as a University training school. The notion of an enabling space arose from my doctorate study (Biddulph & Burnard, 2022) and the notion of possibility thinking (Burnard et al., 2010, 2016) from the field of creativities. Both indicated the necessary principles of trust, courage to take risks in learning and teaching and in seeing teachers as intellectuals who enquire and research their practice. Having defined our core purpose to nurture compassionate citizens, and from our review of the literature, we identified three “golden threads” or pedagogic tools to bind the curriculum together: Habits of Mind, Dialogue and Oracy and Playful Enquiry (Fig. 16.1). These “golden threads” then influenced the values-led, text-rich, and domainspecific structuring of curriculum knowledge and skills. The detail of each aspect

Fig. 16.1 The UCPS Curriculum Model 2020

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and how it related to pertinent research is shared on our website as are the outcomes for our children in weekly BLOGS (available at: universityprimaryschool.org.uk). Within a democratic education, we want to emphasize that learning is not a competition; we want children to strive and learn from mistakes. We want the values to be explicitly and implicitly taught within a democratic community. We want every voice to be valued and everyone empowered to be the best that he or she can be. Our view of democracy translated into the importance of collaboration (Biddulph et al., 2022) – so that together everyone achieves more. Importantly, we adhere to Greene’s view of the centrality of imagination in education that “without imagination, knowledge is not just stale and reduced to mere information, but virtually impossible. . .the imagination is that human ability with which women and men cope with unresolved tensions that characterize the relational dialectic where life finds meaning” (paraphrased in Baldacchino, 2009: p. 58). Moreover, Burnard and Loughrey (2022) further emphasize the creativities and imaginative possibilities that arise with a mindset that encourages questions of “what if?”, “what next?”, and “what else?”. Weaving these imaginative possibilities into our thinking, the school’s strapline evolved to be: Releasing the Imagination, Celebrating the Art of the Possible. Necessarily ambiguous, it aimed to spark dialogue about the meaning and purpose of our work and how education was enabled in our school.

Living the Values: Fostering Agency, Criticality, and Celebration In this section, I bring together examples of reflective voices from colleagues working at the school between 2019 and 2022. Furthermore, there are perhaps three aspects to highlight: the development of professional agency, creating cultures of criticality, and promoting opportunities to celebrate the art of the possible. During the 2020-2022 period of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we invited our whole team to write narratives, poetry, and reflections to identify what they did each day with the children in their care. We saw this as a unique opportunity to “step back” and look again on our practice as a stranger. The notion of “teacher as stranger” arises in Maxine Greene’s work. It is the interpretive sense of possibilities that can be developed when teachers look at their work as if they are a stranger: they are “questioner[s] and goad[s] to others, [as they] can become visible to [themselves] by doing philosophy. There are countless lives to be changed, worlds to be remade” (Greene, 1973, p. 298). To create a school culture that was value-laden, it was important to bring to the surface individual’s beliefs, sense of self, and purpose. Let me first introduce you to Mr. Jolyon Flutter and Ms. Kim Livermore. They are both Teaching Assistants in the school and work supporting individual children. Jolyon’s reflection starts with an explanation of his own personal beliefs and how his own expressed values align with the school values. The example emphasizes the vital importance of recruiting people with values that are commensurate with the organization’s values; as a starting principle, this was our approach: recruit for diversity but for shared values.

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Jolyon’s beliefs Much like how our world needs the elements of Wind, Water, Earth and Fire, my belief is that a school needs key elements of its own. Care. Commitment. Leadership. Without care, children would feel unimportant and would struggle to focus on their learning. Without commitment, where would the care come from? Without leadership, there would be no-one to guide children towards positive forms of behaviour or support them in their learning, as leadership and teaching always co-exist. This is why we bring these three keys together, and as we do so, the door to every child’s full potential is unlocked. I was once shown two pictures; one depicting a lifeless storage facility, and the other depicting a greenhouse filled with plants. In the facility, nothing grows, nothing springs to life, and nothing about the system ever changes. In the greenhouse, there is light, there is life but. . .there is also a roof, meaning that growth in a greenhouse has a limit. I imagine learning as an orchard filled with trees. Each tree can grow to be as tall as possible, and produce as many fruits as possible, so just as there is always more space for these trees to grow, so too must there always be room for our learners to grow. Growth takes many forms: physical developments, developing cognitive skills, and social and emotional developments. Through a combination of these developments, each learner creates their own path forwards, and we, the staff and parents, provide the tools that help to create these paths. These tools take the form of not only learning materials, but also positive, appropriate connections between the staff, parents and learners. Jolyon brings out his view of learning as organic, ever growing, and importantly diverse. In this he sees his role as guide for children to make steps on their own pathways. Similarly, Kim reflects on the importance of relationship-making in fostering values, that is, the values had to be lived and experienced, especially during the most challenging interactions between adult and child. Kim talks about trust, the gifts a child has, seeing learning as a journey including “ups and downs” and through the high-quality relationship-making, the importance of articulating the strengths of a child. Kim’s Reflections It is an absolute joy working with Johnny. It has taken a while to get to know him and for him to know and trust me. It has taken time and patience to build the trust and understanding that is now between us. For me to realise just how complex he can be, and that no one day or situation is the same. He has knowledge and gifts that make me smile, and he makes me feel I’m the lucky one to be able to be a part of his learning journey. I see the highs and the lows (continued)

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and I am swept along with him on his daily journeys through his learning and the challenges that this may bring. When he achieves it makes my heart swell, knowing sometimes the challenge this has taken to achieve this. He is such a kind and sensitive soul. The empathy and support he can show towards others when you least expect it is such a special joy to witness. Kim suggests that the opportunity to step back and reflect was an important professional development moment. She explains how reflecting on her practice gave an opportunity to see how far she had developed and inspired a future of further learning that was not based on arbitrary measures set by the government inspectorate, but was self-driven, motivating, and sustainable. Kim’s Reflections on her professional learning This case study has been a real reflective learning journey for me to reflect how far I have professionally come. It has also been thought provoking when writing this. Reflecting on my own practice and where I have learnt from mistakes that I have made on my journey so far has been uplifting. To also realise that the journey never ends and the boundaries are always changing within the school day. That improvements are constantly happening for the benefit of others and myself to improve the progress for myself and others. What is evident in both Jolyon and Kim’s reflections is their ability to “see the child” for who they are and what they can contribute. It is the “ethic of everybody” and a “growth mindset” which was a core theoretical principle upon which our work was developed (Hart et al., 2004). In Mr. Sam O’Dell and Mrs. Jo Drake’s (both Teaching Assistants) examples below, another aspect of the values being developed is through hearing and advocating for children’s voices; here, the adults present the voices of two children with complex Special Educational Needs – Sam and Jo help the children to be heard and seen. In the first, Sam introduces Violet in a sensitive and kind way; he shows his attention to her needs, trying to make sense of her world and trying to engage with her – and the joy when Violet connected with him by saying hello. Sam’s Poetic Response to working with Violet Violet and Me Hello! Good morning! How are you? Another decibel added to a cacophony. Hello! Good afternoon! How are you? Much too bright. Too much to see. (continued)

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Hello! Good Morning! How are you? Restless, rocking. Too Loud. Hello, Good afternoon, how are you? Scratch. Leave. Bite. Throw. Cry. Hello, good morning Tired. Not interested. Hello, good afternoon Sleep. Rested. Hello, good morning Angry. Too much. Frustrated. Hello, good afternoon Frustrated. Frustrated. ‘Hello’ Elated! Hello! Elated! Hello! Frustrated. Okay. . . ‘Open’ Jo also worked with a child with complex needs. Freddie has little verbal communication and lots of energy. Jo’s representation of working with Freddie is done through his eyes. In a poignant example, she suspends her beliefs, assumptions, and worries to consider how Freddie experiences the world. Her narrative was shared with Freddie’s family and other colleagues, who were invited to reimagine his learning capabilities, and this improved the ways that all adults engaged with him on his learning journey. Representing Freddie’s Voice One day some new ladies came to do some work with me. Well, I had other ideas. As far I was concerned, we would be doing ‘Twist, Twist, Squeeze’ – that was the only learning they had to get to grips with. I could teach them it for hours on end. Watching only, of course; I didn’t want to get my own hands cold and wet! The best part was, when the adults weren’t expecting it, I’d tip the whole bucket of water over their feet, or pelt them in the neck with the wet, foamy sponge. Now that was fun – the faces they pulled, especially on those really cold November mornings. I was quite content doing this all day, along with some rolling and sometimes a tiny bit of throwing. But they wanted more. I tried sitting at my workstation in the classroom. I tried really hard but I couldn’t resist hurling the odd rubber banana into the rows of sitting children (continued)

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and I just loved the noise when I swiped everything on to the floor (even better if it bounced of the window). It was just too tempting, so many people that I had to say hello to, and who can refuse a game of ‘Duck, Duck, Goose’ during maths input anyway? Then one day I was doing my thing in the library, just mooching really and trying to rearrange the books my way, when I became interested in the big cardboard letters. I pointed them out and told my adult it was an ‘o’. She looked really pleased with me and asked me what the other letters were. I told her ‘b’ and ‘k’. (I’m a bit surprised that she didn’t already know that!). Then, before I knew what was happening, I was frog matched to the classroom and shown some more letters. I did know some but after practising a few every day I soon knew nearly all of them, most of the time. I liked it when my friends joined me for this too. Sometimes they would go first and help me and sometimes I’d go first and help them. Soon, she put three of these letters together and said the sounds. I think she needed my help so I told her it said ‘dog’. I reckon she was delighted that I’d helped her because she gave me some more to help her with. Well, that was all over a year ago and I like to do lots of wonderful things now. That said, don’t get too comfy sitting there reading this. I’ll be off soon. . .and you’d better keep up. Keeping up with Freddie is an exhilarating and tiring task. However, Jo’s narrative brings to light the central tenor of the school’s vision: that it is all about relationships. More so, it is through nurturing compassionate relationships that we can begin to consider what is needed for each child, as best we can in the complexity of a large class cohort. These types of narrative evidence a mindset that is open to possibilities; in sharing these with the wider team, it constructed a new dialogue that reduced the judgment or deficit-thinking that can arise when educators become stuck and unsure what to do to support a child or group of children. In the final example, Aimee Durning (Director of Inclusion and Community) describes how the values inherent in the leadership of the school translated into empowered professional agency. Aimee’s Reflections: giving time and space to enable access Working and supporting vulnerable learning in a school where relationships are considered important has been refreshing to say the least. Refreshing for me as an educator, who in the past, due to ability setting of children, was directed to support children who were most able to succeed in education rather than those who could not. It felt an upside way of working! (continued)

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Fortunately, I joined the UCPS team when the school first opened its doors in 2015. Creating compassionate futures applied to the educators as well as the children. Our values-led pedagogy would be tested on occasions as we met children with difficult starts in life. Could this new university school nurture, protect and educate children, when other schools had deemed them unsuitable for mainstream academia? The answer is yes. With a value-based approach to individual children, barriers could be identified and removed. For Tom (who started this chapter), he had lost all trust of the adults around him and felt that no one understood him. He was worn out with numerous ‘time-outs’ which he had endured and was desperate to explain to anyone who would listen that he felt he didn’t belong. He lacked connection, not only to the adults around him but also his peers. He would often slump in our headteacher’s office, willingly bringing himself there, and say: “it’s just not fair, they don’t get me”. I saw our headteacher listen and not judge. There was no mad rush to get him out of the office and back to class. Dr Biddulph said, “stay with him, be present, give him space, let him do what he needs to do to trust us and just show him how much we like and love him here. He will believe us one day and will flourish.” It was amazing to see him grow from a boy who would not change out of his wellington boots, to an articulate young man who was inspiring our headteacher to write books! Another child. Jeremy, aged 7. Jeremy came to us on a sunny day in June. I remember it well. UCPS was his third school and it was considered that this would be his last chance in mainstream education. For Jeremy the space was enabled because of the emphasis on relationship making from a psychological and trauma informed understanding. The educators spent time listening to him, not only his voice and what he said (which did not always make much sense) but also to his actions, his movements, his interactions. I remember one time when the headteacher and I had set up a session in his office to which Jeremy would attend: Jeremy came and sat on a high shelf by the window, refusing to come down. The headteacher and I continued to play with the clay, talking as we went along, explaining how the school worked and the values of kindness and respect. He ignored us. He listened to every word. It took months for him to begin to trust us. What felt different at UCPS compared with other places I have worked is that the team reflected on what these children needed to thrive and survive so that they could then transition to periods of formal learning. For both children they required a period, of what some may call informal learning. Lots of play and dialogue to enable both children to understand what made us tick as educators and what our hopes were. Once trust was established the children began to flourish and began to feel that they were included and that they belonged.

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In these examples, I hope to illustrate the school culture of optimism and compassionate citizenship. Importantly, they craft a new narrative about children and the educating of them. The world is full of stories; they are powerful and essential characteristics of human societies. Educators have a unique chance to tell stories about ourselves and our communities. With a culture of reflexivity, the stories we share in staff rooms and in our dialogic practice can “present our trials and tribulations through yarns that weave together the past, the present and our interpretative hopes for the future; to create memories and to confirm our place on the earth: stories circulate endlessly, sometimes within small networks of friends and family, sometimes they travel over long distances and assume socially significant proportions” (Biddulph & Burnard, 2022: p. 45). The story crafting brings new insights, disruptions, or revelations. It is a starting point to consider “what if?”, “what next?”, and “what else?”

Vision 2.0: Educational Possibilities – An Imperative for Hope and Sustainable Education These very questions arose in our fourth year of operating. During 2020-2023, the world suffered from a pandemic leaving the world in crisis. Increasingly humanity is considered to be at risk. And it became evident that our 7.7 billion world population was confronted with three existential uncertainties: to the survival of planet earth, to cohesive societies because of the social and economic impact of expanding inequalities and uncertainties about individual’s sense of purpose and meaning. In 2021, the United Nations published its bleak report: A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. Human influence has likely increased the chance of compound extreme events since the 1950s. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the findings a “code red for humanity.” (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, August 2021) Questions about the purpose of education arose again. Given that children joining schools now will be retiring at the turn of the next century, these uncertainties will impact considerably on children and young people. In a personal diary entry, I wrote: James’ Reflection on his worries for children The forces for change – if we are indeed clear what these are to be - are held back by technocratic and unimaginative responses to the challenges with which we are faced. It seems that the governments look to the past to answer questions of the present – let alone consider what the future might need. As a (continued)

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primary school that is research informed, we question whether our education systems are fit for the future-making preparedness needed to reimagine, reinvent and reinvigorate our response-ability to the challenges that will arise – those known and unknown. The system encourages the status quo. The world requires a revolution of the social imagination through education. If our values of empathy, respect, trust, courage and gratitude mean anything, do I need to be more bold and with my team to build – sculpt – create – design new possibilities – or rather to make new realities in our curriculum and pedagogy? It became a leitmotif of our thinking that we needed to do something different – to be courageous and more trustful in the strength of hopeful narratives within contexts that look so bleak and tragic. It is through transdisciplinary action, across society and especially in education, “the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficit society” (Greene, 1998: p. 20) that we saw to be essential. This is social imagination – not just a concept but in action. Our Vision 2.0 brings to view the second yet key aspect of the values-led vision of the school: to create new knowledge about primary education through being research generating. And it was from this seed-thought (and Tom’s call to change) came the idea of a research center. The Centre for Educational Possibilities will be a hub for expanding ideas about curriculum, pedagogy, and children’s agency. More particularly, the center will research for new knowledges, skills, and pedagogies that will be needed to create new curricula and resources for global educators. It will be a transdisciplinary center, hosted in Cambridge, but nurturing active relationships across the globe. It will be international. The key question that the center will seek to answer is: How do we educate children so that they are equipped to respond to uncertain and critical futures? Currently, governments’ policies do not address this question; there is no systematic response. With a compelling view, shared by large research organizations like the OECD, that we are not educating children to be future-makers well enough nor are we preparing children for an uncertain future, the center aspires to build networks of networks, mobilize diverse knowledge, and co-create new ideas. When we have secured the additional funding needed to expand the potentials of such a center, its research activities will include (1) collating a detailed knowledge-rich understanding of the risks associated with climate change, social mobility, health and wellness, democracies, and communities from transdisciplinary knowledge domains. Teachers across the globe need this knowledge, disseminated in practical and meaningful ways to enable change of mindsets and changes in practices in classrooms. (2) Academics and practitioners working collaboratively to create knowledge and skill curricula content and associated resources. (3) The center will host a repository of practitioner-wisdom resources including examples of lesson planning, curriculum design, resources, and successful pedagogic approaches from across the globe. This will be hosted on an innovative online platform open to all. Alongside this,

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professional development and training will be developed, using the benefits of better online university platforms, so that we have a global reach and relevance. We have always promoted values in education, taught explicitly, and lived out implicitly. Given the challenges with which the world and humanity are faced, surely it is a fundamental duty for educators to ask bigger, bolder, and better questions. Questions about our purpose as educators, the positions our schools have in propagating greater community endeavor to resolve the problems of the age and continuation to seek answers for what we hope our children’s futures to be. This is perhaps how a valued-led organization needs to be: curious, open, and relational. With thanks to Jo Drake, Kim Livermore, Sam O’Dell, Aimee Durning, and Jolyon Flutter for their invaluable contributions and insightful reflections.

References Baldacchino, J. (2009). Education beyond education: self and the imaginary in Maxine Greene’s philosophy. Peter Lang. Biddulph, J. (2016). Releasing the imagination: Celebrating the art of the possible. In P. Gronn & J. Biddulph (Eds.), A University’s challenge: A school for the nation. Cambridge University Press. Biddulph, J., & Burnard, P. (2022). Storying the journey to new spaces of intercultural creative learning. In P. Burnard & M. Loughrey (Eds.), Unlocking research: Sculpting new creativities in primary education. Routledge. Biddulph, J., Flutter, J., & Rolls, L. (2022). Unlocking research: New democratic voices in primary education. Routledge. Burnard, P., & Loughrey, M. (2022). Creativities of change. In P. Burnard & M. Loughrey (Eds.), Unlocking research: Sculpting new creativities in primary education. Routledge. Burnard, P., Kelly, E., & Biddulph, J. (2010). Mapping the creative journeying in practitioner research. In M. Khine & I. Saleh (Eds.), Practitioner research: Teachers’ investigations in classroom teaching (pp. 1–15). NovaScience Publishers. Burnard, P., MacKinlay, E., & Powell, K. (2016). The Routledge international handbook of intercultural arts research. Routledge. Coltman, P., & Rolls, L. (2020). ‘Nurturing compassionate citizens of the future: Weaving together pedagogy and curriculum’ in Biddulph J & Flutter J (2020) Unlocking Research: Inspiring Primary Curriculum Design, Abingdon, Routledge. Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as Stranger. Educational philosophy for the modern age. Wadsworth Publishing. Greene, M. (1998). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts and social change. Jossey-Bass. Gronn, P. (2016). Becoming a free school. In P. Gronn & J. Biddulph (Eds.), A University’s challenge: a school for the nation. Cambridge University Press. Hart, S., Drummond, M. J., Dixon, A., & McIntyre, D. (2004). Learning without limits. Open University Press. IPCC Digital source The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, August 2021, Retrieved 15 April 2022. https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/ Rallison, J., & Gronn, P. (2016). Introduction. In P. Gronn & J. Biddulph (Eds.), A University’s challenge: A school for the nation. Cambridge University Press. Swann, M., Peacock, A., Hart, S., & Drummond, M. (2012). Creating learning without limits. Open University Press.

The Positive Action Program

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Improving Academics, Behavior, and Character by Teaching Comprehensive Skills for Successful Learning and Living

Brian R. Flay, Carol G. Allred, Kendra M. Lewis, Niloofar Bavarian, and Meagan Haynes Brian R. Flay was with Oregon State University at the time of the first edition of this chapter. He was with Boise State University at the time of his passing in 2021. This chapter is dedicated to his memory.

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Need for Comprehensive “Skills for Successful Learning and Living” (SSLL) Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Positive Action Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prior Evaluations of Positive Action Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of Evaluation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Promising Research Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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B. R. Flay Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA C. G. Allred Positive Action, Inc., Twin Falls, ID, USA K. M. Lewis (*) University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA e-mail: [email protected] N. Bavarian California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA M. Haynes Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_17

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Abstract

The Positive Action (PA) program was developed and revised by Carol Gerber Allred from 1977 to the present using continuous process monitoring and evaluation. It consists of training and materials for schools, families, and communities, and its content is based on three core elements – a philosophy, the thoughts–actions–feelings circle, and six content units. The chapter will outline research applied to the program. Keywords

Positive Action · Academic Improvement · Behavior · Character · Successful Learning and Living

Introduction Academics, Behavior, and Character – these are the ABCs that can shape students during childhood and throughout their entire lives. One method of promoting these ABCs successfully is to teach comprehensive Skills for Successful Learning and Living (SSLL) – and one proven program that does that is the Positive Action program. In this chapter, we will discuss the need for SSLL programs and their potential impact, describe the Positive Action program, summarize the results of multiple evaluations of the program, and discuss future research needs on SSLL programs.

The Need for Comprehensive “Skills for Successful Learning and Living” (SSLL) Programs A multitude of existing school-based programs seeking to impact youth outcomes has been limited in scope and has lacked sustained program effects (e.g., Flay, 2002; Flay & Petraitis, 1994; Flay et al., 2009; Petraitis et al., 1995; Power, 2003). Fortunately, there has been a needed transition to more comprehensive, multimodal, and multi-level programs that address multiple behaviors and that involve families; and these generally appear to be more effective as compared to programs that are narrower in nature and problem-specific (Battistich et al., 2000; Catalano et al., 2004; Derzon et al., 1999; Elias et al., 1991; Flay, 2000; Flay et al., 2004; Hawkins et al., 1992, 1999; Kellam & Anthony, 1998; Lerner, 2002). The best SSLL programs use direct instruction and interactive approaches that are holistic, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive to teach students values and skills, to be intrinsically motivated, to have good physical health, learn effectively in school and life, make responsible decisions, solve problems effectively, recognize and manage their emotions and other personal resources, appreciate the perspectives of others (e.g., empathy, tolerance), handle interpersonal situations effectively, be

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honest with themselves and others, establish positive goals, and engage in selfimprovement. Most behavioral management (DuBois, 1996; DuPaul & Stoner, 2004; Kazdin, 2001; Kellam et al., 1994; Sprague & Golly, 2005; Sprague et al., 1999; Sugai et al., 2000), social and character development (Althof & Berkowitz, 2006; Berkowitz & Battistich, 2008; Berkowitz & Bier, 2004; Lickona, 1993), social and emotional learning (Brown et al., 2004; Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, 2003; Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000; Payton et al., 2000), and positive youth development programs (Catalano et al., 2004; Lerner et al., 2003, 2005) are manifestations of SSLL. Others have recently written about the links of Positive Youth Development (PYD) to Character Education (CE; Catalano et al., 2008) and the complimentary nature of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and CE (Elias et al., 2008). We believe that the Positive Action program (Flay, 2002; Flay & Allred, 2003; Flay et al., 2001) incorporates all the best aspects of all three of these major approaches to social–emotional and character development (SECD) and is, therefore, one of the most complete manifestations of SSLL. Evaluations of SSLL-like programs suggest that they have considerable promise for promoting positive student outcomes. They also show potential to enhance students’ connection to school through caring and engaging classroom and school practices (McNeely et al., 2002; Osterman, 2000), and they appear to be costeffective (Aos, et al., 2004). Theoretically, it is expected that (a) learning SSLL is similar to learning other skills (i.e., initial learning can be enhanced over time if children are reinforced in applying the skills to increasingly complex situations regarding health, social relationships, and academics), and (b) learning and skill acquisition are best accomplished through a combination of direct instruction, interactive approaches, and engagement in positive activities (Henderson et al., 2002; Pittman et al., 2001; Skinner et al., 2009; Tobler et al., 2000), also characterized as sequenced, active, focused, and explicit (SAFE; Durlak & Weissberg, 2007). Evaluations of the PA program have been consistent with findings from additional SSLL-like programs; findings, therefore, have implications for policymakers, school administrators, and communities aiming to identify and support programs with proven efficacy for improving academics, behavior, and character outcomes.

The Positive Action Program The Positive Action (PA) program was developed and revised by Carol Gerber Allred from 1977 to the present using continuous process monitoring and evaluation. It consists of training and materials for schools, families, and communities, and its content is based on three core elements – a philosophy, the thoughts–actions–feelings circle, and six content units. The PA program consists of a PreK-12 classroom curriculum, kits for school preparation and teacher training, school-wide climate development, a counselors kit, and parent and community involvement manuals. PA uses research-supported strategies and methods of education and behavior change, such as active learning, positive classroom management,

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social–emotional–behavioral and learning skills development, role-play, a detailed curriculum with almost daily lessons, school-wide reinforcement of positive behaviors, intrinsic motivation, and family and community involvement. The first core element of the program is the Positive Action philosophy, which is grounded in a broad theory of self-concept (Combs, 1962; Purkey, 1970; Purkey & Novak, 1970). This theory posits that people determine their self-concepts by what they do; that actions, more than thoughts or feelings, determine self-concept; and that making positive and healthy behavioral choices result in feelings of self-worth/ esteem. In accordance with recent theory and supporting research in “Positive Psychology” (Fredrickson, 2000; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), the program also assumes that when people feel positive about themselves, they will, in a reflexive manner, have more positive thoughts and engage in more positive behavior. This can be compared to the ABCD (affective–behavioral–cognitive–dynamic) model of Greenberg and Kusché’s PATHS program (Kam et al., 2004). Positive emotions about self also may prove a superior method for regulating and mitigating negative emotions and their ill effects on self-control (Fredrickson, 2000, 2001; Izard, 1977; Lazarus, 1991). The second core component of the program is the “Thoughts–Actions–Feelings about self” circle (Fig. 17.1). The content of the classroom curriculum, and all other components of the program, is based on the intuitive idea that “You feel good about yourself when you do positive actions and there is always a positive way to do everything.” The “Thoughts–Actions–Feelings about self” circle illustrates this selfreinforcing process that is taught to students; showing them that thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to feelings about self, and feelings about self lead to more thoughts. Values are the key to everything we want to achieve. If we can get students to value being good, achieving, and contributing, then that is what they will be and do. PA helps them do this by understanding that when they do good things, they feel good about themselves. An important aspect of the TAF circle is whether there is a plus or a minus sign in the center that exemplifies good/right vs. bad/wrong. The way to achieve our educational goals is to help students come to value positive actions and to motivate them to engage in positive behaviors by understanding that they feel good about themselves when they do so. Cycles of positive or negative actions become habits, habits then become character, and character becomes destiny. As US theologian Tryon Edwards (1959) suggests, thoughts lead on to purposes, purposes Fig. 17.1 The Thoughts–Action–Feelings about Self Circle

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go forth in action, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character ultimately fixes our destiny. The aim of PA is to get everyone into the positive cycle by making positive choices consciously; this is intrinsically motivated change, where people choose to do positive actions to feel good about themselves. Research strongly suggests that intrinsically motivated learning and behavior change are more likely to be sustained than extrinsically motivated learning or behavior change (Deci, 2009; Deci et al., 1999, 2001; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gottfried et al., 2009; Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2006). Indeed, this process of change, involving teachers, students, other school staff, parents, and community members, allows participants to feel good about the change and about their involvement in it, an approach also found to be effective in largescale school reform (Deci, 2009). The third core component of the program is the actual content. The program teaches specific positive actions for the whole self: the physical, intellectual, social, and emotional areas. The content of all program components is taught through six units: • Unit 1. Self-Concept: What it is, how it is formed, and why it is important (the PA philosophy and circle). • Unit 2. Positive actions for body (physical) and mind (intellectual). For example, nutrition (including not using harmful substances), exercise, sleep, hygiene, motivation to learn, thinking skills, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, curiosity, and study skills. • Unit 3. Social and emotional positive actions for managing yourself responsibly. For example, self-management, self-control, managing personal resources like time, talent, energy, thoughts, actions, feelings, money, and possessions. • Unit 4. Social and emotional positive actions for getting along with others by treating them the way you like to be treated. For example, with respect, empathy, kindness, fairness, cooperation. • Unit 5. Social and emotional positive actions for being honest with yourself and others. For example, taking responsibility for telling self and others the truth, admitting mistakes, not blaming others or rationalizing, doing what you say you will do, knowing your strengths and weaknesses. • Unit 6. Social and emotional positive actions for improving yourself continually. For example, setting and achieving goals, believing in potential, having the courage to try, turning problems into opportunities, persisting, and broadening horizons. Together, these make up the comprehensive set of skills for successful learning and living (SSLL). The program trains teachers and parents to identify, teach, and reinforce positive thoughts, actions, and feelings about themselves by students and others in the school, leading to continual reinforcement of positive actions and enhanced student bonding with parents and school, consistent with multiple social learning theories (Akers, 1977, 1998; Bandura, 1977, 1986) and other theories about and approaches to social development, health promotion, self-esteem, and

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prevention of unhealthy behaviors (DuBois et al., 2009; Flay & Petraitis, 1994; Flay et al., 2009; Hawkins & Weis, 1985; Peters & McMahon, 1996). Research supports the program’s focus on positive emotions and actions, showing, for example, that children who display empathy and sympathy and are sensitive to the well-being of others, also act pro-socially in other respects, even altruistically (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998; Izard et al., 2000). Self-consistency becomes moral when our understanding and reasoning about social issues/problems becomes related to our feelings about ourselves and motivations to act responsibly; when we intend to do right (Blasi, 2004; Higgins-D’Alessandro & Power, 2005). This broad-based approach engages students because the topic is about their selfempowerment – who they are, who they can become, and how they can be someone admirable. By building in relevance, PA provides a foundation of strong, proactive behavior, character development, and academic achievement (see Box 17.1). Students gain social and emotional maturity and sound decision-making skills – aspects of a positive character that easily translate into active citizenship. Box 17.1 The New Essential ABC’s: Academics, Behavior, and Character

How Positive Action Works for Academics: Positive Action creates an intellectually stimulating learning environment and helps students retain academic lessons by applying them to real-life situations. The lessons also inspire students to value learning and education and to engage in setting personal goals for a happy and successful life. Thus, disciplinary referrals and dropout rates decline and graduation rates improve. A counselor at a California middle school reported that Positive Action lessons and academic subjects are a powerful combination. “The student-teacher connection deepens,” she said. “Positive Action gives a platform to address behavior and give positive feedback, and allows teachers to tie academic content into the lessons.” How Positive Action Works for Behavior: Positive Action is an effective tool for teachers to use for behavior management. By teaching the Thoughts–Actions–Feelings Circle, students become empowered to take control of their behavior in an intentional and deliberate way. Traditionally, educators focus on the act itself without considering the thought that precedes the action and the relationship of the act to the feeling you get about yourself that follows. Once students understand the role and importance of all three parts of the circle – thoughts, actions, and feelings about self – they become skilled and motivated managers of themselves, freeing the teacher to focus on academics. How Positive Action Works for Character: The Thoughts–Actions–Feelings Circle also helps students develop a positive character by teaching how important their values are to all aspects of their lives – including education. When you add positive (right or good) or negative (wrong or bad) to the circle, you are adding values to the behavior process. If you value positive (continued)

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Box 17.1 (continued)

actions, you do them; if you do not value positive actions, you do negative actions. The goal is to help students value positive actions, like learning to achieve academically and becoming a good person, so that they can achieve success and happiness – or feel good about who they are, how they treat others, and what they are doing with their lives.

As discussed earlier, broad and long-term effectiveness in improving both school performance and other desired student outcomes requires addressing more distal influences on behavior in a holistic way. The PA program attempts this with a holistic approach to school reorganization, teacher–student relations, parent and community involvement, instructional practices, and development of the self-concept of all parties (students, teachers, parents, and community members). The goal is for students and adults to gain not only the knowledge, attitudes, norms, and skills that they might gain from other programs, but also improved values, self-concept, family bonding, peer selection, communication, and appreciation of school. PA is designed to affect more distal (and more fundamentally influential) influences on school climate and student behavior and performance. The expected result is improvement in a broad range of behaviors (both negative and positive), emotional well-being, and school performance. Figure 17.2 presents a logic/theoretic model for the PA program when delivered in schools. PA lessons are taught in the classroom by the teacher. The lessons are divided into six units (outlined above), and each unit takes approximately 6 weeks to complete. Lessons are age-appropriate and interactive. Lessons for younger students (K-6) are taught for approximately 15 min/day, 4 days per week. For older youth, lessons are longer in time but less frequent during the week (2–3 days for 15–20 min). The school climate component leads to changes in school-wide activities such as reinforcement and recognition of positive behavior and character attributes demonstrated by students, as well as assemblies and other events that focus on SSLL. The family involvement component leads to changes in opportunities for family involvement with the school focused on SSLL, as well as positive increases in the discussion and utilization of SSLL principles in school–parent and parent–child relations. The teacher/staff training promotes more effective implementation of classroom curriculum and contributes to greater integration of SSLL activities, materials, and concepts into classroom management and instructional strategies as well as parent–teacher relations. The classroom curriculum contributes to greater amounts and quality of dedicated classroom instruction in SSLL knowledge and skills in areas that are the focus of the six units of PA. Implementation of the program components and, thus, effects on SSLL activities in the school, is moderated by school/administrator, teacher/staff, and family characteristics. Enhanced SSLL, in turn, impacts student social and character development and supportive attitudes and skills both directly and through improvements in relevant facets of the school and classroom environment for ease of exposition and

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Fig. 17.2 Logic/Theoretic model of the effects of the Positive Action program

presentation, we include effects involving families under school climate). Child and family characteristics moderate the strength and pattern of these impacts of SSLL activities. Improvements in student social and character development and supportive areas then yield both reductions in student behavioral and emotional problems and gains in school attendance, grades, and test scores, with impacts in these two domains mutually facilitating one another.

Prior Evaluations of Positive Action Programs Many schools and districts around the world have experienced success with the “Positive Action Program.” See Box 17.2 for one anecdote. Proof of effectiveness requires more than anecdotes and, fortunately, PA has been researched and evaluated in many different kinds of schools by the program’s developer, school districts, and third-party evaluators.

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Box 17.2 Positive Action ® Success Stories in New Jersey

Glassboro Intermediate School set a goal for the 2017–18 school year to reduce their discipline referrals by 10%. After receiving final data for the year, they were thrilled to see referrals had dropped from 750 in 2016–2017 to 350 during 2017–18 – a 53% reduction! During a mid-year visit to the school, a counselor shared an event that is all too common in school lunchrooms...except for the ending... “In the morning, all of the students gather in the lunchroom for breakfast as the buses arrive. One recent morning, one student who has many challenges decided to attack another student that she believed had insulted her. She walked into the lunchroom, stripped off her coat, balled up her fists and started across the lunchroom toward this much smaller seventh grade boy. However, before she reached him, the other students formed a wall to protect him. Generally, in middle school, you would expect the students to form a ring around the two to watch the fight, shouting encouragement like, ‘Fight! Fight!’ Forming a ring to protect the student was totally unexpected.” In disbelief of what she saw, the counselor later reviewed the lunchroom video. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I don’t know if it’s a result of Positive Action, but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain it.” – Glassboro Intermediate School, Glassboro, New Jersey “Out of 571 students enrolled, from September 2017 to present day of January 9, 2018, 423 of our students have not received any discipline incident reports (74% of the student population). During the same period, student attendance was at 94% as well. A huge drop of discipline infractions. A total of 4 out-of-school suspensions is a major strive towards our discipline endeavors and keeping our students engaged in school instruction. Sports season has officially begun for our middle school students. Our coaches and teachers have developed a communication to keep our students on their toes when it comes to their grades and behavior patterns. Several students were behind multiple weeks ago, but have since developed a core strategy with their teachers to maintain the request of our coaches, which is ‘Student First, Athlete Second.’” – Excerpt from Fairfield Township School District’s “Positive Elements to Note,” Fairfield Township School District, Bridgeton, New Jersey, January 2018 “A special education teacher in the autism program at Spencer Miller Community School shared comments from one of her former Kindergarten students who rarely communicates with staff or classmates: One of my Kindergarten students from last year saw me in the hall the other day. She gave me a big smile, ran up to give me a hug and said, ‘Good Morning, (continued)

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Box 17.2 (continued)

Ms. Wardle!’ I was so proud of her making an appropriate greeting. She then looked at my Positive Action badge, pointed at it and said, ‘No, no, no!’ I looked down and it had the negative side showing. She turned it around and said, ‘Be happy!’ The school also reported a reduction in Office Conduct Referrals by 58% and Suspensions by 75% between the 2017–18 and 2018–19 school years for EOC 1.” – Spencer Miller Community School, Newark, New Jersey “Today when my 7th class was asked what they had learned about Positive Action or how they can make positive choices, these were some student responses: ‘I can help people to make them feel good, like helping my neighbor every summer with her garden.’ ‘I can help my mom carry in the groceries, because if I act positively then my mom will feel positive.’ ‘You don’t have to help a person, you can help your community by picking up trash. Helping my community would make me feel good and the community would be happy too!’” – 7th grade teacher, Spencer Miller Community School, Newark, New Jersey During the late 1990s, the first two authors collaborated to conduct matchedcontrol group studies on archival data from three school districts that used the PA program during the 1990s (Flay & Allred, 2003; Flay et al., 2001). For two school districts in Hawai’i and Nevada, we used School Report Card (SRC) data on poverty and mobility to pair each PA school with the best-matched schools with similar ethnic distribution (Flay et al., 2001). Analyses of school-level data in Nevada found that PA schools scored 16% better than non-PA schools in their percentile ranking of 4th-grade achievement scores; reported 85% fewer incidences of violence; and reported 4.5% lower rates of absenteeism. All of these differences were statistically significant and equal in schools with high vs. low minority populations and mobility. We found similar results using the matched data from Hawai’i (Flay et al., 2001). In subsequent research with a large Southeastern school district, we expanded the variables on which PA and non-PA schools were matched to include outcome variables (achievement) assessed before the introduction of PA (Table 2 in Flay & Allred, 2003). Findings were very similar to those reported from Nevada & Hawai’i – for example, 45% improvement in Florida Reading Test scores and 68% reduction in violence-related disciplinary referrals (Table 3 in Flay & Allred, 2003). Hawai’i Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). With support from NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse, the first author and his colleagues conducted a school-based randomized trial of the PA program in 20 K-5 schools in Hawai’i. Using SRC data, we stratified the eligible schools into strata ranked on a “risk score” comprised from multiple demographic variables, characteristics of the school, and indicators of

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student behavioral and performance outcomes. We randomly selected schools from within strata and randomly assigned them to program or control conditions before recruitment. The study sample consisted of two cohorts of students (Grades 1 and 2 at pretest in 2000–2001 through to Grades 5 and 6 by the wave 5 follow-up in 2004–2005), their parents, their teachers each year of the study, and all other teachers and staff in project schools. In the spring of each year, we surveyed the two cohorts of students and their teachers and parents, and all other teachers in all study schools. We also asked teachers of cohort students in both PA and control schools to rate the behavior of their students on approximately 70 behavioral items. We did not follow students who left project schools and we added students who entered project schools during the study. The program developer (C.G. Allred) and the local PA Implementation Coordinator provided annual teacher and staff training to each school in the program condition – 1 day in the first year, and a half day in subsequent years. In addition, we provided support for teachers and staff during the entire study period through individual consultation with the PA Implementation Coordinator. This person also provided regular consultation with Principals to ensure that the PA curriculum and other program components were implemented in adherence to the guidelines established by the program developer. Finally, to enhance implementation fidelity, we brought school leaders and selected teachers from all PA schools together for a workshop each year to share experiences and learn from the developer and each other. There was variability between schools on a range of implementation indices, especially in Year 1, with improvements over time. By Years 3 and 4, two schools were implementing at a low level, three at a moderate-to-high level, and five at a high level. Through interviews of school leaders and systematic observation of classrooms and schools, we found that control schools reported implementing an average of 10.2 SSLL programs compared with 4.2 – in addition to PA – in the program schools. Teachers in control schools spent an average of 108 min/week on SSLLrelated activities. PA school teachers spent the expected amount of time on PA (55.1 min/week), yet, overall they still spent only 35 min/week more on SSLLrelated activities than teachers in control schools. Control schools reported that teachers were involved in SSLL-related activities for an average of 24 weeks per school year. In contrast, teachers in PA schools reported delivering PA almost every week of the school year as well as being involved in other SSLL-related activities for 25 weeks/year. Both PA and control school teachers reported receiving training to implement approximately half of the SSLL-related programs (52.3% and 53.3%, respectively) that they reported implementing other than PA (100% trained). The school district conducts School Quality Surveys (SQS) of students, teachers, and parents every 2 years and makes the data available at the school level. Parents, students, and teachers all reported improvements on indicators of school quality, such as student safety and well-being, quality student support, and coordinated team work, among other indicators (ESs 0.23–1.08; Flay et al., 2006). Additional improvements in indicators of school quality have also been reported in the Hawaii trail (Snyder et al., 2012). In addition to these school quality outcomes, indicators of

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student academics (e.g., academic achievement, attendance, and suspension; Snyder et al., 2009), behavior (e.g., substance use, violence, and sexual activity; Beets et al., 2009; Snyder et al., 2013), and character (SECD; Washburn et al., 2011) improved among PA students as compared to students in control schools. Chicago RCT. The Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education sponsored the Social and Character Development (SACD) cooperative agreement, and Chicago was selected as one of seven sites nationwide evaluating the effects of seven different school-based interventions designed to promote children’s social and character development using a matched-pair, school-based, randomized controlled trial. Similar procedures to those used in Hawai’i were used to select, match, and randomly assign schools to conditions (Ji et al., 2008; Lewis et al., 2017). University of Illinois (UIC) and Oregon State University (OSU) investigators/staff collected data in 14 K-8 Chicago Public Schools (seven PA schools and seven control schools) beginning in September 2004, and continuing through June 2010. The data collection instruments used to assess program impact included multi-site surveys (administered by the multi-site contractor, Mathematic Policy Research [MPR]) given to children, parents, teachers, and school administrators at all sites, along with site-specific (administered by local staff) surveys of students more aligned with proximal outcomes of PA. We followed one cohort of students (N ~ 600) – those in Grade 3 in the 2004–2005 school year – surveyed at baseline (fall 2004) and in subsequent waves over a six-year-period (spring 2005, fall 2005, spring 2006, and spring 2007, fall 2008, spring 2009, spring 2010). Training and technical support were similar to those provided in Hawai’i. To enhance implementation fidelity, we held a workshop with cohort student teachers each year. As with the Hawai’i study, we assessed program implementation with multiple instruments. Similar to the Hawai’i study, there was variability between schools in all of the above implementation indices, especially in Year 1, with improvements over time. By the end of Year 6, one school was implementing at a moderate level, three at a moderate-to-high level, and three at high levels (JarpeRatner et al., 2013). From these two trials, we have learned that it takes much more time for many low-performing schools to fully adopt and implement a comprehensive program. Along with other comprehensive program developers and researchers (e.g., Schaps, Slavin), we believe that similar schools may need 3–7 years to fully adopt and implement a comprehensive program. At each wave, students were surveyed using both the multi-site and site-specific surveys. Active parental consent was required for all aspects of the Chicago study and we have published two papers on our methods for obtaining a high return rate (Ji et al., 2006; Lewis et al., 2017). We also asked teachers of cohort students to complete behavior checklists on each student in the cohort, asked parents/guardians of the cohort students to complete a survey on their children’s behavior, and surveyed the 3rd- to 8th-grade teachers and Principals in all 14 schools regarding issues such as school climate, instructional practices, and implementation of SSLLrelated programs. We also conducted extensive assessments of program implementation, as discussed in the previous section. Along with student, parent, and teacher

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surveys, we collected data from school records on attendance, disciplinary incidents, and achievement at the school level. MPR conducted analyses on the impact of programs on teachers’ reports of using materials and strategies in their classrooms to promote social and character development goals. Importantly, these analyses showed that teachers in PA schools were significantly more likely than control teachers to report using programs and materials to promote social and character development although control teachers also reported substantial use (Social and Character Development Research Consortium, 2010). For example, PA teachers were more likely than control teachers to report that they engaged in activities for at least 1 h/week to promote violence prevention/peace promotion (43.6% in treatment schools vs. 17.1% in control schools, ES ¼ 0.40), social and emotional development (51.3% and 14.7%, respectively, ES ¼ 0.59), and character education (66.9% and 26.3%, respectively, ES ¼ 0.53). With respect to the impact on student academics, behavior, and character, results from the Chicago trial of PA not only parallel findings from the Hawai’i trial, but also show multiple additional areas of impact. For academics, students in PA schools had higher levels of school self-esteem (Silverthorn et al., 2017), lower disaffection with learning (ES ¼ 0.19), higher motivation to learn (ES ¼ 0.39), and there were marginal effects on standardized test score performance (ES ¼ 0.38 for math scores; Bavarian et al., 2013). Moreover, students in schools implementing PA reported greater school (ES ¼ 0.40) and teacher (ES ¼ 0.78) attachment (Silverthorn et al., 2022). In addition, schools implementing the PA intervention reported fewer disciplinary referrals (ES ¼ 0.58) and suspensions (ES ¼ 0.27; Lewis et al., 2013b). In examining high-risk behaviors, the intervention was shown to have an impact on substance use (ES ¼ 0.27; Lewis et al., 2012), violence (incidence risk ratio [IRR] ¼ 0.38), aggressive beliefs (odds ratio ¼ 0.83), bullying (IRR ¼ 0.85), and disruptive behaviors (IRR ¼ 0.92; Lewis et al., 2013b). For health-promoting behaviors and outcomes, we found favorable program effects on personal hygiene (ES ¼ 0.48), healthy eating and exercise (ES ¼ 0.21), unhealthy eating (ES ¼ 0.19), and BMI scores (ES ¼ 0.21; Bavarian et al., 2016). We also observed an impact on emotional health behaviors and outcomes, with relative improvements in positive affect (ES ¼ 0.17), life satisfaction (ES ¼ 0.13), depression (ES ¼ 0.14), and anxiety (ES ¼ 0.26; Lewis et al., 2013a). With respect to character, when evaluating character as a construct comprised of six subscales, we found statistically significant results for five of the six outcomes (Lewis et al., 2016): prosocial interactions (ES ¼ 0.50), honesty (ES ¼ 0.57), self-control (ES ¼ 0.50), respect for teachers (ES ¼ 0.78), and respect for parents (ES ¼ 0.68); effects were marginal for self-development (ES ¼ 0.29). When examining indicators of positive youth development (Lewis et al., 2016), we observed an impact on self-concept (ES ¼ 0.24), positive peer affiliation (ES ¼ 0.48), deviant peer affiliation (ES ¼ 0.46), negative morality (ES ¼ 0.40), and aggressive problem-solving (ES ¼ 0.76). Findings were replicated when examining program effects in elementary school only (Grades 3–5; Lewis et al., 2021). As such, findings from the Chicago trial of PA confirm the impact of the program, as well as extend evidence of its effectiveness to older youth in a different, arguably higher-risk, setting (Washburn et al., 2011).

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Belize RCT: Outcomes from an additional RCT completed by Hull et al. (2021) in Belize City, Belize further supports PA’s effectiveness even across cultural contexts. Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Government of Japan, the yearlong study included a sample of 24 randomly selected schools within the Belize District. The sample schools were evenly organized to one of three strata depending on their urban/rural status, school size, and cognitive ability of their students. Within each stratum, eight schools were then randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group. A total of 2217 students across eight grade levels received the PA treatment. To assess the effect of PA on positive youth development competencies, students completed self-report surveys at the beginning and end of the school year. Several existing and independently validated subscales were used to assess program outcomes. Outcomes indicated significant improvements in student behavior and character. Significant treatment effects on self-reported behavior measures indicated that students in the treatment group were less likely to engage in negative behaviors after 1 year of PA. Additionally, main treatment effects were significant when considering an overall youth development profile. A single developmental profile measuring behavior and character was created combining several outcome measures (including anxiety, substance abuse and violence, SECD, self-control, prosocial behavior, honesty, self-development, and respect for teachers and parents). When these outcomes were considered simultaneously, students in PA schools reported significantly greater developmental gains in respect to the overall profile. This suggests that PA students may have experienced larger joint program effects when considering all outcomes concurrently. North Carolina Quasi-Experimental Study (QES). With support from the Centers for Disease Control and the North Carolina Academic Center for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention Center (NY-YVPC), researchers conducted a study of the PA program within two economically disadvantaged, rural counties in North Carolina. One county received the PA intervention embedded into the middle-school curriculum during years 2–4 of the study, while the other county acted as the comparison and received no intervention. The evaluation used five waves of data that included 7000 middle-school students from 27 public middle schools and 11 public high schools collected by the Rural Adaptation Project (RAP) between 2011–2014 (Wu et al., 2019). To assess student outcomes, a modified version of the School Success Profile was completed by students during each wave of the study. Results from these analyses demonstrated consistent positive results on student outcomes. Intervention students scored 2.2%–4.6% lower than their peers on school hassles scores, a score that the researchers used as an indirect measure of school climate (Guo et al., 2015). These effects endured even after program completion. After 1 year, intervention students still reported 2.2%–3.5% lower school hassle scores compared to students that were not exposed to PA (Wu et al., 2019). PreK Studies. Preliminary studies and analyses have also examined the effectiveness of the PreK curriculum as well as the family curriculum. In a quasiexperimental study, preschool teachers reported on children’s behavior in 11 domains covered in the PA PreK curriculum (understanding PA, self-concept, physical health,

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intellectual health, self-management, self-control, respect, consideration, social bonding, honesty, and self-improvement. Children in PA classrooms improved on all measures (ES ¼ 0.62, ranging from 0.36 to 0.72 when broken down by domain), versus children in control classrooms who decreased on three (self-concept, physical health, and self-control) (Schmitt et al., 2014). In a randomized controlled study in low-income preschools, children in PA classrooms had greater improvements in health behaviors, as reported by parents (Schmitt et al., 2017).

Discussion Summary of Evaluation Results Multiple quasi-experimental and experimental studies have demonstrated consistently positive effects of the Positive Action program on a wide range of outcomes, including academics, behavior, and character. Effects have also been found across multiple grade levels (i.e., PreK, elementary and middle school) and in different locations (e.g., Chicago, Hawai’i, North Carolina). The fact that these results have been obtained from multiple studies of different designs, using different measures, by various researchers and conducted in different geographical areas with different populations of students and families, supports their robustness, reliability, and validity. The comprehensive results of the Positive Action program suggest that a single, well-designed SSLL program that is implemented with moderate-to-high fidelity can have positive effects on multiple academic, behavior, and character (ABC) outcomes, as well as related outcomes. The multiple positive outcomes observed reinforce each other and so are likely to increase over time rather than decay as the effects of most programs do. Theoretically, changes in multiple domains are more likely to be maintained as students develop; and programs that produce multiple outcomes are more likely to be sustained in schools, families, and communities.

Promising Research Directions Despite much previous research, we still do not have enough SSLL (or prevention or social and character development) programs that produce the kinds of effects we would like or that do all that theory suggests is possible. The PA program is one that comes close, in our estimation, to incorporating most of the factors that current theory and empirical data suggest for comprehensive SSLL. However, in addition to clarifying fundamental issues of program efficacy and effectiveness, it is crucial to establish more clearly how and why effective SSLL programs actually work. Theory and available research, including existing PA research, highlight several promising directions to continue to pursue that could help to clarify (a) the most salient mechanisms of influence in SSLL interventions (i.e., mediators), (b) influences on integrity of program implementation, (c) the implications of differences in student

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exposure, (d) which subgroups of students are most likely to be impacted by them (i.e., moderators) and (e) long-term impacts. Below, we highlight SSLL literature that has demonstrated the importance of these directions, as well as continuing efforts of PA researchers to address these promising areas. Mediating Mechanisms Understanding the mechanisms of influence of SSLL interventions is a growing area of study. Mediators allow for a more complete picture of the relationships between variables to be elucidated. With respect to implemented programs, mediators provide insight into how a program achieves its impact. For example, a positive school environment should improve student character and self-esteem (Cauce et al., 1987; Felner et al., 1994), reduce problem behavior (Battistich & Hom, 1997), and improve achievement (Bulach et al., 1995; Cauce et al., 1987). As such, examining the role of school climate as a mediator is an important area of future research. Theories such as the TTI (Flay et al., 2009) should also be considered when developing mediation models to test. For example, utilizing multiple mediator models allows for testing pathways from ultimate level causes (e.g., school climate), to distal level causes (e.g., expectancies), to proximal predictors (e.g., attitudes), to intentions, to behavior within and across the three streams of influence (Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Environmental). Doing so longitudinally, with long-term follow-up, is particularly needed to establish temporality. Research on PA has increasingly sought to understand mediating mechanisms of impact. In the North Carolina QES, school climate was found to serve as a mediator. Specifically, PA’s impact on students’ outcomes, including substance use and mental health difficulties, was mediated by improvements in school climate (Stalker et al., 2018). We have also tested SECD as a mediator of program effects on more distal outcomes. We found statistically significant mediation on a variety of student outcomes, including substance use (Lewis et al., 2012), positive affect, life satisfaction, depression and anxiety (Lewis et al., 2013a), healthy eating and exercise, unhealthy eating, and personal hygiene (Bavarian et al., 2016). We have also found significant reductions in substance use, violent behavior, and sexual activity as a result of mediation through academic behaviors (Snyder et al., 2013). These findings demonstrate that even though the SACD program does not have a primary focus on substance use prevention, mental health, or health promotion, the program can still produce effects in this domain by cultivating the ABCs.

Program Implementation Delivering a multi-faceted SSLL program with integrity (i.e., high dosage and fidelity) is of critical importance (Basch, 1984; Dane & Schneider, 1998; Durlak, 1998; Emshoff et al., 1987; Weissberg, 1990), since higher quality implementation creates the potential for stronger program outcomes (Domitrovich & Greenberg, 2000; Dusenbury et al., 2003; Harachi et al., 1999; Kam et al., 2004). As such, careful attention to implementation during program planning is essential, as is the incorporation of multiple indicators of implementation during each stage of the evaluation process (e.g., formative, process, and impact/outcome evaluations). For example, if a program did not achieve its intended outcome/behavior change, one

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must be able to answer: Was this a failure of the theory guiding the program, or a failure of program implementation? Preliminary analyses of PA implementation have identified several factors that are influential in shaping integrity of teacher implementation. These include the extent to which teachers receive support from their principal, collaborate with and receive support from other teachers when implementing the program, teacher’s own attitudes and beliefs regarding the need for schools to do SSLL, teacher’s belief about the school’s tendency to be innovative, and the perceived likely effectiveness of the program (Beets et al., 2008; Malloy et al., 2015). In the North Carolina PA QES, students that received 103–174.5 PA lessons demonstrated a self-esteem score that was 6.2% higher than students that received 0 lessons (Smokowski et al. 2016). Additionally, analyses using data from the PA Chicago trial showed the importance of maximizing implementation and addressing implementation barriers to minimizing substance use (Bavarian et al., 2020).

Program Exposure High levels of implementation integrity are necessary for individual students and classrooms of students within schools to receive high levels of exposure to program activities. Exposure can also be impacted by student mobility in and out of schools, as well as poor attendance and school dropout. These phenomena co-occur, are often interrelated, and are problematic for a number of reasons (Welsh, 2018), including reduced exposure to health-promoting programming provided by SSLL. As such, exposure is an area that merits more attention in future SSLL research. With respect to Positive Action, in the North Carolina study, students with 3 years of PA exposure held a self-esteem score that was 5.3% higher than students that held 0 years of exposure (Smokowski et al., 2016). Within the Chicago RCT of PA, we have aimed to examine the role of student mobility groups (e.g., stayers, late joiners, leavers) on program impact (e.g., Li et al., 2011; Lewis et al., 2017). To date, there have been no significant program impacts found between these groups on outcomes. Future research should aim to further examine program exposure and dosage on student outcomes using advanced methodology to better understand how programs work. Moderating Mechanisms Moderation analyses allows one to examine subgroups of students, to determine if they are differentially impacted by SSLL programs. Available findings from the prevention literature highlight the potential differential (moderated) effectiveness of programs for girls and boys as one important concern. In the areas of substance use and violence prevention, evaluations that have reported gender differences more often favor boys (Botvin et al., 1990; Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, 2002; DeJong, 1987; Farrell & Meyer, 1997; Flay et al., 2004; Flynn et al., 1995; Graham et al., 1990; Guthrie & Flinchbaugh, 2001; Kellam et al., 1998; O’Donnell et al., 1995; Perry et al., 2003). To enhance the effectiveness of interventions for girls, programs may need to focus more on internal manifestations of risks (e.g., low

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self-esteem, confidence) and on fostering connectedness to school and family (Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, 2002; Guthrie & Flinchbaugh, 2001). With respect to the PA program, we have tested for moderation effects by gender in the Chicago RCT and have found a few effects. For academics/standardized test performance, we found program effects for African American boys (ES ¼ 1.50) in reading and for girls in math (ES ¼ 0.41; Bavarian et al., 2013). Males were more likely to report substance use and violence in Grade 5 (Duncan et al., 2019). Larger program effects were found on bullying behaviors for girls (ES ¼ 0.51) than boys (ES ¼ 0.23), though findings were opposite for parent-reported bullying behaviors of their child, who reported a larger effect for boys (ES ¼ 0.63) than girls (ES ¼ 0.42) (Lewis et al., 2013b). We found a larger program effect for girls (ES ¼ 0.17) than boys (ES ¼ 0.06) for attachment to friends (Silverthorn et al., 2022). Another relatively robust pattern seen in moderation or sub-group analyses is the greater impact of prevention programs for youth exhibiting greater levels of risk (Muthen et al., 2002; Segawa et al., 2005; Stoolmiller et al., 2000; Wilson et al., 2001). Using growth mixture modeling (Muthen et al., 2002; Segawa et al., 2005) to examine SECD and misconduct trajectories from middle childhood to early adolescence, we identified two groups: one group had relatively higher levels of SECD and lower levels of misconduct, and a smaller group with relatively lower levels of SECD and higher levels of misconduct. Examination of program effects showed that PA improved students’ trajectories regardless of which group they belonged (Duncan et al., 2017). Another type of mixture model, latent profile analysis, was used to identify subpopulations of students based on measures of SECD skills (prosocial behaviors, self-improvement, and self-control), parent–child relationships, and peer influences (peer affiliation and attachment) at baseline. Two profiles were identified: (1) lower baseline risk factors (e.g., higher protective factors such as better parentchild relations) and (2) higher baseline risk (e.g., lower scores on the positive indicators). Lower baseline risk was associated with fewer problem behaviors (substance use, violence) in Grade 5, but not Grade 8. Rather, being in a school that implemented PA was a predictor of lower problem behavior in Grade 8. This highlights the complex interaction of students’ environmental contexts and that implementation of SSLL program may take time before effects are evident (Duncan et al., 2019). It is likely, however, that the most salient and powerful sources of influence on the effectiveness of SSLL programs are combinations of factors rather than any one moderator in isolation. Future research should consider examining multiple moderators when evaluating what factors may impact program effectiveness.

Long-Lasting Impacts There is a wealth of research showing the impact of SSLL programs on promoting the ABCs. SSLL programs promote academic success and teach critical life skills, but does this translate into better outcomes as an adult? In a meta-analysis of 82 studies, the average follow-up of SEL evaluations is 115 weeks (2.21 years;

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Taylor et al., 2017). There is little research on what students retain once they are adults and out of the school system. Evidence that does exist illustrates that SSLL programs can continue to impact the ABCs into adulthood, including outcomes such as high school graduation and college attendance (Bradshaw et al., 2009), educational and economic attainment (Hawkins et al., 2008), better mental health (Hawkins et al., 2008), and better sexual health (Hawkins et al., 2008; Hill et al., 2014). These findings are encouraging and demonstrate the potential long-term impact that an SEL program in childhood can have on adult outcomes. However, much more research is needed to corroborate these findings and expand to other outcomes including additional indicators of academics, behavior, and character related to adulthood (e.g., educational attainment, adulthood difficulties with substance use, violence and crime, adulthood community service engagement, etc.).

Conclusion Values are key to comprehensive social and character development and positive youth development. Students, indeed all people, will do what they value or what is consistent with their values. A central aim of the Positive Action program is to get students to the point where they value being a good, productive, successful, and contributing member of society. The Positive Action program helps people understand that they feel good about themselves when they do good or right – and that provides the intrinsic motivation to continue doing good and right. Abraham Lincoln, when asked about his religion, remarked that it was very much like that of an old man named Glenn in Indiana whom he had heard speak at a church meeting and who said, “When I do good I feel good; when I do bad I feel bad; and that’s my religion” (Fehrenbacher & Fehrenbacher, 1996, p. 245). In some ways, this is a selfevident truth; however, in other ways, it is far from self-evident, especially in this modern world of political and economic scandals. Children and youth need to be taught what is good and right vs. bad and wrong. The Positive Action program does this in a way that is effective for both the students and their instructors and parents (and the rest of the community). In doing so, it has, and we hope will continue to, positively influenced not only their academic, behavior and character development, but also the development of their schools, communities and beyond. Acknowledgments During writing of the first edition of this chapter, the first author was supported in part by the Center on Early Adolescence at the Oregon Research Institute, funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant #DA018760 (A. Biglan, PI). The Hawai’i RCT was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant # DA13474 (B.R. Flay, PI). The Chicago RCT was funded by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), US Department of Education: R305L030072, R305L030004, R3F05A080253, and R305A180259 to the University of Illinois, Chicago (2003–2005; B. R. Flay, PI), and Oregon State University (2005–2012; B. R. Flay, PI), and Boise State University (2018–2021; C. F. Siebert, PI). The initial grant (R305L030072; 2003-2005) was part of the Social and Character Development (SACD) Research Program. The latter grant requires the following disclosure.

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The Case of Finland Kirsi Tirri

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teachers’ Commitment to the Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Sensitivity in Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Challenges in Teaching in Finnish Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Can Sensitive Issues Be Discussed in Schools? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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In this chapter, the value base of teacher’s professional ethics is discussed with some case examples from Finnish schools and teacher education. Finland was the first Nordic country who established the ethical codes for teachers in 1998 and defined the values on which they are based. The latest development in teacher’s professional ethics in Finland includes the opportunity for teachers to take the Comenius Oath established by the Ethical committee for the teaching profession. The Oath supports teachers in their commitment to the profession and helps to strengthen the identity of all the qualified teachers in any grade level. Current challenges in teaching in Finland are discussed with the emphasis on sensitive issues in schools. The importance of ethical discussion in the school communities is emphasized as way to help teachers to meet these challenges. Keywords

Teacher ethics · Value base in teaching · Finnish teacher education · Ethical sensitivity · Moral community K. Tirri (*) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: kirsi.tirri@helsinki.fi © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_18

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Introduction In 2010, I published a chapter on Teacher Values Underlying Professional Ethics (Tirri, 2010) in the International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing (Lovat et al., 2010). In that chapter, I reflected the values of human worth, honesty, justice, and freedom as the main values underlying Finnish teachers’ professional ethics (Code of Ethics for Finnish Teachers, 1998) and identified the values teachers and principals had used in Finnish schools to deal with sensitive and critical incidents in teaching. More than 20 years later, in this chapter, I will update this discussion with the current challenges in Finnish schools and renewed teachers’ values and ethical principles for Finnish teachers (Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2010). The current Finnish ethical codes for teachers specify their underlying conception of humankind and the virtues derived from this conception: human dignity, truthfulness, justice, responsibility, and freedom. According to the codes, “teachers must respect every person, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, gender diversity, appearance, age, religion, social standing, origin, opinions, abilities and achievements” (Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2010). The purpose of the codes is not to provide concrete advice for ethical action but to remind teachers of the principles to which they are committed in their profession. Schools require teachers with a long-term commitment to teaching and a sense of the meaningfulness of their profession. To this end, they need knowledge of the different ethical frameworks underpinning teachers’ ethics. Teachers’ professional ethics are not governed by a single, all-encompassing ethical framework that covers all the aspects of their profession. Instead, professional ethics can be built on many different theories, each with its own goals and purposes. In the school community, every teacher and student possess their own value base that guides them in their ethical decisions. However, each school community is committed to some shared values that steer its actions. In Finnish schools, the national curriculum and municipality-based and school-based curricula represent such shared values and include the educational goals for schools (FNBE, 2016). School-base curricula allow each school the possibility to define its own values in more detail. Common community values are often those that are seen as valuable from most ethical frameworks. The current challenges in Finland are related to equality and equal opportunities for education in society. Education has the potential to support lifelong learning and the experience of a meaningful life by providing equal opportunities for schooling. However, the Finnish population is becoming ever more diverse, with consequent implications for educational equality. Kosunen’s (2016) studies show that the socioeconomic status of families is of significance in choosing schools and that social capital plays an important role for the families awareness about different options for education and alternative pathways. Moreover, we know from international studies that students with immigrant status have lower learning achievements in school than the students with non-immigrant status (Clarke et al., 2010, p. 68). The challenge is now to help vulnerable students, for example those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, to continue their education. Finnish teachers enjoy the freedom and

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responsibility to plan, realize, and evaluate their own teaching in an appropriate manner for diverse students (Tirri, 2014). However, the current national curriculum in Finland calls for inclusive education and community-oriented teacher culture in which ethical reflection belongs to the whole work community, and the best interest of students and the goals of education are discussed and agreed together. In this chapter, I discuss the importance of teacher commitment and ethical sensitivity in teacher’s professional ethics with some case examples from Finnish schools to demonstrate the nature of challenges teachers and principals today encounter in their work.

Teachers’ Commitment to the Profession In Finland, the ethical codes for teachers and the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education have strongly guided teacher culture to develop in a community-oriented direction. In a community-oriented teacher culture, commitments and shared values are important aspects of discussions about professional ethics. In professional occupations, one way to demonstrate commitment is by swearing an oath of office. By swearing an oath of office, the novice demonstrates their willingness to commit to the goals and ethical values of the profession. For instance, medical doctors take the Hippocratic oath during their graduation. In 2017, the Finnish Ethical Committee for the Teaching Profession developed an oath for teachers named Comenius’ Oath (Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2017), according to the seventeenth-century educational philosopher Johan Comenius (1592–1670). Comenius is viewed as the founder of didactics, and his teaching doctrine is crystallized in the best-known textbook on the topic, the Didactica Magna, published in 1657. The English version of this book (Comenius, 1896) is available for download on the Internet. The goal of Comenius’ Oath is to emphasize professional ethics as part of a teacher’s professional identity. The Oath emphasizes, for example, a teacher’s duty always to act with justice and equality. By taking the Oath, a teacher also pledges to advance the development of each student according to their tendencies. Furthermore, a teacher promises to respect the privacy and integrity of children. Finally, the Oath commits teachers to protecting students’ right to develop in an environment free from political and economic indoctrination to allow them to form their own political and world views. Like teachers’ ethical codes, the Oath is intended for all teachers, from early education to adult education. The Oath, which is an ethical guide without juridical obligations, is aptly suited to educational professionals who work autonomously and who are trusted by society. In the school community, teachers are committed to their students, colleagues, and other possible partners. Nevertheless, these many commitments might lead to a conflict of loyalty (Hanhimäki & Tirri, 2009; Tirri & Husu, 2002). Nonetheless, if we define the best interest of students as the goal of education, we can conclude that teachers’ commitment to their students is their primary commitment. However, we know from several studies on teachers’ moral dilemmas that teachers must reflect on their commitments from many different viewpoints before they can make the final

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moral decision (Hedayati et al., 2019; Tirri, 1999, 2021). The central ethical problem in the teaching profession is the interaction between different groups and the conflicts of interest arising from this interaction. The shift from an individually oriented to a community-oriented teaching culture requires ethical reflection from the school community on the commitments of each member.

Ethical Sensitivity in Teaching Ethical sensitivity in teacher–student relationships means that the best interests of a student guide the teacher to understand the different needs of all kinds of learners. The younger the student, the more the teacher needs cooperation with other adults. Today, teachers in Finland team-teach and collaborate with parents and other experts to meet their students’ diverse educational needs. Teachers also consult school psychologists and other experts in the search for what is the best for their students. Moreover, teachers need ethical sensitivity with respect to their own work. They should constantly reflect on their own skills with self-evaluation and strive to improve and develop as professionals. In Finland, the philosophy of life-long learning means that teachers have both the right and the responsibility to pursue personal development and self-care. They are expected to grant the same right to their colleagues as members of the teaching profession. About their schools, teachers should reflect on the balance between individual rights and the needs of their learning community. Because teachers are active agents in their respective societies, they should also consider the impact of their work on the future of their society. Bebeau et al. (1999) have defined ethical sensitivity as the awareness of how our actions affect other people. Ethical sensitivity makes it possible for teachers to identify the moral issues involved in teaching. To respond to a situation in a moral way, a teacher must be able to perceive and interpret events in a manner that leads to ethical action. An ethically sensitive teacher observes various situational cues and can visualize several alternative actions in response to that situation. The teacher draws on many aspects, skills, techniques, and components of interpersonal sensitivity. These include taking the perspective of others (role taking), cultivating empathy for others, and interpreting a situation based on imagining what might happen and who might be affected. These abilities make cooperation possible, which is needed in the teaching, studying, and learning processes of education. The results of our comparative studies show that ethical sensitivity should be considered as an important moral competency for teachers in Finland, Estonia, and Iran and thus should be part of their professional development and education (Gholami et al., 2015; Ronkainen et al., 2021). Caring by connecting with students is a central element of teachers’ ethical sensitivity and connecting shows that establishing good and caring relationships with students is a central issue for teachers in all three countries we have studied. Moreover, this dimension is a culturally invariant aspect of ethical sensitivity in a teaching context, one that should be highlighted by teacher educators in training programs all over the world. Teacher educators should consider cultural aspects of ethical sensitivity in the context of teaching. Based on

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the empirical findings, ethical sensitivity is represented in different ways in teachers from different countries (Tirri, 2019).

Current Challenges in Teaching in Finnish Schools We know from previous empirical studies that leadership is linked with values. Principals and teachers with high levels of morality have greater awareness of political and social issues, and they are more responsive to societal needs and expectations. They tend to have an optimistic mindset, a coherent set of goals, and supportive relationships, all of which help them to identify situations as moral issues (Colby & Damon, 1992, 1995; Damon & Colby, 2015; Tirri et al., 2021). In our studies with exemplar Finnish principals, their moral values such as tolerance, care, and equality guided them in their work with teachers, students, and families (Hanhimäki & Tirri, 2008). We also found later, in another case study, that exemplar principals demonstrate the virtues of wisdom and knowledge in creating long-term visions for their schools and building them up for future generations (Eisenschmidt et al. 2021). Other leadership virtues include humanity, courage, and justice, indicating caring and honesty, and the involvement of teachers and parents in decisionmaking. It, thus, seems that such virtues motivate principals to achieve their desired goals and to resolve challenging situations in morally sustainable ways (Eisenschmidt et al. 2021). However, the exemplar principals seem to have difficulties in creating a shared value base for their schools to which all members of the school community can be committed. In our recent study of educational challenges in schools, the development of the learning community was the challenge most frequently mentioned by principals from Finland and Estonia (Tirri et al., 2021). This challenge was related to teacher collaboration, cooperation with families, student engagement, the well-being of learning community members, and cooperation with external partners. The challenge of teacher collaboration stems from the history of educational systems and teacher education. In Finland and Estonia, elementary school teachers and secondary school teachers are educated separately in their own programs. Elementary school teachers (class teachers of grades 1–6) graduate with a masters’ degree in education, while secondary school teachers (subject teachers of grades 7–9) graduate with a master’s degree in their subject, for example mathematics or English language (Tirri, 2014). However, in both countries, teachers in basic education (grades 1–9) work in the same learning community and even in the same physical buildings. Traditionally, teacher culture has been individually oriented, with an emphasis on teacher autonomy, indicating that teachers have not collaborated with each other. However, the current educational policy calls for the development of learning communities, which demands collaboration between teachers of different grade levels and subjects. Both Finnish and Estonian principals identified the same challenge concerning collaboration between class teachers and subject teachers, indicating the need to educate teachers in ethical sensitivity, especially in the domain of adopting the perspective of others (Tirri et al., 2021). According to our case study, it seems that

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it is easier for teachers to adopt the perspective of colleagues with similar rather than different educational backgrounds. The male Finnish principal of a multicultural school had attempted to create collaboration among elementary and secondary teachers for decades (Tirri et al., 2021). In the following quote, he describes the process and his vision for the comprehensive school in which all teachers collaborate together: The challenge of building a comprehensive school that started in 1996, the ideology of the comprehensive school, still divides teachers. Teachers at elementary schools and secondary schools are still too far from each other, and we cannot build our learning community with this kind of separation. We have worked on this challenge in this school more than in many other schools, and I have not given up on this ideology and development. I can discuss many issues, and we take different ideas to the school board and discuss them, but this ideology of the comprehensive school is something on which I cannot compromise (Jaakko, Helsinki, Finland).

The second most mentioned challenge was related to curriculum development (Tirri et al., 2021). Issues related to inclusive education were major concerns within this category. In Finland, the current policy of inclusive education presents a challenge to teaching and learning in classrooms. The new curriculum promotes inclusive education and the use of information and communication technology in schools (FNBE, 2016). The principals referred to challenges in meeting these new demands. In Finland, for example, it is very difficult for a teacher to have students with severe behavioral problems in the same classroom as students who would like to concentrate on learning new things. Tirri and Laine (2017) argue that inclusive education has neglected the needs of some groups, for example, the gifted. For that reason, it is imperative to examine the needs of gifted students in inclusive educational settings. Teachers’ professional ethics should be reflected in the beliefs, values, and attitudes toward different learners in inclusive settings, as teachers engage in their practice. The goal of inclusive education is to afford nondiscriminatory quality education for all (Saloviita, 2015; UNESCO, 2009), with the aim of providing equitable learning opportunities and experiences for students. Tirri (2021) calls for studies on teachers’ ethical sensitivity in practice on how they meet the needs of different learners and whether they promote social justice in their inclusive practices. We already have some evidence that inclusive education might meet the needs of certain groups of students but not all the student groups (Tirri & Laine, 2017). The third category of challenges related to school leadership concerned the principals’ own professional development (Tirri et al., 2021). For example, the challenge for the male Finnish principal quoted below, who had worked 11 years in a school with approximately 1000 students in a multicultural and low socioeconomical area, was his own well-being. He described his situation in the following way: I am devoted to my school, but, at the same time, I feel that I am close to burnout, and I need to take a break from this work. I am doing everything as well as I can, but I plan to take a

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leave of absence to learn how to build wooden boats. When I retire, I will spend time with my boat, and I’ll do some sailing (Jaakko, Helsinki, Finland).

Burnout is a serious problem that commonly afflicts those working in helping and serving professions (Salmela-Aro et al., 2019). This principal demonstrates responsibility, courage, and honesty in acknowledging his own limitations. In our study with exemplar principals, the moral virtues of wisdom and knowledge, humanity, courage, justice, transcendence, and temperance have been identified as important in creating ethical leadership (Eisenschmidt et al. 2021). Moreover, according to the Finnish ethical codes for teachers, it is important for teachers to take care of their own well-being to be able to help their students.

How Can Sensitive Issues Be Discussed in Schools? Teachers’ ethical codes emphasize both teachers’ pedagogical expertise and the work’s values and norms that should be present in teachers’ pedagogical thinking and practice (Kansanen et al., 2000; Tirri, 2011). The primary goal to educate the whole person of a student, regardless of their background or academic achievement, should guide the teacher in all their interactions with different parties (Trade Union of Education in Finland, 2010; Tirri, 2010). This means that we need to adapt the ethos perspective to teacher’s ethics as suggested by Oser and Biederman (2019). They define teacher’s ethos as “a supererogatory attentiveness to the individuals one oversees and to their development” (Oser and Biederman, 2019, p. 3). The main aspect in teacher’s professional ethos is then caring about the development and the growth of a student. However, in inclusive education in Finland there are situations in which teachers cannot allocate their time or resources equally to all students (Tirri, 2021). In these situations, teachers require guidelines and support from their colleagues to reflect their values and decision-making. Teachers’ commitment to the profession guides teachers to reflect these issues together with the whole school community. Oser and Biederman (2019) recommend realistic discourse as an orientation to solve moral dilemmas and conflicts in the framework of the new teachers’ ethos model. Tirri has developed realistic discourse on ethical issues as a roundtable discussion to be used in Finnish schools and teacher education (Tirri, 2003, 2021). In this kind of realistic discussion, a teacher requires ethical sensitivity with the skills to identify ethical problems and adopt the role of those involved by reflecting on different alternatives and options. Tirri proposes that the roundtable should include “a critical friend” from outside school who brings an objective perspective to the discussion. Such critical friends can be, for example, church workers, police youth workers, social workers, or partners cooperating with the school (Tirri, 2003). In the roundtable discussion, members of the school community and its partners reflect on and attempt to solve ethical issues in the school. In this process, interaction is the only means to realize the value base of education. The current issues in Finnish education that require special sensitivities in discussion include gender, religion, and the nationality of a student. Teachers’ ethical

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codes acknowledge the current plurality in Finnish society and advise teachers to equally respect parents’ cultures and world views and make sure that no one is discriminated against based on them. In our studies concerning Finnish teachers’ attitudes to different cultures and religions, we found that teachers in Finland have more positive attitudes to teaching about differences in general than in teaching about Islam (Rissanen et al., 2015; Tirri et al., 2017). These results reflect the general negativity toward Islam evident in other countries as well and indicate that Finnish teachers are more willing to deal with forms of difference other than religious minorities. This trend calls for teacher education in ethical sensitivity to religions other than the teachers’ own (Tirri, 2019). Moreover, teachers need education on how to discuss religious issues in the school community with respect and an un-biased attitude. In order to develop their ethical sensitivity, teachers could profit from contacts and communication with members of other religions, especially Muslims. In the roundtable discussion, school members of different religions and cultures should be actively invited to participate and share their perspectives on the issues under discussion. In our studies of Finnish teachers, previous involvement with other cultures is an indicator of student teachers’ beliefs that Muslim students will integrate into the Finnish society (Rissanen et al., 2015). Gender is another sensitive issue that teachers need to acknowledge in their work and in round-table discussion. Teachers need to be aware of the gender patterns in educational attainment and the current gender equality policies. Gender has an influence on the expectations of career choices and other behavioral patterns among students and their families. Moreover, gender needs to be understood as a wider concept than biological division to males and females. In Finland, the third gender, “the other” should be officially acknowledged and respected in all school life. In the roundtable discussion, it is important to adopt the role of all the different parties and provide the opportunity for them to be heard. Utilizing this approach advances ethical sensitivity for everybody involved. A roundtable discussion is an example of a situation where equal opportunities are offered for students and other partners to express their views. This requires teachers to adapt an open-minded and sensitive approach. Teachers must show trust toward all participants in the discussion to be able to search for a solution that is inclusive and educationally solid. Teachers need the skills to organize the discussion in such a way that they are simultaneously participants and leaders. Teachers require the skill to balance and coordinate the different views of individuals. Most importantly, however, teachers must trust, in advance, that the discussion will ultimately provide the best solution and that a joint decision is preferable to a unilateral one (Oser & Althof, 1993). Teachers can accustom their students to roundtable discussions, argumentation, and debate by using hypothetical situations or cases of problematic situations identified by the students. School communities can arrange roundtable discussions with different members. In issues concerning the entire school community, each class can send a representative, and the teachers’ union and parents’ association can also send theirs. From an educational perspective, roundtable discussions support argumentation skills and social learning and strengthen moral responsibility (Tirri, 1999). In the best cases, roundtable discussions become a natural way to solve

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conflicts in the everyday life of schools and build a shared vision of the future of the school and its classes.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have updated my earlier work on teacher’s values and professional ethics by introducing the new developments and challenges in Finland related to teacher’s ethics. The current national curriculum in Finland emphasizes inclusive education and community-oriented teacher culture in which ethical reflection belongs to the whole school community. I have presented some concrete examples from our recent empirical research to demonstrate the nature of current challenges our teachers and principals face in their work. Development of the learning community requires teacher collaboration, and this has not been always easy to actualize. Moreover, curriculum development in inclusive education creates situations in which it is difficult to meet the needs of diverse students. Furthermore, the current challenges and demands for principals and teachers can be overwhelming and they must take care of themselves before they can help their students in need. These new trends require even more ethical discussion in schools where all the members of the community can take part. I have called these practical discussions, round-table discussions, and presented sensitive issues this ethical reflection should address. These topics include issues related to religion, nationality, and gender. In the guidance of these discussions, ethical sensitivity skills are necessary for a teacher to be able to take the perspective of each party involved and to advance democratic decision-making in schools. In these discussions, a teacher needs to be committed for the best interest of their students. Today in Finland, teachers could take the Comenius Oath established by the Ethical committee for the teaching profession. At the University of Helsinki, this opportunity has been available for the graduating teachers in their graduation ceremony. The idea of taking the Oath is to support teachers in their commitment to the profession and helps them to strengthen their identity as a teacher. Finland is a country where individuality has traditionally been emphasized more than communality. However, in the teaching profession both aspects are needed to educate future citizens to the society. The goal of education is to build moral communities in schools, and this requires commitment from all members of the school, including students, parents, other staff members, and various partners. The value base of teacher’s professional ethics provides our teachers the meaning and strength in this important work.

References Bebeau, M., Rest, J., & Narvaez, D. (1999). Beyond the promise: A perspective on research in moral education. Educational Researcher, 28(4), 18–26. Clarke, B., Sheridan, S., & Woods, K. (2010). Elements of healthy family-school relationships. In S. Christenson & A. Reschly (Eds.), Handbook of school-family partnerships (pp. 61–79). Routledge. Code of Ethics for Finnish Teachers. (1998). Trade Union of Education in Finland.

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Colby, A., & Damon, W. (1992). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment. Free Press. Colby, A., & Damon, W. (1995). The development of extraordinary commitment. In M. Killen & D. Hart (Eds.), Morality in everyday life: Developmental perspectives (pp. 343–369). Cambridge University Press. Comenius, J. A. (1896). The great didactic of John Amos Comenius (Didactica Magna) (M. W. Keatinge, Ed. and trans.). A. & C. Black. (Original text 1657). https://books.google.com/ books/about/The_Great_Didactic_of_John_Amos_Comenius.html?id¼sE9MAAAAIAAJ& printsec¼frontcover&source¼kp_read_button#v¼onepage&q&f¼false. Accessed 25 Oct 2021. Damon, W., & Colby, A. (2015). The power of ideals. The real story of moral choice. Oxford University Press. Eisenschmidt, E., Kuusisto, E., Poom-Valickis, & Tirri, K. (2021). Virtues that create purpose for ethical leadership: Exemplary principals from Estonia and Finland. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 40, 433–446. FNBE. (2016). National core curriculum for basic education 2014. Helsinki. Gholami, K., Kuusisto, E., & Tirri, K. (2015). Is ethical sensitivity in teaching culturally bound? Comparing Finnish and Iranian teachers’ ethical sensitivity. Compare, 45(6), 886–907. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2014.984588 Hanhimäki, E., & Tirri, K. (2008). The moral role and characteristics of Finnish urban schools’ principals. Journal of Research in Character Education, 6, 53–65. Hanhimäki, E., & Tirri, K. (2009). Education for ethically sensitive teaching in critical incidents at school. The Journal of Education for Teaching, 35(2), 107–121. Hedayati, N., Kuusisto, E., Gholami, K., & Tirri, K. (2019). Moral conflicts in Iranian secondary schools. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 40(4), 464–476. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2019. 1618151 Kansanen, P., Tirri, K., Meri, M., Krokfors, L., Husu, J., & Jyrhämä, R. (2000). Teachers’ pedagogical thinking. Theoretical landscapes, practical challenges. Lang. Kosunen, S. (2016). Families and the social space of school choice in urban Finland [Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences]. http://urn.fi/URN: ISBN:978-951-51-0322-2 Lovat, T., Toomey, R., & Clement, N. (Eds.). (2010). International research handbook on values education and student well-being. Springer. Oser, F., & Althof, W. (1993). Trust in advance: On the professional morality of teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 22(3), 253–275. Oser, F., & Biederman, H. (2019). The professional ethos of teachers. In F. Oser, K. Heinrichs, J. Bauer, & T. Lovat (Eds.), The ethos of a teacher. Springer. Rissanen, I., Kuusisto, E., & Tirri, K. (2015). Finnish teachers’ attitudes to Muslim students and Muslim student integration. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(2), 277–290. https:// doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12190 Ronkainen, R., Kuusisto, E., Eisenschmidt, E., & Tirri, K. (2021). Ethical sensitivity of finnish and estonian teachers. Journal of MoralEducation. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2021. 1960491 Salmela-Aro, K., Hietajärvi, L., & Lonka, K. (2019). Work burnout and engagement profiles among teachers. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2254. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02254 Saloviita, T. (2015). Measuring pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education: Psychometric properties of the TAIS scale. Teaching and Teacher Education, 52, 66–72. Tirri, K. (1999). Teachers’ perceptions of moral dilemmas at school. Journal of Moral Education, 28(1), 31–47. Tirri, K. (2003). The teacher’s integrity. In F. Oser & W. Veugelers (Eds.), Teaching in moral and democratic education (pp. 65–81). Peter Lang. Tirri, K. (2010). Teachers’ values underlying their professional ethics. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student well-being (pp. 153–163). Springer.

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Tirri, K. (2011). Holistic school pedagogy and values: Finnish teachers’ and students’ perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 50, 159–165. Tirri, K. (2014). The last 40 years in Finnish teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching, 23, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2014.956545 Tirri, K. (2019). Ethical sensitivity in teaching and teacher education. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of teacher education. Springer Nature. Springer Science+Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_183-1 Tirri, K. (2021). Growth mindset in learning as teacher’s professional ethos. In F. Oser, K. Heinrichs, J. Bauer, & T. Lovat (Eds.), The international handbook of teacher ethos: Strengthening teachers, supporting learners (pp. 325–334). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-030-73644-6_19 Tirri, K., & Husu, J. (2002). Care and responsibility in ‘the best interest of the child’: Relational voices of ethical dilemmas in teaching. Teachers and Teaching, 8(1), 65–80. Tirri, K., & Laine, S. (2017). Ethical challenges in inclusive education: The case of gifted students. In A. Gaweski (Ed.), Ethics, equity, and inclusive education: International perspectives on inclusive education (Vol. 9, pp. 239–257). Emerald Group Publishing. Tirri, K., Rissanen, I., & Kuusisto, E. (2017). Finnish teachers and diversity: The case of Muslim students. In D. K. Sharpes (Ed.), Handbook on comparative and international studies in education (International perspectives on educational policy, research, and practice) (pp. 475–494). Information Age Publishing. Tirri, K., Eisenschmidt, E., Poom-Valickis, K., & Kuusisto, E. (2021). Current challenges in school leadership in Estonia and Finland: A multiple-case study among exemplary principals. Education Research International, 2021, 8855927. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8855927 Trade Union of Education in Finland. (2010). Teacher’s values and ethical principles. Retrieved January 13, 2020, from https://www.oaj.fi/en/education/ethical-principles-of-teaching/teachersvalues-and-ethical-principles/ Trade Union of Education in Finland. (2017). Comenius oath. https://www.oaj.fi/en/education/ ethical-principles-of-teaching/comenius-oath-for-teachers/. Accessed 25 Oct 2021. UNESCO. (2009). Policy guidelines on inclusion in education. UNESCO. Retrieved from http:// unesdoc.UNESCO.org/images/0017/001778/177849e.pdf

The Secret Workings of the Hidden Curriculum

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How Children Learn Values through the Routines of School Life J. Mark Halstead and Jiamei Xiao

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concept of the Hidden Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Initial Findings: The Hidden Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Normal School Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Children’s Values and the Impact of their Experience in School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter highlights some of the complexities in learning values through the hidden curriculum. The main focus is the informal learning that goes on in schools, especially in the domain of values and attitudes, as a result of (a) structured activities like registration, assemblies, grouping strategies, and classroom organization and (b) classroom management, especially activities concerned with keeping order, like rewards and sanctions. The research reported in the chapter is concerned with children’s own perceptions of school life and explores what they learn from their everyday experiences at school, such as how to please the teacher, how to cope with boredom, how to decide whether to obey the teacher or not, and how to reflect on what they experience. The purpose of raising to consciousness these largely taken-for-granted aspects of school life is to help teachers to respond more effectively to children’s needs and improve the quality of their learning, particularly in the field of values education.

J. M. Halstead (*) · J. Xiao University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_19

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Keywords

Hidden curriculum · Learning · Values · School routines · Children’s voices · Friendships · Teacher control · The normal school day

Introduction The existence of a link between the hidden curriculum and the learning of values is widely acknowledged. Hamilton and Powell, for example, highlight the link in their definition of the hidden curriculum as “the unofficial rules, routines and structures of schools through which students learn behaviours, values, beliefs and attitudes” (2007). Values are learned informally as well as formally and such learning is often unintentional and even unconscious. Halstead (1996) claims that values permeate everything that goes on in the classroom, even the seating arrangements and the disciplinary procedures: “when teachers insist on precision and accuracy in children’s work, or praise their use of imagination, or censure racist or sexist language, or encourage them to show initiative, or respond with interest, patience or frustration to their ideas, children are being introduced to values and value-laden issues” (pp. 3–4). Indeed, children learn as much in the domain of values from what they observe and what they experience as they do from what they are told. But what sort of learning goes on? How is it learned? How do children make sense of their learning if what they experience and observe give different messages from what they are told? How aware are children of the values embedded in a teacher’s everyday behavior? Does it ever happen that children learn the opposite of what they are told? There is a dearth of research on these topics, and indeed, the whole relationship between the hidden curriculum and the learning of values remains largely unexplored (except by Giroux & Purpel, 1983). What is clear, however, is that the process of learning values through the hidden curriculum may be much more complex than some discussions of learning by example imply (Wilson, 1985, pp. 173–176). This chapter focuses on just one aspect of the hidden curriculum – the informal learning that goes on in schools, especially in the domain of values and attitudes, as a result of structured activities like registration, assemblies, grouping strategies, and classroom organization, and responsive activities mainly concerned with keeping order, like rewards and sanctions. If we think of lessons as the bricks which make up the wall of the curriculum, the focus of attention in this chapter is on the cement that holds the bricks together. Even though these classroom rules, routines, rituals, and relationships have long been acknowledged as educationally significant in terms of school culture (Jackson, 1968), and as a sign of social control (Bernstein et al., 1966), children’s experiences of and responses to these structured and responsive activities have not been adequately studied in their own right. Indeed, children’s experiences of everyday schooling are largely invisible in educational research or else limited to incidental references in traditional disciplinary inquiries into teaching and learning, educational management, or the curriculum. The research reported in

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this chapter seeks to address this imbalance by exploring three elements: first, children’s experiences of school rituals, collective activities, and classroom management; second, children’s own understandings and interpretations of the taken-forgranted routines of school life; and third, what children learn from these things (such as how to please the teacher, how to cope with boredom, how to decide whether to obey the teacher or not, and how to reflect on what they experience). By focusing on what children themselves say about their own experiences in school, the chapter thus seeks to raise to consciousness certain aspects of schooling that are normally dismissed as insignificant or simply taken for granted as an implicit part of classroom life and to identify some of the complexity in the processes of learning values. Before, we can proceed to an account of the research; however, we must first examine the concept of the hidden curriculum more closely.

Concept of the Hidden Curriculum The “hidden curriculum” in schools has been variously defined as “the way in which cultural values and attitudes . . . are transmitted through the structure of teaching and the organisation of schools” (Scott & Marshall, 2014, p. 305); “conformity to institutional expectations, . . . regulations and routines” (Jackson, 1968, pp. 34–35); “culturally-based ideologies that operate behind explicitly designed educational content” (Baykut et al., 2021, p. 1); “the unwritten, unofficial, unintended and undocumented life lessons and virtues that students learn while in school” (Sulaimani & Gut, 2019, p. 30); or “all that pupils learn at school which is not intentionally taught or communicated by the teachers and the school system” (Hargreaves, 1982, p. 47). What these definitions share is that the concept is about learning rather than being taught, that the learning is not part of the official agenda of the school, and that it can derive from various sources in addition to direct teaching. These three features have remained consistent from the heyday of research into the hidden curriculum (the 1960s–1980s) to the present day, though the focus of hidden curriculum research has tended to narrow in recent years, in two main ways. The first is focusing on the hidden curriculum of specific subject areas, such as language learning (Meighan & Siraj-Blatchford, 2003, pp. 148–181), sex and relationship education (Smith, 2015), or medical training (Mackin et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2020); the second is focusing on the impact of the hidden curriculum on specific groups, such as international students (Baykut et al., 2021), students with special needs (Sulaimani & Gut, 2019), or LGBTQ students (Walton, 2005). Nevertheless, learning to conform to institutional constraints (Goffman, 1961) remains one of the key elements of the hidden curriculum. This requires students at a personal level to develop patience (Jackson, 1968, p. 18), docility (Henry, 1955, p. 33), dependence on adult approval (Holt, 1965, p. 68), and respect for authority (Richardson, 1967, p. 85) and at a socio-political level to accept hierarchical structures of power and control as natural (Bowles & Gintis, 1976, p. 147). Intentionally or otherwise, schools have tended to promote the passive acceptance of white, able-bodied, heteronormative assumptions (Bank et al., 2007, pp. 529–576; Alsubaie, 2015;

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Preston, 2015) and thus contribute to the socialization of the young into existing class structures and values. All of this strikes a chord with our own findings in school, but in our view it is only part of the truth about the hidden curriculum. In our own research, there was certainly much evidence of the class teacher seeking to dominate and control the class through constant surveillance and verbal instructions, and a by-product of this could be that pupils come to accept authority and hierarchical structures as a normal part of society. But as we shall see, this ignores the common tendency of many children to resist the teacher’s control and to experience a tension between their own wishes and those of the teacher (Halstead & Xiao, 2009). The result is that the learning that goes on in the hidden curriculum is a more complicated mix of the pupils’ own values and those that they pick up from peers, teachers, parents, the school environment, and other sources. The second main problem with the ideological analysis is that it ignores the possibility that there can be other, more positive, outcomes from the hidden curriculum in addition to the negative impact resulting from some types of adult control that may be developmentally unsuitable for children. Dunlop (1984) suggests that things like “a passion for accuracy” or “a sense of humour” are also learned mainly through the hidden curriculum (pp. 3–4). Other research highlights the hidden agenda of emotions and human relationships in the processes of learning (Cooper & Brna, 2002), the learning of creativity and social skills (Kian et al., 2020), and especially the learning of moral values (Ghanta & Mondal, 2018; Giroux & Purpel, 1983). As the scope of hidden curriculum research continues to expand, it may be helpful to start with a more systematic analysis of the concept as a first step to understanding its relation to the learning of values. The adjective “hidden” implies that the hidden curriculum is a sub-category of “curriculum,” and so it seems sensible to start with the latter concept – but even the term “curriculum” is problematic. In fact, it can refer to three distinct concepts, which (for the time being) we will call C1, C2, and C3. C1 refers to the sum of the learning experiences each child has while at school (Johnson, 1968, p. 3; Schools Council, 1981, p. 10). C2 is a sub-section of C1 and refers to everything that children are supposed to learn at school. This definition corresponds to Hirst’s (1980) view of the curriculum as “a programme of activities (by teachers and pupils) designed so that pupils will attain as far as possible certain educational ends or objectives” (p. 9). In other words, it is an intentional, consciously planned, objective-driven set of activities, based on the assumption that children will learn from guidance and instruction. C3 is in turn a sub-section of C2 and focuses on content. It refers to everything that children are supposed to learn at school from a course of academic study and comes to refer to the formally timetabled course of study itself. C3 is thus distinguished from other intentional activities aimed at educational goals, such as following school rules, forming relationships with classmates and teachers and participating in a range of non-academic school activities, whether compulsory (school assemblies, speech days) or optional (extra-curricular activities). In many countries, the National Curriculum sets out the broad content of C3, which is then conveyed in manageable portions to pupils through syllabuses, materials, and individual lessons. The relationship between the three concepts (C1, C2, and C3)

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Level of Analysis Activity Everything that children learn

Environment

C1 Everything that children learn at school

Publicly Declared Intention

C2

HC

Everything that children are supposed to learn at school

Content

Everything that children learn out of school

Everything that children are not officially supposed to learn at school, but do

C3 Everything that children are supposed to learn at school from a course of study

Everything that children learn from intentional activities at school that do not involve study

Structure e.g. Subject Timetables Lessons

e.g. Extra curricular activities Patoral care Assemblies

Fig. 19.1 The relationship between the three concepts of the curriculum (C1, C2, and C3) and the hidden curriculum (HC)

is set out in Fig. 19.1, and we are now in a position to see the link between the “curriculum” and the “hidden curriculum” more clearly. We cannot distinguish the hidden curriculum from C1 because, insofar as C1 refers to all the learning experiences children have at school, it must include any hidden messages that children pick up as well as planned learning activities. It is similarly unhelpful to try to contrast the hidden curriculum with C3, since the hidden curriculum (unlike C3) occurs both in formal lessons and in informal contexts in schools such as breaktime, both in planned activities and in spontaneous interactions, and through contact with other pupils and the social and physical environment as well as with teachers. The real distinction comes at the level of intention, and it is the contrast between C2 and the hidden curriculum which is most illuminative of our understanding of the latter. If C2 refers to “everything that children are supposed to learn at school,” then the hidden curriculum can be roughly defined as the things that children are not supposed to learn at school but do (or at least, the things which

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children learn that do not have the official approval of the school). C2 and the hidden curriculum are thus two mutually exclusive sub-categories of C1. Because the hidden curriculum is not part of the official activities of the school, it is hidden, so to speak, from the eye of accountability. Because there is no systematic planning, pedagogy, or agenda for the hidden curriculum, it tends to be “caught rather than taught” and may involve picking up hidden messages, scraps of knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, ideas about relationships, and so on. The hidden curriculum is a form of social interaction whose outcome can normally not be specified, and the messages may be positive or negative, because there is no quality control and no evaluation. Clearly, such learning does not occur only in the context of the school, and indeed, the term may be used metaphorically for any learning experiences where the nature of the learning is not officially acknowledged; thus, recent articles have discussed the hidden curriculum of online learning (Öztok, 2019), the hidden curriculum of crisis accommodation for young women in Poland (Mostowska & Debska, 2021), and the hidden curriculum of shopping (Turow, 2017). But the present chapter is concerned only with the school-based learning of values and in this context the term “hidden curriculum” can perhaps best be defined as all the learning which occurs through the experience of attending school but which is neither authorized by the school nor intended as a means to specified educational ends. It is clear from this definition that learning associated with the hidden curriculum can come from fellow students as well as from teachers, that it need not be academic, that it may come from relationships and social interactions as much as from training, guidance, and instruction and that it can be beneficial as well as harmful. In this chapter, our focus is on just one aspect of such learning – the values (broadly understood) which children learn at school through the hidden curriculum and the role these play in enculturation. We explore the factors involved in such informal learning, including work and play, experience, and observation of everyday life in school, and the influence of the affective domain, and we draw our evidence from the children themselves.

Research Methods The research reported in this chapter consists of an ethnographic case study of children’s classroom experiences conducted in a single class of 8- to 9-year-old children in a single school in the southwest of England, toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Several months were spent closely observing the class, and this was followed by detailed interviews with the children, the class teacher (Mr. McGee), and others. The interviews were all tape-recorded and later transcribed. A new approach to “listening to children” was adopted in order to avoid the usual dominance of adult agendas, and the children were encouraged to express their own opinions and understandings openly within a framework of non-structured friendship-group interviews. The child-centered perspective is important because (as noted below) it is clear that children’s perspectives on values may be very different from those of adults. The extended period of observation was designed to

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help the researcher to get inside the children’s experiences and see the classroom through their eyes, and this in turn helped the interviews to be productive in probing the children’s consciousness. These methods were chosen in preference to surveys and questionnaires in order to prioritize depth rather than breadth, to acknowledge complexity and ambiguity in the findings and to allow the children space to tell their own stories and express their own views of their normal life and favorite moments as they chose. The research was carried out in accordance with standard ethical procedures and principles including informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, the avoidance of risk, the right of participants to withdraw, and the avoidance of leading questions or undue influence. Pseudonyms have been used in all reports of the research. The research methods were influenced most closely by Jackson, Boostrom and Hansen (1993) and Cullingford (2002, 2007). This chapter focuses on two aspects of the findings – the values that children have (or develop) in the classroom, and the way the values are learned. The former were investigated mainly through the interviews and conversations with the children, the latter mainly through the observation, though in practice it was very difficult to separate out the two aspects. In order to capture as many different layers of meaning and significance as possible, the observational data were initially grouped into two separate categories: school routines and rituals, and child-oriented behavior, and responses. Similarly, the interview data were critically analyzed from different angles – first, within the researchers’ agenda focusing on specific repeated aspects of school life, and second, from the children’s own perspective, focusing on their accounts in their own words of their experiences of schooling. However, the deeper an investigation like this probes, the more difficult interpretation becomes, though perhaps the ambiguity forms part of the richness of the findings. For example, the teacher was frequently observed touching his lip with his index finger as if calling for quiet, moving his finger slowly down his chin, and then smiling. It is difficult to be sure what this momentary action was intended to achieve from the teacher’s perspective, let alone to understand how the children responded to it or what they learned from it. Was the action intended to have a different effect from a straightforward telling-off, or was it simply a variation on the standard approach? Was the teacher really annoyed, or was he simply trying to encourage “good” behavior? Did the smile imply that the reprimand should not be taken too seriously, or that he wanted the children to know that he still liked them and cared for them underneath, or that he saw the need to reassure them at the same time as telling them off? What are the different ways that different children may read this action? What influences the different messages they may learn from it?

Initial Findings: The Hidden Curriculum The findings from the observations and interviews are many and varied, and only a few will be touched on here. The first is that the way children perceive things in the classroom is often very different from adult understandings. This is well illustrated by the issue of the use of space in the classroom. This topic has featured extensively in the literature on the hidden curriculum. Hargreaves (1977), for example, sees the

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physical layout of the classroom as “a symbolic expression of . . . the power relation that exists between teachers and pupils” (p. 101). Not only do teachers have much more space than the pupils and much more freedom to move about (Sommer, 1969, p. 99), but they also control the way the pupils enter and leave the room and the extent of pupils’ movement within the room. In their allocation, use and control of space in school, Hargreaves (1977) reminds us teachers’ “power and authority are constantly represented and reinforced,” and this helps to “prepare the young for an acceptance” of passive roles as adults in industrial society (pp. 103, 105). In our research, the children show an equally strong interest in the use of classroom space, but their interpretation is different and more complex. One of the things that emerge in the children’s interviews is that they are very concerned with where they are placed. In the first group interview, the four boys explained that on the carpet they can choose where to sit but at the tables they cannot. They drew a map of how the children are normally set into “top,” “middle,” and “bottom” tables. This feature of school life is mentioned continuously in the interviews in terms of which table the children occupy. While the children seem to accept the fact that they are organized into groups and that there are ability differences between the groups, they show much dissatisfaction with their lack of freedom to decide whom they sit or stand next to: KAREN:

I don’t normally get paired with any of my friends. (Interview 18)

The issue of whether they can sit with their friends seems to loom much larger in their consciousness than any awareness of the teacher’s dominance of classroom space. The second key finding is that different children may interpret the same event in very different ways. Even the simple twice-daily routine of taking the register evokes very different responses from the children. Generally, registration is experienced by the children as a boring but necessary routine, mainly involving sitting and waiting: MARK:

Well, you don’t learn anything from the register. You just learn to behave, and look at the person who is saying it. (Interview 19)

However, two different interpretations emerge from the exchange of greetings that Mr. McGee requires as part of the registration process. One girl regards the greetings as a sign of care on the part of the teacher, but others see them merely as a requirement and put more emphasis on practical matters like apologizing for their late arrival or confirming their lunch category. The alphabetical sequence also raises issues for the children. One group of girls raises it as a matter of fairness: ANITA:

ELLA:

Sometimes the teachers, ‘cos they think it’s quite unfair for the people at the last of the register, sometimes they go backwards. So they go from the last. The last person to the first person. Mr. McGee does that. And also. . .

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INTERVIEWER: ELLA:

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Why is it unfair, when you said “unfair”? Is this. . .? Because they have to wait until last, to call out their names. (Interview 7)

On the other hand, some boys were very certain that the teacher’s intention in taking the register in reverse alphabetical order is to keep the children more alert rather than playing fair in terms of balancing the normal order. The third key finding is that the children rarely respond uncritically to the teacher’s instructions or to the expectations of the school. This does not mean that their instinctive response is always to subvert the teacher’s intentions (though, as we note below, this is a not uncommon response), but sometimes that they feel the need to offer some explanation when they do go along with what the teacher requires and at other times merely that they perceive the teacher’s advice as irrelevant, particularly when he is telling them to do something outside school. Some children seek to justify the classroom rules in terms of safety requirements or the development of self-discipline or the facilitation of learning, though this still does not mean that they always follow the rules: HENRY: ELEANOR: HENRY: GEORGE:

INTERVIEWER: GEORGE: INTERVIEWER: JESS: GEORGE:

Well, you need rules in life because if you just go under your rules, you won’t be trained. You won’t be as good as you like. If you don’t follow anything, you’ll just kind of be like a grumpy person, moody person, won’t you? That’s true. (Interview 16) Yeah, even if you don’t want to do it you have to do it, ‘cos it’s for your own safety. But also-, erm, . . . sometimes some people might actually learn that, do things from that. So do you learn from that? No, not really. (He grinned.) How about you? What did you learn? It’s just usual, for us. We’ve learned it and now it’s usual for us, so . . . Well, it’s like expecting it. It’s kind of like to go on routine, because it’s like we’re programmed to do that. It’s kind of planned in our mind. (Interview 11)

Other children seem to think that the teacher makes up rules for his own convenience: ANITA:

It’s just easier for the teacher. So they don’t have to work so hard really. (Anita and Polly giggled.) So that’s maybe easier. (Interview 7)

The children’s acceptance of classroom rules is often closely related to their attitude to the teacher:

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GEORGE:

If you keep by his rules, he can turn out to be quite nice. But Jess doesn’t keep by his rules. I know. ‘Cos I’m not too bothered by them. I’m not very scared. (Interview 11)

JESS:

Other children are more critical of the teacher’s behavior. On one occasion, when talking about ways of improving the quality of teaching, John did not hesitate to stress the need for the teacher to change his approach to discipline: JOHN:

“Don’t shout all the time. Don’t tell us off when we just walk around. That’s it.” (Interview 5)

Sometimes the teacher appears anxious to promote family values and encourages the children to tell their parents they love them and to share their favorite bit of the day with them. But the children respond with a kind of blank bewilderment, as if home is a different world where different values apply: KEVIN:

IRIS:

That . . . that’s just stupid. As you know what you did in the day, you know what your favourite lesson is, but you don’t . . .You want to keep it a bit private between yourself. (Interview 17) Sometimes you don’t really want to tell your parents. (Interview 13)

This places a question mark over the widely held assumption that contexts for learning and development necessarily interact and influence each other (cf. Osher et al., 2020, pp. 9–10). It is quite possible for children to compartmentalize different influences on their development. Certain key values are already emerging in this examination of aspects of the hidden curriculum of classroom life, particularly the importance of friendship, the need for fun and distraction, the principle of fairness and the desire for more freedom of choice and decision-making. But before these values are explored in more detail, we shall say something about the children’s experience of the normal school day.

The Normal School Day The children initiated the term “normal day” in the second interview and went on to describe the “normal day” as a set structure composed of programmed activities. They use “normal,” “routine,” or “usual things” in their explanation of their daily experience: ELEANOR: ANITA:

I expect like just the normal day at school, really. It’s all like the same, really, you know. (Interview 16) You have to change from being like, being able to do whatever you want to do and then you’ll have to be like, you’ll have to do what you’re told, put your hand up and answer the question. (Interview 7)

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The fixed expectations of everyday schooling in these quotations capture the experience of boredom, though different children describe it in different ways. Some girls talked about the boredom of repeating tasks endlessly, while some boys complained about the predictability of school life: GEORGE:

JESS: EDDIE:

JOHN:

Sometimes they might think some of the lessons are bit boring. ‘Cos you just sit on the carpet with written things for about half an hour. Even if you know, they are telling you what you’ll be doing. And then you’re going to do it. For five years! (Interview 11) You’ve done it like for almost all of your life. And you have to do it. And it’s like an everyday thing. Yeah. I mean you have to get used to it. And then it like gets boring after a while. (Interview 14)

So what is the normal school day like? The findings illustrate four main dimensions of life for children in the context of the classroom. First, grouping and sequencing always deal with children collectively rather than as individuals. Second, the teacher puts children into their designated places and then gives them comprehensive instructions concerning organizational or disciplinary matters. Third, by supervising the children, assessing their behavior and rewarding or punishing them according to their conformity to the various explicit or implicit regulations, the teacher puts them constantly under surveillance. They may respond with subversive practices like distraction, disruption, and time-wasting (Halstead & Xiao, 2009). Fourth, the children are explicitly required to seek permission from the teacher for everything they do, and this creates a dependency culture and encourages attentionseeking. The children are constantly aware of the teacher’s discipline and sanctions, and these dominate their conscious judgment of the situation in the classroom. At times, the researcher reported herself feeling overwhelmed by the teacher’s organization, instruction, and classroom management while she was recording what was happening in the classroom.

Children’s Values and the Impact of their Experience in School As already noted, the children’s interviews highlight a number of core values, including friendship, fun, fairness, and freedom. Generally, the values are not articulated directly or in detail, but are integrated into the children’s descriptions and evaluations of their everyday classroom experiences. This section brings together the various comments that they make on their developing values across the interviews. Friendship is probably the most significant value in children’s experience of schooling; indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the main meaning of school life for many children. They often refer to “making friends” or the importance of friendship when they are talking about other topics. Both at breaktime and in the lessons, children try to spend time with their friends, and even during registration,

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they think about friendship issues. For example, some girls said that registration for them is a time to identify whether their friends will have school dinner or packed lunch so that they can decide who to have lunch with and play with afterward. In one interview, a group of children raised it as a major issue who they should sit with at the same table. Sitting with one’s friends evokes positive emotions like security, trust, and happiness. In other interviews, girls explained how their feelings during the school day depended on “experiencing friendship”: HELEN:

INTERVIEWER: HELEN:

ANITA:

Well, sometimes at the start of school, I’m like quite grumpy ‘cos I’ve got out and played and I don’t really want to go to work. Then at the end of the school day, I’m normally quite happy because like I’ve seen my friends and I just feel like . . . like not, say grumpy or sad or anything. So you’re happy when the school finished? Yeah, ‘cos we’ve seen our friends. It’s like we feel better about it. It’s like if something sad happened or anything, just seeing your friends makes you feel better. So then you don’t feel so bad later on, as you do in the morning. (Interview 9) I don’t like to go to school all the time really. But I don’t mind coming to school a couple of days to see your friends and things, ‘cos some of the people you don’t see on any other time. (Interview 15)

However, the attitude of the school toward children’s friendships is complex and ambiguous. The children are aware on the one hand that schools promote the value of friendship both through the overt curriculum (especially PSHE) and through the ethos of the school. For example, when the children discuss the value of schooling, friendship is mentioned as one of the main things they learned: POLLY:

Yeah, and we learn just how to be educated, how to be kind to people, like by sharing, by making friends, also in PSHE, because that’s about friendship. (Interview 7)

On the other hand, school conveys the message to children that friendship can get in the way of other important values such as working and learning, and some of the children appear to take this message seriously: GEORGE: RORY:

If you talk to your friends, how can you listen to Mr. McGee? How you gonna pass your test? How you can do that? (Interview 11) If you sit next to your friends then you talk. Then your whole table will be staying behind. (Interview 15)

It is not clear where the value of friendship originates, but even if it pre-dates school attendance, it is clearly reinforced through the hidden curriculum, both through the influence of peers and through the active experiences of the children,

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as well as through some parts of the school ethos. At the same time, the school gives mixed messages to the children about friendship, leaving them in a position where they experience tension between the pleasures of friendship and the need to follow the teacher’s instructions to stay apart from friends while working. What this study reveals is that it is not unusual for the practices of schooling to impose conflicting values on the children, and perhaps it is through reflecting on and resolving such conflicts that the children’s moral values become more mature. Schooling thus plays an important part in their moral development, but not always in the way that is intended. To the extent that schools acknowledge and encourage children’s friendships, however, schooling can become a positive experience for children: GAVIN:

If you had no friends, you would . . . the school will seem like a nasty thing, but whereas if you have friends, there’s a fun side of school. (Interview 12)

Fun is also a complex concept in the context of the school, but in one form or another it is an important value for children. Against the backdrop of the “normal day” and a life lived very much under the watchful eye of the teacher, the children need to have recourse to fun. Sometimes the fun may be organized, or at least sanctioned, by the teacher, such as the distribution of sweets on someone’s birthday or the occasional classroom games. In any case, some of the timetabled activities, especially sporting activities, after-school clubs, and playtime, may be perceived by many of the children as “fun.” ANITA: RORY:

Well, like play times, we find it quite fun. It’s quite nice to see your friends and things and play with them. And after school, school clubs. It’s time to have fun and see each other. (Interview 15)

As one boy and one girl explained, nobody enjoys nothing at all at school. There must be at least one thing the children like. However, the favorite things expressed in the children’s account often do not belong to their ordinary school life. For example, the children in the above interview further revealed that their favorite lessons are Library or on the field or flute lesson. This highlights their dissatisfaction with “normal” school things. Fun and play are usually thought of as the opposite of “work,” which is the general term children use to indicate their programs of learning at school (C3, to use the earlier terminology). It is clear from many interviews that “work” for many children is linked to “boredom” and other negative feelings like repeating “the same old things” (Kate, Interview 17), and the absence of fun (Polly, Interview 18; George, Interview 11): KATE:

Sometimes when I come into school, I look at the chart [of lessons] and then I see what’s on today. And I go “Boring, boring, fun, boring, boring, fun, fun, fun, boring.” (Interview 17)

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In this context, the children frequently resort to making jokes and “messing about,” perhaps as a way of seeking fun through unauthorized channels. Strategies like distraction, disruption, time-wasting, daydreaming, fiddling with something, throwing a pencil, “messing about,” unauthorized talking, and trying to have a laugh are the well-documented ways for pupils to get through the more mundane aspects of school life (Delamont, 1983; Pollard, 1985; Woods, 1990). It seems as if there is an undercurrent of minor deviations from the required patterns of behavior, which may all have their roots in children’s boredom or inability to concentrate for long periods or lack of interest in what they are meant to be doing. Once again, there is a conflict between what the children value (in this case, fun) and what the school demands of them. What the school teaches openly is for the children to restrain their natural inclinations and desires, but what the children learn through the hidden curriculum is how to balance their own wishes and values with those of the school. This may involve a finely tuned set of judgments (Is it worth the risk? How likely is it I will get caught and punished? How bad is the action anyway? Will my action cause any harm? and so on). While friendship and fun appear to represent the dominant values for the children in the context of the classroom, they also mention many other values, including fairness and freedom of choice. Many of the children question the fairness of the teacher’s disciplinary procedures and speak critically of him when he tells individuals off, exercises sanctions, or refuses children permission to sit with friends. For example, although the boys knew that Mr. McGee stopped them covering their mouth to prevent them from talking behind their hands, Gavin raised it as unfair. He said this was because he had a habitual pose with his face leaning against one hand. Some girls also criticized the teacher for unfairness when he told the wrong person off. Several children also expressed the desire for more freedom of choice in the practical organization of the classroom: ANITA:

Maybe you should like . . . maybe you feel it’s better you should choose who you sit next to on the tables and things. (Interview 15)

The value of freedom of choice also comes to the surface in more profound decisions the children make about how to live their life and what sort of image of themselves to present to others. Should they obey or disobey the teacher’s instructions? This can be seen as the autonomous choice of individual children based on their specific understanding of both the nature of the rules and the person exercising the rules. Should they present themselves (in their terms) as a “goodie girl” or a “daring boy”? Ella is regarded as a “good, good girl” by other children in the class. But she struggles with this self-identification. Actually, Henry and Eleanor also share similar thoughts about the question “Should I be good?” and reveal some aspects of their developing values: INTERVIEWER: ELLA: ELEANOR:

Why don’t you like to be good? It’s just. . . Because it’s just boring.

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ELLA: HENRY: ELEANOR: INTERVIEWER: ELLA: ELEANOR: HENRY: ELLA: HENRY:

ELEANOR: HENRY:

377

Boring. Yeah. It’s better being bad. Why don’t you start being bad? I don’t want to . . . I don’t. I can’t. OK. But do you think being good is boring? Yeah, it’s a bit boring because you just have to listen to all the teacher. . . He always asks you to do stuff just because you would say “Yes” all the time. Yeah! Yeah, being good, there is a good thing about it. Because you get. . . You learn more. You learn more. No. You get . . . all these good things, like you get early for break. Remember the whole class were staying in ten minutes, “Eleanor, Ella and Anita, you can all go out.” “These are the people that I can trust to be good.” And I was one of them, actually. (Interview 16)

Conclusion This exploration of some of the complexities in the workings of the hidden curriculum has shown that the process of learning values in the classroom involves much more than either the direct teaching of values (C2 in our terminology) emphasized by some proponents of character education or the teaching by example emphasized within virtues ethics. The complexities sometimes result from differences of personality, needs, and family background among individual children, but may also be related to the varied interactions within the classroom, to the different ways that individual children evaluate situations and to the level of thinking that goes into the judgments they make when faced with moral choices. What the children learn from the teacher’s constant surveillance, reprimands, and use of rewards and sanctions may be less to do with whether to be compliant or disruptive and more to do with the amount of thought that goes into their response. For example, obedience may be an unthinking, passive, lazy response on the part of the children, or merely a desire to “please the teacher,” but the evidence from our research suggests that the children often feel obliged to justify their compliance (in terms of being resigned to the inevitable, for example, or of actually agreeing with the teacher or of being willing to see things from his standpoint), which suggests it is not unthinking. Similarly, disobedience or disruption may be an unthinking response to the generally strict atmosphere in Mr. McGee’s classroom, or to feelings of boredom, but our research suggests that the children are often conscious of the restraints under which they live at school and of the unarticulated regulating intentions of the teacher and make deliberate choices about how to behave or respond in the light of this awareness. However, the question whether or not to obey the teachers still appears to generate

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inner struggles in the children. As we noted earlier, even the so-called “goodie girls” hint that absolute obedience to rules can be unrealistic and arbitrary in reality. While “resistance” and “rebellion” sound negative in the school context, they actually demonstrate children’s individuality and potential for rational autonomy. This is because they are engaging with the teacher’s demands rather than being simply passive; and engagement is a positive learning outcome, even if the particular response involves resistance or subversion. In a sense, all children are resistant and subversive to some extent and their behavior becomes a mirror image of the teacher’s surveillance and dominance, so that a kind of balance is maintained in the classroom between teacher and pupils (cf. Halstead & Xiao, 2009). Important values education is clearly going on through the hidden curriculum experiences described in this chapter. The children may be learning, for example, about empathy, care, trust, and collaboration through their experiences of friendship, and about seeing things through other people’s eyes. They may be learning about the need to avoid inappropriate forms of fun, such as bullying and teasing and having fun at the expense of others. They may be learning about the need for rules in school and, through that, about the importance of the rule of law. At a more abstract level, they may be learning about how to make complex moral judgments, how to be aware of the consequences of one’s actions, how to make choices, and how to be sensitive to the moral dimensions of actions and decisions (Formosa, 2021). But this learning can sometimes go on in spite of the teacher rather than through a positive relationship with the teacher. The teacher may think that his dominating presence and his discipline are helping to guide the children’s behavior and shape their values, but in fact the story is often much more complicated. The children think about (and talk with their friends about) how they are treated in class and subjected to constant surveillance and control; they reflect on the fairness or unfairness of the treatment and its impact on the things they value (such as friendship, fun and individual freedom); in the process of reflecting on how to respond to the treatment, they may find themselves taking on a range of values like respect for others and tolerance of the values and attitudes of teachers and other adults that may be very different from their own. Significantly, such reflection is likely to be reinforced by discussion with their peers rather than with their teacher. Indeed, it may be their inner or overt resistance to the teacher’s control that is leading them toward such reflection and thus toward moral autonomy. But because such learning is unintentional on the part of the teacher and unconscious on the part of the children, it is a clear example of how children can learn values through the secret workings of the hidden curriculum.

References Alsubaie, M. A. (2015). Hidden curriculum as one of current issue of curriculum. Journal of Education and Practice, 6, 125–128. Bank, B. J., Delamont, S., & Marshall, C. (Eds.). (2007). Gender and education: An encyclopedia (Vol. 2). Praeger.

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Baykut, S., Erbil, C., Ozbilgin, M., Kamasak, R., & Baglama, S. H. (2021). The impact of the hidden curriculum on international students in the context of a country with a toxic triangle of diversity. The Curriculum Journal, 33, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.135 Bernstein, B., Elvin, H. L., & Peters, R. S. (1966). Ritual in education. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 251(Series B), 429–436. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. Basic Books. Brown, M. E., Coker, O., Heybourne, A., & Finn, G. M. (2020). Exploring the hidden curriculum’s impact on medical students: Professionalism, identity formation and the need for transparency. Medical Science Educator, 30, 1107–1121. Cooper, B., & Brna, P. (2002). Hidden curriculum, hidden feelings: Emotions, relationships and learning with ICT and the whole child. Paper presented at the BERA Annual Conference, Exeter, UK, 12–14 September. Cullingford, C. (2002). The best years of their lives? Pupil’s experiences of school. Kogan Page. Cullingford, C. (2007). Childhood – The inside story: Hearing children’s voices. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Delamont, S. (1983). Interaction in the classroom: Contemporary sociology of the school. Routledge. Dunlop, F. (1984). The education of feeling and emotion. Allen & Unwin. Formosa, P. (2021). A Kantian approach to education for moral sensitivity. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 55, 1017–1028. Ghanta, B., & Mondal, M. (2018). Hidden curriculum: An informal way for moral development of learners. International Journal of Innovative and Emerging Research in Engineering, 4, 65–68. Giroux, H., & Purpel, D. (Eds.). (1983). The hidden curriculum and moral education. McCutcheon. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Penguin. Halstead, J. M. (1996). Values and values education in schools. In J. M. Halstead & M. J. Taylor (Eds.), Values in education and education in values (pp. 3–14). Falmer Press. Halstead, J. M., & Xiao, J. (2009). Teacher surveillance and children’s subversion: The educational implications of non-educational activities in the classroom. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1, 2264–2268. Hamilton, L., & Powell, B. (2007). Hidden curriculum. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology (Vol. 5). Wiley-Blackwell. Hargreaves, D. (1977). Power and the paracurriculum. In C. Richards (Ed.), Power and the curriculum: Issues in curriculum studies (pp. 97–108). Nafferton Books. Hargreaves, D. (1982). The challenge for the comprehensive school. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Henry, J. (1955). Docility or giving the teacher what she wants. Journal of Social Issues, 11, 33–41. Hirst, P. H. (1980). Logic of curriculum development. In M. Galton (Ed.), Curriculum change. University of Leicester Press. Holt, J. (1965). How children fail. Penguin. Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms. Holt. Jackson, P. W., Boostrom, R. E., & Hansen, D. T. (1993). The moral life of schools. Jossey-Bass. Johnson, H. T. (1968). Foundations of curriculum. Merrill. Kian, M., Ehsangar, H., & Izanloo, B. (2020). The effect of hidden curriculum on creativity and social skills: The perspective of elementary schools. Social Behavior, Research and Health, 4, 487–496. Mackin, R., Baptiste, S., Niec, A., & Kam, A. (2019). The hidden curriculum: A good thing? Cureus, 11, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6305 Meighan, R., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2003). A sociology of educating (4th ed.). Continuum. Mostowska, M., & Debska, K. (2021). The conspicuous hidden curriculum and young women’s daily lives in Polish crisis accommodation. British Journal of Social Work, 51, 2500–2516. Osher, D., Cantor, P., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2020). Drivers of human development: How relationships and context shape learning and development. Applied Developmental Science, 24, 6–36.

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Öztok, M. (2019). The hidden curriculum of online learning: Understanding social justice through critical pedagogy. Routledge. Pollard, A. (1985). The social world of the primary school. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Preston, M. (2015). ‘They’re just not mature right now’: Teachers’ complicated perceptions of gender and anti-queer bullying. Sex Education, 16, 22–34. Richardson, E. (1967). The environment of learning. Nelson. Schools Council. (1981). The practical curriculum (Working paper 70). Methuen. Scott, J., & Marshall, G. (2014). A dictionary of sociology. Oxford University Press. Smith, B. (2015). The existence of a hidden curriculum in Sex and Relationships Education in secondary schools. Transformations, 1, 42–55. [Online]. Available at: https://educationstudies. org.uk/?p¼3781. Accessed 8 Mar 2022. Sommer, R. (1969). Personal space. Prentice-Hall. Sulaimani, M. F., & Gut, D. M. (2019). Hidden curriculum in a special education context: The case of individuals with autism. Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 9, 30–39. Turow, J. (2017). The aisles have eyes: How retailers track your shopping, strip your privacy and define your power. Yale University Press. Walton, G. (2005). The hidden curriculum in schools: Implications for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth. Alternate Routes, 21, 18–39. Wilson, J. (1985). Example or timetable? A note on the Warnock fallacy. Journal of Moral Education, 14, 173–176. Woods, P. (1990). The happiest days? How pupils cope with school. Falmer Press.

Personal and Professional Values in Teaching

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values and Virtues in Teaching I: The Link with Moral Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values and Virtues in Teaching II: Pedagogy as Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Case of Discipline and Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Personal Relationships in Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

In line with the theme of the first section, this chapter is concerned to explore the conceptual and ethical complexities of the question of what it is to be a good teacher. As the author has argued in previous work, the teaching of good teachers seems implicated in principles and values that are not merely regulative of the activity of teaching but constitutive of the character and personality of good teachers – and, indeed, many of the so-called technical aspects of teaching may be, when rightly viewed, more qualities of this personal kind than of technique. That said, it should also be acknowledged that teaching is a deeply contested notion and therefore open to further debate and analysis. Keywords

Values · Teaching · Good Teacher · Professional Role of Teachers · Ethics

D. Carr (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_20

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Introduction The key issue with which this chapter is concerned is that of how we should understand the (professional) role of (good) teachers and the conduct of (good) teaching. To this end, I shall begin with some assumptions that are not, I trust, too controversial. The first is that insofar as our present concern lies with the nature of “professional” teaching, we must appreciate that any associated idea of good teaching is inherently normative, implying value-laden standards that – at least in contexts of public schooling – are nevertheless subject to (local if not universal) codes or conventions of acceptable practice. That said, despite any and all professional attempts to secure universal consensus on the nature of good teaching, one may not reasonably expect to find complete agreement on this contested matter – and the present account also cannot be exempted from such controversy. Still, the second major assumption or claim of this essay – to be argued more fully in what follows – is that it is only possible to understand teaching, either as professional role or activity, as implicated in human relations of an inherently “personal” and/or interpersonal nature. Thus, on the one hand, while teaching, along with other professions, vocations, and trades, is an activity that is subject to objective standards of effective practice and/or public or official codes of good conduct, it is also – perhaps unlike (say) pest extermination or (even) brain surgery – an occupation in which it is difficult, if not impossible and/or undesirable, to avoid some measure or level of more subjective, personal, or interpersonal relationship with those (in this case pupils or students) whom the practice aims to serve. In this light, the present chapter will address two basic questions. First, what personal qualities – compatible with generally accepted professional standards – are required by the good teacher and for good teaching? Second, what forms of interpersonal association – likewise compatible with professional standards – are required for or acceptable in teaching? In the course of addressing these questions, however, the present essay will also seek to identify various significant respects in which teaching differs from other human professions, vocations or occupations – to the extent, perhaps, of requiring quite special or unique personal qualities and/or capacities of personal and interpersonal association. In particular, it will here be argued that teaching does not entirely conform to a certain latter-day account of professional or occupational expertise largely or exclusively modeled on conformity to codes of professional practice and/or mastery of professional skills. Thus, for example, we might consider a good joiner to be someone who has mastered the technical skills of joinery and who adheres to a particular code of trading standards and a good doctor to be someone of sound medical knowledge and expertise who also conforms to an established code of professional ethics. To be sure, we might judge particular joiners or doctors to be better or worse in terms of qualities not entirely confined to some such combination of technique and professional code – and these might include personal qualities. Thus, we might prefer this joiner to that one for his or her cheerfulness and good temper, or this doctor to that one for his or her superior “bedside manner.” Still, it is arguable that the joiner’s cheerfulness or the doctor’s bedside manner – while admirable –is not quite as crucial to effective

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carpentry or medical practice as technical expertise or skill and/or obedience to occupational codes or rules. Indeed, we might well prefer grumpy or misanthropic joiners or doctors to their opposites if these are more technically proficient or heedful of correct occupational standards and procedures.

Values and Virtues in Teaching I: The Link with Moral Formation However, it may now be asked why we cannot say exactly the same about teaching. In this light, good teachers would be first and foremost those who had mastered the necessary skills of efficient and effective pedagogy and whose practice conforms to certain professionally established standards of trustworthiness, fair treatment of clients (pupils), satisfactory to high quality of educational service, and so on. Here, again, we might hope that good teachers would also be warm and approachable, cheerful, and enthusiastic, or even have wit or charm; but we could hardly require– at least in any very strong terms – such more personal qualities or characteristics from a general professional perspective. Indeed, once again, it might be supposed that we should even prefer humorless, grumpy, and unapproachable teachers to their opposites, if the former managed classes with good discipline and were more successful than others in securing competitive examination results – and it may be that this is rather closer to some bygone or “traditional” conceptions of the good teacher. Moreover, one might aspire to express what we have so far said about teaching and other occupations – particularly in liberal-democratic contexts – in a general distinction between professional and private aspects of human association. (For a useful exploration of this distinction in relation to education, see McLaughlin, 2008a.) In such terms, the professional or other occupational roles of agents would be strictly defined in terms of public (officially endorsed) standards of service and conduct that are largely if not completely separable from their personal qualities, attitudes and dispositions as private citizens. It might then appear to follow from this: first, that insofar as such personal qualities as wit or charm can contribute to professional efficiency, they may do so (at least so long as minimal conventions of politeness to clients are, however reluctantly, observed) only “contingently” rather than necessarily; second, that insofar as professional practitioners are entitled to a significant measure of personal (liberal) freedom in their private lives, how they behaved in private would be strictly their own affair. Thus, for example, a person might be as misogynist as he likes in his private life, just so long as he treated women respectfully and fairly in his professional capacity as a social worker, probation officer, or teacher. However, it is a key aim of the present chapter to argue that it is difficult if not impossible to sustain this distinction between private attitudes and/or professional role in the case of an occupation such as teaching. To be sure, it is probably also difficult to sustain it in relation to many other human occupations (such as notably, religious ministry, social work, and nursing), but it is the present contention that this distinction is particularly unsustainable and objectionable in the case of teaching – for a number of very specific reasons. To be sure, one may concede that the

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distinction – despite the rather artificial liberal contrast between private or personal and public values and virtues on which it is based – may be useful or defensible to some extent and/or in some cases and contexts. Thus, we may allow that just so long as the general practitioner or medical consultant is appropriately knowledgeable or skilled and takes due care with the treatment of one’s ailing child, his or her actual character or personality – whether he or she is personally pleasant, agreeable or friendly – is neither here nor there. Indeed, it may seem personally intrusive to “require” doctors, architects or civil servants to exhibit particular character or personality traits, or even to renounce certain attitudes that others might (from another moral perspective) find objectionable – if neither traits nor attitudes do not interfere with his or her professional practice. While this might also engender some psychological conflict or tension, even entail some hypocrisy in the life of some professionals, such strain would be a matter for private and not (especially) public concern. All the same, I have previously argued (see Carr, 1993a, 2000, 2005, 2006) that such shortfall between the private and the professional does not sit well with any idea of good teaching – at least at those stages of educational practice explicitly concerned or charged with the personal, social and moral formation of children or young people. The key point here is that insofar as some level of moral education or training seems to be (evidently for most people) part of public expectation of teachers, at least with regard to primary and secondary schools, and moral education – according to a compelling view derived from Aristotle (1925) – is a matter of the cultivation of character via something like personal example, the personal character of the teacher must also be of public professional concern. On this view, insofar as effective moral education requires teachers who actually exhibit certain positive qualities of character (or virtues), rather than teachers who merely conform to certain public expectations in their professional practice (while dancing, perhaps, to some quite different private tune in their personal lives and attitudes) their personal characters cannot be of only private concern. To this extent, it seems easier to make sense of the idea of a good but misanthropic, misogynist, homophobic, religiously bigoted or even racist doctor, builder, architect, airline pilot (insofar as such individuals might indeed manage to conceal such shortcomings in their daily work), than to suppose someone tainted with such attitudes and sentiments to be a good teacher – not least since it would be difficult for such agents to engage sincerely, as teachers are often required to do, with issues of decent and just human association in their pedagogical practice. Likewise, it may also be easier to suppose that someone prone to abusive, bullying, or humiliating conduct in his or her private life might yet be fit to practice as (say) a good doctor, builder, or airline pilot than to think of someone so disposed as fit for teaching. To be sure, we ought not to take any such case for conformity between the private and the professional in the case of teaching too far: even if we might prefer witty or charming teachers to dour or humorless ones – or even regard them as more effective instructors – we can recognize that dourness or lack of wit need not of itself disqualify someone from teaching or be quite inconsistent with effective instruction or education. At this point, it may be useful to draw some distinction among personal qualities between traits of character and personality. On one plausible construal of

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this distinction (see Carr, 2007), the former would be largely qualities of some moral import – those for which we can be praised for having or (more particularly) blamed for lacking. Thus, insofar as would-be teachers are misogynistic or sarcastic, there would certainly seem to be a strong professional case for judging such qualities to be inconsistent with good teaching. On the other hand, however, insofar as this or that teacher appears to lack such (perhaps more “aesthetic”) personality traits as wit or optimism, any professional case for deploring this or for requiring a more upbeat approach to life would seem rather less compelling. That said, the point is still that there certainly appear to be qualities that, in the case of teaching if not other human occupations, cut across the liberal separation of private from professional values, standards, and virtues. To whatever extent we might take privately misogynist or humiliating doctors or plumbers to be successful or good at what they do, it seems rather less acceptable to regard misogyny or bullying as compatible with good educational or pedagogical practice – not least, insofar as it seems precisely part and parcel of good education to assist those under instruction to develop qualities of character at some odds with such attitudes and associated conduct.

Values and Virtues in Teaching II: Pedagogy as Virtue Still, there is another significant respect in which it is difficult to separate the personal from the professional in the case of teaching. On this view, it is not only that we may expect teachers to exemplify and/or model positive qualities of character to pupils– at least in the familiar professional contexts of elementary or pre-higher education – but that it is difficult to identify any body of professional pedagogy or skill that is entirely separate or distinct from qualities of either character or personality. This certainly does appear to be possible in the case of many other human occupations – and, indeed, it is upon some such separation that the liberal distinction of the personal from the professional largely turns. Thus, despite any preference we might have for decent and approachable rather than personally disreputable or disagreeable surgeons or builders, we can make perfect sense of good but disreputable surgeons or builders – precisely in terms of the separately specifiable skill and expertise that largely serves to define good surgery or building. In this light, it really may not much matter to us whether a surgeon or builder is dour, irascible, impatient, boring, timid, unimaginative, sarcastic, authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic – or even a faithless husband or cruel father – just so long as he or she is able to perform the tasks of good building or surgery to an acceptable or high degree of competence. But could not someone still ask whether this is not also true of teaching? Could teachers not also be prey to some or all of such human defects, yet still be judged good teachers – precisely insofar as they possess the knowledge, skills, and techniques of effective pedagogy that enable pupils to learn from their instruction? Indeed, have not many of us benefited much from the effective and successful instruction of dour, irascible, impatient, boring, sarcastic, and/or misogynist teachers?

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However, while this last point need not be denied, it is clearly far from supporting any very positive or salutary account of teacher professionalism. In the first place, insofar as this objection evidently presupposes the presently contested dichotomy of professional and private or personal, it is blatantly question-begging. Thus: First, while many may have learned lessons from boring, sarcastic and/or (at least verbally) abusive teachers, this can hardly be considered grounds for advocating that teachers should be boring, sarcastic, or abusive; secondly, of course, one might also ask significant questions about precisely what has been learned from boring and sarcastic teachers. At all events, it should be appreciated that methods of teaching –at least as directed toward serious educational goals – are not apt for the relatively impersonal or person-independent specification that those of building or surgery are. Precisely, it is not obvious – despite a modern history of attempts so to identify them – that the means and methods of teaching and education are liable to pre-specification in terms of a technology of pedagogy based on a science of learning. Thus, while much modern behavioral and cognitive science has sought – with considerable professional influence – to identify processes of effective knowledge (or “information”) transmission, such technologies have been found wanting precisely on the grounds that education surely involves so much more than such knowledge transmission. To be sure, one might well conceive of modern science “advancing” to a stage at which information or skills are directly encoded in the human brain in the manner of information technology, and whereby learners are subjected to such programming to the end of some vision of social progress – as depicted in much science fiction (for example, in Aldous Huxley’s prophetic Brave New World). Still, the usual point of such science fictional conjecture has been to show that this sort of conditioning is precisely dehumanizing and that no such programming could seriously count as human education. On more enlightened views, education is not passive or disinterested in-take of information, but active discovery of human meaning and understanding; it should not merely be involuntary or coercive submission to others’ agendas but witting, willing, and engaged development of individual vision; it should reach beyond cold cognition to passionate enthusiasm; it ought not to be confined to second-hand retention of meaningless or value-neutral facts or propositions, but involve formation of and commitment to personally significant human values; and so on and so forth. Thus, given that education – at least on such views – involves the meaningful interpretation of human experience, the development of freedom, emotional growth, interpersonal association, and the formation of and/or commitment to worthwhile values and ideals, it is hard to see how it might or should be reduced to some quasiscientific technology of knowledge acquisition and personal or social control or how the liberal distinction between professional and private concerns in teaching might be rigidly observed or sustained. In this light, it is difficult to see how teachers who do not put themselves wholly into their work and relations with pupils in a personally engaged way might generate or inspire the passionate enthusiasm that characterizes significant educational progress. By much the same token, it would not appear that the pleasure or satisfaction of educationally significant learning might be promoted by teachers who are downbeat, dour, or humorless. Moreover, it must

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also be evident that pupils are unlikely to come to have much regard for what they learn from teachers who appear to care little what they teach – or for those to whom they teach it – and, more seriously, that the fragile confidence of often emotionally vulnerable learners is liable to serious damage by teachers who are impatient, sarcastic, or scathing. All this said, it is a source of perennial concern that educational policymaking across the globe continues to be drawn to quasi-scientific approaches to theorizing about professional practice that essentially owe much to reductive twentieth-century behavioral psychology. One such highly influential approach – enduringly attractive to official and professional policy-makers – aspires to reduce professional practices to repertoires of fundamentally behavioral skills or techniques that might, in principle, be amenable to quite scientifically objective measurement or testing. As applied to professional preparation for teaching, this would require student or probationary teachers to acquire and exhibit prescribed and pre-specifiable skills of lesson presentation, communication, and classroom and/or pupil management. (For a specific modern example of such official introduction of the competence model of professional training – though such models have had globally widespread latter-day application – see Scottish Office Education Department, 1993; see also, for critical comment on this and competence models in general, Carr, 1993b, 2000; Hyland, 1993, 1994.) Still, in the present view, the large trouble with such competence models of professional expertise is precisely that of taking such qualities as lesson presentation, communication, and class management to be reducible to such objectively construed behavioral skills or techniques. In this regard, borrowing from an older, but much more helpful Aristotelian psychology (Aristotle, 1925), it seems that many such aspects of effective professional practice may be a great deal closer to what we might better regard as moral virtues – and, as such, only very unhelpfully, if not disastrously, construed as technical skills.

The Case of Discipline and Authority Indeed, a striking example of such potential confusion of virtues and skills seems especially apparent in suggestions that classroom authority, control, and discipline – something about which most student teachers are invariably underconfident or apprehensive – may be usefully construed in terms of techniques or strategies of management (see, for example, Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office, 1989). However, without denying that poor classroom discipline and control may sometimes follow from basic failure to organize one’s lessons in an efficient or effective way, it is by no means clear that such skills are either the first or last word on good teacher authority and discipline. Indeed, teachers who possess competent or even exemplary managerial or organizational skills or techniques may still lack the real presence of classroom authority – and, conversely, teachers who are not markedly managerial or who are even relatively disorganized (though this, of course, is not presently being recommended) might still display impressive authority and control over classes and pupils. In this regard, the key difference – allowing for some inevitable generalization – is that whereas management is primarily concerned with

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external manipulation or control, authority aims more at winning the hearts and minds of those who are subject to it and persuading them of the reasonableness, fairness, and justice of such authority. In this light, while there may be often be (not least in contexts of compulsory schooling) coercion without authority, genuine authority invariably seeks the willing co-operation or complicity of those over whom such authority is wielded. In this sense, authority seems aptly characterized, in the words of philosopher Peter Winch (1967), as an “internal” rather than “external” relation – which is roughly to say that it is less concerned with the coercive exercise of power over others for this or that extrinsic purpose and more with promoting the rational appreciation of others of the (moral or other) sense, legitimacy, and benefits of this or that prescribed conduct. Again, this is not to say that imposed management or control is never appropriate in human affairs – not least, indeed, in contexts of education and schooling. Clearly, some degree of coercive control is required for the social order and security of any large groups – that is what police forces and law courts are for – and contemporary contexts of compulsory education and schooling will also often call for some such management of often not well house-trained or wayward pupils. Still, there are also contexts of human association – of friendship, family life, and other modes of civil and political participation – in which coercive control is clearly less helpful or desirable, if not actually damaging. In this regard, given aforementioned purposes and goals of education – to promote not only learning and knowledge acquisition, but a love of learning and knowledge for its intrinsic no less than extrinsic worth – it would seem that teacher authority is not generally well modeled on coercive social control. So how might it be better conceived? While this is doubtless a complex question, one may nevertheless suggest some plausible directions. To begin with, perhaps the most obvious plank in the platform of educational authority is that the teacher should have something of substance to say or teach – not only in the sense of coming well-prepared to class, but of having prepared lessons that are also of clear educational interest, significance and (at least some) relevance to pupils. Here, the trouble with “competence” or skills-focused approaches to teacher preparation is that they are liable to encourage focus on the more external or superficial aspects of lesson planning – on the recycling of second-hand and/or de-contextualized content and on superficially entertaining or distractive presentation – which may, indeed, serve to insure or safeguard some minimal teaching success in the event that teachers have little or no personal interest in what is being taught. However, teachers of any significant classroom authority are more often those who aim for some personal intellectual investment in or ownership over what is taught (see Peters, 1966): those, precisely, whose voice merits hearing and respect by virtue of their own serious and genuine concern for and engagement with what is humanly interesting and/or worthwhile. However, pedagogical success will also depend on effective “teaching style” (though not in the behaviorist sense commonly give to this term by educational technicians) in light of accurate “Socratic” (see Plato, 1961) appreciation of the capacity or ability of those taught to grasp the substance and significance of what is being taught. But again, however tempting it might be to construe such appreciation

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as a species of specialized professional technique of observation or monitoring, such appreciation seems better construed as closer to, if not precisely identical with, the common-or-garden knowledge of other minds and motives (what psychologists, again rather misleadingly, are inclined to call “theory of mind”) readily available via the time-honored route of taking the ordinary human interest in others that is needed to get to know them. Like all effective communicators, good teachers need to be good listeners, capable of genuine conversation, and dialog– which is also by definition a significantly two-way affair. (For the idea of education as a “conversation,” see Oakeshott, 1962.) To be sure, lacking the confidence needed for this kind of classroom interaction with pupils, trainee, and early years teachers often find it difficult to allow classroom space for this. In this light, student teachers may well find themselves caught in a vicious spiral of ever-mounting fear of the unpredictable outcomes of such open interaction and communication. Having initially approached learners in a didactically top-down and distanced way and discovering that they are failing to connect with pupils, they may be prone to retreat into even more repressive postures of refusing further pupil voice or expression. But now, of course, the more teachers retreat from genuine personal and interpersonal communication, the further removed they are also likely find themselves from any prospect of real educational authority – in which case, the more ineffective any desperate resort to “external” management techniques is likely to be. How might such difficulties be addressed or resolved? To be sure, sometimes – particularly at the stage of bad beginner’s nerves – the acquisition of a few skills or techniques of coercive crowd control may assist matters. But it is crucial to see that this cannot be either the last word or even any very useful beginning of the right sort of classroom order. Here, of course, one thing that teachers of such early-stage fright will fairly soon need to acquire is, precisely, “nerve”: Indeed, no-one who fails to acquire pedagogical nerve or confidence is likely to last long in teaching. However, it should also be clear that such confidence is not a skill, but a quality of spirit or character. So again, while such nerve may be learned or acquired, it is not effectively learned in the manner of a skill – and certainly not in quite the habitual way that many skills are learned. Indeed, as a quality of character – an attribute for which one may be praised for having or blamed for lacking – it is first and foremost a moral accomplishment requiring not only effort of will but development of intelligent evaluation and judgment concerning the circumstances in which one finds oneself. One acquires nerve or courage, as Socrates long ago pointed out, via cool and intelligent assessment of one’s weaknesses and fears and of the real rather than merely apparent dangers of one’s present situation. But, likewise, the knowledge and understanding that enables good teachers to enter into comfortable and secure educational conversation with others is also evidently more of a moral than technical kind. Indeed, as Piaget (1932) and other psychologists of moral development (such as Kohlberg, 1981) have argued, the main drift of such development seems to lie in the general direction of psychological “de-centering,” by means of which the primitive egocentric or (largely) pre-rational self comes (with greater maturity) to recognize and value the needs and interests of others alongside its own – if not, indeed, as Kant (1967) maintained, to place such interests above its own. So

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considered, the key to educational authority again lies in cultivating that deep human regard that truly successful teachers have for their pupils and in the climate of respectful and trusting association that they are thereby able to generate in their relations with them. In short, to appreciate that the genuine authority of the teacher is “internal” rather than “external” is to recognize that it is a matter more of moral association than of the exercise of the coercive power of social control.

Personal Relationships in Teaching All this has the very highest implications for the other issue that we earlier undertook to address in this paper of the nature of professional relationships in a “people profession” such as teaching. To be sure, this issue is much bedevilled by certain common assumptions about what it means to characterize any given human occupation as a “profession.” On the present view, this issue needs taking seriously insofar as there is a significant theoretical and practical case (which I have explored elsewhere: Carr, 1999, 2000) for maintaining a familiar, if commonly contested, distinction between professions and other human trades or services. In this light, while the conduct of any human work or occupation may be judged “professional” or “unprofessional” to the extent that it is competently or otherwise undertaken, the term “profession” has traditionally been reserved for those occupations (such as medicine, law, and perhaps teaching) which are subject to (explicit or implicit) codes of practice apparently grounded in morally universal or “universalizable” principles of other-regarding service and conduct. So considered, however, it is often held to be a key feature of “professions” – as distinct from other occupations – that relations between practitioners and clients (defendants, patients, pupils, and so on) are governed by rules or standards of strict personal disinterestedness or impartiality. Thus, the defense lawyer should treat his or her client without prejudice, fear, or favor (irrespective of any suspicion or even evidence of the client’s guilt), and medical practitioners are professionally obliged to devote equal time, attention, and care to patients regardless of class, status, wealth (at any rate in public service), race, color, creed, or other contingent human differences. In this regard, professions aspire to be distinguished from other occupations – in which profit or other material advantage may be the overriding motive – by virtue of primary and universal moral obligation. In this light, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere (Carr, 1999, 2000), perhaps the key respect in which teaching has significant claim to recognition as a genuine profession lies in its concern to promote general education as a fundamental condition of human well-being and flourishing. So, just as medical practice aims to address a basic (universal) human right to healthcare, and legal practice is answerable (at least ideally) to a basic human claim to justice and due process, education, and schooling aim to equip agents with the rational powers and capacities required for personal freedom and economic independence and self-sufficiency in a competitive modern world. Insofar as it is charged with this universal moral mission, education conforms to the fundamental normative ideals and goals of profession.

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So considered, good teachers, no less than good doctors or lawyers, are also committed to ensuring that they treat each and every pupil impartially – without, as it were, fear or favor. In this light, sound professional integrity and conduct would appear to rule out many of the more informal or unregulated relations and/or attachments that would normally be comprehended by the term “personal relationships” in other non-professional spheres of human association. But, on the other hand, is not this conception of correct professional conduct precisely at some odds with those human occupations in which personal relationships would appear unavoidable if not actually desirable – such as social work, ministry – and, indeed, teaching? To begin with, however, as I have also argued on previous occasions, much apparent uncertainty on this issue almost certainly follows from some failure to appreciate the contextual moral complexity of much if not most professional association and conduct – not least with particular regard to such “people professions” as teaching. First, then, while genuine professions are answerable to such universal and impartial (so-called deontic) principles and imperatives of justice and fairness, intelligent or wise professional practice and conduct still requires significant and sensitive modification or adaptation of such formal principles to the particular practical contexts of human association and engagement. As such, practical professional conduct requires case-sensitive deliberation and judgment of the kind that draws upon the resources of personal and professional character as lately indicated in the particular case of teaching. (On the dependence of virtuous judgment on character, see Aristotle, 1925; and in relation to teaching, Dunne, 1993, Smith, 1999, Carr, 2007, McLaughlin, 2008b.) Moreover, professional impartiality should not be confused – as it so often is – with impersonality. Thus, while treating all without fear or favor, good doctors may nevertheless need some personal “bedside manner,” and also require – no less than good teachers – to adapt their treatment to the particular sensibilities and sensitivities of individual members of particular (ethnic, cultural, or religious) constituencies. To this end, most if not all professional reflection, deliberation, and conduct clearly calls for the kind of “reflective equilibrium” (see Rawls, 1985, 1993, 2001) precisely needed for satisfactory negotiation or adaptation of abstract moral ideals or imperatives to the more particular circumstances of professional experience and practice. That said, as already indicated, the extent to which professional conduct is implicated in more personal or interpersonal association obviously varies between professions. Thus, at one extreme, the relations of surgeons with (perhaps mostly unconscious) patients may hardly be personal to any great extent. Again, while general practitioners may need to familiarize themselves with the medical histories of patients, as well as to be sensitive individual differences of gender, class, or culture, they are unlikely to feel much need or pressure to cultivate personal relationships with them – and they might be generally well advised not to do so. However, it would seem harder for members of so-called “people professions” to maintain such professional distance – if not actually undesirable that they should do so. In tune with this, we have so far argued that the heart of good pedagogical association and engagement with pupils is anyway closer to familiar

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pre-theoretical personal and moral association than to the cultivation of anything much like technical skill or expertise. Hence, while it will need constant effort to make myself a fairer, more patient, or considerate teacher, this is not something I would normally attempt to achieve via the acquisition of specialist skills or techniques. In this light, the justice or fairness at which such ordinary pre-theoretical moral discipline and conduct aims is hardly conceivable apart from some significant level of personal association and engagement with pupils. As Aristotle argued in his Politics (1962), it is no less unjust to treat unequals equally than to treat equals unequally: so, as already seen, teachers will require – precisely in the interests of classroom fairness – to appreciate the different needs and interests of pupils, and such needs and interests are unlikely to be registered or addressed by purely impersonal or personally disinterested modes of association. This to be sure, can hardly be regarded as some regrettable shortcoming of educational practice – the falling short of some ideal of professional objectivity – since it is precisely part of what it means to be a good teacher to be a personally concerned person. Good teachers need to know and understand those whom they teach as well as they possibly can: precisely, to establish positive personal relationships with pupils (of inevitably different individual personalities and characters) in order to teach effectively and address their particular needs and concerns as well as possible. That said, such more personal relations are also liable to attract some professional and public suspicion on the grounds of bias, favoritism or other impartial, if not exploitative, treatment. In this regard, it may now be useful to identify briefly some of the key areas in which suspicion of unfair or inappropriate treatment is likely to arise. First, no matter how educationally well-intentioned, attempts to give additional educational support to some (more or less able) pupils may be perceived by pupils and/or parents as unfair or discriminatory. Indeed, latter-day political and professional pressure toward so-called educational “inclusion” may be perceived by parents as precisely unjust – when, for example, the learning of their children seems neglected by a teacher’s need to attend to other less able or more demanding (perhaps disruptive) pupils. Secondly, personal relationships in teaching inevitably raise questions of privacy and confidentiality. Teachers may feel that in order to help pupils – personally or academically – they may need to know more about them than may seem quite proper. Relatedly, pupils who trust teachers may wish to offer confidences that teachers would rather not hear – precisely because it might have legal implications, particularly, if children are being ill-used at home, or are themselves lawbreakers. In such cases, while teachers may feel that they both should and should not know more, they are still liable to face some hard choice. Thirdly, there are questions of pupil protection. Here, much latter-day professional educational legislation has been quite rightly concerned to regulate or constrain aspects of teacher conduct toward pupils (by, for example, abolishing corporal punishment) to the reasonable end of precluding any and all potential maltreatment and abuse and/or racial, religious, or other discrimination. By much the same token, there may also be need on some occasions to protect teachers against accusations of abuse and discrimination from pupils. All this said, despite any and all evident benefits of professional regulation in the interests of forestalling negative or undesirable

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relations between pupils and teachers, such regulation is clearly not without its drawbacks. Indeed, it may in itself be liable to engender widespread suspicion and mistrust of schools among the wider public in ways no less inimical to cultivation of the more positive and constructive “internal” dimensions of teacher-pupil relations identified in this chapter. On the one hand, to be sure, none of these tensions between general imperatives of proper professional engagement and more personal modes of educational association are likely to be unfamiliar to teachers – and none of them are amenable to any simple or blanket solution. By the same token, however, it should be clear enough that none of them are much conducive to resolution via further general educational legislation or the introduction of new pedagogical technology (or both). But this is surely because good education and teaching are not ultimately reducible either to general codes of professional practice or to bodies of impersonal technical expertise – or to some combination of these – in the manner of (at least some) other (less personally implicated) occupations. In this regard, I have long maintained that the guiding principles or norms of significant pedagogical practice are primarily ethical or moral – not in Kant’s (1967) sense of rationally disinterested rules or prescriptions for universal observance, but in Aristotle’s (1925) conception of wise contextsensitive practical judgments grounded in morally sound character. As any teacher grappling with the difficult educational business of assisting pupil progress is likely to know, one cannot really teach something well to others until one has reasonably good measure of their interests, abilities, inhibitions, insecurities, loves, hates, and so on: in short, until one has got to know those whom one teaches in a way that is significantly closer to ordinary informal than to formal professional association. In short, without at all denying all serious role or place for regulatory principles or technical expertise, the present view is that reflection upon the nature of good education and teaching is primarily and more appropriately focused upon the clarification, cultivation and promotion of human moral and intellectual virtues and values than upon increased educational legislation or upon further development of quasi-scientific technologies of instruction. By way of conclusion, it may be helpful to comment briefly on some recent theoretical, professional, and practical research and development of relevance to issues raised in this chapter. First, it should be noted that over the past two decades there has been significant work on the ethics of teaching and teacher professionalism that has sought to emphasize – much in tune with the spirit of this chapter – the primarily moral status and character of the practice of teaching: precisely, to affirm that the key concerns and questions of education and teaching are primarily ethical or moral rather than legal or technical (see, notably, Campbell, 2003; Carr, 2000; Sockett, 1993, 2018; Peterson & Arthur, 2000; Strike & Soltis, 2009). It should also be noted that – again in line with the spirit of this chapter – much of this work has been concerned to highlight the crucial contribution of moral character not only to good education and teaching, but to wider effective professional conduct. In this regard, recognition should also be given to numerous centers of research devoted to the study of ethics in education, moral character, and professionalism that have emerged across the globe in the past decade or so – not least, perhaps, to the highly

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influential Jubilee Centre for Character and Values at the University of Birmingham (UK). That said, again in the spirit of this chapter, there is some reason to be cautious – if not apprehensive – about some latter-day developments of character education. For example, much of the work of the North American character education movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century (see, for example, Lickona, 1991; Ryan & Bohlin, 1999) seems not entirely free from thrall to early twentiethcentury psychological learning theories and sails uncomfortably close to a somewhat instrumental behavior-shaping view of character education. However, while the more Aristotelian approach developed at the Jubilee Centre of the University of Birmingham (UK) has explicitly distanced itself from such instrumentalism (see, especially, Kristjansson, 2017), the rapprochement that this has yet sought with the more empirical work of positive and other psychology continues to be significant source of present concern. In short, while remaining sympathetic to the concern of virtue ethicists that their work might have some observable impact on education and other human practical affairs, present fear is that the true aims of good character education – to assist professional or other agents to free, rational, and responsible moral conduct – are liable to serious compromise or distortion with undue focus on securing measurable and predictable outcomes on the basis of empirical experimental interventions. In this light, understandable concern to make a difference is all too apt to result in promoting the wrong sort of difference.

References Aristotle. (1925). The Nicomachean ethics. Oxford University Press. Aristotle. (1962). The politics. Penguin. Campbell, E. (2003). The ethical teacher. Open University Press. Carr, D. (1993a). Moral values and the teacher: Beyond the paternal and permissive. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 27, 193–207. Carr, D. (1993b). Guidelines for teacher training: The competency model. Scottish Educational Review, 25, 17–25. Carr, D. (1999). Professional education and professional ethics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 16, 33–46. Carr, D. (2000). Professionalism and ethics in teaching (Routledge professional ethics series). Routledge. Carr, D. (2005). Personal and interpersonal relationships in education and teaching: A virtue ethical perspective. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53, 255–271. Carr, D. (2006). Professional and personal values and virtues in education and teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 32, 171–183. Carr, D. (2007). Character in teaching. British Journal of Educational Studies, 55, 369–389. Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office. (1989). Discipline in schools (The Elton report). HMSO. Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘techne’ in modern philosophy and in Aristotle. University of Notre Dame Press. Hyland, T. (1993). Professional development and competence based education. Educational Studies, 19, 123–132. Hyland, T. (1994). Competence, education and NVQ’s: Dissenting perspectives. Cassell. Kant, I. (1967). The critique of practical reasoning and other works on the theory of ethics (T. K. Abbott, Trans). Longmans.

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Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development: Volume 1. Harper and Row. Kristjansson, K. (2017). Aristotelian character education. Routledge. Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. Bantam Books. McLaughlin, T. H. (2008a). Beyond the reflective teacher. In D. Carr, M. Halstead, & R. Pring (Eds.), Liberalism, education and schooling: Essays by T. H. McLaughlin (pp. 60–78). Imprint Academic. McLaughlin, T. H. (2008b). Philosophy, values and schooling: Principles and predicaments of teacher example. In D. Carr, M. Halstead, & R. Pring (Eds.), Liberalism, education and schooling: Essays by T. H. McLaughlin (pp. 222–238). Imprint Academic. Oakeshott, M. (1962). The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind. In M. Oakeshott (Ed.), Rationality in politics and other essays (pp. 197–247). Methuen. Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and education. George Allen and Unwin. Peterson, A. with Arthur, J. (2000) Ethics and the good teacher: Character in the professional domain. Routledge. Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgement of the child. Free Press. Plato. (1961). Meno. In E. Hamilton & H. Cairns (Eds.), Plato: The collected dialogues. Princeton University Press. Rawls, J. (1985). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (1993). Political liberalism. Columbia University Press. Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Harvard University Press. Ryan, K., & Bohlin, K. (1999). Building character in schools. Jossey-Bass. Scottish Office Education Department. (1993). Guidelines for teacher training courses. SOED. Smith, R. (1999). Paths of wisdom: The revival of practical judgement. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 31, 327–340. Sockett, H. (1993). The moral basis for teacher professionalism. Teachers College Press. Sockett, H. (2018). Moral thought in educational practice. Routledge. Strike, K., & Soltis, J. (2009). Ethics in teaching. Teachers College Press. Winch, P. (1967). Authority. In A. Quinton (Ed.), Political philosophy (pp. 97–111). Oxford University Press.

Values-based Education A Transferable Ethical Education

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Impact of Values-based Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My VbE Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Home of Values-based Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Transformational Elements of Values-based Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Examples of Values-Based Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values-based Education and the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Values-based Education (VbE) was conceived and implemented at a community school in Oxfordshire, UK. It was developed as an integral and explicit part of the school’s curriculum and pedagogy, as a method for educating pupils in positive human values such as trust, humility, compassion, joy, hope, and love. Over a period of 7 years, its impact on the quality of teaching and learning was monitored and evaluated as the research subject of the Headteacher’s doctoral thesis at Oxford University. The chapter outlines the nature of the program and the results of the research. Keywords

Values-based Education · Ethical education · Transformational education · Pedagogy

N. Hawkes (*) International Values Trust, Oxford, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_21

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Introduction In 1993, a transformational form of values education, later known as Values-based Education (VbE), was conceived and implemented at a community school in Oxfordshire, UK. It was developed as an integral and explicit part of the school’s curriculum and pedagogy and as a method for educating pupils in positive human values such as trust, humility, compassion, joy, hope, and love. Over a period of 7 years, its impact on the quality of teaching and learning was monitored and evaluated as the research subject of the Headteacher’s doctoral thesis at Oxford University (Hawkes, 2005). The work was supervised by Professor Richard Pring, the renowned moral philosopher, who was the Director of the University’s Education Department between 1989 and 2003. Subsequently, VbE has been recognized throughout the world as an effective model for embedding ethical education. The school’s transformational and unique pedagogy transformed the life and work of the school and its community, having a significant lasting impact on both adults and children. This chapter will explore the nature of VbE and its positive effects on learning, behavior, and school culture. It will argue that this model of ethical education is transferable to all schools, educational establishments, and generally in society.

The Impact of Values-based Education On October 28, 2021, I was invited by the CEO of the OWLS Multi-Academy Trust in the UK, to give a motivational presentation to the Trust’s leadership teams, about Values-based Education (VbE). One of the Trust’s six schools, Hinckley Park, had positively transformed its culture and pedagogy to be recognized as an outstanding values-based school. The school was the County of Leicestershire’s School of the Year. Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal, had recently visited the school and experienced its values-based culture. Over recent years, the school had seen a serious decline in pupil numbers, low morale of staff, and serious concerns by the local authority and the Regional Schools’ Commissioner. A new Headteacher, David Harding, was appointed who had previously been the head of a values-based school. He brought with him the VbE philosophy and practices and shared them with the school’s community. The school went through a remarkable renaissance; pupil numbers rise from 420 to 562 with parents making the school their first choice for their children’s education. Academic standards and relationships saw a dramatic improvement, staff morale became high, and parents and the community enthusiastically embraced the school’s philosophy and methodology. The school achieved the International Values-based Education Trust’s (IVET) Enhanced Quality Mark, as a valuesbased school, in September 2021.

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David Harding wrote on the school’s website: Values-based Education is a philosophy which underpins all our thoughts and actions. It creates a strong learning environment that enhances academic achievement and develops students social and relationship skills that last throughout their lives. The positive learning environment is achieved by the positive values modelled by staff throughout the school. It quickly liberates teachers and students from the stress of confrontational relationships, which frees up substantial teaching and learning time. It also provides social capacity to students, equipping them with social and relationship skills, intelligences and attitudes to succeed at school and throughout their lives.

The CEO of the Trust witnessed the school’s remarkable transformation and consequently wanted all the Trust’s six schools to embrace VbE. Following my presentation, he invited me to give a motivational address to all staff at their training day in May 2022. This outstanding VbE school has been highlighted as an example of the numerous schools worldwide, which over the last 30 years have successfully embraced an ethics-centric educational philosophy and subsequently transformed their culture. The following paragraphs will outline the background of Values-based Education (VbE) and explain its key principles and practices. Toward the end of the article, I will describe how VbE can make a significant contribution to transforming human consciousness, which could make a significant contribution to the United Nations achieving its sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UN, 2021a).

My VbE Journey Or as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about how children best learn and how schools can create an environment and pedagogy that allows all to flourish as human beings. I love my vocation as a teacher. At the age of 27, I took up my appointment as Headteacher of Braywood School, a small English rural school near Windsor in the UK. I was fascinated to understand why children learn and behave in the way that they do and how crucial good relationships are in creating an environment for learning to take place. I saw how important it is that home and school cooperate in harmony together. I wrote an M.Ed. thesis at Reading University, UK, on this important topic (Hawkes, 1977). Two years later, I was promoted to the Headteacher of the Palmer School, a large urban school in Wokingham, UK, where I remained for 6 years very happy years. During this period, I built on my previous experience as a headteacher, working with colleagues to create a school where pupils were excited to learn about the world. My educational vision was to create a school that gave pupils meaning and purpose for their lives; learning experiences that would form their understanding of themselves and the world; and a teaching environment that released the creative dynamic of all who worked in the school. My reputation as an educator and school leader spread; in 1983, I was encouraged by county officials

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to take my knowledge and experience to be a schools’ County Education Adviser for Buckinghamshire, a large county in England. Five years later, I was promoted to the County Principal Adviser, of the Isle of Wight Education Service, having responsibility for supporting the educational development of its schools. It was during this period as a schools’ adviser in the late 1980s that I had two significant experiences. The first involved taking a party of teachers to Israel on a study visit. The group visited Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust, and I was drawn to visit the place where the children, who were murdered by the Nazis, are remembered. I entered what seemed to be a dark cave. My eyes became accustomed to the light. I became aware of what appeared at first site to be hundreds of candles – yet were only a few. Their radiant light was being reflected on glass panels to create a visual impression that I can only describe as deeply spiritual. As I mindfully walked through the memorial, the only noticeable sound was that of a lone voice of a person, who was carefully and respectfully reciting the names of the children who had been murdered by the Nazis regime. The simplicity, power, and horror of this experience touched me deeply. When I emerged from the darkness into the sunlight, I was aware of tears smarting my eyes. In a few minutes of deep reflection, I had an overwhelming realization that my future career must be spent helping people, especially children, to understand and appreciate the common humanity and value of all people. An education was needed that would transform human consciousness so that atrocities, such as in a holocaust, would not be repeated. The second experience was not such a dramatic, deeply personal event but happened over an extended period. As I visited numerous schools as an education adviser, I was becoming aware that I was observing increasing numbers of children with behaviors that showed that they lacked a knowledge and understanding of words such as respect, empathy, caring, responsibility, love, trust, and peace. Teachers were asking for courses to be arranged for them to help them manage classroom organization and particularly student behavior. Some schools were harmonious with few problems connected with pupil behavior. These schools were ones that had a culture that focused on the individual needs of pupils, having a pedagogy build on giving children time and space to explore first-hand experiences. These autonomous schools had outstanding relational cultures but were coming under increasing government pressures to change their methodology to cover the detailed requirements of the newly introduced National Curriculum (DfEE, 1989), school league tables, and a national Inspection Service (Ofsted). By 1991, schools were experiencing a national focus on basic literacy and numeracy. This situation made me wonder what I should do to keep my meaning and purpose alive as an educator? A defining moment came in 1992. I recall giving a talk about good educational practices to a large group of teachers at a conference. I thought I was engaging and inspiring the audience, until I noticed someone sitting at the back of the room, who seemed totally disengaged from my presentation. I used all my teaching skills to engage the person who had her arms folded and who I imagined was tutting disapproval under her breath. In my mind, a part of me was curious about this situation and another was disturbed. Although I continued with the talk, my internal world was chaotic. I became critical of myself, wondering why I could not inspire the person. My internal dialog was imagining

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what the person was thinking. Was she thinking? “If he really knew what he was talking about then he would go and do it, not just talk to us about it.” Such thoughts had a profound “road to Damascus” effect on me. At the end of the presentation, which had been warmly received, I returned to my office at County Hall, reflected for a few minutes, and then decided to resign my senior leadership position and return to a school headship – to put my thoughts and words about education for the future into action – to put into practice what I was talking about to teachers. This sudden decision dramatically changed my career path; to some colleagues, it seemed a demotion, as I returned to a headship, becoming the Headteacher of West Kidlington School, a large urban school in Oxfordshire, UK. For the next 7 years, I worked closely with exceptionally talented colleagues and a receptive school community, to introduce a form of values education, now known as Values-based Education, as the basis of the school’s educational philosophy. I wanted the school’s work to be academically recognized as having an impact on improving the quality of education, so I applied to be a part-time doctoral student at Oxford University. Professor Richard Pring became my supervisor, and Professor Mark Halstead was asked by the University to be an external supervisor. This latter provision was to ensure that by researching the effects of education in my own school, I was not compromising the ethics of the research. Professor Halstead suggested that I also conducted research in a school that would form a comparative case study. The vacancy in the Times Educational Supplement for a Headteacher at West Kidlington School had particularly caught my eye because in small print it had said, “school just burnt down!” I was curious and was drawn to finding out more. In England, there is a firework festival called Bonfire Night, which, on November 5, remembers the failed attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. So, it was on one of these nights that some fireworks were put through the door of the school, which set the building ablaze. The single-story building burned quickly. The fire brigade was only able to save a small part of the building and the school’s nursery for the youngest pupils. The teachers shared with me their trauma when they heard that their precious school and its resources had been destroyed. The then-current Headteacher, Paul Canterberry, a highly respected headteacher nearing the end of his career, decided to retire following this heart-breaking event.

The Home of Values-based Education On taking up my appointment as Headteacher of West Kidlington School, a series of temporary buildings were erected on the school field, while the new school was being built. The local education authority, Oxfordshire County Council, designed a building that was architecturally distinctive with spaces that provided for the learning needs of the pupils. The building and the values pedagogy of the school are described in Francis Farrer’s insightful book about the school, titled A Quiet Revolution (Farrer, 2000). The school was like the mythical story of the phoenix rising from the ashes. As the building took its form, so did the school’s philosophy of values-based education.

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The governing body of the school gave me its full support, to underpin every aspect of the school’s life and work with a set of universal positive human values such as respect, trust, justice, humility, quality, and happiness. My leadership style ensured that there was only a hierarchy of roles, never of relationships. This meant that all colleagues, teaching and support, knew what role they played in the structure of the school but felt equally valued as human beings. The staff, teaching and support colleagues, embraced the values vocabulary, which were not imposed but was the result of a community consultation. The community was asked to decide what dispositions, described as values, it wanted their children to develop during their time at the school? This gave rise to a core set of 22 values. Each was the subject of a monthly in-depth study over a two-year cycle. During their 6 years at the school, pupils considered a value three times, each time at a greater depth in experiential lessons. The monthly value was introduced in an assembly that enabled pupils to understand its meaning. Assemblies were held separately for children between 3–5, 5–7, and 7–11 years of age to ensure that the subject material that was used was appropriate to the children’s level of understanding. A great deal of thought was given to ensure that assemblies were very special times in the school day. The thought was given to creating a reflective ambience in the room through appropriate calming music and visual displays. Lighting was used to enhance a creative or spiritual atmosphere, especially during the telling of stories or the acting out of a pupil-led piece of drama. Adults sat with the pupils, modeling the behavior they were expecting the children to assume. Pupils were encouraged to be self-led, so no adult was expected to speak with children to remind them about appropriate behavior. As the work became embedded in the culture of the school, the pupils were so proud that adults treated them with respect and understanding. A central feature of the assemblies was the opportunity to develop reflective practices. This was at the time (1993) before mindfulness had entered our vocabulary and practice. The school wanted pupils to be able to inwardly reflect about themselves, their attitudes, and behavior and to consider the learning that they were experiencing. It aimed to support the development of their emotional intelligence and their ability to visualize scenes and events sensitively and creatively on the screen of their minds. Reflection also became a key feature of lessons, with brain breaks being used to give time for a pupil to be inwardly reflective about what they were learning and how they were responding to what they were learning. I was convinced that helping children to reflect about values and their practical application, during assemblies and lessons, would give them the skills to gradually gain greater personal control (self-regulation) of their inner world of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions. In 1997, the national school inspection service Ofsted validated this in their report of the school in which was written: Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is an outstanding feature of the school. The consistent and successful implementation of the school’s values policy, enhanced by the excellent role models provided by staff and adult helpers, contributes significantly to standards and results in high quality relationships and excellent pupil behaviour.

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Values-based assemblies became a feature of the school, which many visitors asked to witness. One such visitor was Professor Lovat, from Newcastle University in Australia. He and his research team were looking to support the introduction of values education across Australian schools – a federal initiative. He suggested that the work of West Kidlington School be used as a “gold standard” that could act as a model of good practice in Australian schools. This decision resulted in me making several visits to Australia to support its national program. Professor Lovat and colleagues later produced a research report, which validated my own research at Oxford University, across a much larger sample of schools (Lovat et al., 2009). Following the introduction and clarification of a monthly value in an assembly, teachers would revisit the value, in the context of an experiential lesson, embedding learning at an age and stage appropriate level of understanding. In the explicit teaching about values, the staff used the whole of the vocabulary in an implicit way, for instance, in the way that they would talk and interact with pupils. As pupils entered the classroom they might say, “Thank you for coming in so respectfully.” Or “Thank you Wayne and Jacob for the way you were cooperating in your game on the playground. As I watched you, I thought you showed each other so much respect.” As the staff used and modeled the vocabulary in their daily interactions, so did the children. Parents shared with teachers that the understanding of the values words was helping their family to live more harmoniously. A parent remarked to me that the values had affected the way she spoke and responded to her children. As the values-based philosophy developed, teacher Linda Heppenstall became the curriculum leader for values education in the school. Her outstanding commitment, along with all members of staff, led to a consistency of good practice that created a unique culture that was described as calm, purposeful, and happy (Farrer, 2000). West Kidlington became known as a “no shouting school,” as the school demonstrated that inappropriate shouting and shaming cannot be tolerated in a school that teaches about values such as respect. Staff soon noticed the positive effect that the values were having in encouraging good pupil behavior and a positive attitude to learning. The reputation of the school drew the attention of writers, such as Matthieu Ricard, well known for his book Happiness, who wrote about the school’s methods and their impact in his international bestseller, Altruism (Ricard, 2015). It also had to Linda Heppenstall and me being invited to UNICEF headquarters in New York to be part of the team that founded the international program, Living Values Education (Living Values Education, 2022). The UNICEF leader of the Early Years Cluster, the inspiring Cyril Dalais, saw the potential of values education to help challenging global issues, such as the education of girls. Diane Tilman, Lynn Henshall, and a team of global educators made up the founding group who profoundly influenced my own thinking and development.

The Transformational Elements of Values-based Education Bridget Knight, a colleague teaching at a local school, was curious about what she had heard about the transformational curriculum at West Kidlington. She asked to visit the school to observe an assembly and lessons. Later, she remarked that the

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values dynamic of the school was outstanding: simple yet profound, in its impact on children as people and the quality of their learning. Bridget went on to be the head of a values-based school and then led the development of values-based education as a senior adviser for the county of Herefordshire. She has since returned to a headship, being the Head of Eardisley Church of England Primary School – an outstanding VbE school. My wife Jane thought that the acronym “miracle” (that which causes wonder) provided a memorable way for educators to remember the key elements of Values-based Education. These are modeling (the thinking and behavior of adults and pupils), inner curriculum (nurturing the inner world of the pupil), reflection (time for stillness and understanding of thoughts, feelings, and emotions), atmosphere (the ethos, culture, and character of the school, expressed in relationships, routines, structures, display, and ambience), leadership (the understanding, commitment to leading, and developing a values-based school), and ethical vocabulary (the positive values words) – all introduced simultaneously. In 2013, I captured the uniqueness of the VbE methods in my book: From My Heart: Transforming Lives through values (Hawkes, 2013). The book is a celebration of schools that are explicitly values-based. It also gives information about how to create a values-based school. In 2018, I thought that the transformational elements of VbE’s Inner Curriculum required a book of their own. Consequently, my wife Jane – a psychotherapist – and I wrote The Inner Curriculum: How to nourish wellbeing, resilience and self-leadership (Hawkes & Hawkes, 2018). In this book, we drew on the insights from the world of psychotherapy, particularly the work of Dr. Richard Schwartz and his theory of the internal family systems (IFS), which emphasizes the essence of a human being, which he describes as Self (Schwartz, 2001). Jane was the first to notice that much of VbE’s success as an educational philosophy is because it makes it safe for our authentic Self in us to be fully present. This I now describe as VbE’s secret ingredient! If Values-based Education is transformational, then what does it transform? VbE’s intention is to nourish the essential characteristics of human beings, which are positive and life-affirming. These include cooperation, love, peace, altruism, equality, and justice – expressed as virtues (values that are lived). Nurturing this essence in children helps them to take control of their feelings, which may spring from holding on to limiting values, such as jealousy (unpleasant suspicion), greed (selfish desire), or envy (discontented longing). Thus, enriching a child’s vocabulary with one that is ethical, based on positive human values, nurtures what I describe as ethical intelligence (EI). This intelligence, which includes emotional intelligence, I define as the ability to ethically self-regulate and be the leader of one’s own behavior. The potential impact of EI, if it were both at the core of the school curriculum and the key outcome of education, could be life-enhancing – truly transformational. I believe that there would be a paradigm shift in the way that humans think about what it means to be human and how people should relate to each other locally and globally if ethical leadership was the priority for character development.

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Examples of Values-Based Schools To choose a few examples is daunting, as there are now so many examples of excellent practices that are part of values-based schools worldwide and that deserve to be mentioned. In May 2018, Jane and I were welcomed to AFNorth International School, at Brunssum in the Netherlands, by its Director Kathy Wood, MBE. AFNORTH International School is a Dutch Foundation, established around its dynamic international community. Students, families, and staff enjoy the “best of both worlds,” in that they gain a wonderfully rich and culturally diverse experience. They live in an international environment, yet under the safety and security of their own national education system. The school provides an education commensurate with the national requirements of its four founding nations – Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The expectation, as agreed by all four nations, is to develop a mutual understanding of a shared school culture – hence its passion for values-based education. Kathy Wood is an inspiring educator, whom I first met when she was a Headteacher at Brookside School, Bicester in Oxfordshire, UK; I was privileged to be her school’s adviser. She subsequently was promoted to the Head of Hornbill, British Forces School in Brunei. It is in this school that she underpinned the school’s educational philosophy with Values-based Education. When visiting the school I awarded it the Values Quality Mark, issued by the International Values-based Trust (IVET), which is a charity which I founded to promote values-based living worldwide. Kathy built on this experience by taking her great educational knowledge, insights, and passion for values to AFNORTH. Kathy invited Jane and I to conduct professional training to help deepen the staff’s understanding of the transformational power of values. Recently (2021), the students from all sections of the school made two inspiring videos to be used at an international pupils’ values conference about the importance of positive values and the effects they can have on the world. The videos feature several students who do not have English as their mother tongue and some students with special needs (SEND). I was so moved by the quality of thinking and the passion behind what was being presented so articulately. They represent the outcome and impact of a values-based school. Values are seen as the positive essence of students, who are inspired to put this into action in their lives. It is inspiring to imagine the transformative effects on our world, if students from all schools were able to articulate how their values can make the world a better place. This is what student Krzysztof Bryla says in one of the videos: I think values such as trust, empathy and responsibility make the world a better place, by helping us to positively change the way we perceive things around us. They help us to see the good in people. They lead to mutual respect and trust, opening pathways to international collaboration for everyone. A person with values will always help others and will not stop until the goal is accomplished. Shortly put, values make the world a better place by creating global citizens, who are empathetic, caring, responsible and eager to explore new ideas when they meet people.

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How do we first empower students to think about values in this decisive and inclusive way? It must begin in the early years. My aim is to give children an ethicscentered, holistic education, in a school, which inspires them to be the best version of themselves that they can be. Such an innovative school I observed in Iceland, at Leikskolinn Alfaheidi Kindergarten for children between the ages of 2 and 6, which I visited on two occasions – 2014 and 2017. The school had successfully implemented Living Values Education (LVE). As stated earlier, I was one of its founders and has been the Chair of LVE in the British Isles since 1995. The heart-based programs, such as the values activities for children 3–7, help schools to focus on creating a positive atmosphere for children and adults. The school gives the children a wonderful caring values-based atmosphere, filled with mutual respect. All staff model the school’s values, and the children have access to a child-focused curriculum that helps each child to develop naturally and to love learning. The calm, purposeful ,and joyful atmosphere is tangible. The headteacher said that the whole school feels the values philosophy – it is in the walls. This atmosphere is also present on the other side of the world. In March 2020, just before the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown, I revisited Snells Beach Primary School in New Zealand. I had first visited it 11 years earlier when it was a new school. I was deeply moved to see that their values journey had blossomed. Kathryn Ramel, who on my first visit had been the deputy, was proud to show me how the values work had been developed and influenced the whole of the school’s curriculum. The uniqueness of each child is recognized and nurtured. Agency is a high priority to encourage the pupils with them taking responsibility for themselves and their learning. The headteacher remarked that many immigrants from the UK found it difficult to understand why a school such as Snells Beach does not have fences around it to keep intruders out. Are their children going to be safe? In this school, the community is welcomed, relationships developed, all encouraged to be an integral part of its resources for learning and not a potential threat. One early year’s teacher was so proud to show the values training book that I had used with the staff on my first visit. A newly appointed teacher said that she was enjoying the values approach to learning. The experiences that are given to the pupils attending the school are in many ways like those in values-based schools in Sweden, Belgium, El Salvador, Jamaica, Thailand, Nigeria, Singapore, and many other parts of the world. Importantly, the curriculum is designed to match pupils’ needs both as learners and as human beings. It was poignant that Jasmine, a teacher at Mahurangi High School, the local secondary school, said that her staff see a very positive difference in pupils transferring from Snells Beach School. Their attitude to learning and their respectful behaviors are so positive, compared with pupils who are not helped to understand the transformational power of positive human values. This year (November 2022), I again visited the school and awarded it the Values Quality Mark as an outstanding values-based school. I also visited another outstanding New Zealand Primary school at Leigh. The Principal Kerrin Jamieson is creating a model of excellent Primary practice, founded on values, which reminded me of the work of Montessori and Sukholmlinsky.

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In the UK, there are numerous schools that explicitly state on their websites that they are values-based schools. These are actively nurturing ethical intelligence/ leadership as an outcome of their curriculum. One such school, mentioned earlier, is Eardisley, Church of England, Primary School, in Herefordshire. In the UK, there are state schools and denominational schools, many of which are Church of England schools. Eardisley had an amazing display, featuring a natural scene full of brightly colored ladybirds, near to which were creatively written the school’s 22 values. What especially took the eye were the words written across the display: “Our Values give us roots and wings.” This lived reality of this imaginative phrase can be sensed in lessons and in school assemblies when all the pupils and staff meet. As this is a church school, the assembly contains an act of Christian collective worship. When an assembly takes place, a candle is lit that burns steadily and brightly in the middle of a Mayan circle of figures. When I was present, there was a globe and other artifacts, which the headteacher was going to use during her assembly. Bridget Knight, the Head, sat on one side of the hall and the pupils were grouped on the other three. What was deeply moving during this memorable assembly on the value of joy was the quality of the atmosphere in the room, which can only be described as deeply spiritual. By this is meant that there was an atmosphere of love, peace, and harmony in the room, with everyone contributing to a palpable feeling of reverence and joy for our world. Bridget demonstrated her incredible professional skill as a teacher, by making meaningful connections with individuals and the group of children as a whole. The written word cannot do justice to the quality of the profound connection that was witnessed during that assembly. One of the pupils read a prayer that she had written which said: Dear God. Thank you for the value of Joy and let's spread it across the world. Without joy we would not be happy and as grateful. Please help us to remember joy and keep it in our hearts. Amen.

The child’s prayer, quoted above, summed up the joy that was evident during the assembly. Bridget demonstrated what may be the prime key skill of a teacher, which is the ability and desire to connect meaningfully with children, which create the space for them to thrive and feel self-confident. These powerful humane connections are formed by the teacher first having an understanding, acceptance, and awareness of themself as a complex human being. Secondly, having the natural ability to form good interpersonal relationships, which give tacit permission for both adults and children to be authentically themselves. Such teachers put into practice the words of Goethe, which may be modified to suit the context of a school: If you take children as they are you will make them worse and If you take children as they could be you make them capable of being what they could be. VbE schools bring out the very best in children and do not place a glass ceiling on their potential. They are curious about behavior not critical, realizing that each of us is on a journey of personal

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development and is grounded in love, which Carl Rogers, the renowned psychologist, described as unconditional, positive regard. Good relationships are tangible in all VbE schools, which create trust and harmony. Good relationships are also at the heart of Ledbury Primary School. It is an outstanding values-based state school that actively nurtures respectful relationships throughout its community. Its inspiring Headteacher, Julie Rees, has made the building of meaningful relationships a cornerstone of her headship. Whenever I look back on photos of activities at Ledbury School, they are full of smiles. Each member of the school is truly valued and accepted unconditionally for who they are as a person. It was at Ledbury that I first witnessed children being taught class massage, which created a feeling of calm as they practiced routines such as “the weather.” For this activity, the children sat in pairs, taking it in turns to massage each other’s shoulders, gently patting each other’s backs to represent rain and moving in circular motions when the sun came out. The parents and children were asked to give permission for the lessons to take place, which are now very popular with both staff and children. Through these experiential sessions, which the children enjoy and take very seriously, they learn to respect each other – another central tenet of a values-based school. What all these examples exemplify is that VbE is an educational philosophy that is embedded in every aspect of school life. Values-based means that the school’s curriculum, its policies, structures, and routines are based on a community inspired set of positive human values. Values education is a subset, embracing the deliberate teaching and learning about human-centered values. The school is therefore ethicscentric, empowering people to nurture their innate capacity to espouse and live their lives using a common values narrative, which celebrates our shared humanity. Further details about Values-based Education can be explored at the website www. valuesbasededucation.com.

Values-based Education and the Future Because of the perceived academic and social impact of schools, such as the ones described in this article, Values-based Education is increasingly being appreciated by change-makers as playing an important role in response to the current (2022) global challenges including COVID-19, climate change, social and racial injustice, and economic inequalities. In October 2021, Professor Marco Tavanti and I wrote a chapter for the V20 group of values experts that formed a part of a protocol sent to the G20 leaders meeting in Italy. The paper was titled Empowering Education for Sustainable, Global and Ethical values that achieve the G20 priorities for people, planet, and prosperity (Hawkes & Tavanti, 2021). The chapter argued that education is key to assuring a future of human coexistence, environmental interconnectedness, and sustainable prosperity for all. The resolution of today’s global challenges is inextricably linked to providing quality education that embraces sustainability at its core and espouses ethical values such as integrity, solidarity, and sharing. It was

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recommended that the G20 urgently needed to ensure the adoption of valuescentered curricula that align with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which seeks to cultivate global citizenship through a humancentered, ethical, inclusive, and equitable quality education that promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all (UN, 2021). The chapter went on to propose that education must (it is not an option) enable students to be explicitly and systematically educated to respect, emphasize with, and be compassionate to others. It needs to give students the educational and pro-social values to sustain themselves, others, and the natural world. However, the current outdated industrial economic model of education has created a standards-based, outcome-focused culture that is often narrow and fragmented into isolated academic subjects and disconnected from a human-centered approach. Instead, the purpose of education should be envisioned to focus on people, planet, and prosperity and on enhancing the dignity, capacity, and welfare of the people in relation to others and to nature (UNESCO, 2015). With the advancements of science and technology, it is imperative to promote a values-centered, interdisciplinary approach to education that integrates universal values and principles, such as global solidarity, social inclusion, gender equality, and accountability, in the implementation of the SDGs. At the end of Chapter 3, proposals were made, one of which was that the G20 should convene a strategic education task force. This would build on the recommendations of the G20 Education Ministers Meeting (2021) to promote a strategic education taskforce with representative experts who can advance values-based education to offer solutions to post-pandemic challenges like blended teaching and learning, educational poverty, global cooperation and commitments, and sustainable development. The taskforce could also become and/or promote a clearinghouse for contents, strategies, and effective practices for values-based education. I am hopeful that there will be a growing recognition that if humanity is to solve its existential problems, then besides promoting technical and scientific competences, it needs to be firmly based in sustainable ethical principles. The fourth industrial revolution of artificial intelligence (AI) must be programmed by people who understand and work ethically for the long-term happiness and sustainability of all people. This is more likely to happen if education systems are required to be ethics-centric, as shown in the description of values-based schools.

Conclusion My intention in writing this article has been to give a clear picture of the historical development of Values-based Education as transferable ethical education – its journey so far. I hope too that I have inspired you to see VbE’s enormous potential for creating an explicit common values narrative, ensuring a secure, peaceful, harmonious future for humanity. You may be wondering about the long-term effects that VbE has on the lives of young people? The following is part of a heartwarming letter sent to me by Stephanie Giles.

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Dr Hawkes, I wanted to thank you for implementing your truly inspirational values system. Thank you for making my childhood at West Kidlington School so memorable and enjoyable. Thank you too for teaching me about values, which I have held so closely since leaving 20 years ago throughout my adult life. I will be eternally grateful that I was lucky enough to be a pupil of West Kidlington when you were Headteacher, and to have experienced the values-based education you implemented. Words simply cannot express my gratitude. Please just know that even after all this time, your work has had a truly transformational and lasting impact. It has made a real difference to my pathway in life – thank you.

In the intervening years since VbE was conceived and implemented at West Kidlington School, human activity worldwide has created greater complexity, challenges, and disunity. I think that the existential threats will only be met; the United Nations sustainable goals reached, if, first, each person is helped to raise their level of altruistic awareness/consciousness, maintain their mental and physical health, and thereby make a positive contribution to nourishing life on earth. Secondly, young people are supported by educators, families, and the community to find an ethical meaning and purpose for their lives, based on sustainable, positive human values. I am confident that this aspiration can be achieved, if there is a political and social resolve to implement the transformational benefits of nurturing values-based schools, families, companies, communities, and governments. Humanity could have a bright future if the guiding principles of Values-based Living (VbL) are adopted. I remain optimistic and hopeful, having not lost my faith in humanity’s potential. My optimism was encouraged at a Values-based Education Conference held in November 2022, at the Gold Coast Convention Centre in Australia. Members of the government were present and listened to and endorsed the values messages that I was sharing. The values renaissance is happening and my VbE journey continues. . .

References DfEE. (1989). The Education (National Curriculum) (Attainment Targets and Programmes of Study in English) Order 1989. Farrer, F. (2000). A quiet revolution. Rider. Hawkes, N. (1977). Home, school and community relationships with special reference to a village primary school [Unpublished M.Ed. thesis]. Reading University. Hawkes, N. (2005). Does Teaching values improve the quality of education in primary schools [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. Oxford University. Hawkes, N. (2013). From my Heart: Transforming lives through Values. Independent Thinking Press imprint of Crown House Publishing. Hawkes, N., & Tavanti, M. (2021). Empowering Education for Sustainable, Global and Ethical values that achieve the G20 priorities for people, planet, and prosperity. https://values20.org/ media/mcpjbdgg/sharing-policy-brief-complete.pdf Hawkes, N., & Hawkes, J. (2018). The Inner Curriculum: How to nourish wellbeing, resilience and self-leadership. John Catt Publication. Living Values Education. (2022). https://www.livingvalues.net/history/ Ricard, M. (2015, p534). Altruism: The power of compassion to change yourself and the world. Atlantic Books.

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Schwartz, R. (2001). Introduction to the internal family systems model. Trailheads. UN (United Nations). (2021a). Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/goals UN (United Nations). (2021b). SDG4 Quality Education. https://www.un.org/sustainablede velopment/education/ UNESCO. (2015). Rethinking education. Towards a global common good. https://unevoc.unesco. org/e-forum/RethinkingEducation.pdf Values-based Education. (2022). https://valuesbasededucation.com

Revisiting the “Quiet Revolution”

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emotional Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Counseling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

My book, A Quiet Revolution, told the story of the development of values education methodology at West Kidlington School in Oxfordshire, one of the values’ pioneers in England. I went there initially to write an article for the Times Educational Supplement about the phenomenon of silent reflection for 5- to 11-year-olds. Could it be true? It could, and children and staff were responding calmly and harmoniously to the daily practice in their school assemblies and sometimes also after break time or before beginning a lesson. A few moments’ class reflection might be used to create the right atmosphere in which to talk through a disagreement or simply to slow down and clear the mind for academic effort. It was simply part of the school day. The children would sometimes ask for it themselves. Keywords

Values education · Positive concepts · Daily practice · Silent reflection · Observation · Discussion F. Farrer (*) Former Education Journalist, Oxford, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_22

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Introduction Values education finds different expression in different kinds of school; it is its adaptability within different contexts that validates the central theories. That this adaptability exists while retaining the integrity of the method is of course an essential aspect. The structure as practiced in the schools that have taken up the work as exemplified at West Kidlington Primary School, just north of Oxford in Southern England, is in three parts. First comes the exploration of positive concepts, next the daily and frequent practice of silent reflection, and last the building of the habit of dispassionate observation and discussion. Some schools replicate the West Kidlington model and many use the West Kidlington list of 22 values concepts, but most change at least some of the words. Some schools, with different circumstances, retain traditional disciplinary measures while slowly phasing in the values method in its full complexity. Wonderful imaginations create different materials and methods around the words. My book, A Quiet Revolution (Farrer, 2000), told the story of the development of values education methodology at West Kidlington School in Oxfordshire, one of the values’ pioneers in England. I went there initially to write an article for the Times Educational Supplement about the phenomenon of silent reflection for 5- to 11-year olds. Could it be true? It could, and children and staff were responding calmly and harmoniously to the daily practice in their school assemblies and sometimes also after break time or before beginning a lesson. A few moments’ class reflection might be used to create the right atmosphere in which to talk through a disagreement or simply to slow down and clear the mind for academic effort. It was simply part of the school day. The children would sometimes ask for it themselves. The reflection article was published in a religious education supplement, not always the most enthusiastically read pages in the TES, and what was more, it was in a December issue, the end of the winter term with Christmas coming up. But the piece uncovered a real interest, and for the remainder of that term the school got more than 20 calls a day from people wanting to know more. The reflection article led to another about the values conversations that take place in dedicated lesson time (similar to a system now codified as Philosophy for Children). That piece dealt more closely with the values concepts. Next came the book. Since A Quiet Revolution was published, many schools in the south of England and in other parts of the world have taken up values work. This interest is probably attributable at least in part to the perceived need for some moral element within increasing secularized schooling. In addition, with the growing interest in EQ (emotional quotient), methods that pertain to emotional literacy, such as those contained within values education, are gaining ground. The education of the reasonable side of the brain has long been prevalent; now the emotional side is getting back into the frame. Neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer (2009) says that our best decisions are a blend of feeling and reason, the precise mix depending on the situation. Lehrer maintains that if it were not for our emotions, reasons would not exist, “the process of thinking requires feeling.” A brain that cannot feel, cannot

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make up its mind. These ideas are harmonious with the thinking behind values education. In this chapter, I would like to look at how by paying considered attention to the emotional condition of the children, social awareness and relationships are transformed in schools, and cohesion, comprehension, sensitivity, and a greater sense of community are created. With regard to the direct effect on teaching and learning, it is clear that with the practice of the values education methodology, the quality of communication is so improved as to facilitate all understanding and increase motivation. Many researchers now see emotional stability as an essential component of quality teaching and learning, and emotional stability is a consistent result of this work. At the age of 13, a former West Kidlington Primary School pupil summed up her approach to the school day at secondary school. “I expect to learn something – I start by thinking, what will be fun in lessons, what will I find interesting? . . . At West Kidlington we came in ready to enjoy the lessons. I don’t think any lessons are boring, it’s just what you make of them. At primary school the atmosphere made you concentrate. We were bright – I think because everyone’s happy and calm they’re learning more. It’s a shame I couldn’t have been there longer! . . . At my new school, I say if I don’t understand. I’m at ease with the teachers, really you can almost speak to them like friends” (Farrer, 2000, pp. 104–105). A clear account of how her early education shaped her attitude to learning.

Case Studies Emotional Stability Many children live in discordant families, and school communities may provide a lifeline in the form of a secure alternative emotional environment. Values education proposes in addition that academic achievement is enhanced by emotional stability. In A Quiet Revolution (Farrer, 2000), Year 5 (9- and 10-year-olds) teacher Karyn Errington observed, “An unhappy child is not going to learn” (p. 59). School and class assemblies are the fulcrum of the values effort, children are often invited to speak in them and Karyn Errington remarked on the extraordinary empathy often shown. She described one incident when understanding was the value concept under scrutiny. “We did an assembly on understanding, on the need to understand. The children were asked about understanding and they said we all needed to understand – why some of them can’t read, or swim, things like that – then it moved into bigger things, why some of the children’s parents couldn’t get on. A boy whose parents’ marriage was breaking up said he wanted the subject talked about, but that he himself couldn’t talk about it because it would make him cry. I can’t imagine anywhere else where that would have been possible, this is the most extraordinarily supportive place. It’s the whole child we’re concerned with here – literacy, numeracy, heart and soul” (Farrer, 2000, p. 88).

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The assembled children who talked about the marriage breakdown acknowledged that the situation must be terrible for the boy, but suggested that if his parents would be happier living separately, and he could see them being happier, it might in time turn out not to be so bad after all. Then, they offered him their sympathy. These are very grown-up responses indeed. Teachers say the values work gives clarity of thought, and on this showing it appears that it gives children the clarity to think through even domestic catastrophe. It also enables them to put themselves in the position of their schoolmates, to share their troubles, and to offer kindness and group support. Social awareness, and comprehension of the part each person in the school community plays in the life of the whole, is a characteristic result of the values work, and invaluable for the sense of community that the children will take into adult life (Farrer, 2000, pp. 88–89).

Community The next story contains an unusual incident: one in which West Kidlington children misbehaved within the local neighborhood. Neil Hawkes was head teacher at the time and he was taking an assembly for the youngest children. Here it is, in another extract from A Quiet Revolution: There has been an unusual hiatus in the form of a minor stone-throwing incident and Mr Hawkes has decided after a moment’s hesitation that he must mention it, although in general the positive medium of the assembly is not used for disciplinary matters. The incident is explained. ‘When stones are thrown they always hurt something. So what would I want you to do with stones?’ ‘Not pick them up,’ says a boy. ‘Yes!’ says the head. ‘Put your hands up if you understand.’ (Farrer, 2000, p. 90) Since any event will always be dealt with in the larger as well as the smaller sphere, the other part of this equation was properly dealt with too, The following term there was a sequel at Harvest Festival, when the elderly neighbours whose glass had suffered were invited to the school, ‘to see another side of us’. It was a beautiful occasion. The entire school population was packed into the hall, with the visitors seated at the back. A huge table in the corner was laden with fruit and vegetables and tins of food. Gentle music was played on the piano. The children filed in as usual, but because the whole school came it took 10 minutes and a bit of engineering to seat them. After several stories came the social message: ‘We need to remember that in some countries people, the grown-ups and the children, grow the food, and that some of them have nothing at all to eat when the crops fail. We need especially to remember the Sudan,’ said Mr Hawkes. (Sudan was experiencing drought at the time.) (Farrer, 2000, p. 91) Next, while Ave Maria was played on the piano, each class sent an emissary with a small basket of fruit. The gifts were received with thanks and added to the store. The infants sang, ‘See the farmer sow the seed, Up the fields and down,’ and the juniors led the whole school in, ‘Lord of the Harvest,’ a hymn-style song lustily sung. ‘Let us give thanks now to God, in nature revealed,’ said Mr Hawkes, ‘and for this fine display. Keep your wonderful patience going while you’re going out!’ And they did, through a near-10 minute disembarkation from

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the hall, having sat in a crowded room and concentrated and sung for just over half an hour, the five year-olds right up to the top juniors. (Farrer, 2000, pp. 91–92) The elderly visitors said they found it ‘touching’ and ‘moving’. They said they were amazed at the total concentration, they applauded the explanation of the different people, said they loved living near the school and enjoyed the children’s proximity so much that they missed them during the school holidays. I asked about the contretemps with stones during the previous term. ‘Oh it was nothing really,’ said one of the elders. ‘A storm in a teacup. We’ve all got grand- children, we understand these things can happen. The mistake was in laying a gravel path in the first place, children are bound to pick up bits of it. Boys will, anyhow.’ The others agreed that the incident had been well handled and that the harm done had been little and understandable. You could almost have thought the stones had been put down to test the children, and that it wasn’t quite a fair test. (Farrer, 2000, p. 92)

Thus, the harmony of the neighborhood is kept in view by the school community. In fact, there is very little bad behavior from the children of these schools. I heard a story from a school in the West Country. The children had been visited by the local policeman for a talk on road safety and sensible conduct when out in the town. Afterward, the policeman spoke more generally. “What do you do about bullying in this school?” he asked. “We don’t know,” they replied, “we don’t really have any.” To which the policeman sportingly replied, “Well, you’d better come and talk to us then!”

Social Awareness There is a fine line between social awareness and community, with the same delicate balances of sympathy and understanding at work. The children are constantly (and gently) shown the consequences of their actions, and they develop the ability to ask themselves, “If I do this, what might happen next?” They are made aware of the effects of their actions and attitudes on other people. The next story, also from the West Country, is included in my forthcoming book, Minds and Hearts: A school in Herefordshire decided to make a stained glass window with a values theme. Money was obtained from a charity and a local artist was found to teach a group of year six children (10 and 11-year-olds) to do the craft work. It happened that the five children who were to make the window were all girls. A local artist came to the school and worked with the children. She explained the techniques, the whole school was consulted about the design, then the artist and the working group talked about which words they wanted to use and why, about what words such as Cooperation meant to them, and about how to express the concepts visually. They began by drawing round some of the children’s hands and photocopying the outlines, then they etched the outlines into the glass. The team learned how to cut the glass and work the lead. They chose the colours. Meanwhile the main hall could not be used for gym, lunch or assembly for about two weeks. Since none of the boys had any part in it some staff members thought they might feel left out, though in fact none of them complained and there were no obviously sulky faces. There had already been dislocation all through that term because of building alterations, pupils had

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been moved from classroom to classroom and many of them hadn’t had a desk or a place of their own. They had behaved well throughout, but it was acknowledged that the loss of the hall was an extra irritant in an unquiet term. The girls involved in the craft work were excused their usual lessons and from time to time the other children dropped by to look at the progress of the glass work. The craft team noticed some of the boys hanging around and they too half expected some kind of nuisance, but none came. When the window was finished and put in place, the school assembled so that the local Member of Parliament David Bell, then Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Skills, could dedicate it. All had been properly arranged for the formal visit and on the day the school assembled in good order, but when everyone was seated, one of the girls from the stained glass team stood up spontaneously in front of teachers, pupils and visiting grandees and said, ‘Before we start, I want to say something on behalf of all the girls who made the window. We want to thank everyone for putting up with us working in the hall, and we specially want to say thank you to the boys. They weren’t making the window and they couldn’t have gym; we noticed they never complained and we want them to know we appreciate that.’ The sensitivity and confidence of this speech say more about the success of the values pro- gramme than stained glass ever could. It demonstrated Humility, Understanding, Kindness and Courage. This is not just good manners, it is a deep comprehension of how emotional and social worlds work.

This story was told to me by the head teacher, who said that it showed her a great deal of what the girls had absorbed. Sensitivity, a social awareness that goes beyond politeness – and the self-possession to stand up in front of a visiting dignitary and speak out clearly and succinctly, was at least some of it. Staying with social awareness, here is another story from Minds and Hearts, set once again in West Kidlington. It comes from the chapter on Reflection, which is defined not only as silent sitting, but also as considering, reviewing, contemplating: During the summer, there are two or three makeshift tennis courts on the grass behind the outdoor classrooms at West Kidlington Primary School. They are not properly marked out, but the demarcations are well understood by the children. At break time children rush out to bag them. When the girls get there first the boys always want to stop the game and they often steal the ball. It can get quite heated, and even the dinner ladies have been involved in the resulting disputes. Ten-year-old Melissa told her class teacher Linda Heppenstall a story about the tennis court situation. She said, ‘I remembered you talking about choosing to be tolerant.’ On this occasion the boys had once again taken the ball, but Melissa persuaded the girls not to get angry. The girls decided to sit on the grass instead, and talk about the tennis they had seen on television. When the boys found that they got no reaction from stealing the ball they went over to where the girls were sitting and joined in the conversation. The children talked about Wimbledon, and their favourite players. Melissa said, ‘Because I had decided not to get angry it didn’t bother me that they’d got the ball. I thought it was better not to get into, “I’m going to see the Miss”. Better to do something different.’ In the end the girls and boys made up a new game and played as a group. They all played together, but took turns. They invented a game in which, after you had a turn hitting the ball, you had to run round the court and allow the next child in line to play. Linda Heppenstall said, ‘So you see by being more tolerant, things changed.’ ‘We like the game that we’re playing now,’ Melissa said.

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The new game that was established turned out to be better than just having four people on two courts. Linda Heppenstall says, ‘Arguing just asserts, ‘I want this!’ But these children had got on with speaking together, and had just started to listen to each other’s wishes’. There must have been some questions about shall we do x or y? – and then they thought of a way round it. They’re inventive when it comes to changing the rules. ‘It’s heartening that sometimes the brighter, older children can take something and use it. They listen intently when you do values lessons, they pick up something and see its potential. The kids like to see that other kids have worked it out. Those with the greatest ability teach others.’

They also make many fine definitions. Tolerance was defined by an 8-year-old at a school in Kent as: “It’s respecting everyone’s views and differences, isn’t it?”

Counseling The habit of listening dispassionately to others is useful throughout life. In the values schools there are often lessons programmed into the timetable for sessions in which children can explain their moral quandaries, or talk through an incident in which they are not sure of the part they played. This can be somewhat akin to counseling. At secondary school, West Kidlington alumnus Sam Gardner enthusiastically took on the new task of mentoring juniors, using the methods he had learned as a young child. He described his role as “a lot like a big brother.” He remained keen on the practice of reflection for slowing down thoughts, and said of the values work, “It influences pretty much everything I do.” At 17, Sam began to help teach some drama classes in his school, and found them invaluable for exploring emotional and social questions. He brought his early education into the drama work. “The values I was taught are the outline for the way I teach and to a large extent for what I teach,” he said. On the effect of his primary schooling he said a very large thing indeed: “I’ve learned how to be.” In the mentoring work, “I made some significant, overt references to the value words. I loved being able to explore them with children. I liked asking questions, searching for meaning. You often hear people say, for example, “I want to be happy!” – and I’ll say, “But what does it mean to be happy?” Of course the answer to that is different for everybody, but that’s what makes the questioning interesting and worth doing.” Sam saw that he had first to establish a clear channel of communication with the younger children. “I’d say, ‘I want you to think about yourselves in relation to me, I want you to trust me and I’ll trust you!’. I think that engages on a much better level, one that encourages individual investigation. I would make it clear that I wanted them to explore an idea, and explore it thoroughly.” Sam added with relish: “I’d tell them I was going to give it to them again and again!” He was ready to adapt his methods to reach different children. Sometimes roleplay was used, sometimes drawing, often conversation with a positive emphasis. General discussions were set up which led to private conversations. One of the success stories was that of 11-year-old Benjamin, who Sam described as, “Very, very

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energetic – exhausting, in fact! The teachers were not always sure how to deal with him. They sent him out of classes for fighting.” One day in a drama class, Sam noticed something about Benjamin. “I started to see him look up at the teacher whenever he did anything wrong. It was as if he was looking for a reaction. I went to him and said, ‘I know we can all get a bit wound up sometimes but I’d like to talk to you, maybe one lunchtime’. I also said, ‘I’ll bring sandwiches’.” (The clincher, perhaps, and a trick Sam had learned from his mother.) “Benjamin came, and we talked. He has older brothers who are quite full- on and aggressive, this attitude thing has spread with all of them into the school. I said to Benjamin, ‘Why do you provoke this teacher?’ He said, ‘I don’t!’ and I said, ‘I think you do’.” “He loves motorbikes, so I suggested he could draw one and write on it the qualities he wanted the teacher to have. He did this, and the words were Trust, Happy, Friend, Respect – mostly West Kidlington words, as it happens. I said we needed to put fuel in the bike, and the fuel was Benjamin trying to be who he wanted the teacher to be. We talked about getting from the teacher what he wanted. After that we went and played football.” “He’s a lot better now. I used to make motor bike noises very quietly when I passed him in a corridor to remind him, and it made him smile. He started to engage quite soon after that talk. He’s got a lot of dramatic talent, he loves performing. He can see the things he wants to achieve and now he can see how to get them. I think the key to the values thing is giving the approach for people to do what they can, to do what they want to do.” An understanding of cause and effect, an understanding of the part one plays in one’s own success, an invaluable life lesson – and with a sandwich thrown in! So the preliminary work was built upon. Sam Gardner was in no doubt where it came from. “You can’t forget your earlier understanding,” he said. “Primary education is a time when your subconscious develops significantly, and then that’s how you are. Primary school is a very important time for constructing those elements that make you who you are.” Sam did well at secondary school and set off on the road to become a drama teacher, combining his love of acting with his dedication to the importance of passing on what he felt lucky to have learned himself. His anticipation of life as a teacher was idealistic. “It’s a unique profession, you engage with people in a very special way. You challenge your own ideals, your own perceptions, every day.” Teaching was seen as a vocation. “I don’t think just anyone can be a teacher.” These have been some of the products of the values method as taught at West Kidlington and another school in the south of England. There are many more schools doing this work, including some city schools. Research is beginning to show that the disciplines of values education are invaluable in training young minds, so that aspects of the students’ studies become more focused and creative. However, the most immediately noticeable and clearly attributable effects are social. At a school in Bedfordshire, in the south of England, the head teacher spoke of the effect of bringing silent reflection into the daily assemblies. “After the atmosphere of assembly had started coming together we noticed a different atmosphere in the school. Somebody said, ‘I’m not dealing with the playground hassle any more. The children

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used not to solve their own problems, they used to come to an adult and whinge.’ Then we noticed the children didn’t come to the head any more. The staff on playground duty said how much more enjoyable it was, and we told the children that.” Indeed, teachers using this method often say that they are enjoying their work much more. These useful techniques for focusing and unifying school communities are now in use around the world. In the two convent schools for girls that I visited in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the nuns and lay teachers give each of the words a fortnight, using them briefly at the end of morning assembly as a thought for the day. They adopted the value concepts because they teach girls from both Christian and Muslim backgrounds (with a few Buddhists), who naturally go to separate religious classes. The sisters were looking for something to bring all of the staff and pupils together. I was there immediately after the earthquake in the autumn of 2005, when they had been using the value words for about 2 years. The schools were closed for 3 days, and when they reopened the teachers decided to extend the word unity for two more weeks because they found it so helpful while they were working together after the disaster. The staff members were collecting blankets and towels, plates, cups, and bottled water to send in to the hospitals. Some of the older children helped them. The atmosphere was stoical, but jittery. We all kept thinking the ground was trembling, and almost any rumbling sound could stop a conversation and bring nervous laughter. During daylight hours the noise of ambulance sirens and helicopter blades was constant as the emergency services moved injured people to hospital. During the political upheavals in Pakistan at the end of 2007 I e-mailed the sisters to ask how they were. There was serious concern about the stability of the country, but head teacher Sister Julie Watson took the time to comment on the values work. She said, “We have values well and truly alive and it has really affected the atmosphere of the school for the better. The daily assembly with a stress on a different value every two weeks has brought about a remarkable change in the atmosphere, children are friendlier, teachers work well together, and the overall atmosphere is very good. May it long remain so!” In the context of such religious certainty and discipline this is a wonderful tribute. The nuns often told me of the unifying effect of the focus on the positive concepts. It seems that clarity is one of the chief benefits of the work.

School Communities Now to a newer phenomenon: groups of schools within localities work together on the values concepts. One of them is developing around the small English Midlands town of Daventry. Ashby Primary School is at the heart of it, seven more primary schools are interested in starting the work and two secondary schools are about to begin. Ashby head Neil Balliston says of the values work, “Children understand the benefits of behaving,” and indeed one often hears quite young children say approvingly, “It teaches us manners!”. These schools are developing some of their own learning materials. At Falconer’s Hill Infant School (for 3- to 5-year-olds), the concepts have been pictured as animals. Thus, thoughtfulness is an owl, respect is

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a tiger, responsibility is a monkey putting his banana skin into a recycling bin, and cooperation is a group of ants carrying a piece of rainbow colored cloth. Imaginative interpretation of the National Curriculum is often found in primary schools, and Ashby Primary reports a wonderful treatment of the Great Fire of London (1666), part of the history syllabus for Key Stage 2 (7 to 11-year-olds). The children built a cardboard and paper model of medieval London, with streets and houses to scale. Contemporary houses were made of wattle and daub based on wooden frames, which is why the fire took hold so quickly and burnt the city so completely. The model was centered on Pudding Lane, where the fire started, and took the children 6 weeks to build. When it was finished, by prior arrangement, the Ashby Fire Brigade sent a fire engine, the cardboard London was set on fire, and the firemen put it out. The involvement in the lives of schoolchildren of local people such as policemen and firemen has benefits all round; the adults enjoy it just as much as the children. There was another, incidental lesson: the model took 6 weeks to build and 6 minutes to burn. At Walton-on-Thames, 15 miles southwest of London, there are nine values schools within a small radius, coordinating their value words. This is the Bridge Partnership: six primary schools, two secondary schools, and a special school for children with varying degrees of severe learning disability. The group was formed at the end of 2007; teacher representatives from each establishment meet termly to discuss their joint effort. They say that their common language – in all senses – makes consensus quicker. Over time, this arrangement will harmonize the thinking and outlook of siblings of different ages, and could do away with at least some of the familiar apprehension that can accompany children’s moves from primary to secondary school. Richard Dunne heads Ashley Church of England Primary School in Walton-onThames. He believes that the joint effort “will enable young people to show the power of partnership and collaboration in the community.” He believes that the result of the work in assemblies, collective worship, through the curriculum, in public celebrations, and perhaps above all through the practice of quiet reflection will be that “School will nurture in the children a set of values that we hope will guide them as they grow into the citizens and leaders of the future.” The Bridge Partnership decided on the values methodology as a means of focusing their confederation, and there was swift agreement on it. “I was amazed that we had nine representatives from nine schools, and we asked them to put up their proposals for values, and we just raced through it,” says Dunne. They agreed on their joint value concepts for a two-year program in just under an hour. Consensus on the shared vocabulary continues into the schools’ joint efforts, such as the outdoor concert I saw one cold spring morning in the Walton-upon-Thames shopping precinct. All of the schools willingly offered help organizing it. “We enjoy working together, there’s a trust between us,” says Richard Dunne. “The competition has gone out of things, probably because people do really value what we’re doing.” The five participating schools attracted a good-sized audience for a chilly Monday morning, and not just of parents, either. The local mayor concluded the concert with

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a promise. “I will try to be more confident, and aspire to the values,” he said. Within the precinct were huge peace and values banners that the children had made, as well as more traditional art work. The mayor saw it all as exemplary. “This is the sort of commitment we hope all our young people will make.” Shared vocabulary, shared understanding, and consensus make a huge difference in all spheres of activity, and teachers say, “It makes sense to the children.” Teachers are involved in the values work individually, aware of their own effect, and of the depth of it. Mark Jackman, head of Rydens Secondary School, is convinced of the importance of the work. “The point is in the explicitness,” he says, “though of course in secondary schools there may need to be a more subtle approach, with individual pupils beginning to know their own minds. We still have the value of the month and the focus in assemblies, but we may have to use more persuasion and argument. We may have to go into what appear to be contradictions and it is important that we must persuade rather than tell.” “Recently I gave an assembly on hope. I talked of situations where the factor that made the difference was hope, but then I talked about times when hope is not appropriate, for example you don’t hope you’ll get your homework done.” At Rydens School, “Students reflect on assemblies, discuss the concepts, reflect on the values. We expect to see actions and behaviour that summarize the values. We give house points for community action, for positive values shown in practice.” Mark Jackman remarks that student behavior has improved, and he is convinced that the strengthening of the community depends on the values work being done in concert with other schools. “It’s the right thing to do, and it’s difficult to do by yourself. It has the potential to have a significant impact on our communities. People acting together for the common good – the longer you do this, the more impact it will have elsewhere.” Richard Dunne agrees. “The impact of schools working together on the community of families and parents will be immense.” Linda Curtis is a class teacher, she says that the linked schools arrangement “makes sense to the children.” She also notes that the schools are able to maintain their individuality. “Within the confederation it’s very personalized, we need to ensure that the values work is personalized to school settings. At the same time we all appreciate what each other does.” Linda Curtis emphasizes the importance of maintaining clarity. “We must help our teachers to know which questions to ask – which need not necessarily be very comfortable.” There are complex conversations to be had. “Some of the values are not easy. Honesty, for example. We might ask, ‘why do people steal things?’ – and then we might notice that when people are desperate they do things they might not do otherwise. There really aren’t many situations that are black and white. Understanding is another complex one. Why do people behave as they do? Why did that person do that?” Ashley Primary School has a strong environmental emphasis. “Values are the foundation of all we do,” says Richard Dunne, “and sustainability is the core.” He sees this as essential effort. “We are very close to the tipping point with regard to the climate,” he says. The school uses alternative energy sources, monitors its energy

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use, and researches different ways of consuming – and of not consuming. Each year group is growing food, and they also keep three chickens within the school grounds, with chicken monitors taking on the job for at least a term. (Chicken monitors get the eggs as wages.) All this is clearly harmonious with work on principled behavior; the question of the way we live must include how and what we consume. The remark “The values work should lead to positive behavior ultimately” is of course a general one, but when made in the context of a special school it must accompany very different approaches and subtleties. It was said at Walton Leigh Special School, also part of the Bridge Partnership. The school caters for 64 pupils between the ages of 11 and 18. Their categories of severe learning disability include Downs syndrome, autism, and profound and multiple learning difficulties. About 25% of the pupils are wheelchair bound and totally dependent. Teacher Eva Bartok-Beke says that much learning at the school is sensory, alongside Makaton signing and other special techniques including visual aids. A great many systems are used and tailored to individual needs. In terms of the values work, she says, “Some of the children get the values messages through teaching sessions,” and “the reflections at the end of every day are useful.” Reflection is used at other times too. “Sometimes we might try for one minute’s quiet in class, which helps to calm the students.” Walton Leigh uses many pictorial aids for understanding simple words. One of their A4 sheets asks, “How can we be good friends?” Underneath, the word Kind is illustrated by a hand with the thumb pointing upward, beside a heart; by an ear with waves going into it; another hand with an exclamation mark beside it accompanying the word Helpful and lastly a brown hand and a white one pictured above a halved apple, with a piece going to each. In the context of this special school, the values words are still central to the effort. “Co-Operation – we define that as working together, and we may point out to the pupils that that’s what they are doing,” says Eva Bartok-Beke. “One of our boys is friends with a profoundly disabled girl, and he helps her, he brushes her hair, for example. He would get an award for understanding. We might have explained the word understanding by talking about how a friend might be upset because the noise was too high.” This is backed by rewards: students are given awards for citizenship, and there is a nomination box for the staff member of the month. Ms Bartok-Beke believes that the values work has focused what was already present in the school’s working ethos. “We have always talked about respect, for example, but it was implicit. This way of working has brought it to the students, and I think now that staff and youngsters all use the word ‘values’. The students can tell us the value of the month, they have more of an awareness about it. The children get a greater understanding of the values and for some of them it can affect the behaviour. When that happens it is enriching because it’s giving them more independence. Some of the children can use the words themselves.” Others in the Bridge Partnership have linked with schools around the world. Year 2 children (aged six) at Manby Lodge Infant School are communicating by letter and e-mail with Jumeirah Primary School in Dubai; their Year 1 children are linked with

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a school in Leicestershire. They define Belonging in a way that moves from self to other; “people accept me for who I am. I belong in my family. I belong in my class. I belong in my school.” Another school that is looking at self and community is Bell Farm Junior, where there has been a focus on children around the world. Bell Farm children decided to produce African batik wax printing, and to make prints that illustrate the emotion within the value. St James, Church of England Primary School children made banners in cooperation with a group of parents and an artist. Their definition of Understanding is “by looking and listening carefully we can begin to understand others’. Oatlands Infants family values art project also created banners. There, every month one of the classes invites the parents or carers to come to school for an afternoon and talk about what the current value means within the family. Next, art work illustrating the value is created. Their definition of Care is ‘look after yourself, look after others, look after the environment.” Two more schools within the group have links with the elderly: St Charles Borromeo Catholic Primary School, and Heathside School, which is for secondary students (11–18 years). Elderly people attend assemblies and help in classes with memories of the World War II at St Charles Borromeo; Heathside students help to care for elderly people within the community. Heathside students also work at Walton Leigh School, and concern themselves with green issues and healthy eating. Their definition of Confidence predates the US presidential election, and is You can do it! All of the community efforts could be said to be similar to those undertaken by many if not most schools the length and breadth of the land. As with other products of values work, the concrete evidence may not be exceptional, critics could argue that making banners and singing in public is not out of the way. However, the usefulness of work done with explicit intention, and done as an expression of virtue – to use the grander word – is arguably infinitely more significant. It is the quality, the inherent communication that is important. Richard Dunne sums it up. “What we did through the singing was to really capture a sense of community and demonstrate it – here we are. People’s expectations are that schools are separate, but we said very publicly we are a team, we have partnership, we work together and we really enjoy working together. The combination of music and art through our collaborative partnership was very powerful. We said to all the parents, from whatever background, that all these children are working together. What better way to share our values work with our community than through our art and music?” “Over time, doing this work, you start to see children behaving in a really positive way. You start to notice that they speak to each other nicely, they hold doors for each other, they pick each other up if they fall over in the playground. They have a heightened awareness of how to behave The ongoing exploration of what it is to live a values-based life is what is being demonstrated. They have an understanding of how to behave.”

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Conclusion This chapter amplifies the close relationship between a values approach to learning, the development of character, and the overall wellbeing of students, teachers, and the communities they live in and serve.

References Farrer, F. (2000). A quiet revolution: Encouraging positive values in our children. Random House. Lehrer, J. (2009). The decisive moment: How the brain makes up its mind. Canongate.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Need for Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pedagogies of Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subject-Matter Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Broader Theoretical Framings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Asset-Based Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toward a Comprehensive and Integrated Approach to Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Service-Learning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Service-Learning as Values Education in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

While values education has become quite ubiquitous within today’s school systems across the globe, there is no consensus among educators as to which values are most essential for securing students’ character development and overall personal success. Traditionally, values education efforts have sought to advance the prosocial development of young people – broadly defined to include sociomoral cognition, personal morality, prosocial behaviors and attitudes, communicative competency, character knowledge, positive relationships, and active citizenship. In recent years, the concept of values development has expanded to incorporate aspects of social-emotional character (e.g., self-concept, coping, problem solving), risk behaviors (e.g., protective skills, violence, and aggression), A. Furco (*) Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_23

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and school-based outcomes (e.g., school behavior, attitudes towards teachers, academic skills, school attachment). The narrative has expanded to include values education as a strategy for improving students’ academic performance and success, and this chapter speaks into that space, especially in relation to service- learning. Keywords

Values education · Service-learning · Social-moral cognition · Active citizenship · Academic performance

Introduction Traditionally, values education efforts have sought to advance the prosocial development of young people – broadly defined to include socio-moral cognition, personal morality, prosocial behaviors and attitudes, communicative competency, character knowledge, positive relationships, and active citizenship (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005). In recent years, the concept of values development has expanded to incorporate aspects of social-emotional character (e.g., self-concept, coping, problem solving), risk behaviors (e.g., protective skills, violence, and aggression), and school-based outcomes (e.g., school behavior, attitudes towards teachers, academic skills, school attachment) (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005; Handsman, 2021). In her analysis of 600 papers and articles focused on character education in the United States, Handsman (2021) identified a recent shift in the narrative of values education. She points out that earlier narratives focused primarily on teaching young people “to be good moral people”, but that over the last 20 years, the narrative has expanded to include values education as a strategy for improving students’ academic performance and success (p. 271). Researchers and practitioners have noted similar trends in other parts of the globe (Brown et al., 2021). This shift toward a more academically-integrated approach to values education has raised new questions regarding the best practices for delivering such programs. It is also changing the content of values education programs, how values education is delivered, and the intended purposes and outcomes of such programs. In particular, the curricular content of values education programs includes a broader array of moral development theories, and the educational activities are becoming less teacher-led and more student-centered. The programs are also incorporating more authentic learning experiences in which students are not only learning about values, but they are also practicing and living them by applying their values learning to real-life situations. One of the more popular approaches that teachers are using within this current paradigm of values education is the practice of service-learning. As is discussed in this chapter, service-learning can enhance students’ achievement of values education curricular goals as well as provide a pedagogical means to address some of the persistent criticisms that values education programs have endured over the years,

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such as weak connections of character-focused curricula to the core academic program and low student engagement in values-based programs.

A Need for Reform For some time now, educational researchers have noted that most of the traditional approaches to values education found in primary and secondary education systems have had only modest success in achieving the intended goal of enhancing participating students’ character and values development (Diggs & Akos, 2016; Jeynes, 2019; Lovat et al., 2010b). Reviews of research studies on the topic reveal generally mixed results regarding the impact of values education programs on primary and secondary school students. While some studies have shown positive impacts in advancing students’ knowledge of values, ethical attitudes, prosocial behaviors, and overall character development, other studies have found that the effects on students’ character and moral are not robust (i.e., effect sizes are modest) and do not last, especially when the values education programs are not well-implemented (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007; Brown et al., 2022; Diggs & Akos, 2016). To some degree, the current shift toward a more academically-integrated, student-centered, authentic learning approach to values education is to an attempt to enhance the outcomes of these programs. In addition, there remains much criticism of the overall quality of the research itself, raising questions about the validity of claims made regarding the various positive effects of values education programs. For example, in their review of 109 studies that included investigations of 54 different values education programs, Berkowitz and Bier (2005) found that only 69 of the studies (representing 33 programs) were scientifically acceptable. They also discovered that many of the studies “did not sufficiently elaborate on the content and pedagogical strategies of the program methods”, making it difficult to ascertain which aspects and practices of values education programs (e.g., the content, educational activities, teacher delivery, etc.) contributed to students’ value development (p. 11). Researchers have offered several reasons for the lack of positive impacts expected from values education programs and the challenge of securing high-quality research. Burton et al. (2011) note that given the wide variability in the content and practices contained across values education programs and curricula, it is difficult to develop standardized measures, compare findings across program, and identify which aspects of the delivery of values education contribute to positive student outcomes. Berkowitz et al. (2017) point out that there are more than 40 practices in values education programs that research studies have identified contribute to positive student outcomes, yet few studies have been able to investigate which combination of practices are likely to have the greatest impacts. Jeynes (2019) suggests that most studies are highly contextualized given that they are based on localized samples; therefore, their generalizability to the broader field is limited. Regardless of the reasons, there remains a need for more and better research that can further unpack the

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complex relationship between particular practices of values education and resulting student outcomes. One issue that researchers generally agree on regarding practices within values education curriculum is the importance of making values more explicit (Arweck & Nesbitt, 2004; Lovat et al., 2010b). Lovat (2019) characterizes the nature of values education as a two-sided coin composed of an “implicit side” (the safe, values-filled learning environment) and an “explicit side” (values-focused pedagogy) (p. 11). Making values education more explicit requires incorporating instructional practices that engage students in authentic situations in which they encounter, confront, and work through various moral dilemmas and challenges (Berkowitz, 2011; Burton et al., 2011). To make values education explicit, Berkowitz (2011), Lovat (2019), and others recommend that programs should include pedagogies of engagement, such as service-learning, in which students are given opportunities to apply and practice values. In addition, there is general agreement among researchers that values education programs are most effective when they use the core academic curriculum to deliver the program, build practice on a broader set of theoretical framings, and apply an asset-based (rather than deficit-based) approach (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007; Komalasari & Saripudin, 2018; Lovat et al., 2010b; Zajda, 2018). As values education gains greater centrality within primary and secondary school systems, some of the traditional curricular emphases and approaches to the delivery of values education are giving way to including these components to provide a more integrative and comprehensive approach to teaching values.

Pedagogies of Engagement A longstanding criticism of traditional approaches to values education has been that the curricula are based on teaching students about values rather than teaching students to enact values (Komalasari & Saripudin, 2018; Lovat & Toomey, 2007). In general, traditional values education curricula have been built on teacher-led, didactic approaches in which students read about, discuss, and reflect on various values. As Komalasari and Saripudin (2018) state, values-focused curricula tend to “only teach students about the concepts and principles of the subject, but concern less on educating the students to behave and conduct oneself according to the concepts and principles of the subject in everyday life” (p. 397). When students are not given opportunity to enact values and apply them in real-life situations, the values education curriculum tends to lack depth, robustness, and effectiveness (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007). In addition, traditionalvalues education typically do not offer students opportunities to work through the inherent complexities associated with making value-based decisions. For example, many values education curricula often highlight the importance being honest and respectful. However, to enact such traits, one must understand that there are different levels and nuances associated with them. One must know when and how to apply each value appropriately, such as the importance of balancing being honest about one’s views about others, with being

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respectful of others’ feelings and perspectives. Giving students opportunities to situate themselves in complex scenarios in which they must practice values in different situations is seen as critical to effectively advancing students’ character development (Berkowitz, 2011; Burton et al., 2011). In response, educators are finding ways to incorporate into the curriculum activities that engage students in exercising their knowledge and understanding of various values by having students work through a set of hypothetical moral dilemmas or real-life moral challenges occurring at their school or in the community. As is demonstrated in the example that is presented later in this chapter, these activities provide students opportunities to demonstrate acts of responsibility, compassion, cooperation, empathy, and respect, among other values.

Subject-Matter Values Education The proliferation of primary and secondary school values education curricula during the last three decades has sought to address concerns over a decline in the overall moral fabric of society (Jerome & Kisby, 2019). In turn, educational policy makers have encouraged and, in some countries, required educational systems to incorporate a values education agenda. These agendas have sought to increase students’ attention on the importance of having “good” character (Winton, 2008). From these initiatives, a variety of values education curricula have emerged that provide guidance to educators who may not have had much experience in the direct teaching of values as a subject matter within their classrooms. These emerging curricula provide a framework for cultivating in students a set of shared universal, living values (e.g., respect, honesty, cooperation, responsibility, etc.) that should be instilled in all persons, regardless of social or cultural background (Komalasari & Saripudin, 2018). In other cases within specific cultural settings, values education curricula are customized or adapted to reflect or emphasize particular cultural values that might not be included or sufficiently emphasized in generic, universally applicable packaged curricula (Cheung & Lee, 2010). For the most part, values education curricula have lacked a strong integration with students’ core academic curriculum. There has been a longstanding belief within educational communities that the content and teaching of academic subjects such as science, mathematics, and language-arts should maintain value neutrality (Ellenwood, 2007; Lovat & Toomey, 2007). However, it has been widely argued that academic subjects are far from being value-neutral as most subjects contain a hidden curriculum designed to advance the norms within the dominant culture(s) while ignoring alternative ontologies and epistemologies. Lovat (2010) reminds us that “there is a values component in all learning, because all knowing cannot be values-neutral, and therefore, any learning entails an encounter with values related to a knowledge domain” (p. 494). For example, history classes may revere the conquests of particular groups while ignoring the suffering that those conquests caused for other groups. Within the language arts curricula, students are made to read stories that may cast certain cultures and groups

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in a particular light that may perpetuate stereotypes. Yet, despite the implicit presence of values within academic curricula, explicit attention to values education has been generally viewed as a non-academic, co-curricular activity conducted as a supplement to the teaching of core academic subjects (Lovat, 2010). The current movement toward a more academically integrated approach is helping to anchor values education more fully into the mainstream of school’s educational agenda. This is an important step for achieving the intended student outcomes of values education. As Lovat and Dally (2018) purport, to realize its full potential and effect, “values education must be seen as core business” (p. 13). A consequence of remaining peripheral to the core academic curriculum is that values education has held marginal status among educational priorities. This status has also limited teachers’ investment and students’ engagement in values education curricula (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007). When teachers do not view values education as a primary focus of their work, they are less likely to give it the same attention they give to other subjects (Mohamad et al., 2019). As the importance of having a strong values education for advancing students’ prosocial development and education success has become more evident in recent years, more attention is turning to finding ways to integrate values education more fully into core academic curricula. Increasingly, today’s value education approaches focus on exploring ways to use the core academic curriculum as a medium through which values can be taught. Specifically, these more academically integrated values education curricula provide teachers with instructional activities designed to extract values-focused lessons from academic subjects such as science, history, and language arts. For example, in a kindergartner through six grade character development program (Project H3: Heart, Head, Hands) offered in the United States, values education activities are aligned with the state-mandated Language Arts curriculum. As part of the Language Arts curriculum, students read various stories, and from those stories, the teachers extract value lessons and engage students in activities that provide opportunities to explore various values in the context of the stories. These extractions include values-focused reflection activities in which students respond to questions regarding how various characters in the stories behaved or acted. For example, students are asked to provide advice to the characters in regard to the decisions the characters made or should have considered. In other cases, students are asked to draw parallels to their own life experiences and consider how they might have acted or behaved in a similar situation. While this trend toward using the core academic curriculum as a medium to teach values is elevating the centrality of values education within the teaching of academic subjects, Jerome and Kisby (2019) warn us that if educators are not careful, they could unintentionally swing the pendulum back toward emphasizing the more implicit, cognitive, and text-based approaches to values education instruction. When using the core curriculum to teach values, attention should be given to balancing activities that advance the academic learning objectives with activities that promote values-focused lessons (e.g., activities that promote students’ socialemotional development and character skills via their engagement with authentic moral dilemmas).

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Broader Theoretical Framings One of the criticisms regarding traditional approaches to values education is that the majority of existing programs rely on packaged curricula built on a narrow band of moral and character development theories (Arthur, 2014; Winton, 2008). To address the complex interplay of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions that comprise moral and character development, today’s values education programs are incorporating practices that draw from a broader range of moral development theories (Nucci et al., 2014). Such approaches are building stronger connections across a series of key theoretical frames that help explain the nature of young people’s moral growth and development. These frames can be categorized into five areas: reasoning (moral development as a cognitive function), emotions (how young people use and relate to their feelings and emotions), relational (the influence of relationships in young people’s moral decisions and behaviors), internalization (taking in, duplicating, and acting on society’s moral rules), and community culture (navigating and interpreting moral rules and enacting particular behaviors depending on setting) (Berkowitz & Bier, 2017; Burton et al., 2011; Lapsley & Carlo, 2014). The reasoning frame draws on the work of Piaget (1948) and has been examined through the years by theorists including Smetana (1981), Turiel (1983), Kohlberg (1984), Killen and Hart (1995), Nucci (2001), and others. The reasoning frame situates moral development primarily as a developmental, cognitive function whereby children must be taught a set of values in order to develop a moral compass that will allow them to navigate moral dilemmas successfully. While there are substantive differences in perspectives of the theorists in this camp, they believe that in order to make wise moral decisions, children first must be explicitly taught a set of values along with a set of cognitive processes that facilitate their ability to distinguish among different moral actions and types of thinking, such as concern, convention, personal discretion, and prudence (Burton et al., 2011). The majority of extant values education programs have been built on the theories situated within the reasoning frame. Other theorists, such as Eisenberg-Berg (1979), Arsenio (1988), Zahn-Waxler et al. (1992), and Hoffman (1984, 2000), promote an emotions frame for understanding young people’s character development, suggesting that children’s emotions are critical to their development as moral beings. Those who subscribe to the emotions perspective believe that individuals’ moral behaviors and actions, while influenced by external societal norms, are mediated by one’s emotions and feelings. An individual’s emotional state at a particular time has a bearing on how one behaves when confronted with a moral challenge. While much work in the emotions frame has focused on the role of particular emotions during situations, Burton et al. (2011) note, “there is growing attention to how moral development encompasses a broad range of emotions that are considered to influence each other” (p. 14). In contrast, the relational perspective suggests that children’s moral development is cultivated and mediated through their interactions and relationships with specific individuals and groups (e.g., parents, friends, siblings, etc.). Drawing on Noddings’s (Noddings, 2005) philosophy of caring, the relational frame centers on the

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importance of interactions and how the nature of children’s interactions with others influences their decisions and behaviors. For example, a child may break a rule or act in unprincipled manner in order to preserve or protect a cherished friendship. For this child, the value of the relationship with a friend supersedes the value placed on established rules or other expected norms of practice. The internalization perspective (also referred to as the competence or intrinsic motivation perspective) is based on the theory that children must develop a sense of moral competence – a sense of moral agency – before they feel efficacious and able to internalize and replicate the moral norms of their society. Based on the work of Freud (1930), Thompson (1989), Bandura (1977, 1991, 1995), and Grusec and Kuczynski (1997), and others, the internalization perspective suggests that children must first learn how to make positive, moral decisions before they can internalize the moral values and belief systems of the society and enact positive moral actions and behaviors (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005; Burton et al., 2011). Lastly, the community frame is situated within a sociological perspective whereby children are members and participants in communities that influence what decisions are available for children to make and what decisions they ultimately make. Drawing from the work of Shweder et al. (1987), Etzioni (1988), Dunn et al. (1995), Bellah et al. (1996), and others, the community-oriented frame views individual communities as having their own value system and their own determinations of which values are acceptable and unacceptable. Within the community frame, the burden of moral development rests not with the individual child but rather with the broader society. In this regard, the classroom, the school, the home, and other key environments become the primary spaces in which children’s moral development is shaped. Individually and collectively, these five theories of moral development have several implications for values education curricula. Firstly, they reveal that an individual’s moral development advances through the interplay and synergy of a series of internal and external factors. Therefore, to be effective, values education curricula need to incorporate a broad range of theoretical perspectives that expose students to a diverse set of values. Secondly, these theories point to the fact that moral development is not just about learning values; individuals must also feel values, internalize them, and enact them. As Burton et al. (2011) suggest, values education curricula are most effective when they incorporate and connect issues of the head (reasoning), the heart (emotions and relational), and the hands (internalization and community culture). Many traditional, prescribed, and packaged values education curricula fall short in achieving high impacts for students perhaps because they tend to focus primarily on engaging students in cognitive-based (head) activities, such as asking students to learn the definitions of particular value traits or to read and discuss stories that provide examples of the traits. As Winton (2008) argues, cognitive-development approaches to values education are criticized for promoting moral relativism that does not encourage students to reflect on critical issues of contemporary society, such as social justice and rights, in turn limiting students’ capacity to build moral sensitivity and competence. In addition, traditional, packaged values education

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curricula usually target only a handful of value traits that may not always align with the particular norms and needs of participating schools, communities, teachers, and students (Abdullah et al., 2019; Winton, 2008). For example, in describing the character-building curriculum in Indonesia, Abdullah et al. (2019) note that the content of the curriculum emphasizes norms and values that address national and state cultural priorities that “are subsequently not internalized by students” (p. 146). They describe how the curriculum is built on a cognitive-based approach that only reinforces students’ reflections on the meanings of specific values, but not students’ internalization or enactment of them.

Asset-Based Approaches Values education programs and curricula are also shifting away from deficit-based approaches that are built on the assumption that students inherently lack good character. Traditional values education programs are generally constructed on the assumption that young people lack the wherewithal to make wise moral decisions, and therefore, they need values education to help build their moral efficacy and development (Komalasari & Saripudin, 2018; Lovat et al., 2010a; Zajda, 2018). Such programs have tended to focus on measuring student success by how well students follow a set of established rules regarding school and broader social behavior. Students’ character is then judged on how well they conform to the established norms. This traditional approach to values education promotes the idea that individuals who do not succeed in following rules and meeting expectations fail because they lack good character (Winton, 2008). As student bodies are becoming more culturally diverse, there is a movement within educational systems to incorporate more culturally responsive content that acknowledges that students’ moral behaviors, attitudes, and dispositions are guided by different value systems. These culturally responsive programs highlight the strengths that different students bring. They also provide opportunities for students to build a greater understanding of how to navigate the compatibilities and incompatibilities of their own values system with others’ values systems. To accomplish this, values education requires the incorporation of positive youth development theories. Theories of positive youth development posit that all young people have strengths which, when tapped and leveraged, enhance their chances of overall success in adolescence and adulthood (Lerner et al., 2011). Positive youth development theories speak to the importance and power of intrinsic motivation, aspirations, and community in elevating young people’s sense of agency and empowerment (Lerner et al., 2011; Shek et al., 2019). This movement toward greater student empowerment and self-efficacy to exercise personal talents, creativity, and strengths is shifting the instructional approaches of values education to include more student-centered pedagogies. For example, as was mentioned previously, students are being presented with a suite of moral dilemmas and are empowered to consider how they would handle and approach the dilemmas in their real lives. Students are not judged as to whether their

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approaches or decisions in addressing the dilemmas are right or wrong, but rather they are asked to explain why they made the decisions they did and what consequences those decisions might have in comparison to having made a different decision. This approach to values education not only draws on students’ strengths and cultivates within students a sense of agency, self-efficacy, and moral discernment, but it also builds better connections between the values education curriculum to students’ personal lives and experiences (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005; Burton et al., 2011).

Toward a Comprehensive and Integrated Approach to Values Education The recent increased attention to values education programing in primary and secondary schools has spawned various efforts to improve students’ character development, taking into account the aforementioned emerging practices. When compared to traditional approaches to values education, today’s values education efforts are drawing from and incorporating a broader array of moral and ethical development theories designed to engage students not just cognitively, but emotionally and experientially as well (Handsman, 2021; Lovat, 2019). In addition, these programs are increasingly delivered through academic subjects and require students to demonstrate their values development as students are asked to reflect on and work through various authentic, challenging moral dilemmas. This more student-centered approach to values education provides opportunities for students to cultivate and flex their character muscles rather than focusing on improving weaknesses in their moral character. One of the instructional approaches that is being adopted in school systems to strengthen the delivery of values education is service-learning. As Lovat (2019) points out, service-learning is embedded in many of the valuesfocused activities schools have introduced to develop students’ social responsibility, social justice, and environmental stewardship.

Why Service-Learning? Service-learning is an experiential learning pedagogy in which students consider and apply academic content to address authentic, complex societal challenges through community service activities. Over the last several decades, service-learning has gained popularity within primary, secondary, and higher education systems across the globe as a means to strengthen connections between students’ classroom experiences and their lives outside of school. In contrast to volunteer and community service experiences, service-learning is rooted within academic subjects and incorporates input and participation from community members. While engaged in service-learning, students work with community members to design, develop, and implement place-based solutions to real and current challenges in the community. In this regard, service-learning is an experiential, constructivist pedagogy that centers

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on tapping students’ assets (e.g., talents, creativity, skills) as they ideate, develop, and implement service activities that address challenging issues in the community. In addition to being a pedagogy of engagement, service-learning is delivered through the academic curriculum, provides opportunities to incorporate a broad range of values-focused theoretical frames, and is rooted in asset-based instruction (Furco, 2010). A requirement of service-learning is that there be in place a set of learning objectives that students are to achieve. Typically, these learning objectives center on academic subject matter areas (e.g., science, mathematics, social students, writing, language arts, etc.); however, the learning objectives may also center on developing critical thinking and/or technical skills development (e.g., creating digital stories, learning interviewing techniques, operating particular equipment, etc.). Through service-learning, students apply knowledge and skills learned from their curriculum to develop strategies and implement actions that address a societal challenge in the community. Service-learning can be integrated with any academic subject, and the level of community-engaged learning activity can be adapted to meet the developmental skill and knowledge levels of participating students. Given that most community challenges (e.g., homelessness, poverty, food insecurity, climate change, pollution, etc.) are inherently value-laden and interdisciplinary, service-learning provides teachers with opportunities to engage students in valuesbased learning activities through various subject areas of the core academic curriculum. The community-based nature of service-learning provides a means for students to confront and consider various authentic moral dilemmas as students design, develop, and implement service activities to address societal challenges. In essence, servicelearning places students in communities in which they confront a real-life societal challenge, analyze and reflect on the situation, and then identify and implement actions to address the challenge. Through this process, students not only experience value systems that are different from their own, but they must tap their own value systems as they consider the various actions they will take (and not take) to address the societal challenge. In turn, service-learning can help students hone their individual values systems and recalibrate their moral compass (Cooks et al., 2004). As Lovat (2019) describes, service-learning not only helps students situate their sense of values in the context of the larger (real) world, but it guides students in making connections between the values they are studying in class and the application of those values in their everyday lives. In this regard, service-learning offers a means to expand the narrow-banded perspectives of the extant, traditional values education curriculum by incorporating into the curriculum values education lessons that draw on the broad range of moral development theories essential for building a comprehensive approach to values education (see Table 23.1). Through service-learning, students apply their knowledge, skills, talents, and creativity to develop strategies and solutions on how to best apply the content of their academic curriculum to address the societal challenges they have identified. This student-centered, asset-based approach to addressing real-life societal issues provides opportunities for students to reflect on and enact a set of values that

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Table 23.1 Moral development theories and service-learning

Theory Reasoning

Wholistic values development Aspects of moral development Head Children need guidance in developing their moral compass, therefore they must be taught values and how to distinguish among different kinds of values

Emotions

Heart

Relationships

Heart

Internalization Hands

Community culture

Hands

Characteristics of servicelearning Service-learning places students in diverse communities and situations that typically require students to learn and exercise various values (e.g., empathy, respect, compassion, cooperation, responsibility, etc.) Children’s moral actions and Service-learning places students behaviors are mediated by their in situations in which they must emotions confront their emotions as they see first-hand the realities of societal challenges; the value judgements students place on the situation and the actions they ultimately take to address the issue are often mediated by their emotions Peer and adult relationships In service-learning experiences, influence young people’s moral students build relationships with decisions and behaviors members of the community and with each other to understand and address the societal issue; the nature of these relationships influence value judgements students place on the issue and the actions they ultimately take to address it Children take in, duplicate, and Service-learning places students enact established moral rules in diverse community settings; to work effectively and succeed in these communities, students must learn and internalize particular cultural values and norms of practice, and exercise them appropriately during their service-learning experiences Community value systems By engaging students in diverse frame children’s moral community settings, servicedevelopment learning helps students learn how to navigate different value systems in order that they can work effectively within the prevailing community norms and expectations

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different social and cultural situations require. While the teacher provides scaffolding to guide students’ thinking and actions, the solutions and strategies that are implemented to address the societal issues are initiated, created, designed, developed, and implemented by the students. As students engage with the community and the challenge(s) within it, they confront various moral issues that become part and parcel of the overall service-learning experience. Fox et al. (2012) describe it as follows: “The concept of integrating service learning activities within an academic class promoted making a difference in the lives of young people. . . . The service learning assignment provided a scaffold for students to make meaning between what they chose and their interests” (p. 10). As a constructivist, authentic learning pedagogy that promotes quality teaching, service-learning can serve as an effective strategy to deliver values through a more constructivist, student-centered, assetbased approach (Lovat, 2019). In sum, service-learning is increasingly used to advance traditional approaches to values education. It provides a whole-child approach to values education, as servicelearning experiences typically require students to exercise their cognitive abilities (head), socio-emotional intelligence (heart), individual talents and skills (hands) to address the societal issues they encounter. It also engages students in confronting various societal issues that require them to consider and exercise their values systems and calibrate their moral compass. While societal issues are implicitly values-laden, service-learning provides the praxis through which students are able to take implicit values and then engage with the values in an explicit manner (Lovat, 2019). While the implicit side provides a safe space for students to think outside the box, ideate, and be imaginative, Lovat (2019) notes that “it is the explicit that really nails the learning experience”. The service-learning scenario in the next section is presented as an example of the kind of explicit values education that can occur through a service-learning experience.

Service-Learning as Values Education in Practice Several years ago, students in a fifth-grade class in the state of Colorado were examining the issue of slavery in the United States. The teacher and students read a news story about an issue in Sudan in which warlords extort money from citizens by kidnapping children and demanding a ransom for the children’s release. The news story detailed how the kidnapped children were held under abusive conditions and were required to perform slave labor. Most parents of the children did not have the money to pay the ransom. Concerned about the welfare of the kidnapped children, the students in this fifth-grade class began to ask many questions about what it would take to get the children out of the enslaved conditions and returned home to their respective parents. The students learned that if the ransom was paid, the kidnapped children could be released and be able to return home. Through their research, the students learned that the ransom cost for one child was approximately $50 USD.

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The students decided to engage in a service-learning project focused on raising money to pay some of the ransom to free some of the kidnapped children. The students built a publicity campaign, sold lemonade and cookies, and worked to secure donations. Initially the students raised about $1000 USD and decided to continue their fundraising campaign. Eventually, through their persistent efforts, the students raised more than $50,000 USD, which they gave to an international non-profit human rights organization to apply toward the enslaved children’s freedom. The organization used the funds to set free 1000 children from chattel slavery, returning the children to their families. Knowing that there were more children who remained enslaved in Sudan, the fifth-graders then launched a letter-writing campaign to celebrities and the U.S. president. These letters caught the attention of the U.S. congress, which invited the teacher, members of the class, and a few of the freed individuals to present their case at a congressional hearing in Washington D.C. During their presentation to members of the U.S. congress, the teacher spoke about what her ten-year old students were able to accomplish. Her testimony, along with presentations from her students and some of the freed individuals, included a demand that the U.S. government do something about the serious situation in Sudan. Following their appearance in Washington, D.C., the U.S. congress worked to develop strategies to mediate the enslavement of children, and put pressure on the Sudanese government to address the issue. In this example, we find a situation that was not initially established or intended to serve as a values education program. However, through the students’ interest and initiative, and the teacher’s scaffolding and guidance, an opportunity for students to learn about slavery first-hand emerged. By developing the experience around the students’ interests, service-learning supported students’ intrinsic motivation, which is a critical practice for securing high-quality values education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007; Lickona et al., 2002). The service-learning effort also provided the means for students to engage with the issue through an academic lens while immersing themselves in a values-rich learning experience through which students applied their heads, hearts, and hands to address a societal challenge. The teacher first provided students a safe space for them to ideate, create, and develop strategies and solutions to address this values-laden societal challenge (implicit values education), and then provided them with the opportunity to apply their knowledge, energy, creativity, and other assets to enact actions that produced real change (explicit values education). Through this service-learning experience, the students encountered a series of moral challenges and had to learn how to best apply various values to achieve their goals. In regard to moral dilemmas, the students had to consider whether paying the ransom might encourage the warlords to kidnap more children; they decided to not just pay the ransom, but then to put pressure on the U.S. congress to take action to address the problem. The students had to make a decision about when to stop raising money and pay the ransom. The students had to be responsible stewards of the funds and select and entrust an agency to deliver the funds appropriately for the ransom. What if their ransom would be rejected by the warlords? And what about the other

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thousands of children who are enslaved in the Sudan and in other parts of the world? These types of moral dilemmas provided opportunities for the students to reflect on, test, and practice their moral values and calibrate their moral compass. The experience helped reveal to students that there may not be easy answers to challenging societal issues. From their research, Lovat and Dally (2018) found that when students are confronted with these kinds of moral challenges that create internal struggles, it leads students to reflect on their value systems and self-regulate their behavior and actions. Through the experience, the students were able to learn and practice various value traits, such as responsibility, cooperation, compassion, empathy, integrity, equality, justice, and respect. They also gained academic knowledge, such as learning about the culture in Sudan (geography and social studies), the workings of government and politics (social studies), the atrocities of slavery (social studies), citizenship and service (social studies), fundraising and accounting skills (mathematics, marketing, communications), and letter writing and public speaking (language arts and communication). The service-learning experience provided a means to engage students’ heads, hearts, and hands in addressing a challenging and controversial issue. Present in this experience is an example of a comprehensive, integrative approach to values education, encompassing all of the aforementioned moral development theories (i.e., reasoning, emotions, relational, internalization, and community culture). In essence, the service-learning experience transformed the lesson into a de facto values education program, allowing for values development of students through the academic curriculum. As this example demonstrates, service-learning activities can serve as an effective strategy for moving values education from the margins to the mainstream of the core academic curriculum. In describing the potential benefits of service-learning as a means to deliver values education, Lovat (2019) states: 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. (p. 50)

Student Impacts Findings from research studies of service-learning reveal generally positive outcomes for students who engage in high-quality service-learning activities. The outcomes are situated across a broad range of domains that include positive impacts on students’ academic achievement, personal development (e.g., self-esteem, sense of selfefficacy, and agency), social and prosocial development (e.g., relationships with peers, teachers, and others), career development (e.g., career-related skills), civic development (e.g., further engagement in community service), and character and moral development (e.g., sense of responsibility, integrity, ethical behaviors, etc.) (Burton et al., 2011; Celio et al., 2011; Furco, 2002; Kahne & Sporte, 2008; Yorio & Ye, 2012). While

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there are debates in the field regarding the particular practices that define high-quality service-learning, there is general agreement that, at a minimum, high-quality academically based service-learning experiences contain meaningful service experiences, strong link between service activities and curricular learning objectives, student voice, sufficient intensity and duration, and multiple challenging reflection activities (National Youth Leadership Council, 2008). The research on service-learning reveals various positive impacts on students’ moral development. Findings from several studies reveal that participating in service-learning can foster students’ development of character traits (e.g., compassion, cooperation, empathy, honesty, integrity, responsible, etc.) and strengthen students’ ethical judgement (e.g., ability to effectively navigate difficult ethical challenges) and moral sensitivity (Bernacki & Jaeger, 2008; Furco et al., 2010; Marichal, 2010; Scott, 2012). Other research findings suggest that when servicelearning is done well, it can enhance students’ development of empathy and care for others, ethic of service, social responsibility, intercultural understanding, and prosocial behaviors in school and in the community (Billig et al., 2008; Burton et al., 2011; Celio et al., 2011; Furco, 2002; Furco et al., 2010; Metz & Youniss, 2003; Pisano & Rust, 2007; Stewart, 2007; Yorio & Ye, 2012). As was exemplified in the aforementioned fifth-grade service-learning experience in Colorado, servicelearning can promote students’ moral development even when it is not part of a formal values education program or curriculum. It is important to note that emerging research on children’s development of character and moral assets suggests that without periodic reinforcement, individuals may experience a diminution of their moral sensitivity and character assets over time. While some character traits remain steady over time, others may change or diminish as individuals mature (Damian et al., 2019). Research studies have found the presence of a maturational effect that occurs whereby young people demonstrate increasingly lower levels of moral judgement and character assets over time (Billig et al., 2008; Burton et al., 2011). In their three-year study of middle years and secondary school students (n ¼ 840), Billig et al. (2008) assessed pre-post changes in the students’ values development, comparing differences in the development of altruism, care, and respect (for self and others) in students engaged in a values education program that included service-learning with students engaged in a values education program that did not include service-learning. These researchers found that students who participated in the values education program that included servicelearning had significantly less diminution in their values attainment. Similarly in their study, Burton et al. (2011) examined one-year changes in 25 character traits among students (N ¼ 3975) in elementary grades three through six, with one group of students (n ¼ 1820) participating in a specialized values education program that included service-learning, and a group of comparable students (n ¼ 2155) who did not participate in values education programming. Based on students’ response to the character traits survey, each student achieved a pre-test “character asset score” and a post-test “character asset-score” ranging from 1 to 4 (based on 4-point, ordinal Likert scale), which represented the average of the

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student’s self-reported response across the 25 items of the character traits survey (Burton et al., 2011). These researchers found that for both group of students, there was a statistically significant drop in their character assets scores (post-test scores were lower than the pre-test scores) over the course of year as measured by the 25-item pre-post character traits survey. The highest pre-test character asset scores were found in students in grade 3, with students in each succeeding grade (e.g., grades 4, 5, and 6) having a lower pre-test character-asset score; that is, pre-test character asset scores decrease as grade level increases (Burton et al., 2011). The same result was observed among students’ post-test character asset scores. The researchers point out that this finding aligns with the findings from a similar study they had conducted previously, supporting the theory that young people’s character assets may diminish as they mature. Interestingly, the diminution in character assets was highest for the students who did not participate in values education programming; similar to Billig et al.’s (2008) study, students who participated in the servicelearning-based values education program retained more of their character traits at a statistically significant level over the course of the year (Burton et al., 2011). It is not clear why this maturational effect exists. Burton et al. (2011) suggest that it might be due to social desirability. They point to the possibility that younger children are more likely to want to please adults and, in turn, might select survey responses that they believe will please adults, whereas older children might be less influenced by social desirability and therefore exercise more discernment in providing responses to surveys (Burton et al., 2011). They state: . . .As students completed the post-survey nine or ten months later, their responses were based on more careful consideration of the nature and complexities of character traits, and thus might have scored themselves lower than they had on the presurvey. The maturational issue is an untested hypothesis that, given the fairly consistent findings from our two studies, perhaps warrants further investigation and consideration in future studies. (p. 57)

Kohlberg (1984) might describe the maturational effect as an indication of students progressing from the pre-conventional level of moral development (rules are imposed by authority figures and students’ self-interest is to obey and be rewarded) to the conventional level of moral development (students’ self-interest shifts to considering their relationships with others and following their rules to win their support). Other moral development theorists would most likely offer different perspectives to explain this phenomenon. The fact that in both Billig et al.’s (2008) and Burton et al.’s (2011) research the maturational effect was observed and that students who participated in values education programs that included servicelearning experiences were able to retain character assets and moral sensitivities over time suggests that making values education programming more multitheoretical, more student-centered, and more academically-integrated through the engagement of students in explicit authentic learning pedagogies, such as servicelearning, may not only help mitigate the anticipated diminution in young people’s character and moral assets, but it can help strengthen students’ overall moral development.

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Looking to the Future Service-learning continues to show promise as an effective instructional strategy for improving the ways in which values education is delivered in our educational systems. As an academically integrated pedagogy of engagement, service-learning provides teachers with a theoretically sound, student-centered, asset-based approach to teach values through the core curriculum, using real-life situations that students encounter to engage them with moral dilemmas and challenges. Given that servicelearning can be a part of any academic subject, teachers have much flexibility as to when and how to apply it as strategy for values education. Through service-learning, students are able to cultivate their moral development through an academically rich, comprehensive approach that engages their hearts, heads, and hands. To date, much of our understanding of how values education programs and service-learning experiences affect students’ moral development is based on studies that have investigated outcomes within a bound grade span (i.e., elementary, middle, or high school grade levels) and within a short period of time (e.g., within one year). Given the possibility that value traits and character assets diminish and change over time as individuals mature, the field would benefit from having more studies that provide a deeper understanding of the developmental aspects of moral growth and advancement. Future studies should examine how the pedagogies that are used today in values education, such as service-learning, should be calibrated and adjusted to align with students’ maturity and capacity for engaging in values-rich experiences. Additional studies are also needed to understand more fully what successful character development looks like among different types of students at different stages of their lives. To achieve this understanding, Walker (2020) recommends conducting research that focuses on exemplars – namely, studying individuals who have demonstrated high moral character – whereby their experiences are deconstructed and reconstructed “to discern developmental trajectories and causal factors” to their exemplary moral development (p. 385). Within this framework, studies that consider and take into account culture and gender differences, the role of parents, school climate, and other factors known to influence young people’s moral development can provide nuanced data and findings that can explain potential differences in developmental trajectories among different individuals. This can bring greater understanding to the different ways and the different places in the curriculum that values-focused lessons can be extracted and used to optimize the character development of students who are living in an increasingly diverse and multicultural global society. Such understanding can help teachers use pedagogies such as service-learning more effectively to advance students’ moral development. Berkowitz and Bier (2007) assert that values education programs are most effective in advancing students’ character development when the values-focused instruction is removed from the hidden curriculum and is delivered through a structured values education curriculum or agenda. However, as the fifth-grade example presented in this paper reveals, positive character and moral development can occur through experiences, such as service-learning, that are not delivered through a formal values education program. In the Colorado example, values

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education grew out of students’ interest in a societal issue they encountered. The resulting service-learning experience was not driven by an established values education agenda but rather provided an opportunity to build in values teaching within the core academic curriculum. To date, there is scant published research that has examined the overall effectiveness of values-focused educational activities that emerge more organically – that is, values education opportunities that are catalyzed by an occurrence or spontaneous idea that sparks and results in efforts that make values education more explicit (e.g., via service-learning). It would be useful to have more research studies that provide best practices that can guide teachers on how to best draw out values-focused lessons from those spontaneous activities and how to best use service-learning in those situations to optimize students’ moral development. Lastly, with the rise of globalization, there is an increased focus on developing students’ skills to navigate diverse cultures and settings. This raises questions about the particular values that should be emphasized when students engage in any kind of values-focused activities. As was demonstrated by the students in Colorado, servicelearning can serve as a means for students to experience communities, cultures, and value systems that are different from their own. Expanding students’ boundaries through such experiences can help students understand that there are values that are unique to their culture and there are universal values that transcend cultures and societies. In the end, it is the ability for individuals to make good moral decisions and successfully work through the moral challenges they confront in their lives that is at stake. Traditional values education programs in schools have generally fallen short in preparing students for these important life tasks. Service-learning as values education offers one way to improve schools’ capacity to prepare students for their future as morally grounded citizens within their communities and the larger society.

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Vasily Sukhomlinsky’s Educational and Social Experience Olga Sukhomlynska and Alan Cockerill

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sukhomlynsky’s System of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Educational Approaches Adopted Throughout the School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Preschool Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Primary School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Middle School (Grades Five to Eight) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Senior Classes (Grades Nine and Ten) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participants in the Education Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Significance of Sukhomlynsky’s Approach to Moral Education in the Soviet Context . . . Sukhomlynsky’s Relevance Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Since antiquity, human morality and moral education have been of great interest not only to teachers and educators, but also to philosophers and thinkers. The moral values of society and of its various social groupings, especially of children, have accompanied humanity throughout the centuries and permeated all human thought and actions. Morality, as a distinguishing feature of the human race, and consequently moral education, has been a constant factor, though the content of moral values and moral education has varied, depending on the epoch and the issues people faced at the time, which gave rise to the values orientation and types of behavior that were encouraged or censured in children and young people. O. Sukhomlynska (*) Ukrainian Academy of Educational Sciences, Kyiv, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected] A. Cockerill Monash University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_24

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Knowledge of these processes may be found in sources devoted to moral education, its theory, and practice. They reveal not only the content and purpose of moral education, but also the reasons behind fundamental values during various historical periods. The twentieth century is significant, as the approaches to moral education formulated then still influence its theory and practice today. The approach of the Ukrainian educator Vasyl Sukhomlynsky is of particular interest, because of the unique and rather unorthodox approach he took to posing and solving issues of moral education, and because many of his methods have yet to be widely explored and applied. In 2018 the hundredth anniversary of Sukhomlynsky’s birth was noted by UNESCO, an international recognition of his contribution to the treasures of world educational thought and practice. In spite of this fact, Sukhomlynsky remains relatively unknown in the Englishspeaking world, and we hope that this chapter will go some way toward filling a gap in knowledge. Keywords

Moral education · Vasyl Sukhomlynsky · Ukraine · Our School in Pavlysh

Introduction Vasyl Oleksandrovych Sukhomlynsky (1918–1970) devoted his whole life to the teaching profession, beginning his career in village schools at the tender age of seventeen. He took part in battles during the Second World War, in one of which he was severely wounded. He subsequently worked for twenty-two years as the principal of the school in the rural settlement of Pavlysh in central Ukraine, which had a population of about 6000. In Soviet times there was a small collective farm in Pavlysh, and its proximity to regional cities (Kremenchuk, Svitlovodsk) where many of the school’s parents worked determined the number and social composition of the students. (Most were the children of agricultural and industrial workers, with a small percentage coming from the families of the rural intelligentsia.) The school in Pavlysh is not just a building, it is a campus occupying an area of almost five hectares. As Sukhomlinsky wrote in 1958: Apart from seventeen [later this number increased to twenty-four] classrooms, there are special workshops for metalwork, woodwork, mechanics, and electrical engineering, biology and physics laboratories, and a library. We have experimental plots, an orchard, a nursery for raising fruit trees and ornamentals, a berry plantation, a zoological section, a greenhouse, and a workroom for experimental work in botany. (Sukhomlynsky, 1958, 13)

Thanks to the efforts of children, teachers, and parents, the school campus improved with each passing year, and took on ever greater educational significance. It was at this school that Sukhomlynsky realized his potential as a teacher, a publicist, a children’s writer, and a decorated educator. On the one hand he

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participated actively in scholarly life, as a candidate of educational sciences, a member of the USSR Academy of Educational Sciences, and a publisher of books and articles. On the other hand, he was a school principal, entered the classroom every day as a teacher of primary and secondary classes, and maintained contact with teachers throughout the vast Soviet Union and abroad. The record of his correspondence held in the Central State Archives of Ukraine includes over 2600 letters addressed to him: 950 from teachers, 456 from parents, and 339 from school and university students and young people who wrote to him about matters that were troubling them. Sukhomlynsky replied to all these letters (Central State Archives of the Higher Organs of Government of Ukraine, Collection 5097, Register 1, Document holders 1056–1099). Sukhomlynsky promulgated his ideas in numerous publications. By the beginning of the twenty-first century his books had appeared under sixty-five titles in print-runs totally over 15 million copies in fifty-nine languages. He wrote over 500 articles. The style of exposition in his works is of a literary and publicist nature, with a personal tone, not typical of educational works, which alienated educational officialdom, but attracted a huge number of readers. Sukhomlynsky was a child of his times: the sixties of the twentieth century, the time of the first Soviet “thaw” with its tentative democratization. Sukhomlynsky was one of the prominent activists thrust into the spotlight by Soviet civilization during those years. He was among the thinkers who posed vital questions thrown up by life. What does it mean to be human? What is human life for? What is the meaning of life? What is good and what is evil in this world? These questions are not limited by place or time and are posed by each new generation. As a teacher and school principal, Sukhomlynsky devoted a great deal of attention to these questions. He reflected on the nature of childhood, and on how to educate children so that they would understand what human life is for. He contemplated how to teach children moral concepts and ethical norms and guidelines.

Sukhomlynsky’s System of Education Dissatisfied with the state of educational science and practice during the 1950s, Sukhomlynsky began to seek his own ideas and educational approaches and methods. His position as a school principal gave him the opportunity to encompass the whole life of a general education school, from the early primary to the most senior classes, and all the components of the educational process, whose ultimate aim was the holistic and harmonious development of the whole person. In practice this meant integrating the intellectual, physical, moral, vocational, and aesthetic education of students. His position as principal also facilitated the creation of a closely knit group of teachers who shared his views and participated in their realization. We need to remember that Sukhomlynsky, like all representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia, worked in conditions of relative isolation from the rest of the world, due to the “iron curtain”, and did not have the opportunity to access

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information about what was happening internationally in schools and in education. The information they did receive was in the form of criticism of “bourgeois” schools and the “bourgeois” conceptions of education. Moved by a desire to change the existing order, Sukhomlynsky rejected the idea of a school aimed just at developing the intellect, a “study school”, in favor of the idea of a “work school”, where educationally oriented and methodologically based work and other diverse activities guided the development of students and their preparation for life. This orientation became an integral part of Sukhomlynsky’s educational ideas, based on the development of the physical, intellectual, and moral potential of every student without exception, through collective association based on ethical and aesthetic values, interests, and needs, directed toward creative activity that included both intellectual and physical work. In his works we find many statements, arguments, and descriptions expressing a holistic view of children, considering their intellectual abilities and their psychological and physical condition. Sukhomlynsky did not approach children simply as students, but related to them as natural, social individuals, worthy of respect and support. He saw children as students, sons and daughters, grandchildren, friends, classmates, workers, patriots, and citizens. In order to realize his educational ideas, Sukhomlynsky developed a methodology and technology to support the education process. A significant place was occupied by considerations of age. Some researchers recently noted: The age of a child is an important consideration for educational scholars to keep in mind when interpreting Sukhomlynsky. Time determines the social differentiation in the biological growth of a child, and the social roles that a child fulfils in process of socialization . . . The eminent educator drew attention to the particular stage of life called “childhood” and insisted on its special characteristics. (Seradz’ka-Bazyur & Seiko, 2017, 108)

Defining childhood as an essential concept in educational studies, Sukhomlynsky differentiates three stages within it – early childhood, adolescence, and youth – and shared his understanding of specific characteristics of each stage of development in a child’s personality, developing a corresponding educational methodology, defining educational approaches that are common to all ages, and those that are specific to a particular age. An analysis of Sukhomlynsky’s holistic approach to the education process reveals that he had an overriding interest in one particular component: moral education. He wrote: While concerned with the development of every facet, every aspect, every attribute of a human being, an educator never loses sight of the fact that the harmony of all human attributes is determined by something that is primary and fundamental. The living, human flesh and blood of a roundly developed personality embodies a harmonious plenitude of strengths, abilities, passions, and needs, among which the educator can discern facets such as moral, philosophical, civic, intellectual, creative, vocational, aesthetic, and physical attributes, all of which are capable of being refined. The primary, governing component in bringing these attributes into harmony is morality. (Sukhomlinsky, 1979a, 78)

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Sukhomlynsky’s main rationale for this position is that absolutely every child who receives an appropriate education can attain the highest level of morality, despite the obvious limitations and barriers that can stand in the way of intellectual and physical development. “Here no-one is barred from reaching the summit; here there is genuine equality without boundaries; here everyone can be great and unique” (Sukhomlinsky, 1979a, 80). Sukhomlynsky explains his concept of moral education and its practical implementation in his writings. In 1961 his book Dukhovnyi mir shkol’nika [The spiritual world of a school student] was published in Moscow. This was the first time that the concept of “spirituality” had been referred to in Soviet pedagogy, in the sense of developing, shaping, and satisfying the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic needs of a growing personality through self-motivated activity (Sukhomlinsky, 1961). In later years Sukhomlynsky wrote other works in which issues of moral education were treated with greater depth and breadth: Serdtse otdayu detyam [My heart I give to children] (1969a), Narodzhennya gromadyanina [The birth of a citizen] (1970a, 1980), and other works that were written during the 1960s but not published until after his death (Kak vopitat’ nastoyashchego cheloveka [How to educate a true human being] (1975); Khrestomatiya po etike [An ethics anthology] (1990)). If we review our current understanding of the moral sphere from an educational point of view, we will encounter many complex practical issues, since the moral sphere encompasses the cognitive (knowledge, convictions, values), the emotional (feelings, emotions, experiences, moral relationships), and the behavioral (habits, actions, and work). These issues include some of a pedagogical nature (considering children’s age and developmental needs, requirements of a teacher’s character, the curriculum, the organization of appropriate activities), and also no less important issues involving the environment and the economic, social, political, and ideological context. In the 1960s all these structural elements, dependent on complex social conditions, are taken into consideration in Sukhomlynsky’s conception of an enlightened and socially responsible moral education, that encompassed a holistic approach to the education process. It was an innovation in the field of education that Sukhomlynsky made the whole education process dependent on the purposeful development of a child’s emotional and evaluative domain by saturating the whole instructional and educational process with ethical components: “from the refinement of language to emotional refinement, from the refinement of the emotions to the refinement of moral feelings and moral relationships” (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 546–547). Current Russian researchers have written the following about Sukhomlynsky’s approach: The humanistic orientation of his work, in many ways ahead of its time, has led to continuing interest in the study of his theoretical legacy and practical experience by educators and researchers in our country and in many other countries of the world. The enduring relevance of his creative legacy derives from the fact that Sukhomlynsky was the first in the history of Soviet pedagogy to give his attention to the development of the emotional domain of the personality, including the key component of moral feelings, and to make this the leitmotif of

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his humanistic system of education. By doing this in the 1950s and 1960s, he anticipated the most significant developments in current pedagogy, with its emphasis on universal human values, the humanisation of education, an orientation towards a child’s motivation during the education process, and the emotional and evaluative aspects of that process. (Sakharov & Sakharov, 2010, 108)

As well as filling the whole education process – intellectual, aesthetic, physical, and vocational – with moral content, Sukhomlynsky began to develop the idea of educating morality on the basis of ethics as the primary, system-shaping factor of an educational philosophy. He created a course, which he referred to as “Educational ethics”, consisting of a handbook for both teachers and students entitled Kak vospitat’ nastoyashchego cheloveka: Etika kommunisticheskogo vospitaniya [How to educate a true human being: The ethics of communist education] (1975, 1989) and Khrestomatiya po etike [An ethics anthology] (1990). Both these books were not published in their complete form until after his death, but they were used extensively in educational work at his school. This course examines the concepts of good and evil, beauty, love and hate, mercy, duty, sympathy, and empathy. We have counted up to forty-five moral attributes of a personality described by Sukhomlynsky, both positive (virtues) and negative (vices). The handbook gives an exposition of the essence of these concepts, offering short homilies addressed to students, and suggesting various methods of moral education that might be adopted by teachers and educators. The anthology offers illustrative material to accompany the handbook: stories, fables, and vignettes. This course was conducted throughout a students’ schooling, from grade one until graduation from secondary school, and was conducted not as a classroom lesson, but more often out in nature in the form of an informal discussion. The content of the educational ethics course was made up of material that had already passed through a process of approbation and been widely used in the school at Pavlysh. It included “The ABC of moral culture”, the “Ten don’ts”, the “Fourteen rules of friendship”, “Ten things that are unworthy of a human being”, and other elements. Sukhomlynsky made extensive use of rules, canons, requirements, and guidelines, clothing moral principles in short, aphoristic expressions. Thanks to their emotional coloring, they were easily memorized, and when accompanied by appropriate opportunities for putting the principles into practice, gradually became moral habits and rules governing conduct. For example, the ten prohibitions, or “don’ts”, included “don’t be idle”, “don’t make fun of old age”, “don’t contradict people whose age should command respect”, “don’t neglect a relative who is lonely”, and provided a typology of “bad” and “unworthy” actions and deeds, the ultimate result of which was exercises in moral action (Sukhomlinsky, 1989). Sukhomlynsky introduced into the structure of educational studies concepts such as “the refinement of feelings”, “the refinement of desires”, “the refinement of needs”, and “the spiritualization of knowledge”, explaining their meaning, and suggesting a number of constant elements in educational ethics (“cults” in the sense of “objects of veneration”). Such objects of veneration included mothers, one’s family, one’s homeland, books, the school, knowledge, and nature.

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Through these “cults” we can trace a reorientation of the education process toward moral constants that were foreign to Soviet social discourse, and that shared common ground with ethics, and with folk and religious morality. These were seen by Sukhomlynsky as partaking of the categories of good and evil, as spiritual values that had universal human significance.

Educational Approaches Adopted Throughout the School Sukhomlynsky’s first priority was the physical education of children of all ages, from preschool to those in their final year of secondary school. In the “School of Joy” (the preschool year) he adopted simple folk methods that are customary for children. These included sitting on the ground and going barefoot during the warmer seasons, so that a child’s body feels the warmth of the earth heated by the sun; spending a great deal of time outdoors, and walking for various distances, from two kilometers in early childhood to significant distances as senior students; an active lifestyle; simple, nutritious food; a whole system for tempering the body that became more complex with age; purposeful work within children’s capacities; hiking through meadows, fields, and forests. One thing that distinguished his methodology from that of other innovative educators at various times (such as those proposed by Rousseau, the “new schools” of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, or Summerhill) was that he did not create special conditions for the development of his students. He did not interrupt their normal lifestyle when he placed them in natural surroundings. On the contrary, he saw school as a continuation of a child’s normal life and simply gave that life educational significance. Nature was seen by Sukhomlynsky as a valuable resource not only for physical education, but also for intellectual and moral education. He saw nature as the wellspring of thought and language, capable of awakening curiosity as the principal motivating principle of learning, and he made that his goal. At Pavlysh teachers did not just open their windows and doors to show children nature. They took their children out of the classrooms, taking them in the mornings and evenings to visit the orchard, the bank of the reservoir, the river, the fields and forests, so that they could stimulate the children’s activity, curiosity, and creativity, and widen their intellectual horizons through reflection stimulated by observation. They gave children the opportunity to see and feel the beauty of the natural environment, so as to awaken kindly feelings toward nature and everything that lives. They took them on journeys into the world of work and ensured that participation in work would become “a most important spiritual imperative for children”. Work education occupied a very significant place in the organization of activities throughout the school. And Sukhomlynsky repeatedly emphasized that this need not be physical work. “I am deeply convinced that the prime educational purpose of children’s work is to refine the heart, to educate emotional sensitivity and keen awareness. . .children’s work should be inspired by kindly feelings, humanised” (Sukhomlinsky, 1980c, 264). Sukhomlinsky considered that

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Work becomes a great educator when it enters the spiritual life of our pupils, giving them the joy of friendship and comradeship, developing curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. It allows them to experience the joy of overcoming difficulties, revealing more and more beauty in the surrounding world, and awakening the first stirrings of civic pride—the pride that comes from creating those material benefits without which human life is impossible. (Sukhomlinsky, 2012, 427)

Sukhomlynsky gave special significance in his system of primary and secondary education to children with special needs, some of whom may present significant challenges for teachers, whether it be due to mental processing disorders, intellectual disabilities, hyperactivity, difficulties adjusting socially, or any other form of disability. To optimally adjust educational theory to the psychological and intellectual needs of such children, to develop their potential, and not to neglect a single child: such was Sukhomlynsky’s educational credo. He was convinced that such children should study with the other children and that the school should present a friendly face to them. Indeed, the education of such children was an examination in humanity for all the other children. In the last annual plan that Sukhomlynsky wrote for the 1970/1971 school year, we read, “A separate issue that the school principal has been working on for many years is the development of the intellectual abilities of children with intellectual disabilities, who struggle with their studies. . .” (unpublished manuscript). Such children were offered individual help during lessons, after lessons, and in families and were given “special forms of assessment, unique to each child”, so that they might progress “from success to success” (Sukhomlinsky, 1980b, 535–536).

The Preschool Program Primary schooling was preceded by a preparatory year spent outdoors in nature, at the wellsprings of thought and language, during which the teacher/educator got to know the children, studied them and their parents, and prepared the children for schooling, not by teaching them elementary reading, counting, and writing, but by acquainting them with the wellsprings of thought and language, with nature. For “the world that surrounds children is first and foremost the world of nature, with its boundless wealth of phenomena, with its inexhaustible beauty. Here, amidst nature, is the eternal source of children’s intelligence, speech, and concepts” (Sukhomlinsky, 2012, 65–66). He referred to this preschool period in children’s development as “the school of joy”, where he adopted innovative forms of education such as “a school under the open sky”, “lessons in thought amidst nature”, activities in the “nook of dreams” and the “thinking room”, and journeys to the “Island of Wonders”. It was a romanticized and play-based system of educational activities, designed to develop children’s intellects, to stimulate thought processes, to foster an appreciation of beauty, and, most importantly, to develop the desire and the ability to act “according to the laws of beauty”, first and foremost spiritual beauty, the beauty of plans and actions, as a way of awakening kindly feelings, mercy, compassion, responsibility, steadfastness, and courage.

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The Primary School After the “school under the open sky” children commenced four years of formal primary schooling. Sukhomlynsky considered that the seasons have an impact on children’s physical and intellectual development, so at the school in Pavlysh schooling in the primary years took into account the cyclical variations of nature, with a diminished load in spring, and a greater load during the other seasons. Sukhomlynsky attributed special significance to the primary school years, believing that the foundation for the whole process of education is laid in the primary school. He wrote: During the years of schooling in grades one to four – from the age of seven to eleven – a person’s character is formed. Of course, this process is not completed by the end of primary school, but it is during these years that the most intense period of a person’s life unfolds. During these years children need not only to prepare for further studies, accumulating the knowledge and skills that will enable successful progress in the future. They need to live a rich spiritual life. The years of study in the primary school represent a whole period of moral, intellectual, emotional, physical, and aesthetic development, which will only be truly realised, and not just empty talk, if children live a rich life today, and are not just preparing to master knowledge tomorrow. (Sukhomlinsky, 2012, 202)

The organization of primary schooling at Pavlysh had certain specific features: separate, relatively isolated buildings; the creation of a special atmosphere; the psychological preparation of children for lessons; the development of thought and memory through diverse types of work (children creating their own picture books, lessons in thought and creativity, creating stories and fairy tales, combining writing and drawing, feelings and words); activities in a “green classroom” in conditions of “psychological equilibrium”, friendship, and constant support. The whole methodology was directed to the development in children of “the joy of learning”, a term that Sukhomlynsky introduced into educational discourse and considered fundamental to the process of study. The whole system of primary education at Pavlysh was rationalized and realized on the basis of developing children’s motivation, abilities, and activity, in part through specially arranged human relationships, introduced with the goal of establishing respect for other human beings: . . . the creation by children of joy for other people and the consequent experience of personal happiness and pride, . . . the development of a sense of duty and responsibility; the creation and preservation of beauty in all its many-faceted manifestations; awakening feelings of civic responsibility; . . . the cultivation of feelings of pity, sympathy, sensitivity to all things living and beautiful; . . . the development of thought and of the intellect. (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 311–312)

Students continued to go on nature walks with the aim of observing the surrounding world, awakening curiosity, enriching thought and language, and “stimulating the intellect through the emotions”. During the whole four years of primary schooling all students wrote a book entitled “300 pages from the Book of Nature”. Romanticized

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and aesthetic approaches to stimulating and motivating development, such as the story room, the “Island of Wonders”, and the “school under the open sky” continued to play a major role in the school’s educational methodology. Students in the primary school went on hikes and participated in whole school festivals such as the Festival of Song, the Festival of Flowers, the Bird Festival, the Festival of the Winter Snow Town, and others. Work festivals occupied a major place among the school traditions. For instance, primary school students cultivated a plot of wheat, and then organized a “Festival of the First Harvest”; they planted trees in the “Mothers’ Garden”; they grew fruit and flowers and presented them to their parents and grandparents; they looked after rabbits, treated injured birds in a “bird clinic”, and celebrated the Day of the Lark. In other words, they combined work and play.

The Middle School (Grades Five to Eight) Upon completing primary school, as they entered grade five, the students moved from their separate buildings into the main, two-storey building, where classrooms were allocated according to subject. Sukhomlynsky suggested that in adolescence, and even more in youth, “a child ceases to be a child, and becomes an adolescent, a senior student, [and eventually] a partner, a father, a mother”(Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 334). Childhood ends and adolescence begins: the most complex period in a person’s development and the one requiring the most responsible approach, when the young person gradually separates from their family and from the unquestioning acceptance of childhood authorities and embarks on the first steps toward an independent mastery of life experience. The school in Pavlysh paid particular attention to the complexities and contradictions in students’ psychological development during adolescence: the emotional evaluation of the surrounding world, the passionate feelings that arise from an inability to navigate the complexities of that world, the striving for an ideal and the primitive actions, the aspiration for self-sacrifice and the inability to make sacrifices, the need for wise council and the reluctance to seek advice, the many desires and the inability to satisfy them, romantic infatuation, and coarse behavior. Studying each adolescent and paying attention to each unique personality, making individual adjustments to instruction and education, and the psychological and educational analysis of behavior became the basis for organizing the educational process for adolescents and senior students. Sukhomlynsky considered two things to be necessary for organizing education in the middle school: to know how each child had been educated up to that point in time and to understand their psycho-physical and social characteristics and traits. Based on the idea of “two sources of education” that are especially important in adolescence (the first being purposeful, organized educational activities and the second being the unplanned influence of the social environment) Sukhomlynsky introduces into educational theory and school practice the notion of an “educational dissonance” between these two sources of education:

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The sharper the dissonance between the planned, intended means of education and those unplanned influences that provide a setting for the formation of a person’s social instincts, the harder it is to educate, the harder it is to form what we call in practice the voice of conscience. (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 319)

Sukhomlynsky comes to the conclusion that education will be successful only through a “harmonization of educational influences”, when the two sources of education have been integrated through the common efforts of the school, families, and the community. The school saw the aims of moral education as being the development of a person’s spiritual life, the refinement of feelings, the establishment of a harmony between intellectual development, emotional refinement, activity, morality, and spirituality. The methodology applied to achieve this was based on respect for each student’s personality, helping them to develop emotional sensitivity, an appreciation of nature and of beauty, the awakening of a desire to become a better person, protecting the intimacy of an adolescent’s personal feelings, especially on the part of teachers and parents, refining the sexual instinct through venerating mothers and through chastity. On this basis Sukhomlynsky introduced adolescents to the “refinement of desires”, which was inseparable from the “refinement of feelings”, and which ultimately signified a conscious attempt to develop moderation, to limit one’s needs, especially when they were met at the expense of others. At the school in Pavlysh the system of instruction and education for adolescents encompassed a broader range of activities than was the case in the primary school. The school implemented the idea of “two curricula for intellectual education”, consisting of the compulsory curriculum and “non-compulsory knowledge” that went beyond the compulsory school curriculum, and that created what Sukhomlynsky referred to as an “intellectual background”. This included the development of students’ interests, aptitudes, and vocations. There was a transition from concrete, object-based thinking to abstract thinking, as the school “reveals to students not only nature and society, and the laws that govern them, but also [helps them to discover] themselves” (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 413–414). The philosophical basis of education took center stage and was manifested in an investigative approach to knowledge at lessons in biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics, in the observation of natural phenomena and work processes, in the development of a scientific view of the world, and in a civic orientation. Particular attention was paid to moral issues in adolescence, because “if in childhood the source of a person’s spiritual life is the world of things . . . in adolescence the world of ideas opens up” (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 466). This creates an opportunity for revealing the essence of moral norms, provides motivation for noble actions, and gives rise to an urge to be involved in creative activity. The content of the curriculum now played a fundamental role in the development of adolescent morality: the two curricula, the intellectual background, the emotional enrichment of the process of instruction through the joy of discovery and the joy of learning, the incorporation of the wellsprings of thought in the study process (nature, books, musical works), the exchange of ideas and values, the integration of the work

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of mind and hands (creating models of machinery and the machinery itself, working in various clubs – agricultural, technical, literary, artistic, and scientific). Sukhomlynsky and his staff created a golden library of treasures of world literature that included 300 books, which students were expected to read during adolescence and the senior years. These were selected with a view to inspiring students and giving them the opportunity to experience intellectual and aesthetic joy. These books could be borrowed from the library, or read in a room set aside for reflection, that had been set up for intellectual and emotional enrichment. During the years of adolescence Sukhomlynsky continued the original methodology he had developed in the primary classes, of taking students on excursions to the wellsprings of thought and language, motivating creativity on the basis of an emotional and aesthetic relationship with the world, creating emotional stimuli for spiritual activity, putting students in situations where they would experience empathy and be motivated to manifest their kindly feelings in actions. This was a pedagogy of the heart: A child’s heart must be devoted to someone or something. If a young person has not left a part of their heart in a doll, a rocking horse, a teddy bear, a bird, a delicate and defenceless flower, a young tree, or a favourite book, then they will not be capable of deep feelings of human friendship, loyalty, devotion, attachment. . . . Many of the things that children and adolescents are involved in do not touch their hearts, skate over the surface of their consciousness, . . . and become mere “activities”. (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 563–564)

The work activities of adolescent students were inspired by feeling. They labored in workshops, in the greenhouse, in the experimental plot, on the collective farm, and at home. Sukhomlynsky wrote: The most significant thing is not how many trees a child has planted, but how much a single tree means to them, how much it has found a place in their heart and become part of the emotional and spiritual culture of adolescence. (Sukhomlinsky, 1980a, 564)

Ensuring there was continuity between the primary school and the middle school, introducing new elements into his educational system, Sukhomlynsky created a flexible and agile synergy in his concept of the school as an open system, characterized by the harmony of educational influences, the “refinement of feelings”, and “refinement of desires” – emotional and aesthetic components of spiritual culture.

The Senior Classes (Grades Nine and Ten) Sukhomlynsky considered that children should begin the path to adulthood early, at the age of twelve or thirteen, because an extended, “carefree childhood is the root of infantilism”. The sooner a young person’s spiritual life is founded on concern for public resources, the joy of working for others, and of overcoming difficulties, the more quickly they will find a pathway to spiritual maturity and creative inspiration.

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The objectives of the senior years of secondary schooling are to give students a broad polytechnical education, a high degree of skill in intellectual and physical work and wellestablished practical skills, to educate a love of work and of knowledge, and to prepare students to choose a profession wisely. These goals dictate an appropriate choice of methods of instruction, of lesson structure and sequencing, an appropriate amount of independent work at lessons and as part of self-education, and suitable opportunities for the practical application of knowledge. (Sukhomlinsky, 1969b, 288)

When the educational process is structured in this way, the “second curriculum” takes on great significance, and is guided by the preferences and aptitudes of the senior students themselves, with consultative support from the teachers. There is a gradual transition to more independent forms of work: essays, compositions, abstracts, annotations, design calculations, laboratory work. Self-education as a complex and systematic phenomenon touched all aspects of the education process in the senior school: study, work, discipline, and physical development. It is with such an approach in mind that programs were developed and instructions formulated to guide the work of each senior student. In his book Sto sovetov uchitelyu [100 pieces of advice for teachers] (1979b) Sukhomlynsky devotes considerable attention to advising teachers how to motivate senior students to educate themselves in work, studies, and sports activities. A separate section is devoted to the development of self-discipline in intellectual work and includes fifteen recommendations, which form a thread running through all the years of schooling but become more significant with each passing year. The most important recommendation is to read every day so as to create an intellectual and spiritual background for studies. Other recommendations include taking notes, summarizing what you have read, healthy daily routines, developing self-discipline, working systematically, being able to motivate yourself, being able to say “no” to yourself, not wasting time on trifles, creating a reserve of free time by completing tasks early, choosing rational approaches to mental and physical work, varying your load, and maintaining continuity (Sukhomlinsky, 1979b, 656–659). The system of self-education in the moral domain was inseparable from selfeducation in the intellectual domain and was based on a program developed by the staff at Pavlysh, a “program of self-education in moral refinement, that incorporated a number of demands that a student should place on themselves in their moral relations with other people” (Sukhomlinsky, 1979b, 649–652). It consisted of ten recommendations and represented a development of the moral values that had been established during the primary and middle school years. The recommendations included seeing oneself through the eyes of others and being prepared to overcome one’s vices: If you notice the seeds of a vice in yourself, learn to be harsh with yourself. Tear out the roots of the vice: laziness with work, indifference to good and evil with sympathy and human concern, hypocrisy with integrity, flattery with directness, subservience with a preparedness to defend the truth . . . a lack of conviction with independent thought, cruelty towards a weak and defenceless creature with humanity, gluttony with moderation, miserliness with generosity. (Sukhomlinsky, 1979b, 651–652)

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The senior students compiled an anthology of the moral values of humanity that they continually updated. They conducted debates and discussions that provided a fertile basis for converting knowledge into convictions. In the senior classes serious work continued to be undertaken with the students on the “refinement of feelings”, “refinement of needs”, and “refinement of desires”, relying mainly on self-education. Civic mindedness as the highest manifestation of moral maturity formed the core of moral activity, directed toward other people, the social environment, and the community.

Participants in the Education Process Let us examine the participants in the education process: the students and educators at the school. Sukhomlynsky modified their roles and added new participants: the surrounding environment, parents, and the community. The child. Sukhomlynsky placed the individual student at the center of his educational framework, as a physical and social entity, and in so doing challenged a basic canon of Soviet educational thought on the primacy of the collective over the individual when organizing the activities of a school. The teacher. Sukhomlynsky also focused on the individual personality of the teacher, because We must not consider the means of educational influence as existing independently of the personality of the teacher. I view them as an organic component of the spiritual life of the educator, of their moral, intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic culture, which finds expression in the culture of their relationships with their students. (Sukhomlinsky, 1968)

In his practical work and in his writings, Sukhomlynsky presents an image of the sort of teacher that our systems of education still hope for: not only someone with “competencies”, a regulator of “interactivity”, a narrow specialist in their subject, but a human being and a professional in the highest sense of the word. Such a teacher cannot be and is in principle not the bearer of absolute knowledge. They must be a guide, who accompanies the process of a child’s self-discovery and selfdevelopment, directing and adjusting that process in accordance with the concrete talents of each student, teaching children how to study, and how to apply knowledge and information. The collective. The “collective” was the most used “Soviet” word and presupposed the organization of interactions and common activities of large groups with the conscious subordination of personal interests to the common interest. The organizational aspect of this system was considered more important than the activity itself. In Sukhomlynsky’s time the concepts of the “collective” and the “individual” were juxtaposed and contrasted, always in favor of the former. They formed a framework for the education process in educational institutions at various levels. Depending on the relationship between the individual and the collective, one could

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speak of the educational paradigm that governed the activities within a school: authoritarian or democratic. Sukhomlynsky broke this paradigm, making the individual personality the focus of the whole education process, developing the inner resources of the individual during collective activity. The meaning of the process of education and the skill of an educator is to be found in deeply studying, researching, and taking into consideration the interdependence between the development of the collective and the development of the individual, and finding the optimum conditions for the formation of the personality, for the full flowering of a person’s abilities, gifts, and talents (Sukhomlinsky, 1979a, 166). Sukhomlynsky suggested that “the collective is a means of educating a human being. It is a powerful means, but not an omnipotent one” (Sukhomlinsky, 2008, 33). The principal. Sukhomlynsky reviewed the role and function of the school principal, the manager of the teaching staff, who not only can, but most importantly, wants to work creatively. At his school, teachers’ professional development was conducted through “educational Mondays” at which educational issues were discussed and psychological seminars were “devoted exclusively to children” (Sukhomlinsky, 1969b, 50), and through a system of work involving the mutual visiting of lessons, the presentation of demonstration lessons, and the subsequent analysis of those lessons. Sukhomlynsky had a thorough knowledge of the living conditions of his teachers and the issues they faced, their moral qualities, and their spiritual interests. He knew how to say a kind word, and also how to make critical observations, which is much harder than offering praise. The individual and humanistic approach that he brought to education was applied first and foremost to his teaching colleagues. The surrounding environment. Sukhomlynsky gave exceptional attention to the environment, by which he understood everything that surrounds a child, from the classrooms to the school grounds, the village, and the natural environment. He considered that the surrounding environment should not be left to chance but should be consciously created with the participation of the children. He wrote: Everything that surrounds a child contributes to their physical, intellectual, moral and aesthetic education. . . . Education through the environment that is created by the students themselves, through things that enrich the spiritual life of the community, is, in our view, one of the most subtle aspects of the education process. (Sukhomlinsky, 1969b, 106)

Parents. Without the involvement of the family, of parents, it is impossible to give a holistic education that incorporates the physical, the intellectual, the vocational, and especially the moral dimension. Social education begins in the family. Figuratively speaking, it is in the family that the roots develop from which branches, flowers, and fruit ultimately grow. The educational wisdom of the school is built on the moral health of the family. (Sukhomlinsky, 1988, 6)

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Sukhomlynsky included “parental pedagogy” in the educational system of his school as an important component of “family and school education”. At the school in Pavlysh there was a “school for parents” where practical lectures and activities were organized twice a month for the mothers and fathers of the students. The parents were divided into groups according to the ages of their children, from pre-school to senior students, and attended activities aimed at developing their parenting skills. “Along with advice on healthy routines and various activities for children, we pay special attention to the spiritual education of children. . . . to [imparting] a sensitive awareness of the world” (Sukhomlinsky, 1988, 57). The community. The school’s activities were integrated into the surrounding environment, a significant part of which was the village, its inhabitants, the parents, and relatives of the students. The teachers and children were an important part of village society, and the influence of the school, its teachers, and students was significant and manifested on various levels. The school students played an active part in the work of the collective farm: planting trees, assisting with the harvest, caring for young animals. They assisted elderly people living in isolation, reading them books and newspapers, planting flowers and trees in their yards, giving concerts, and inviting respected members of the community to the school to talk about their lives and work.

The Significance of Sukhomlynsky’s Approach to Moral Education in the Soviet Context In order to understand what was innovative in Sukhomlynsky’s approach to the moral education of children, we should examine the context within which he worked. Soviet discourse on ethics and morality began in the 1920s by demonstratively renouncing morality as a spiritual phenomenon. In the following decades it produced moral ideology as a symbiosis of Bolshevik Party ethics and moralizing, which postulated the desired traits of internationalism, loyalty to communist ideas and ideals, strong character, strength of will, and a readiness to make sacrifices for the sake of the common ideal, as exemplified by the lives and deeds of the founders of Marxism-Leninism. The eminent Russian philosopher Abdusalam Guseinov states that in those times It was considered that revolutionary activity absolves one of morality and makes it superfluous. Morality was reduced to the challenges of the class struggle of the proletariat, its strategies and tactics, as expressed most fully in Lenin’s Zadachi soyuzov molodezhi [Tasks facing youth unions] (1920) and Trotsky’s Ikh moral’ i nasha [Their morality and ours] (1938), and also in the practices of bolshevism, principally in the practices of the Soviet state during the 1920s and 1930s. In this way ethics in the traditional sense disappeared. (Guseinov, 2010)

During the ensuing decades the theory and practice of moral education developed from moral ideology to the education of “communist” morality, an important component of the education process. This occurred after the adoption in 1961 of the Third Program

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of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an integral part of which was the “Moral code of a builder of communism”, which led to ethics being included in the education process. “Lecture courses and textbooks began to appear; departments of ethics were created in higher educational institutions . . . which in their turn stimulated research” (Bondarenko & Petrov, 2012, 58–59). In educational studies the concept of “Soviet ethics” was developed. Twenty-first century scholars such as Bondarenko and Petrov view this as having been a positive alternative to moral ideologizing, as communist party and class considerations to some extent gave way to more generally recognized moral principles (Bondarenko & Petrov, 2012, 54–81). During those years, educational researchers responded to a practical need as they attempted to make sense of a whole range of issues that had accumulated in the area of moral education. These issues included the development of criteria and indicators of moral culture, the significance of experimentation in education, methods of moral education, and psychological conditions required for the processes involved (Konnikova, 1968; Kharlamov, 1967, 1972; Marienko, 1969). But these researchers did not consider changing the theoretical underpinning of moral education. They continued to work within the paradigms of Marxist-Leninist ideology, so the emergence of Soviet ethics did not have any major impact on the essence and content of moral education. Sukhomlynsky’s work was an exception to the general rule. He developed a completely new approach, addressing ethical issues in both his writings and his practical work during the early 1960s. It is true that Sukhomlynsky romanticized communist values and ideals, but within this thematic framework he spoke mainly of the contribution that each individual child could make to the common good.

Sukhomlynsky’s Relevance Today Is there any connection between the current state of education in Ukraine and in other countries, and the ideas and methods developed by Sukhomlynsky? We believe there is. Let us first consider the more obvious, external features. In the first instance there is the practice of values education through “philosophy for children”, based on the material in An ethics anthology and the book How to educate a true human being. Sukhomlynsky’s little stories and vignettes, aimed at developing children’s moral feelings, are an important element in current Ukrainian textbooks for teaching language and reading in the primary school. Many of the ideas promoted by Sukhomlynsky – “education without punishment”, an environmental approach, integrated family and school education, inclusive education, the spiritualization of knowledge – have been incorporated into school practice. The application of the “School of joy”, “The school under the open sky”, and “Journeys to the wellsprings of thought and language” have been particularly popular in preschool and primary school settings. As far as Sukhomlynsky’s theoretical position is concerned, it seems to us that he was one of the few to anticipate future trends, and to formulate in a simple and accessible way ideas that have since become very influential in educational studies

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as a whole and in values education in particular. We could, for example, see Sukhomlynsky’s system of moral education as a practical demonstration of the RAVES model of moral education developed by Darcia Narvaez, where “RAVES” stands for Relationships, Apprenticeship, Virtuous village, Ethical skills, and Selfauthorship (Narvaez, 2021). While placing the child at the center of his educational system, Sukhomlynsky notes the huge influence of adults and teachers on the formation and development of an individual’s moral foundations, and the importance of a teacher combining academic instruction with character development. A teacher should also be prepared for the modern role of educating effective national and global citizens. When discussing the social role of a teacher, we may note Sukhomlynsky’s ideas on the significance of having an ethical orientation, and educating through one’s own example, demonstrating integrity, positivity, tolerance, and devotion to ideals. However much modern societies are dominated by digital technology, it could be argued that personal development remains the main indicator of the level of development of a society. Given the environmental and social problems we face, Sukhomlynsky’s research into holistic approaches to child education, and to the development of a moral foundation, remains relevant. One idea that runs through all Sukhomlynsky’s theory and practice is the idea of the spiritualization of knowledge and education. Today computer technology is revolutionizing education at all levels, reorienting the process of study to incorporate not only the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to reproduce it during a lesson or an exam, but also the ability to independently analyze the processes and phenomena taking place in society and in the natural environment. In this context it is appropriate to refer to Sukhomlynsky’s ideas about study as the humanization of knowledge through reflection on the essence of human life, where the central focus of education is human beings, their needs, and their actions. Sukhomlynsky’s individual approach to each child is also relevant. In our modern, humanistic interpretation we have adopted Sukhomlynsky’s compassionate approach to children and young people who do not have the opportunity to lead a normal life because of physical or intellectual disabilities, or the loss of family. Now we are beginning to combine special education for children with special needs with the development of inclusive education, aimed at guaranteeing a quality education, social rehabilitation, and the integration of children with special needs into school communities, as equals among their peers. Such an approach was anticipated in Sukhomlynsky’s theory and practice. Sukhomlynsky sought to make educational knowledge available to all members of society, so as to ensure that parents have sufficient educational knowledge to fulfil their role as caring parents. This idea is clearly still relevant. Within a family a child is completely defenceless. Raising the educational skills of parents, helping them to understand their children, and humanizing the relationships between parents and children can provide the optimum conditions for the development of children in each family, and hence at school.

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The environmental approach to the education of children, treating the environment as an ecosystem of interacting components, and not just as the sum of its parts, is also being developed today. The multidimensional nature, the changeability and fluidity of today’s reality, its diversity, which both children and adults must interact with, demand an environmental approach, which should address the sociosphere, the psychosphere, and the ecosphere. Now the significance of the virtual sphere (virtual communication via telecommunications technology) is taking on ever greater significance. We must also consider the significance of issues affecting the lifestyle and health of human beings on the global scale, and their significance for the development and survival of civilization in the face of environmental crises, including climate change. The unrestrained use of natural resources, and the destruction of animals and vegetation for the sake of human comfort, now threatens human survival. Sukhomlynsky’s words in a letter to the science fiction writer Ivan Efremov now seem prophetic: I am deeply disturbed by the thought that humanity, in destroying nature, is marching to its own demise. If we do not make every person think about this, if literally every heart does not shudder at the thought that in a few decades . . . there will be nothing to breathe, all our current social and political problems and disagreements will seem laughable and naïve. (Sukhomlinsky, 1970b)

In the current situation we should be particularly receptive to Sukhomlynsky’s approach of teaching young children to have a caring attitude to nature and to all living creatures, to fostering a desire to create and protect beauty, to see beauty in everything that surrounds us, and to support it in any way we can through our own efforts. Such an approach provides a foundation for the “refinement of needs”, for the sensible limitation of our desires and for sensible consumption, as the responsibility and duty of every human being, of every citizen. We have given an exposition of the ideas that Vasyl Sukhomlynsky introduced into educational theory and practice. Many of his ideas seemed utopian and marginal at the time but are now being taken up by educational reformers in various forms. New English language translations of Sukhomlynsky’s works are appearing (Sukhomlinsky, 2016, 2021), together with English language studies of Sukhomlynsky’s work (Cockerill, 1999, 2011, 2022). The American playwright and educator Douglas Larche visited the school in Pavlysh in 2004 and wrote: Something is hidden deep within my soul. Will you not help me to find the key That will open the door where I am hiding, And show me all the treasures that I have? (Larche, 2004, 40) The “treasures” are within us, and we are seeking the key that will unlock them. Today one of those keys is Vasyl Sukhomlynsky. Let us seek and find many others.

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References Bondarenko, L. I., & V. Yu. Petrov. 2012. Teoreticheskaya etika v SSSR (1960s–1980s) [Theoretical ethics in the USSR (1960s–1980s)] Diskursy etiki: al’manakh [Ethics discourses: An anthology]. Issue 1. Cockerill, A. L. (1999). Each one must shine: The educational legacy of V.A. Sukhomlinsky. Peter Lang. Cockerill, A. L. (2011). Values education in the soviet state: The lasting contribution of V.A. Sukhomlinsky. International Journal of Educational Research, 50, 3, 198–204. Cockerill, A. L. (2022). A holistic approach to curriculum: The example of Vasily Sukhomlinsky. In R. C. Collister (Ed.), Holistic teacher education: In search of a curriculum for troubled times (pp. 1–15). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Guseinov, A. A. (2010). Etika. Novaya filosofskaya entsiklopediya. [Ethics. A new philosophical encyclopedia.] (Second edition revised and augmented. Vol. 4). Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. Mysl’. Kharlamov, I. (1967). Osnovnye voprosy vospitatel’noi raboty v shkole [Fundamental issues in educational work in schools]. Minsk. Kharlamov, I. (1972). Teoriya nravstvennogo vospitaniya [Theory of moral education]. Minsk. Konnikova, T. E. (1968). Formirovanie obshchei napravlennosti lichnosti kak pedagogicheskaya problema [The formation of the general orientation of the personality as an educational issue]. In O nravstvennom vospitanii shkol’nika: Sbornik statei [The moral education of school students: A collection of articles] (pp. 3–27). Leningrad. Larche, D. (2004). Cited in Ukrainian in Shlyakh osviti [The way of education] 1, 40. Marienko, I. (1969). Zadachi nravstvennogo vospitaniya shkol’nikov [Challenges in the moral education of school students]. In Nravstvennoe vospitanie shkol’nikov [The moral education of school students] (pp. 28–42). Moscow. Narvaez, D. (2021). Moral education in a time of human ecological devastation. Journal of Moral Education., 50, 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2020.1781067 Sakharov, V. A., & Sakharov L. G. (2010). Emotsional’no-tsennostnoe soprovozhdenie protsessa nravstvennogo vospitaniya kak novatorskoe napravlenie v sovetskoi pedagogike [The emotional and evaluative accompaniment to the process of moral education as an innovation in Soviet pedagogy]. Vestnik Vyatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Bulletin of the Vyatka State University] 3, 108. Seradz’ka-Bazyur, B., & Seiko N. A. (2017). Temporal’ni kharakterystyky pedagogiky Vasylya Sukhomlyns’koho [Temporal characteristics of Vasyl Sukhomlynsky’s pedagogy]. Visnyk Zhytomyrs’koho derzhavnoho universitetu imeni Ivana Franka. Pedagogichni nauky. [Bulletin of the Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University. Educational Sciences] 5(91): 106–113. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1958). Pedagogicheskii kollektiv srednei shkoly [The staff of a secondary school]. Uchpedgiz. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1961). Dukhovnyi mir shkol’nika (podrostkovogo i yunoshevskogo vozrasta) [The spiritual world of a school student (in adolescence and youth)]. Gosudarstvennoe nauchno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo ministerstva prosveshcheniya RSFSR [State Scientific and Educational Publishing House of the Ministry of Education of RSFSR]. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1968). Kak ya predstavlyayu sebe shkolu budushchego [How I imagine the school of the future]. Detskaya literatura [Children’s Literature]. 11, 11–14. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1969a). Serdtse otdayu detyam [My heart I give to children]. Radyans’ka shkola. (First published in German translation in 1968.) Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1969b). Pavlyshskaya srednyaya shkola [Pavlysh secondary school]. Prosveshchenie. Sukhomlynsky, V.O. (1970a). Narodzhennya gromadyanina (The birth of a citizen). (In Ukrainian). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1970b). Private letter to Ivan Efremov, dated 11.07.1970. From domestic archive.

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Sukhomlynsky, V. A. (1975). Kak vospitat’ nastoyashchego cheloveka [How to educate a true human being]. Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1979a). Problemy vospitaniya vsestronne razvitoi lichnosti [Issues in the education of a fully developed personality]. In: Izbrannye proizvedeniya v pyati tomakh [Selected works in five volumes] (Vol 1). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1979b). Sto sovetov uchitelyu [100 Pieces of advice for teachers]. In: Izbrannye proizvedeniya v pyati tomakh [Selected works in five volumes] (Vol 2, pp. 447–698). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1980a). Rozhdenie grazhdanina (The birth of a citizen). (In Russian) In: Izbrannye proizvedeniya v pyati tomakh [Selected works in five volumes] (Vol 3, pp. 301–627). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1980b). Razgovor s molodym direktorom shkoly [Conversation with a young school principal]. In: Izbrannye proizvedeniya v pyati tomakh [Selected works in five volumes] (Vol 4, pp. 413–656). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1980c). Narodnyi uchitel’[A national teacher]. In: Izbrannyeproizvedeniya v pyatitomakh [Selected works in five volumes] (Vol 5, pp. 252–269). Radyans’ka shkola. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1988). Mudrost’ roditel’skoi lyubvi [The wisdom of parental love]. Molodaya gvardiya. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1989). Kak vospitat’ nastoyashchego cheloveka (Etika kommunisticheskogo vospitaniya) [How to educate a true human being (The ethics of communist education)]. Pedagogika. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (1990). Khrestomatiya po etike [An ethics anthology]. Pedagogika. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (2008). Nasha dobraya sem’ya (Zapiski pionervozhatogo) [Our kindly family (Notes of a Pioneer leader)]. In O.V. Sukhomlynska (Ed.), Pedagogicheskie apokrify: Etyudy o Sukhomlinskom [Pedagogical apocrypha: Essays on Sukhomlinsky] (pp. 32–34). Akta. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (2012). Serdtse otdayu detyam [My heart I give to children]. Akta. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (2016). My heart I give to children. EJR Language Service Pty. Ltd. Sukhomlinsky, V. A. (2021). Our school in Pavlysh: A holistic approach to education. EJR Publishing.

Keystones of Holistic Education Trust, Love, Joy and Mystery

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John P. Miller

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Holistic education focuses on the development of the whole child—mind, body, and soul. It also is based on the idea that nature and reality are deeply interdependent and helps children see themselves in relationship with each other, the Earth and the Cosmos. The ultimate reference point for holistic education is the Whole, the cosmos. It is a worldwide movement as many parents seek alternatives from state-based systems that focus on standardized approaches to learning and testing. In this chapter, I explore what I believe are four critical underlying concepts in holistic education—trust, joy, love and mystery. Keywords

Holistic Education · Trust · Love · Joy · Mystery

This paper is based on talk given at the Asian Pacific Holistic Education Network conference held in Bangkok November, 2017. J. P. Miller (*) University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_25

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Introduction Holistic education focuses on the development of the whole child—mind, body, and soul. It also is based on the idea that nature and reality are deeply interdependent and helps children see themselves in relationship with each other, the Earth and the Cosmos. The ultimate reference point for holistic education is the Whole, the cosmos. It is a worldwide movement as many parents seek alternatives from statebased systems that focus on standardized approaches to learning and testing. In this chapter, I explore what I believe are four critical underlying concepts in holistic education—trust, joy, love and mystery.

Trust It was Einstein who articulated the fundamental question we face -“Is the universe friendly?” In other words, do we trust the basic processes that exist in the universe and on the earth? The alternative is to see the universe as hostile and approach life with trepidation and fear. Trust starts with ourselves and learning to trust our own selves. This begins by trusting the body. The body has its own wisdom that we can listen to. Unfortunately, in the rush of daily life we tend to live in our heads and get lost in our thoughts, worries, and projections. Connecting to and trusting the body brings us into the here and now. When we walk, we can feel the body move and our feet touching the earth. In the Buddhist tradition, there is walking meditation that focuses on this movement. When we do this meditation, we naturally slow down and our walking becomes unhurried and develops a different rhythm. As we slow down, we can see and experience our surroundings more clearly. We can really see a tree and the blue sky. With young people spending so much time in front of screens, it is easy for them to lose touch with their bodies. Mindfulness practices, breathing exercises, and simple yoga practices can help students stay connected to their bodies. Trusting ourselves also means trusting our intuition and the deeper part of ourselves—e.g. our Buddha Nature. This part of ourselves exists outside of time and space. Richard Rohr. (2013) said this is “the divine breath passing through you” (p. 63). This is a place of wisdom and compassion where we act in harmony with the cosmos. Gandhi called it the “still small voice within,” which can sometimes be at odds with what society expects. It is not easy to follow this voice, but it is fundamental to our growth as a human being. As a young American facing the draft and the possibility of going to fight in a war in Vietnam that I thought was wrong, I decided to come to Canada in 1969. Finally, we need to trust nature and the unfolding of the cosmos. Alan Watts (2000) argues that nature is “the natural world in which we live, and human nature itself, must be trusted” (p. 27). We naturally trust our beathing and the beating of our heart and we need to extend that trust to the rest of ourselves and to nature. However, “nature is not completely trustworthy. It will sometime let you down with a wallop,

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but that is the risk you take, the risk of life” (Watts, 1995, p.30). Indigenous Peoples speak of “thunder beings” who come into our lives and test us in different ways. Sometimes this can be your child or a student. Still living with trust in ourselves and the cosmos is the beginning of deep happiness and joy. This is what Emerson felt when he wrote, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—not disgrace, not calamity (leaving my eyes), which nature cannot repair” (p. 18). The Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi, talked about how we develop trust in ourselves and the universe: “Feel your way along in the dark, slowly and carefully. . . When do you things in this spirit, you don’t know what the results will be, but because you carefully feel yourself along, the results will be okay. You can trust what will happen”(Chadwick, 2021, p. 18.) Suzuki Roshi also talked about seeing our practice in the largest, cosmic sense: We practice with people first of all. But the goal of practice is to practice with mountains and with rivers, with trees and with stones-with everything in the world, in the universe-and to find ourselves in this big cosmos. And in this big world we should intuitively know which way to go. (Chadwick, 2021, p.82)

Richard Rohr (2013) has written, “We all somehow believe it is a coherent and even a benevolent universe. Maybe that is the very heart of the meaning of faith. It is surely the Perennial Tradition discovered by all people of good will and sincere search” (p. 138). The ancients believed that sound resonates throughout the universe. Sardello (1992) writes, Soul learning does not consist of the internalization of knowledge, the determination of right meaning, the achievement of accuracy, but is to be found in what sounds right. That the soul sings was understood by the ancient psychology of the world—the singing of soul was known as the music of the spheres. (p. 63)

When we feel at home in the universe our souls want to sing. As much as possible, education should help students feel this connection to the cosmos so that their souls sing. The singing soul is a wonderful outcome of holistic education. There is no better example of the soul singing than Beethoven’s ninth symphony and the Ode to Joy. Part of the Ode is “Be embraced you millions! This kiss for the whole world.” Jan Swafford (2014) in his biography of Beethoven writes, When the bass soloist speaks the first words in the finale, an invitation to sing for joy, Beethoven’s words are addressed to everybody, to history. There’s something singularly moving about that moment when this man—deaf and sick and misanthropic and selftorturing, at the same time one of the most extraordinary and boundlessly generous men of our species has produced—greets us person to person, with glass raised, and hails as friends. (p. 836)

Beethoven’s soul sings in this great work and in turn ours do as well as we listen.

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Joy Thoreau wrote, “Surely, joy is the condition of life.” Thoreau’s love of nature and simple approach to living nurtured this joy. Joy is deeper and more abiding than happiness. Each of us need to find ways to deepen our experience of joy. Wagamese writes, “For me I have to find my joy first-what really moves me. Once I find my joy I am led to my passion-the daily articulation of joy. Then, through akinetic and passionate interaction with the world I am led to my purpose. The secret lies in joy” (2021, p. 136). In the Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu talk about joy and how to bring it into our lives. Both these men have experienced real suffering. The Dalai Lama has been an exile for more than 50 years from his home country, Tibet, while Bishop Tutu suffered under apartheid in South Africa. Yet both exude a deep sense of joy. Meditation is one thing that they discuss. “The real secret of freedom may simply be extending this brief space between stimulus and response. Meditation seems to elongate this pause and help expand our ability to choose our response” (The Dalai Lama & Tutu, 2016, p.179). It is in this space where both freedom and joy can arise as we live more in the moment and are not lost in thoughts. It is so easy to let the thoughts take over in our mind and negative thoughts can cause suffering. There is the mindfulness phrase—I don’t have to believe what I think. Meditation allows us to see a thought as thought and that is the beginning of freedom and joy. I have taught meditation to graduate students in education for over 30 years and many students have commented how meditation has enhanced their well-being and sense of joy. Here is one student’s comment: Through meditation I feel that I am being gently invited to observe the nature of my own humanity. Personally I had been strongly moved and transformed through the beautiful nature of this spiritual practice. I had heard my voice and soul with amusement. I had slowly let my inner judge go away and be more in touch with the unspoken, the unseen, and the sacred part of myself. I had achieved a larger vision of my self and my reality, a vision that tenderly dilutes my fears, preconceptions, judgments and need for control. Because of meditation I had been able to transform my fear, anger, and resistance into joy, forgiveness, acceptance and love. I can bring to meditation anything that is for the purpose of seeing it or feeling it. The reflection and contemplation offered by this practice provides a very safe and comfortable environment where my creativity, intuition, and imagination can be enlarged. I can feel, see, and reflect on my reality while I confess my own fears and personal dilemmas to the being that exists within myself. I become my own witness, my own mentor and my own source of liberation. I can unveil the many layers that cover my real nature so I can then be able to recognize my own needs and inclinations. Meditating has also been a road of discovering for me. I first discovered the honoring power that the soul possesses for every human being. Through meditation I discovered the unconditional acceptance that is available to the heart of every human being. It is through the practice of meditation that I had better understood the meaning and importance of accepting and honoring myself and others. (Miller, 2014, p. 154–155)

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Suzuki Roshi talked about the joy of meditation practice. “He was most happy when students shared in the joy [my italics] of practice. He said that’s what Buddhism is— not enlightenment or understanding” (Cited in Chadwick, 2021, p. 12). The Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu (2016) also stress the importance of being in a community and caring for others. Joy can arise when we find ourselves thinking of others rather than ourselves. They mention studies where people who refer to themselves by saying “I” and “me” a lot tend to have more health problems (p. 130). For years I have done what is called lovingkindness meditation where we send thoughts of happiness and well-being to others. We start with ourselves, then family and friends, colleagues, to those that we are having difficulty with, and finally to all beings. I begin my class with this practice. One student experienced the meditation this way. As Jack usually starts his lovingkindness meditation with the self, Jack recited, “May I be well, happy and peaceful.” Instantaneously, I envisioned this shining bright light illuminating my heart. It was a soft, yellow-white light that floated so gracefully near my heart. When I saw this glow, I thought perhaps this was my soul, but I wasn’t quite sure. Whatever it was made me feel warm, happy and calm deeply inside. As Jack went on with this meditation, I envisioned this light shining through every single person in our class as we spread the love to those around us. As we wished people around OISE (the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) to be well, happy and peaceful, I visualized myself walking throughout the building and seeing people walking by with their glowing hearts shining bright. As our love spread to those within the provincial level, I saw people from various places I’ve been before with illuminating hearts. When we reached the level of all beings, I imagined a radiant glowing planet full of billions of tiny bright lights radiating into the universe. This vision was absolutely breathtaking. How a simple mediation instantaneously brought my mood up to a more happy and positive state was truly remarkable and eye-opening.

I recently received an email from a woman who took my class in 2004 Dear Dr Miller: I hope this note finds you managing during these unusual and trying times. I attended your spirituality and education course in 2004 when I was an M.Ed. student at OISE. I have since moved to the US and have found my calling at the intersection of bioethics/health, education and spirituality. I was ordained in the Orthodox movement of Judaism as a rabbi in 2015 and direct a bioethics and humanities program at a medical school. This is just for some professional context but what I wanted to share with you is something that has been meaningful to me over my many years since I was in your classroom. You began each session with a lovingkindness meditation. That was my first “formal” introduction to mindfulness practice though my late father did share some practice with me as a girl without calling it such. I used to be filled with such anticipation and gratitude upon entering that room on Bloor St. and centering myself in that way. I have come back to your voice as an anchor and your words several times since 2004. At the bedside of my patients, at the start of every class that I teach my students, when I buried my father a few years ago and while caring for him when he lived with ALS, with my congregants in synagogue and by myself, I hear your voice and your words. I have attended several retreats over the years but I never realized it was your voice and those formative impactful OISE days that anchored me until 8 weeks ago when I

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began an MBSR course at UMASS near where I currently live in Massachusetts. There is more I could say and share but really I just wanted to share that in so many ways you have walked alongside me for all these years. In so many moments—and I am filled with immense gratitude. You have been my teacher in a profound way and perhaps you didn't even know it. You have given me silence and a constant whisper of “in the moment”. I wish to thank you with all of my being and all that I am and am not. Sending you blessings and wells of gratitude. Lila Kagedan

I was deeply moved by this. It also shows the mystery of teaching as we never know the effects of our work as teachers. Lovingkindness is one of the four immeasurables in Buddhism. These four qualities—lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity—are so powerful they cannot be measured. I also believe when we practice these, we can experience a deep and abiding joy. Compassion is where we suffer with others and do what we can to relieve suffering. I will write more about compassion in the section on love which follows. Sympathetic joy is rejoicing in another person’s happiness. We feel good when something positive happens to another person, even a person that is not close to us. Finally, equanimity means to have a clear-minded tranquil state of mind or steadiness of mind. These four qualities could be developed in our students and would do much to nurture their well-being.

Love At the end of The Divine Comedy, Dante writes that it is “Love that moves the Sun and other stars” (Alighieri, 2003, p. 894). Love as the animating principle of the universe has been echoed by many, including Gandhi and King. King wrote, I have discovered that the highest good is love. This principle is at the center of the cosmos. It is the great unifying force of life. When I speak of love, I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to the ultimate reality. (cited in Lin, 2006, p. xii)

Gandhi (1980) wrote, “It is my firm belief that it is love that sustains the earth. There is only life where there is love. Life without love is death. . . It is my firm faith. . . that we can conquer the whole world by truth and love” (p.65). Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer and atheist, wrote about the “love of love”. He believed that “it is the greatest and most potent force in all this great universe” (cited in Farrell, 2012, p. 276). Another word for love is compassion. The Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (2016) has written about compassion: “Nothing exists by itself alone. We all belong to each other; we cannot cut reality into pieces. My happiness is your happiness; my suffering is your suffering. We heal and transform together. Every side is “our side”;

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there is no evil side, no enemy” (p. 82). Thich Nhat Hanh developed the term interbeing to describe the deep interconnectedness of existence. When giving his talks, the Dalai Lama looks out at his audience and sees beings who desire happiness and do not want to suffer. This witnessing leads naturally to compassion for others. Parents suffer with the agonies of their children as they grow; this can lead to feeling compassion for all parents and children in the world. Compassion can extend to all living things, and in the last decades, there is much more awareness of animals and efforts to avoid harming them. Closely linked to love and compassion is ahimsa, which means non-harming or nonviolence. Karen Armstrong has written extensively about compassion and how it is central to all faiths and spiritual traditions. She has also offered guidelines to living a compassionate life (2010). She developed the Charter for Compassion which has been signed by more than two million people around the world. There are cities and schools that havecommitted themselves to the charter. There are many forms of love which I have written about in Love and Compassion: Exploring their Role in Education. These include self-love, personal love, impartial love, love of learning, love of beauty, nonviolence, presence, and cosmic love. Self-love is a foundation for the other forms of love. Nature can help us as we see ourselves as part of creation and its beauty. Catherine Gildiner (2015) describes her encounter with the Welsh countryside, which she described as a “paradise,” where the trees and fields made her realize that “the colour green had infinite variations. Streams meandered through the forests and were so clear you could see the forest perfectly reflected in them” (p.76). She writes, “Suddenly I know what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins meant when he said, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ It was the first time I had seen God as separate from organized religion” (p. 77). We also see the rhythm of life in nature, as one moment we are being soaked in pouring rain and the next moment we are feeling the warmth of the sun. Nature is constantly in transition. Deng Ming-Dao (1992) makes the connection between the growth of aflower and our own development: “Just as flower goes through stagesbud, open, bloom, pollinate, wither, fruit, fall—each of us will go through obvious stages of birth and death. . . We change and grow. Our identities unfold and bloom” (p. 123). Seeing change in nature can make it easier for us to accept change in our lives. Learning to accept change is part of cultivating self-love. Love can happen in our schools and classrooms. I believe this happens through the presence of the teacher. When teachers are fully present, the student feels cared for. Mindfulness practices have helped teachers become more present to their students. As I mentioned in the section on joy, in my classes I ask students to engage in contemplative practices to help them be more present. I also focus on mindfulness practices where we bring our full attention to what we are doing in our daily life. A classic mindfulness exercise is eating a raisin. Usually this involves two raisins. We eat one raisin as we normally would. Then we eat a raisin mindfully. We can start by looking at the raisin and contemplating it. Through the contemplation we make friends with the raisin. We are conscious of all the conditions that brought the raisin

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to us in this moment. These include the earth, rain and sun that nourished the grape. Then there were people who looked after the grape and harvested it. Others were involved in drying the grape and eventually packaging it and shipping the raisin. People in stores placed the package on the shelves. So many conditions brought the raisin to us. Then we can put the raisin in our mouth and let it sit there for a moment. Gradually we start to chew it slowly, tasting it fully. When we are done, then we swallow the remains. After eating both raisins, I ask students to compare the experience. Invariably students point out the taste of the second raisin was much richer. I have had some students who found this small exercise life changing in that it opened to them the whole world of mindfulness. The experience also brings awareness to how life is interconnected and how so many conditions brought the raisin to us. Another important insight of the practice is to begin to see how we live in an interconnected and interdependent world. In my classes, I suggest to students to start with very simple activities in developing mindfulness, such as drinking tea or coffee. Gradually, they can then bring their attention to more complex situations. Connected to meditation practice, mindfulness becomes a powerful way that we can carry our awareness into daily life. With mindfulness, meditation is not something that is fragmented or separated from the rest of life. Instead, our day can become a seamless whole of awareness. We find that we live in the most empowering place, the eternal now. One of the teachers in my class commented how mindfulness made a difference: As a teacher I have become more aware of my students and their feelings in the class. Instead of rushing through the day’s events, I take the time to enjoy our day’s experiences and opportune moments. The students have commented that I seem happier. I do tend to laugh more and I think it is because I am more aware, alert and present. (Miller, 1995, p. 22)

Mystery The universe is filled with mystery. Our own lives contain many surprises, both large and small. Mystery has spurred scientists for centuries to investigate and explore. Edward Frenkel (2013), professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about the beauty of mathematics and how it reveals a hidden reality at the heart of the universe. He cites Einstein in his book, Love and Math, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modes powers must feel” (p. 241). Frenkel writes that there is a hidden reality that can be discovered with the help of mathematics. He believes that exploring this hidden reality in this way “will shed light on the deepest mysteries of physical reality, consciousness and the interactions between them (p. 235). Mystery exists with each human being. If we are open as teachers, we can be surprised by the mystery within each student. Each person has some talent that may

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be hidden and our hope as teachers is that we can help that talent to unfold. There are moments in teaching when a student suddenly shows us something wonderful and unexpected. It could be something the student has written or drawn or an act of compassion to another student. In one of my courses, a teacher wrote a paper entitled “Compassion Flows in Every Direction,” which was about children of parents who experienced the Holocaust and how they cared for their parents. This teacher wrote about how students in her school have compassion for their teachers: At school, the love from teacher to child seems to be the natural way of life; however, this mini-study has compelled me to look at how compassion flows in every direction. It has been my folly not to develop this awareness earlier. I have recognized how children, when they have their needs met, have a great capacity to care for adults both emotionally and physically. During the course of writing this paper, I have begun to look for the compassion, patience and forgiveness that students show their teacher in my school, and I have been so pleased to notice many instances. It is a great capacity that we are born with; when we feel loved, however imperfect that love may be, we respond with compassion and more love. It is a wonderful cycle. (cited in Miller, 2018, p. 121–122)

This teacher witnessed a wonderful surprise in how students can care for their teachers. Awareness of Mystery brings a natural humility. It is difficult to be arrogant in the face of the mystery that exists in the cosmos and within human beings. This awareness brings a sense of proportion in life and helps keep our egos from getting too inflated. If we see ourselves as part of nature, a basic humility arises. Humility is a central virtue in Taoism. As a person sees themselves as part of nature, it brings a natural humility. “Being still within permits a man to express himself fully without having to avoid the limitations imposed by his attempting to think of a higher reality. This is why you should be humble before Heaven. This is why you should express humility beneath the power of Heaven” (Kaufman, 2016, 34). We live in the day of the self-promotion and celebrity worship. The ego is out of control as narcissism rules. Humility can be seen as weakness. It is important to root humility in nature so that it is not false or contrived. Humility is related to the word “humus” which means soil; we are part of the earth and its processes. If we use nature as a guide, then it helps bring about a natural humility. As teachers we realize that learning never ends. We are constantly curious about the world, our subject matter and how children learn. Our curiosity should match the curiosity of the child. Through this curiosity we can see ourselves in the students. Sometimes when we take on a major learning project (such as learning a new language), we can feel how the students must feel in learning something new and difficult. This curiosity keeps us humble; we realize there is never an end to the learning process. We are also humbled by the fact that we never can fully know the results of our teaching. Sometimes we will hear from a student years after they were in our class about how much they learned from us. Yet this is an isolated incident, and we can wonder about our effect on all the other students we worked with over the years.

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Clearly there is a mystery to teaching and being aware of this mystery is truly humbling. Henry Adams wrote, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops” (cited in Howe, 2003, p. 238).

Conclusion These four elements—trust, joy, love, and mystery are interconnected and support each other. The more we can trust ourselves and the unfolding of nature and its mystery, it is natural for joy to arise. We give up trying to control things in our lives in and in the classroom. Trying to control what is happening is futile. The only thing we can control is how we respond. If we can respond with love then life can feel like a gift and filled with grace. Sarah Kaufman (2016) has written a book on grace and writes, “The most meaningful application of grace is to connect us more deeply with one another (or perhaps especially?) in the smallest moments” (p. 2017). Grace is being aware of others and responding to them in helpful ways. In the classroom, a teacher describes how mindfulness helps her respond gracefully to students: Being mindful in our classrooms we are able to slow our thoughts and actions and become aware of our students’ needs, see how we are meeting them, and how the students are affected and respond to our actions. . . . When we teach mindfully, we know what we are teaching. We are aware of the words we speak, the tone in which we speak them, we are able to deeply observe and listen to our students and aware of connectedness between student and teacher and indeed all the members of the classroom community. We are able to see the presentation of the curriculum and adjust it to the situation. (Miller, 2014, 151)

Of course, there will always be tension and stress in teaching but living as much as possible with trust, joy, love and mystery can help us teach with ease and grace in the classroom. We can experience what the teacher wrote about in her paper—“the cycle of compassion”—which is ongoing and can fill our lives with love and joy.

References Alighieri, D. (2003). The divine comedy. New American Library. Armstrong, K. (2010). Twelve steps to a compassionate life. Knopf. Farrell, J. H. (2012). Clarence Darrow. Random House. Frenkel, E. (2013). Love and math: The heart of hidden reality. Basic Books. Gandhi, M. (1980). All men are brothers: Autobiographical reflections. Continuum. Gildiner, K. (2015). Coming ashore. ECW Press. Hanh, T. N. (2016). At home in the world: Stories and essential teachings of a monk’s life. Parallax Press. Howe, R. (Ed.). (2003). The quotable teacher. The Lyons Press. Kaufman, S. F. (1998). The living Tao; meditations on the Tao Te Ching to empower your life. Charles Tuttle. Kaufman, S. L. (2016). The art of grace: On moving well through life. W. W. Norton. Lama, D., & Tutu, D. (2016). The book of joy: Lasting happiness in a changing world. Viking. Lin, J. (2006). Love, peace and wisdom in education. Rowan & Littlefield Education.

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Miller, J. P. (1995). Meditating teachers. Inquiring Mind, 12, 19–22. Miller, J. P. (2014). The contemplative practitioner. U of Toronto Press. Miller, J. P. (2018). Love and compassion: Exploring their role in education. U of Toronto Press. Ming-Dao, D. (1992). 365 Tao: Daily meditations. HarperCollins. Rohr, R. (2013). Immortal diamond: The search for our true self. Jossey Bass. Sardello, R. (1992). Facing the world with soul. Lindisfarne Press. Swafford, J. (2014). Beethoven: Anguish and triumph. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Wagamese, R. (2021). What comes from the spirit. Douglas and McIntyre. Watts, A. (1995). The Tao of philosophy. Charles Tuttle. Watts, A. (2000). What is Tao? New World Library.

Advancing the Science of Character Education

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Twenty Plus Years of Reviewing the Literature in Character Education Melinda C. Bier, Mitch Brown, Robert McGrath, Marvin W. Berkowitz, and Keith Johnson Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Works in Character Education? Summary, Re-analysis, and Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The What Works in Character Education Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Reviews of the Character Education Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meta-principles of Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Second Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Practitioners and researchers have been evaluating the effectiveness of individual character education programs for more than 50 years, and substantial funds have been dedicated to the conduct of these programs. What Works in Character Education literature review (WWCE; Berkowitz and Bier, What works in character education: A research-driven guide for educators. Character Education Partnership, Washington, DC, 2005a; Berkowitz and Bier, What works in character education: A report for policy makers and the media. Character Education Partnership, Washington, DC, 2005b; Berkowitz and Bier, J Res Character Educ M. C. Bier (*) · M. W. Berkowitz University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] M. Brown University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. McGrath · K. Johnson Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_26

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5:29–48, 2007) was the first comprehensive review of these studies. The goal of that review was to determine whether sufficient evidence of character education’s effectiveness existed to warrant the continued investment of very limited school resources. Begun in the year 2000, this initial literature review drew a great deal of interest and revealed not just a national but a global hunger for a science-based approach to character education. Over the years the initial WWCE research team, joined by various colleagues, continued collecting and reviewing the literature (Berkowitz & Bier, Research-based fundamentals of the effective promotion of character development in schools. In: Nucci, Narvaez, Krettenauer (eds) Handbook on moral and character education. Routledge, pp 248–260, 2014), adding a review of the growing number of related literature reviews from fields such as social emotional learning, positive psychology, and prevention science (Berkowitz et al., J Character Educ 13(1):33–51, 2017). In this chapter, we summarize WWCE research, its strengths and weaknesses, and our subsequent efforts to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of character education. We go on to present findings from more recent work using rigorous meta-analytic techniques (Brown et al., J Moral Educ, in press). This work is part of a larger project supported by grant #61178 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Keywords

Character education · Literature review · Meta-analyses

Introduction

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National interest in character education has waxed and waned over the last century. Figure 26.1 demonstrates this phenomenon using two sources. The plot on the left reflects the frequency of references to the term “character education” according to

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Fig. 26.1 Frequency of scholarly references to character education. The plot on the left reflects references to character education in Google Books, the plot on the right references to character education in PsycINFO

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the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which is an online search engine that charts the yearly frequencies for any word string in the entire corpus of digitized Google Books. The plot on the right is the yearly distribution of PsycINFO entries that included the phrase. Although scientifically imprecise, the two plots share a similar U-shaped distribution and tell a common story. Interest in character education reached an all-time peak in the early 1930s. However, this was followed by a rapid decline that has only partially been reversed beginning in the early 2000s.

What Works in Character Education? Summary, Re-analysis, and Update The initial decline in national interest and investment is often attributed to the research by Hartshorne and May (1928–1930) on the effectiveness of religious and moral education programs. Their extensive research was widely interpreted as suggesting that these interventions had little relationship with students’ tendency to engage in unethical behaviors such as cheating or lying, and that moral choices were more strongly influenced by situational factors. A substantial literature has emerged in recent years questioning the methodology of their work, and the degree to which their findings justified rejecting concepts such as moral education and moral traits (e.g., Leming, 2014; Rushton et al., 1981). Subsequent research suggests both personal dispositions and situational factors are important contributors to the tendency to behave honestly (e.g., Markowitz & Levine, 2021). At the time, though, the educational community perceived the Hartshorne and May findings as compelling and negative in their implications, which contributed to a half century of disinterest in the school-based development of character and virtue. Arguably, the modern character education movement has its roots in the cognitive developmental perspective of psychologist Jean Piaget (1997/1932), as extended by Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) in the 1970s and 1980s. Kohlberg’s work on moral development and specifically moral cognition, resulting in a theory of the stages of moral reasoning, inspired a renewed interest in crafting educational systems to contribute to moral and social development among youth (Kohlberg & Mayer, 1972). It is important to note that the data in Fig. 26.1 are specifically about usage of the term “character.” In the latter half of the twentieth century, prior to its resurgence, and again largely due to the work and influence of Kohlberg, other terms replaced it, most notably “moral” and “values.” More recently there has been a marked expansion of terminology adding terms such as “positive,” pro-social,” “social-emotional,” and “virtues.” In response to what is widely seen as an overly narrow cognitive focus in Kohlberg’s psychology, and the justice reasoning focus of his ethical philosophy, psychologists and educators subsequently sought to expand their conception of morality. An Ethic of Care, emphasizing caring, compassion and empathy, and situated in a relational psychology, was championed by a number of feminist philosophers and psychologists (Sherblom, 2008), notably Carol Gilligan (1982) and later Nell Noddings (2002). Other psychological aspects of the moral domain

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also became the focus of renewed interest, including the topics of empathy; moral identity; prosocial development; social-emotional capacities; and distinctions among moral values, social-conventional values, and personal values (Nucci, 2001). These efforts ultimately resulted in the identification of potential targets for character development programming beyond the moral domain (Shields, 2011). In addition to moral character, educators have looked at performance character (Lickona & Davidson, 2005), intellectual character (Baehr, 2023; Ritchhart, 2004), and civic character (Althof & Berkowitz, 2006; Howard et al., 2004) as targets for school-based personal development of students. Each of these socially sanctioned goals in turn can encompass an entire class of more specific targets, such as the development of integrity and kindness as sub-goals of moral education. Character education has come to be conceptualized by many as a large umbrella that encompasses programs addressing any of these targets (McGrath et al., in press) through changes in the attitudes, identity, knowledge, and behaviors of youth (Benninga et al., 2006). It is this breadth in terminology and practice that creates the greatest challenge for proponents of character education. Despite the limitations of their answers, Hartshorne and May (1930) were asking an important question: Does the character education currently being done actually work? Our thinking about questions of this type have matured in the intervening years, moving away from binary judgments of treatment efficacy to dimensional perspectives on how well treatments work, but the question remains essential. A systematic empirical approach is necessary to adequately address this question, however.

The What Works in Character Education Project In 2000, the What Works in Character Education (WWCE) project was initiated to provide insight into the efficacy question (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a, 2007); i.e., literally, when character does work, what is it about those initiatives that makes it work? With a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, these authors embarked on a literature review that consisted of four phases. In phase 1, they set about defining a conceptual framework for character education. After examining an extensive list of definitions for the term character education, including definitions from leading scholars, educators, and educational organizations, character education was conceptualized broadly and the domain of relevance was operationalized as all “K-12 school-based initiatives either intended to promote the development of some aspect of student character or for which some aspect of student character was measured” (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005b, pp. 1–2). Our definition was intentionally inclusive of initiatives that did not necessarily self-identify as character education. In phase 2, we set about uncovering and collecting the relevant outcome research based on our operationalized definition of character education. First, we established an interdisciplinary advisory panel. This panel included five experts representing the fields of service learning, social-emotional learning, violence prevention, drug and

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alcohol prevention, and teacher/classroom effects on students. The panelists were charged with providing and reviewing lists of studies and research review articles as well as identifying prominent program developers and evaluators from their respective areas of expertise. We then began collecting candidate studies through the year 2004. We searched multiple electronic databases, including ERIC, PsychINFO, HealthSTAR, and the Social Science Index. In addition, we directly contacted program developers and evaluators we or members of the panel identified as potentially having conducted a formal evaluation of a character education program requesting (via email or telephone) relevant studies. Over 760 documents, including 67 research reviews, were collected. Unfortunately, many documents did not include outcome research, were duplicates, and/or early versions of later publications. In total, 109 outcome studies and 5 focused program reviews fit the domain definition (for more details on methodology see Berkowitz & Bier, 2007). In phase 3, the remaining 109 individual outcome studies and 5 literature reviews were reviewed to exclude those that did not meet our minimal criteria for acceptable scientific design. These criteria consisted of: a. Inclusion of a comparison group b. The use of a pre-post assessment, or some means to ensure initial equivalency of program and comparison groups such as random assignment c. Report of at least one statistical test of significance Of the 114 manuscripts, 73 representing 39 different character education programs were deemed to have met these criteria. We then applied an algorithm to each study to determine whether the study to be considered was overall supportive of the program’s effectiveness. The algorithm involved differentially weighting the number of significant outcomes supportive of the intervention, the number of significant negative outcomes, and non-significant outcomes in a manner intended to ensure that the bulk of outcomes in a study were significant and supportive. In the case of publications that included multiple studies, we applied the algorithm to the combined studies (see Berkowitz & Bier, 2007, for a detailed explanation of this process). This process yielded 33 character education programs considered efficacious based on 69 studies (64 primary studies and 5 reviews). The programs are listed in Table 26.1. Of these 33, data were available on their effectiveness for 21 at the elementary level, 18 at the middle school level, and 8 at the high school level.

Findings As one of the first systematic reviews of the research literature on character education programming, the WWCE project yielded broad, yet important, conclusions. The single most important finding was that character education can positively affect the character development of school students. Other major findings included evidence that character education can affect many aspects of

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Table 26.1 Empirically supported programs in what works in character education 1. Across Ages (elementary, middle) 2. All Stars (middle) 3. Building Decision Skills with Community Service (middle) 4. Child Development Project (elementary) 5. Facing History and Ourselves (middle, high) 6. Great Body Shop (elementary) 7. I Can Problem Solve (elementary) 8. Just Communities (high) 9. Learning for Life (elementary, middle, high) 10. Life Skills Training (elementary, middle) 11. Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers (LIFT) (elementary) 12. Lions-Quest (elementary, middle, high) 13. Michigan Model for Comprehensive School Health Education (elementary, middle, high) 14. Moral Dilemma Discussion (elementary, middle, high) 15. Open Circle Program (Reach Out to Schools) (elementary) 16. PeaceBuilders (elementary) 17. Peaceful Schools Project (elementary) 18. Peacemakers (elementary, middle) 19. Positive Action (elementary, middle, high) 20. Positive Action Through Holistic Education (PATHE) (middle, high) 21. Positive Youth Development (middle) 22. Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) (elementary) 23. Raising Healthy Children (elementary, middle, high) 24. Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP) (elementary, middle) 25. Responding in Peaceful & Positive Ways (RIPP)(middle) 26. Roots of Empathy (elementary, middle) 27. Seattle Social Development Project (elementary) 28. Second Step (elementary, middle) 29. Social Competence Promotion Program for Young Adolescence (middle) 30. Social Decision Making & Problem Solving (SDM/PS) (elementary, middle, high) 31. Teaching Students to be Peacemakers (elementary, middle, high) 32. Teen Outreach (middle, high) 33. The ESSENTIAL Curriculum (Project ESSENTIAL) (elementary, middle) Note. Though some programs were implemented at multiple levels of schooling, empirical evidence was only available for those levels that are bolded

character development; character education programs take a wide variety of forms; and character education programs tend to include multiple components (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a; 2007). This project played a significant role in nine journal articles, three monographs, eight book chapters, a book, and over 100 workshops (see Table 26.2). The three formal WWCE monographs (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a, b, 2007) and other project products became the primary resource by which educators, administrators, and policy-makers across

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Table 26.2 WWCE products

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Articles Berkowitz and Bier (2004) Bier and Berkowitz (2005) Berkowitz and Bier (2007) Berkowitz (2011) Berkowitz (2011–2012) Bier et al. (2016) Berkowitz et al. (2017) Monographs Berkowitz and Bier (2005a) Berkowitz and Bier (2005b) Berkowitz (2007) Book Berkowitz (2021) Book chapters Berkowitz et al. (2006) Berkowitz et al. (2008) Berkowitz (2009) Berkowitz et al. (2012) Berkowitz et al. (2012) Berkowitz and Bier (2014) Berkowitz and Bier (2020)

the country accessed and utilized the extant evidence base for character education. With no intentional effort by WWCE authors, other than by responding to requests, WWCE has made its way across the globe and the authors have been invited to give talks on WWCE throughout the USA as well as globally, including Taiwan, Colombia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Estonia, and Turkey. Despite its historic importance as the first large-scale review of the character education literature, limitations of the project must be recognized. One was the focus on the results of significance testing. This is a problematic inferential strategy. Assuming some homogeneity in effects associated with character education, one implication of power analysis is that the likelihood of significant findings is partly a function of sample size. Given that some studies involved multiple schools with potentially thousands of students, interventions of even trivial size can achieve significance though they have limited clinical value. This is particularly problematic in studies where the data analysis did not correct for dependencies among children experiencing character education in a shared classroom or school, especially when the unit of intervention was the whole school or classroom. In recent years, there has been growing recognition that violation of the independence of observations assumption associated with standard t tests or analyses of variance can substantially increase the probability of a Type I error, thereby

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suggesting a relationship exists when the evidence does not support this conclusion (e.g., Baldwin et al., 2005; Murray, 1998). Whereas at that time the bulk of research on this topic was in the USA and in English, limiting the search to English language manuscripts can be a bias and has become more so as the character education “movement” has become more global. Finally, the exclusion of articles with a balance of evidence suggesting no or negative effects for character education interventions meant the statistics reviewed were not a comprehensive survey of the character education literature. Accordingly, while the WWCE project was the most thorough compilation of research literature to that time, it addressed the question of whether the literature indicated character education could be efficacious, and if so under what conditions. It did not address the question of how efficacious that literature suggested character education programs to be.

Other Reviews of the Character Education Literature Several other attempts have been made to provide insight into the effectiveness of character education programs, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Early efforts focused on programs that emphasized moral development and values clarification interventions (Berkowitz, 1985; Enright et al., 1983; Lockwood, 1978; Schlaefli et al., 1985), consistent with Kohlberg’s influence on the rebirth of interest in character education. These authors noted various methodological weaknesses in the literature, including non-random assignment, lack of control groups, use of inappropriate statistics, and failure to control for potential confounds. Subsequent to the WWCE review, more recent reviews of a broader swath of approaches to character education have been presented. Berkowitz (2011) attempted a “review of reviews” and to integrate them with the WWCE findings. This effort tended to reinforce the general conclusions of WWCE, to echo many of the specific conclusions about effective implementation strategies, and to supplement those strategies with additional evidence-based strategies.

Meta-principles of Implementation The reviews of what is effective in character education have identified a cumbersomely long list of evidence-based practices. While that provides a rich smorgasbord of options for educators to consider, it remains inordinately unwieldy for professional development, program design, and consultation with educational organizations. Therefore, identifying a set of “meta-principles” which organize and cluster these specific implementation strategies is an attractive solution. In the field of social-emotional learning, Durlak et al. (2010) proposed the SAFE model of Social, Emotional Learning (SEL), recommending that SEL implementation builds on (1) Sequenced modular training, (2) for Active learning, that (3) explicitly Focuses

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on SEL skill development, (4) directed toward Explicit SEL goals. These guidelines can assist educators in designing effective implementation plans. In an attempt to identify a set of meta-principles for the implementation strategies identified in the WWCE (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a, 2007) project, as supplemented by the subsequent review of reviews (Berkowitz, 2011), Berkowitz et al. (2017) presented the PRIMED model of “six design-principles” for character education (Berkowitz, 2021). PRIMED clustered the long list of evidence-based practices into: (1) Prioritization of character education in classroom/school/district purpose; (2) the intentional, strategic, structural and inclusive nurturing of healthy relationships; (3) promoting the internalization of core values and virtues through Intrinsic motivation; (4) Modeling of the targeted vision of human goodness and competency toward which the initiative is designed and directed; (5) a pedagogy and philosophy of Empowerment of all relevant stakeholders; and (6) a Developmental pedagogy designed for long-term and holistic human development and learning.

The Second Question The foregoing answers the question of “what works in character education,” providing (1) a list of effective programs, (2) an extensive list of molecular implementation strategies, and (3) a molar list of guiding “design principles” based on those implementation strategies. However, the WWCE project was not designed to test a second question, namely “how well does it work?” This can be done by testing individual approaches/programs/initiatives or by engaging in meta-analyses of a set of such studies. WWCE in fact identified research about 33 programs that are effective. CASEL (2003) has done likewise with an even larger number of socialemotional programs in their Safe and Sound guidebook. The US Department of Education sponsored a large-scale effort to evaluate crossprogram effectiveness of a small set of programs, referred to as the Social and Character Development Research Consortium (SACDRC, 2010; cf. Haegerich, 2009). This project is noteworthy in that it simultaneously evaluated multiple character education programs with a common set of instruments; using a prospective design over the period 2004–2007; involving a large variety of schools and participants; evaluated using appropriate statistical methods such as correction for non-independence among students. The project revealed little evidence of positive effects, and the investigators concluded that programs might even have been associated with a detrimental impact on some student outcomes. However, this research had several limitations. Only seven character education programs were examined, and it is unclear to what extent they represented effective programs in general. For example, only three of them were on Berkowitz and Bier’s (2007) list of programs for which there was existing evidence of effectiveness. Second, the substantial majority of teachers in the control groups reported integrating social and character development strategies into their classrooms. Furthermore, while the combined results of the seven programs showed no effect, program-specific reports for the

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established programs among the seven revealed strong significant impacts (e.g., Jones et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2010; Li et al., 2011). More recent reviews of programs that can be considered examples of character education have employed meta-analytic methods. This approach represents an important alternative to those of WWCE and the SACDRC. The WWCE method for choosing studies meant the project addressed the following question: When there is evidence of effectiveness for a program, what program characteristics are associated with that finding? In contrast, the SACDRC approach addressed whether the seven programs investigated were effective; it provided no basis for generalizing beyond them. The use of meta-analysis creates a context in which it becomes possible to draw conclusions about the extent of effectiveness of character education in general. Four meta-analyses are currently available specifically focusing on character education. Diggs and Akos (2016) and Jeynes (2019) both found significant albeit modest effects on academic, behavioral, social, and personality outcomes. Jeynes (2019) additionally found that the length of program implementation was associated with larger positive effects. Meta-analyses focusing on social-emotional learning programs have also consistently generated positive effects for a number of outcomes, including social-emotional skills and academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011; Taylor et al., 2017). In order to answer the “does it work” question, the Center for Character and Citizenship team (most notably Berkowitz and Bier) partnered with Bob McGrath and his research team to use meta-analytic approaches, first for the original WWCE data set and then for a larger and updated data set. The WWCE study, because it was asking the “what works?” question, excluded studies that showed no effect, and in rare cases iatrogenic effects. We were now interested in what the existing research at that time indicated about the second question, namely “does it work?” Hence, originally excluded studies were now included. This generated a database of 64 studies, with 836 statistical tests for a total of nearly 100,000 participants. For details of this project, see Johnson et al. (2022). The overall effect size was g ¼ 0.33, which Johnson et al. pointed out is consistent with effect sizes in educational research. It was therefore concluded that, based on the data that generated the WWCE conclusions about “what works,” it can also be concluded that character education does work to promote character development. Given that the WWCE database, at this time, was both relatively small (only 64 studies) and not up to date (studies were all dated 2004 or earlier), we decided to update the database (through 2017 when the project began). We were able to identify an additional 150 studies, beyond the WWCE database, that met all the criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. This resulted in a sample of 214 studies, including 2472 analyses of over 300,000 participants. For details, see Brown et al. (in press). There was a mean effect size of g ¼ 0.24, slightly smaller than in the first metaanalysis, but still significant. Based on the prior meta-analyses (Diggs & Akos, 2016; Jeynes, 2019) and our decidedly larger meta-analyses (the Brown et al., in press, sample was four times as large as Jeynes’ and 20 times as large as Diggs and Akos’), the answer to the second

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question, Does it Work?, is “yes.” Meta-analytic techniques suggest that the body of research on school-based character education is effective in promoting the development of student character. This is particularly heartening given the heterogeneity across the studies in methods, pedagogical philosophies, outcomes and outcome measures, samples, etc. In fact, as was demonstrated in the SACDR study (SACDR, 2010), simply including any program that calls itself character education, without a filter for effective practices, such as those identified in WWCE, will weaken the overall findings of effectiveness.

Conclusions Given the enduring and widespread, indeed global, interest in promoting the positive development of youth, particularly with schools as a delivery system, knowing what is effective practice is both prudent and crucial. The Center for Character and Citizenship has been at the forefront of providing information pursuant to the identification of effective school-based character education for over 20 years. These efforts can be clustered into answers to two questions. First, we addressed the question of “what works in character education” in a project of that name (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a, b, 2007) and successfully identified 33 programs and a large set of practices that are effective in promoting character development. This was supplemented by adding other reviews in a review of reviews (Berkowitz, 2011). Then in order to make this large and complex set of suggestions more manageable and implementable, we created a meta-model of six “design principles” for effective character education that organized the long list of specific practices. This model, PRIMED, suggests educators focus on (1) Prioritizing character education, (2) promoting Relationships, (3) fostering Intrinsic motivation, (4) Modeling good character, (5) Empowering all stakeholders to partner in the initiative, and (6) taking a long-term perspective on a Developmental pedagogy (Berkowitz, 2021; Berkowitz et al., 2017). Having established a usable and evidence-based model of “what works,” we partnered with Bob McGrath’s lab at Fairleigh Dickinson University to tackle as second question, “does it work?” WWCE focused on skimming effective practice from the large body of implementation research, but we still did not have good evidence that as a general, albeit quite variable, endeavor character education tends to be effective. Employing meta-analytic techniques, we executed two studies to directly tackle this question. First, we revisited the original WWCE database and applied meta-analysis, finding that indeed, for that set of 64 pre-2005 studies, character education is effective (Johnson, et al., 2020). Given the outdatedness of the original WWCE literature database, we then executed a second study of 214 studies up to 2017 (Brown et al., 2020). Again, the findings were that character education is effective. We can take heart in the fact that, despite the heterogeneity of the field and the varying levels of implementation rigor, research methods, and bases for program design, character education tends to work in promoting the positive development of youth in schools (note that given the spread of character education into out-of-

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school/after-school programming, it would be useful to replicate this work on studies of such implementation modalities). Whereas the effect sizes in the two metaanalytic studies were significant and generally in line with the size of significant finding in the field of education, it is prudent to design character education initiatives around what we specifically know are research-based design principles and specific pedagogical practices, in other words findings from research on our first question “what works.”

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Leming, J. S. (2014). Research and practice in moral and character education: Loosely coupled phenomena. In L. P. Nucci, T. Krettenauer, & D. Narváez (Eds.), Handbook of moral and character education (pp. 150–174). Routledge. Li, K. K., Washburn, I., DuBois, S. L., Vuchinich, S., Ji, P., Brechling, V., Day, J., Beets, M. W., Acock, A. C., Berbaum, M., Snyder, F., & Flay, B. R. (2011). Effects of the positive action programme on problem behaviours in elementary school students: A matched-pair randomised control trial in Chicago. Psychology & Health, 26(2), 187–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 08870446.2011.531574 Lickona, T., & Davidson, M. (2005). Smart & good high schools: Integrating excellence and ethics for success in school, work, and beyond. Center for the 4th and 5th Rs/Character Education Partnership. https://www2.cortland.edu/centers/character/high-schools/SnGReport.pdf Markowitz, D. M., & Levine, T. R. (2021). It’s the situation and your disposition: A test of two honesty hypotheses. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(2), 213–224. https://doi. org/10.1177/1948550619898976 McGrath, R. E., Han, H., Brown, M., &Meindl, P. (in press). What does character education mean to character education experts? A prototype analysis of expert opinions. Journal of Moral Education Murray, D. M. (1998). Design and analysis of group-randomized trials. Oxford University Press. Noddings, N. (2002). Educating moral people: A caring alternative to character education. Teachers College Press. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1997/1932). The moral judgment of the child. Free Press. Ritchhart, R. (2004). Intellectual character: What it is, why it matters, and how to get it. JosseyBass. Rushton, J. P., Chrisjohn, R. D., & Fekken, G. C. (1981). The altruistic personality and the SelfReport Altruism Scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 2(4), 293–302. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/0191-8869(81)90084-2 Schlaefli, A., Rest, J. R., & Thoma, S. J. (1985). Does moral education improve moral judgment? A meta-analysis of intervention studies using the Defining Issues Test. Review of Educational Research, 55(3), 319–352. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543055003319 Sherblom, S. A. (2008). The legacy of the ‘care challenge’: Re-envisioning the outcome of the justice-care debate. Journal of Moral Education, 37(1), 81–98. Shields, D. (2011). Character as the aim of education. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(May), 48–53. https:// doi.org/10.1177/003172171109200810 Social and Character Development Research Consortium. (2010). Efficacy of schoolwide programs to promote social and character development and reduce problem behavior in elementary school children (NCER 2011–2001). National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Taylor, R. D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school-based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta-analysis of follow-up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156–1171. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12864

Coping with Tradition and Secular Literacy Higher Education as a Site of Hope and Anguish – A Case Study

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arab Society in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arab Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Higher Education, Literacy, and Religiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Higher Education in Arab Society in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Higher Education Among Arab Women in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analytical Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Need to Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The University as Part of the Socialization Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content, Structure, and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Literacy as a Source of National Pride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Power/Knowledge Relations and Sorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Multiple Modernities Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze how a religious Muslim woman copes with secular studies in a religious university setting in Israel. Through a comprehensive case study, the article will uncover the major socialization agents that have meaningful influence on her academic and religious life and how exposure to higher education influences her religious definition, values, and worldview. Arab society is principally a traditional, religious, and patriarchal society, and this fact Z. Gross (*) Bar- Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_27

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has wide-reaching ramifications on various aspects of the individual. Thus, it is assumed that the exposure of religious Muslim women to a university setting and especially to secular literacy, which is a modern arena, challenges her traditional religious definition and outlook and serves as a meaningful agent of change and transformation. Keywords

Higher education · Muslim woman · Literacy · Religion · Secularism

Introduction The aim of this research is to analyze how a religious Muslim woman copes with secular studies in a religious university setting in Israel (Gross, 2012). Through a comprehensive case study, this article will uncover the major socialization agents that have meaningful influence on her academic and religious life and how exposure to higher education influences her religious definition, values, and worldview. Arab society is principally a traditional, religious, and patriarchal society, and this fact has wide-reaching ramifications on various aspects of the individual (Barakat, 1993). Thus, it is assumed that the exposure of religious Muslim women to a university setting and especially to secular literacy, which is a modern arena, challenges her traditional religious definition and outlook and serves as a meaningful agent of change and transformation. First, this chapter will describe Arab society, the possible clash between globalization, mobility, literacy, and religiosity, and Arab women and higher education. Then I shall present a case study of an Israeli Arab woman who describes and analyzes what it means for her to be an Arab Muslim student in a religious Israeli university coping with secularism and literacy.

Arab Society in Israel Arab society has three principal characteristics: a patriarchal regime, a conservative village-oriented society, and a society with a Muslim majority under foreign rule (Al-Haj, 1987). The Arab family maintains a patriarchal regime with segregation of roles based on four components: age, sex, generational status, and birth order. The extended patriarchal family is the principal societal institution which protects the individual and provides for most of his needs. Success and failure are attributed to the family in general and not solely to the individual (Al-Haj, 1995; Bloom & Blair 2002). Arab society attributes importance to social and family loyalty and prefers collective behavior to individual behavior. In Arab culture, the individual is not granted entity status distinct from the social identity. Striving for individual achievement is viewed by society as deplorable (Dwairy, 1997) and is in direct conflict with basic values of society.

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After the 1948 war, the Arab population that remained in Israel was delegated to minority status, with no political, social, or religious leadership. The Arab minority suffers from an identity crisis, reflected in its ambivalence between Israeli citizenship and Palestinian identity.

Arab Education Arab schools view themselves as tools to achieve universal goals and not as part of the social gamut that acts to achieve collective-nationalistic, social, cultural, stature, and religious objectives. The course of studies ignores the nationalistic and religious aspects of the Arab population and emphasizes Arab culture in a defused and simplistic format. Arab schools in Israel suffer from chronic discrimination in budgetary terms. In addition, Arabs are practically non-existent at the decisionmaking level in the Ministry of Education and study materials lack content that reflects Arabic culture, history, and literature including Islamic studies. Arab schools also have a relatively low level of achievement, reflected in matriculation results and in acquisition of higher education (Abu-Asba, 2005). According to the Ministry of Education, Islam is a required subject in Grades 2–9 in Arab schools. As part of the study cluster known as “Culture and Religious Heritage,” the Arab population is supposed to teach its pupils 2 h of Islam a week. This requirement is not generally enforced and, in most schools, there is a trend toward reducing the number of hours of instruction. In the high schools, only 70% of pupils study Islam. On this level, while the subject matter is required, there is no testing requirement, since the grade in this subject is not included in the students’ average needed for university acceptance. In practice, only the weaker students study and take tests in Islam. It is therefore possible to see two contradictory trends. On the one hand, there is the street with its increasing religious orientation that provides the students with a feeling belonging and identity. On the other hand, there is the achievement approach in the spirit of neoliberalism with a meritocratic orientation that promises students that high scholastic achievement will grant them social mobility (Abu-Asba, 2007). Since there is no systematic teaching of Islam in the schools in a modern and enlightened manner, the students are mainly exposed to political Islam in the street and in the mosque, which advocates the ultimatum to distance themselves from modernity and cling to fundamentalism. Hence, when Muslim students are exposed to secular studies in the framework of higher education, they may become less religious or secularized.

Higher Education, Literacy, and Religiosity In the Middle Ages, literacy was only granted to the religious elite in society. It was assumed that the exposure to literacy will lead the masses to skepticism and heresy. Literacy was considered to be the enemy of religiosity (Moore, 2007). Illiteracy was

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a tool for ruling the masses. One of the greatest achievements of the enlightenment was that it granted equal access to literacy to the masses. This process was accompanied by rationalism and relativism which were the basis for a new movement, secularism. It was assumed that the more people are exposed to secular texts, the more secularized they will become and their connection with sacred texts will gradually weaken. The exposure to secular ideas will cause a transformational and conceptual change in values, norms, and worldviews. Peter Berger and his colleagues argued that the exposure to a value system that contradicts religion causes secularization and the abandonment of religiosity (Berger et al., 1973). Accordingly, the university has the power to secularize because of the conflicting ideas it presents to students. Pluralism also has a secularizing impact. Indeed, research has found a correlation between literacy and secularization (Astin, 1993; Bowen, 1977; Roof & Hadaway, 1977, 1979). Exposure to higher education has been found to entail a decrease in religious practice and religious participation (Hadaway & Roof, 1988), among these a decrease in church attendance and in participation in prayers. The decrease in religiosity was mainly found among individuals who endorse liberal worldviews: those who were more liberal in their attitudes to sex, drugs, and abortions. Bar-Lev (1994) argued that higher education is one of the major factors in the secularization and leaving religiosity among adolescents. He claims that the exposure of religious students to an alternative belief system decreases the basic trust of adolescents in their belief system. He based this assertion on a study which found clear objective and subjective parameters of decreasing religiosity among students who were exposed to higher education (Bar-Lev & Kedem, 1984). However, since the 1990s, other researchers have found that the religiosity of students who attended higher education institutions was strengthened (Lee, 2002). According to Lee, this stems from the fact that the new zeitgeist supports openness to alternative sets of values and the university is perceived as reflecting an additional truth alongside other truths. In their research, Lee et al. (2004) found that religious students on campuses viewed their religious peers at the university as a support group and that contact with them strengthened their religious level. Thus, they perceived the peer group at the university as a meaningful factor in religious strengthening and concluded that the possibility of being religiously visible on campus and practicing your religion strengthens religiosity. However, Lee defined religiosity as being spiritual rather than traditionally religious. It may be that college strengthens feelings of spirituality but the manner in which the contents of higher education (namely, literacy) influence religiosity is still unclear. In order to understand the unique situation of Arab women attending higher education institutions in Israel, this article first discussed higher education in Arab society in Israel.

Higher Education in Arab Society in Israel Higher education is a social and economic resource (Yogev, 2010). It is perceived as a transformative force to increase the professional and social status of minority

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groups (David, 2007) and narrows the bridge between the majority and minority in different aspects of life. It empowers the minority and enables them social and political mobility. Higher education enhances individualism and critical thinking that contradicts the collectivist nature of Arab society. Literacy is one of the main instruments for developing the society and the individual. It is a prerequisite to adopting and adapting to modernization. It is the basis for the acquisition of power and influence. It empowers the individual to resist discrimination and to be committed to enhancing equality and combating social injustice. Due to the political situation in Israel, higher education is perceived among Arabs as a national and political resource (Al-Haj, 2003). The development of higher education is considered a major factor in integrating the Arab minority into the modern Israeli state. Arab academics are perceived as agents of change and their power derives from their achievements rather than their ascribed status within the framework of Arab society (Al-Haj, 2003). In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of Arab students studying toward second and third degrees in Israel. As a minority group, they have higher aspirations, enhanced by their school socialization (Abu-Asba, 2005), and they continue studying toward higher degrees in order to increase their opportunities in the marketplace (Haidar, 2003).

Higher Education Among Arab Women in Israel The number of Arab women in higher education institutions is larger than that of Arab men, and Arab women have higher social and economic expectations than women who belong to the majority group (Haidar, 2003). Women perceive higher education as an instrument that enables them to equally compete with men. However, research shows that despite the increase in higher education among Arab women, there has only been a very small social change (Abu-Baker, 2002). This is explained by the fact that women do not see higher education as a means to selffulfillment but rather an instrumental need of economic survival. Arab women in Israel face “double marginality” (Herzog, 2004), as part of a minority that is systematically ignored and has fewer opportunities in the work force and as women who need to compete with men in their society. They perceive participation in higher education as an opportunity to enter the public sphere (Azaiza et al., 2009). They like the fact that they have an opportunity to distance themselves from the private sphere and be exposed to the hegemonic dominant Jewish Israeli culture, which is more modernized and thus challenging. Literacy enables them to escape traditional norms and expand their social horizons and social status. Literacy is an instrument to crystallize an individualized identity, which gives legitimation to private independent opinions, gives them self-efficacy, and increases their self-image and confidence, enabling them meaningful careers. Gilat and Hertz-Lazarowitz (2009) found that Arab women perceive higher education as a basis to demand equal rights. They perceive themselves as strong women; higher education gives them feelings of liberty and empowerment.

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However, research shows that the way to higher education is often blocked to an Arab woman by her family and by the social and political leadership (Haidar, 2003). It is encouraged by men only if it serves their designated interests. Nevertheless, studies show that educated Arab women succeed in the Israeli workforce and gradually become partners in the nuclear family (Al-Haj, 1995; Herzog, 2004). Despite the success of some Arab women in breaking through the glass ceiling, research shows that most Arab families perceive literacy only as an economic resource that enables providing meaningful economic assistance to the husband. Families perceive higher education for a woman as a resource for marriage or a financial investment for her future husband (Abu-Baker, 2002).

Methodology The central research question examined here was how a religious Muslim female student copes with exposure to secularism through literacy in higher education in a religious Jewish university. Since literature on the relationship between higher education, literacy, and religiosity is relatively scarce, these categories have not yet been made explicit. The methodology employed here is therefore a qualitative case study of a single woman. The aim is to expose tacit categories in the individual’s mindset (Phillion & Connelly, 2004; Sabar, 1990). The prerequisite for this is a constructivist epistemological orientation (Connelly et al., 2003; Sabar, 1990). I will use the case study as it is a technique for organizing information and social findings in a way that preserves the uniqueness of the objects that are investigated (Sabar, 1990, p. 115). A case study can be used to investigate complex phenomena not yet theoretically described. It contributes to our knowledge of individuals, groups, and uncharted phenomena (Yin, 2003, p. 1). The goal is to produce an integrated, holistic description of real-life events and to establish a framework for discussion and debate. Manal is a Chemistry student at a religious university in the center of Israel. She lives in a village in the north of Israel. She comes from a very religious and traditional background. Her family is strictly religious and associated with the Islamic movement. I met with her in the cafeteria. She is beautiful, intelligent, and very articulate. She does not cover her hair. I asked her if she would agree to be interviewed in depth for my research and promised her full anonymity and confidentiality. I interviewed her twice. I asked Manal to describe her academic experience as a Muslim woman. More specifically, I asked her to describe what it meant to her to be a religious Muslim woman at our university. The first interview was very general and the second was more focused and specific. I then interviewed Manal 10 years after my first interviews and publish here this additional layer. I called her to invite her to start her PHD. At the beginning she rejected the idea but then she agreed, and we had a meaningful conversation which I recorded and analyze here. This later interviews had a more intimate quality and dealt with personal issues

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which I promised not to publish, yet many parts of this follow-up interview helped me to answer my research question.

Analytical Method The three interviews I conducted (two 10 years ago and one more recently) were taped and transcribed according to Spradley (1979), and the material was analyzed according to the constant comparative method (Strauss, 1987). In the initial stage of analysis, recurring topics were identified. Axial coding allowed for formulating categories, defining criteria, and continuing theoretical sampling. The stage of selective coding involved refining and finalizing the criteria. The next stage included formulating the hierarchy and identifying core categories. The final stage involved creating a category-based theoretical structure linked with the literature and developing an empirically corroborated theory.

Findings The Need to Excel The main topic that arose repeatedly during the interviews was the need of the Arab woman to excel: The main message our [high school?] teachers repeated again and again was “You have to be the best! You are the leaders of the future. You have to be the best in every subject and every issue.” Some teachers even told us: “Literacy is our weapon. It is especially important for women – we will be able to survive and be empowered with our good grades.” They kept saying literacy is both a means and an end. All means are justified to achieve that end. We have to survive. This is our future; we need a profession, so we need good grades; high achievements are the key to our survival.

This response was typical of a member of a minority group, even after 10 years, her discourse was filled with words like “survival,” “fight,” and “weapons.” She told me: “although recently I got the position as a deputy to the principal of a school still I need to struggle for my survival.”

The University as Part of the Socialization Process Manal believes that her academic journey is part of a long socialization process: “I don’t feel that I only come to school when I come to the university. I feel that I come to a new culture. It is like entering a new country.” Socialization involves the “acceptance of values, standards, and customs of society as well as the ability to

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function in an adaptive way in the larger social context” (Grusec & Davidov, 2007, p. 284). When we met recently at the university and she told me that she feels at the academia like a migrant “You know Zehavit you try to convince me to start my PHD yet I still feel here like an immigrant. Everything is so different, and I ask myself will I ever be part of this system?” Manal told me 7 years ago, “Every morning when entering the gates of the university, I understand that in order to be part of this place I have to accept certain new norms and values. Even the exposure to a mixed society with boys and girls is new for me. I have to get used to it and adapt to some new situations.” Kuczynski (2003) defines agents as “actors with the ability to make sense of the environment, initiate change and make choices” (p. 9). Schachter and Ventura (2008) assert that agents of socialization, identity agents, have five main characteristics: they have goals regarding children’s development; they act upon their identity concerns and goals, implementing practice intended to further these goals and enhance their participation in identity formation; they continuously assess and monitor the child and his or her environment on different levels in order to better mediate identity; they hold implicit psychological theories regarding identity development that guide their practice; and they are potentially reflective practitioners. That is, they do not passively adopt goals and replicate practices from their own past experience and socialization but rather they reflect on them, adopting, adapting, and rejecting them. Though her father is considered her main socialization agent, Manal thinks that her mathematics teacher in high school and her university teachers are also meaningful socialization agents. My father is the most important person in my life. He is so wise and so determined – everyone admires him in my village. But I must confess that in terms of my career, my mathematics teacher was the most meaningful person in building my academic aspirations and dreams – he kept telling us excel, excel, that’s the most important message for you.

Then she added, “Also if you ask me, my teachers at the university are very meaningful, especially the women and especially the religious women – when I see a religious woman who has five children and excels, that gives me a lot of hope.” In her recent interview, she told me: “I must tell you a secret my father urged me to come. When you called me, I hesitated, but he had heard about our conversation and he said: ‘Go ahead- go and meet her. . . and listen to her. . .’.” According to Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory, socialization for values takes place through a process of intersubjectivity, in which the teacher and student begin a discussion with different conceptualizations and can ultimately reach a shared understanding. This is made possible by a process of adjustment to the perspective of the other and scaffolding that involves the social support given by the adult in any learning process. Manal recounted,

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My lecturer in statistics told us one day, “You have to think what you want to achieve in life, what is your direction. There are probabilities concerning the consequences, depending on the tracks you choose.” I took this lesson literally and thought what it means for me – I had a conversation with the lecturer a month later and told him how meaningful his comment was for me.

Manal told me in our recent interview: I was very innocent. . . and foolish I thought that everything is open to us and I will have equal opportunities yet although I am now the deputy of the school principal I still feel that the tradition does not allow me to function as a free person, as a free woman. Women are still considered to be inferior and in my village educated women are considered to be second rate citizens. I hope that the new generation will feel much more comfortable in this complex post-modern world.” In this recent interview it is obvious that Manal is much more mature, reflective and critical.

Content, Structure, and Procedures Re-reading the interviews indicated that Manal’s academic experience involved three basic dimensions: content, structure, and procedures. Most research on school curricula concentrates on content and learning skills, while the educational or values component of the curriculum is usually neglected. This stems from the fact that content and learning skills can be measured in real time, whereas transmission of values can only be estimated in retrospect, at a time when the students are no longer in school. In my interviews with Manal, the contents were indeed the major part of the discourse, though she also referred to the structural aspect and to the processes she underwent. Contents: It is important to have knowledge and information. The university gives me a great opportunity to collect information – we live in a world where information becomes power. This is also an important message we got in school. . . They also told us that we have to have skills, basic skills and then more sophisticated skills – the skills are instruments but they are also contents. We collect everything that is available to us through the literacy process. In our philosophy of science course, we met challenging texts which sometimes contradict our Muslim education. They talked about the fact that we have to rely on rationalism. The whole notion of belief, as we believe in Allah, is different. We didn’t go into this issue, but it is important information.

Now working as a professional 10 years later, Manal says: “Information is the main source for my emancipation. Therefore I came to meet with you today.” Structure: Manal juxtaposes the structure of socialization between a monistic and pluralistic approach: The university functions differently. According to our teachers in high school, we are supposed to believe only in Allah. Here they present some alternative beliefs and say that

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all beliefs are true; this is something very different. Some people might have problems with such a structure. We are used to another structure.

Process: Manal differentiates between a linear and a spiral process of learning. As a member of a patriarchal system, she is accustomed to a frontal learning system based mainly on repetition and memorizing texts. However, at the university and especially in philosophy courses, she is exposed to spiral processes of learning, to exploration and reflexivity, mainly through interactive learning, meditation, discourse, and hermeneutics. In high school, we mainly repeated and learned things by heart, as our teachers believed that we have to know as much as possible – to collect knowledge. This doesn’t mean that we didn’t understand it; of course we understood the information, but what was important was to collect more and more information. Here we have to understand. We are asked to think and to explain, and if we start at a certain point we may leave it and come back to it later. This is very different; some people have real difficulties with this approach.

Yet, Manal notes that the situation within the Arabic school system is adapting to the more modern educational approaches: “there is a huge change in our educational system. We are now asked to be more reflective and critical. It is a huge shift in our system.” Jonassen (1995) argues that meaningful learning consists of the following categories: it is active (engagement with mindful processing of information), constructive (accommodating new ideas into prior knowledge to make sense of meaning), collaborative (building a community of learners that supports contextual learning), intellectual, conversational, contextualized, and reflective (learners reflect on the process and decisions). Manal considers exposure to literacy to be a process that results in meaningful learning for her. She analyzed the process: Studies at the university enable me to be part of a special society. I must work hard and prepare assignments. The material we read is not easy. We are bombarded with information. Most of it is in English which further complicates the situation. I have to digest the material and examine it in relation to my tradition. Then I consult with my friends. Question: Who? Arab or Jewish friends? Manal: Both. It depends. Obviously, I first speak with my Arab friends but often when we come to class, we discuss it with the rest of the students. Most of them are Jewish but there are many kinds of Jewish students. Sometimes it is easier to speak about it with the Russian students. I think they are more open. Most of our material is very technical but here and there we have some philosophical debates. But this is very unusual. We have to work hard and pass the exams. We don’t have time. Reflecting on her current situation, Manal commented: “I think that now I am more open to open ended questions and dialogues. In retrospect the exposure here to literacy and knowledge was transformed in the long run to a reflective channel which enabled me to see reality differently. Yet, when I came home to my traditional society I became an immigrant. . . once I understood the situation, my life has been changed completely. It took me time to realize this”.

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Literacy as a Source of National Pride The exposure to literacy gives Arab students with a sense of belonging. It empowers them and grants them dignity as a minority group: We also had a debate on the origin of Algebra. I told my Jewish friends that Algebra was invented by the Arab nation, by an Arab scientist – so the Arab nation practically invented science. My teacher told me, “Be proud of your origin. When you are at the university, you represent Islam. Be proud.” The university enabled me to meet other opinions, other religions. I live in a village. This was my first opportunity to experience the outside world. There are many temptations. You must be ready. School concentrates on instruction of the subjects for the matriculation. I want to learn more. This is not only my feeling but also the feeling of my friends. The level of Islamic studies in our high school was very low. I practically knew nothing. I knew very little Quran, but after our conversations in the university cafeteria, I felt a need to learn more. Now I was more mature and ready to really study. Studying Islam was now out of real curiosity. I didn’t do it because I have an exam. It was pure interest because I knew I would need it. The level of teaching of Quran at my school was perhaps problematic. I don’t blame the teachers – we didn’t have time. People kept telling me Islam is a religion of terrorism. I felt I must resist. I am not a terrorist and felt I need more material, more information to confront those arguments. This is part of our struggle to survive in this country. After ten years Manal says that she started studying a special religious course where she was exposed to some new ideas in Islam and other Abrahamic religious traditions “being exposed to Judaism for example has helped me to better understand my Islamic origins”.

Manal does not wear a hijab, a head covering. When asked about this when she was a student at the university, she said: I plan to cover my hair after finishing my studies and the university before going to work. I have to grow and be ready for this act. I have to better understand it and be motivated. But I know it will be easier for me to get a job with the hijab. We had a conversation about it in class. One Jewish woman asked me, “How come an intelligent woman like you still thinks about covering her head? Look how beautiful you are.” I like this university – I feel comfortable here. Many orthodox Jewish women cover their hair – we develop sisterhood feelings with the religious Jewish women – they are also modest. Modesty is a high value in my traditions and in Jewish tradition. It is interesting to note that after ten years Manal still does not wear a hijab and she has not married. It seems that she feels uncomfortable with this status and with a very apologetic remark she says “I think that this is the price I paid for my emancipation. I was not accepted in my village and became a real threat to young men who simply did not even want to meet with me”. I looked at her and feel sorry for her. She says “I have not given up. I hope that now you understand that I will NOT be able to start my PHD as I will immediately loose my future”. I told her that I am sorry for her and promise to continue waiting for her and said: “you are very capable and intelligent”. She smiled. . . but it was a very bitter smile.

During the interviews, Manal juggles between her strong commitment to Islam and Allah and the academic demands to be open to literacy and secular knowledge.

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Literacy is a challenge for us. Yet, I always remember that I am a Muslim woman. I am very religious, not only traditional. Allah is part of my personality – I come from a religious home – my father is strictly religious. My whole family is that way. I fast during Ramadan, and I pray. The university even strengthened my religiosity as I see how it is important to be religious when you go to the outside world. Our religion empowers me. It gives me courage and hope.

This comment and Manal’s other comments during our interviews illustrate the difficulties and challenges which Muslim woman from traditional societies face in Israel. This has significant ramifications, which will be discussed in the next section.

Discussion and Conclusions The aim of this case study was to analyze how a religious Muslim woman copes with secular studies in a religious university setting in Israel. The life of female Muslim students is situated in the incongruence between the neoliberal modern world offered by academia through a formal course of study that builds up their world as individuals, and their religious-traditional world at home and in the mosque that builds their religiosity and grants them feelings of belonging to the Arab collective (Abu-Asba, 2007). Aside from this, the female Muslim student finds herself in a system of contradictory expectations between the formal definition of her role as a representative of the Muslim society and her social definition as a university student. In discussing Manal’s role as a female Muslim student in higher education a hybrid comparative perspective is employed: a vertical perspective, which analyzes changes in the Islam over the decades, and a horizontal perspective, which examines the different ways Muslims cope with the opportunities open to them in the modern world and the diverse ways they implement those opportunities. These two lines of analysis highlight the multiple interpretations of modernity that a Muslim woman encounters while constructing her unique approach to modernity. In the past, Arab society was defined as a rural traditional society (Sagy et al., 2001), but today it is undergoing rapid secularization and modernity processes. Arab social structure in general emphasizes the collective over the individual and has slower paced societal change and a higher sense of social stability (Arar & Rigbi, 2009). However, today researchers inspired by the multiple modernity hypothesis tend to see the diverse ways Muslims relate to and interpret modernity (Himmelfarb, 2004; Inglehart, 1997). This multiple perception enables women like Manal to simultaneously juggle literacy and traditionalism, modernity, and strict essentialist religious conviction.

Power/Knowledge Relations and Sorrow There is a fundamental difference between the first interviews that took place in 2012 and the interview that took place in 2022. Manal in the later interview is much more mature. She has a high personal awareness of the complex situation in which she

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finds herself. On the one hand, her exposure to knowledge within the framework of higher education advanced her professionally; on the other hand, she has paid a heavy personal price for this enlightenment. The exposure to high knowledge caused her to lose her belonging in her traditional village to which she returned. She has experienced difficulty bridging the gap between the ideal, emancipated woman, to which she was supposed to aspire according to the academic world, and the ideal model of the submissive and obedient Muslim woman that the traditional society in her village requires her to be in order to survive. Michel Foucault developed the theory that sees a connection between power and knowledge. He claimed that power relations are relations of power and resistance (Foucault, 1980). Where there is no resistance there is no power relationship. Manal structures the power relations within the traditional environment in which she lives in her village that is resisting the new value system of modernity that she acquired with her higher education studies. The knowledge she acquired at the university creates resistance and gives her strength. The new language she acquires from her studies in higher education produces a new consciousness and it is a structure that creates a new reality for Manal, but along with the idiosyncrasies she has in this new reality, she also has a lot of sorrow for exposing herself to a foreign lifestyle and culture through the knowledge she acquired in higher education. The power she receives frees her but also fetters her because she does no longer fits into the traditional world where she grew up, causing her angst and sorrow (Gross & Maor, 2018). Thus, there is a dichotomy with the higher education she has received, because it undermines her place and integration into the society she is returning to (Moore, 2007). The academic discourse within which she grows at the university goes through processes of manipulation in her village and actual sanctions are applied to her in which she becomes an outcast because of the new power she has gained (Halevy & Gross, 2022). This separates her from the society she grew up in and where she no longer has a future because marriage and having a family are the central pillars for a woman in that society, unlike Western societies, where the traditional family structures have been undermined. Knowledge gives her strength, but it is also a weakness, causing her anguish that paralyzes her. She finds it difficult to build a life for herself that can able to bridge the gap between the world of knowledge and its possibilities and the great anguish created as a result of that knowledge. While this is a challenge at the individual level of Manal’s story, it reflects the situation for women living in traditional religious societies – both Muslim and Jewish.

The Multiple Modernities Hypothesis Most of the social sciences have been organized around the pre-modern/modern conceptual divide that seeks to understand the institutional and cultural transformations from one to the other (Smith, 2008). Thus, concepts like differentiation, rationalization, individualization, urbanization, and so on were used to conceptualize

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processes of modernization. Religious education literature used these concepts as major tools to analyze processes and institutions within the education arena (de Souza, 2005, 2009; Gross, 2003, 2006; Lovat, 2003, 2005; Ziebertz, 2003; Ziebertz & Riegel, 2009). The assumption was that modernity was destructive to religion and to traditional cultures. The secularization hypothesis assumed that religion would vanish with the progress of time and the advance of modernity. The opposite has happened. Events that took place after World War II – the fall of the Soviet Union, the strengthening of fundamentalist regimes in Iran, and 9/11 – have all shown that religion is still a major actor. What we have seen is a growing trend of terrorism, which utilizes modern technology to promote anti-modern agendas. S. N. Eisenstadt (2000) was the first sociologist to argue that modernity is not a simple coherent unity but contains many facets. “Modernity liberates individuals from the constraining bonds of tradition generating a multiplicity of options that give rise to choice and pluralism. Yet at the same time modernity imposes certain forms of discipline, uniformity, rationalization and social control that counts individual liberation” (p. 5). This new approach unpacks the Gordian knot between modernity and westernization and claims that they are not identical and that the western patterns are not the only authentic manifestations of modernity. Eisenstadt argued that the idea of multiple modernities in the contemporary world is “the story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs. These multiple institutional and ideological patterns are carried forward by specific social actors in close connection with social, political and intellectual activists holding different views and conceptions of modernity” (p. 2). One of the major social actors is the teacher, and especially the religious education teacher, who facilitates the journey into modernity vis-à-vis his crucial role in the crystallization of the religious identity formation of his students (Gross, 2010; Lovat, 2003). Göle (2000) argues that the idea that religion is an obstacle to certain modern beliefs should be revised. She perceives the Islamic movement as “a critical reevaluation of modernity” (p. 92). We can see different facets of Islam in Turkey, in Iran, in France, in the Middle East, and in the Hindu world in India, where, for example, different manifestations of autonomy for both men and women are growing (Eickelman, 2000). In Turkey, the young generation sees itself at the same time as both European and Muslim. In the same way, Manal can be both religious and very open to modern literacy. This tendency is supported by recent research. It explains how Muslim students can be simultaneously religious and modern. Bryant et al. (2003) examined the influence of the first year in college on students’ spiritual and religious world and found that after the first year, they became more committed to spirituality though they were less active and practiced less. Lee et al. (2004) found that college students showed increased intellectual interest in religion and motivation for religious knowledge acquisition. Batson et al. (1993) found that while on campus, students develop religious conceptions that match the worldviews of their peer group. The university enables an encounter with the other. As Manal lives in a village, the university experience was her first opportunity to have an unmediated encounter and to practice interfaith dialogue. The fact that her higher education socialization

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takes place within a religious university made it easier for her, as both groups (religious Jewish and Arab) share a traditional orientation and similar dress code and modest behavior. The multi-faith encounter with other religions, especially with modern orthodox women at the university, challenged her religiosity and forced her to strive to gain more knowledge in order to “protect” Islam. She feels she has to fight prejudice and stereotypes that lead to discrimination. Hence her religious strengthening will help her to resist and continue the Israeli Arabs’ struggle for religious and social rights.

Conclusion The major finding of these interviews is that Manal treats secular literacy and her academic studies in a very instrumental fashion. Arab society in Israel has undergone fundamental change in recent years (Haidar, 2003), for example, from the extended family to the nuclear family, and a growing number of women are gaining higher education and entering the public sphere (Abu-Baker, 2002). However, it still maintains a patriarchal regime and a collective orientation which imposes on her limitations in terms of her education. Thus, her quest for information is a means to adjusting herself to society’s demands (Saada & Gross, 2017). The interviews indicate that Manal treats the information she acquires at the university as consumption, which she accumulates eagerly in a neoliberal fashion. It is not meant for self-fulfillment but rather for gaining power and “commodities.” In such a situation, what is important is the final degree rather than secular literacy in the original meaning of the period of the enlightenment. She seeks information rather than knowledge. This kind of socialization does not contradict her religious worldview but rather empowers it – it does not cause “the clash of civilizations”; on the contrary, it fuels the neoliberal revolution which is situated within a multiple modernity context. This is a fundamental “change of the game” (Bourdieu, 1990) which is enlisted for national and political revolution rather than literacy for its own sake. Hence, Manal does not see any contradiction between secular literacy and religiosity. This finding should be further investigated in larger samples using sensitive qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

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Integrating the Personal with the Public Values, Virtues, and Learning and the Challenges of Assessment

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Knowledge Management and Meaning Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning How to Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Language for Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Negotiating a Locally Owned Language for Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pedagogy for Values Education: The Challenges of Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Issues in the Assessment of Values and Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Validity and Reliability: Or Authenticity and Trustworthiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modes of Assessment for Values and Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Values are a contested, but increasingly important, aspect of learning and teaching in the information age. In this context, values education – that is learning and teaching that attends to the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development of students and the formation of virtue and character – was understood, practiced, and resourced separately from the core business of schooling which was about the acquisition of knowledge in the form of testable learning outcomes. There is now a paradigm shift that sees the formation of virtue and character as an indispensable part of the whole of education. The chapter recounts the ramifications of this paradigm shift. Keywords

Values · Virtues · Character · Assessment · Learning · Teaching R. Crick (*) WILD Learning, Bristol, England e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_28

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Introduction Values are a contested, but increasingly important, aspect of learning and teaching in the information age. During the industrial era of the twentieth century, in western schooling systems, values were understood as separate entities from rationally justified forms of knowledge (Hirst, 1974) which formed the bedrock and focus of the curriculum. Stimulated by economic imperatives, the latter part of the century saw a burgeoning of high-stakes summative testing and assessments, such as the state-mandated tests in the United States, the national examination systems for 16–19-year-olds in the United Kingdom and in many other countries, and the national curriculum tests in England and Wales. There was a widely held view that such testing would actually increase educational standards – or the quality of the learning outcomes required by the curriculum and defined in terms of knowledge, skills, and understanding. Kellaghan et al. (1996) suggested that part of the rationale for this view was that the tests themselves exemplified to students what they have to learn, that they indicate standards, and that high (“world class”) standards can be demanded of students, who would put effort into school work in order to pass the tests. In this context, values education – that is learning and teaching that attends to the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development of students and the formation of virtue and character – was understood, practiced, and resourced separately from the core business of schooling which was about the acquisition of knowledge in the form of testable learning outcomes. The popular idea of the “values neutral” school and curriculum was upheld as an ideal way to deal with the increasingly complex multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaith society. At best, values were an “add on” to the central task of schooling – relevant to people’s private lives, traditions, and communities but of little significance in the public world of the curriculum, and beyond in the world of work. Although espousing “neutrality” in terms of values, the “lived” value of this form of twentieth-century schooling was evident in Hirst’s description of liberal education as follows: . . . a form of education knowing no limits other than those necessarily imposed by the nature of rational knowledge and thereby itself developing in man the final court of appeal in all human affairs. (Hirst, 1974, p. 43)

The basic metaphor within this paradigm is of the teacher as expert, facilitator, or conduit for knowledge, and the chief orchestrator of the curriculum (Haste, 2009). The teacher facilitates and channels information to students, in ways designed to maximize the students’ ability to process and absorb it. Knowledge is transmitted from the “top down,” and the primary target of teaching and learning is the individual student’s performance. However, the impact of the information age has profoundly challenged, if not terminally wounded, this educational paradigm. It has changed forever the ways in which human beings relate to things, to each other, to knowledge, and to the natural and the material world. In this new context, values, attitudes and dispositions, and

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identity are integral components of learning, teaching, and curriculum which require professional attention, planning, resourcing, and assessment. There are three aspects of pedagogy which are particularly brought to the fore by this paradigm shift – and which demonstrate the ways in which values education can no longer be ignored. These are as follows: first, the ways in which knowledge is now encountered and constructed; second, the related need to focus on the processes of learning how to learn, and go on learning in novel situations throughout life; and third the pedagogical imperative to negotiate and identify a locally owned and shared language of values for learning within a particular community and place.

Knowledge Management and Meaning Making Knowledge, as information and data, is widely available on the Internet both as information and as prepackaged systems of ideas. Young people turn to the Internet in order to find out about anything from complex philosophical ideas to knowing how to mend cars. The challenge for educators is no longer in instructing students to memorize and repeat “pre-packaged” ideas and concepts in a prescribed and abstract curriculum, separated by the walls of the classroom from the places and contexts in which that knowledge has been constructed. This latter is a model of knowledge acquisition consistent with the Cartesian dualism of subject–object and mechanical modes of production that have dominated Western thinking for the past few centuries. In contemporary society, students’ experiences of reality unfold in terms of interrogations of rapidly changing, overlapping systems of spatialized knowledge (Jaros & Deakin Crick, 2007). In practice, technology has become almost “body invasive,” providing tools (such as mobile phones) which mediate between people, and between people and things, providing new “networked structures” for communication, exchange, and development. These mediators literally blur the distinctions between image and reality, between “Self” as an abstraction and “Self” as embodied in a particular place, and furthermore between experiential and propositional knowing. Signs, symbols, and imagery take on new epistemological significance, because they enhance the capacity of the Self to make meaning from these data and experiences (Moor & Bynum, 2002; Lovink, 2004; Goldberg, 2001). Their impact on an individual’s sense of identity is a key aspect of values education which requires renewed attention from theorists and practitioners because signs, symbols, and images are major ways of communicating meaning and mediating values in contemporary society (Gruhska, 2009). The pedagogical challenge of this “new technological paradigm” characterized by “information generation, processing and transmission,” as the core means of production and source of power (Castells, 2000, p. 21), is in enabling students to select, make meaning of, and creatively use that information in a manner that connects with their own life purpose and is applicable to the world beyond the classroom. That is not to say that traditional didactic teaching and rote learning of some aspects of knowledge and skills is not worthwhile, but that the ability to generate and manage

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knowledge and information must increasingly form part of a learner’s “tool box” of capabilities which can be used for negotiating personally meaningful pathways through the otherwise overwhelming amount of data which is “out there.” As Bauman (2001) argues: . . . educational philosophy and theory face the unfamiliar task of theorising a formative process which is not guided from the start by the target form designed in advance. (p. 139)

In summarizing a substantial review for Futurelab which looked at the impact of technology on learning and schooling for the twenty-first century, particularly focusing on the formation of identity and citizenship, Haste (2009) argued as follows: . . . interactive technologies are inherently ‘bottom up’ driven by the agent who is acting on the information in order to take advantage of new technologies, and to bring into formal education what are increasingly the routine and taken for granted practices and skills of the rest of the student’s world, schools will need to rethink the top-down model of education, and find ways to facilitate, and orchestrate, these bottom-up, often collaborative, practices productively. (p. 23)

This “bottom up” approach to the cogeneration of knowledge is inherently values-laden. The metaphor is no longer curriculum as prescription, but curriculum as narration (Goodson et al., 2010) as the student as learning agent negotiates a personally meaningful pathway through the “plethora” of information and opportunities available and then projects forward toward a negotiated, publicly assessable learning outcome. The student’s encounter with values is integral to the process of knowledge construction and use because a “bottom up,” or archaeological, approach begins with understanding how humans relate to, use, or perceive the information/ knowledge/data in question in a context which is meaningful to the learner. In a word, human activity is always values-laden. Values are foregrounded from the moment that the student uncovers the narratives embedded in how humans have related to the object of inquiry and continues as the learner compares how these stories critically intersect with their own life narrative, as well as the narratives of the particular learning community in which they are situated. This is an inescapable part of the process of meaning making, relevance, and engagement in authentic pedagogy.

Learning How to Learn The second, interconnected aspect of pedagogy, which requires a rigorous application of values education, is the process of learning how to learn. Bentley argues that in future the key resources for the generation of wealth will be ideas, knowledge, and creativity, not the land, labor, and physical materials as in the past. In the light of this, Bentley (1998) argues that the goal of education “... should be the development of understanding which can be applied and extended by taking it into the spheres of

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thought and action which, in the real world, demand intelligent behaviour” (p. 19). He proposes two tests of education as follows: . . . how well students can apply what they learn in situations beyond the bounds of their formal educational experience, and how well prepared they are to continue learning and solving problems throughout the rest of their lives. (p. 1).

Such findings are supported by research carried out by Quality in Higher Education which identifies four underlying reasons for the employment of graduates: knowledge and ideas; ability to learn; capacity to deal with change; and problem solving, logical, and analytic skills (Harvey & Mason, 1996). Learning how to learn has been the focus of a plethora of initiatives since the turn of the century, at school and policy level (see the Teaching and Learning Research Project of the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom; the Campaign for Learning; and The Assessment Reform Group). The European Commission set up a Learning to Learn expert group in order to develop indicators for learning to learn, which was one of the key competencies identified by the Lisbon Agreement (Hoskins & Deakin Crick, 2008). Common to all of these initiatives has been the quest for an approach to learning and teaching which stimulates the student to take responsibility for their own learning over time, in other words, to become “intentional learners” (Black et al., 2006). Intentional learning implies a novel sense of agency and choice on the part of the learner and involves self-awareness, ownership, and responsibility. Black et al. (2006) are reluctant to reduce the concept of “learning to learn” either to an individual quality or to a set of strategies. They argue that it is impossible to separate learning to learn from the process of learning itself, focusing on the term “learning practices” that incorporate intra- and inter-personal processes. Likewise, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1989) argue that intentional learning goes beyond the acquisition of study skills and strategies and requires practices which invoke the need for the learner to take responsibility for their own learning, and to do this in a way that involves peers. This requires students to be motivated to learn, to be intentional, to be aware of themselves and others as learners, and to regulate their own learning. Hautamaki et al. (2002) also emphasize the importance of learner agency and selfregulation. When pedagogy focuses on the development of student awareness and ownership of learning, and the capacity to take responsibility for learning choices in a curriculum designed to stimulate inquiry, the question of value becomes a local, personal one, concerned with its relevance to a context and the purpose brought to it by a learner. What I learn cannot be separated from what matters to me – it is a product of intention and desire (Zembylas, 2007). Knowledge is no longer simply what I learn, but also how and why I learn and how I apply that learning in my life. Intentional learning begins with desire, which is autogenic and personal, but the outcomes of formal learning are mostly assessable by publicly agreed criteria set by a particular community of practice and are thus formal, external, and publicly valued. The journey from personal choice in learning to a formal and assessable outcome is a

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dynamic process in which critical attention to values is an integral and inescapable part of the process. Furthermore, learning to learn as a “competence,” or “as the ability to successfully meet complex demands in a particular context through the mobilization of psychosocial prerequisites (including cognitive and non-cognitive aspects),” includes dimensions of knowledge, cognitive skills, practical skills, attitudes, emotions, values and ethics, and motivation (Rychen & Salganik, 2003, p. 44). Research into “learning power” suggests that there are clusters of values, attitudes, and dispositions which are necessary for effective learning. These have been identified as the seven dimensions of learning power: changing and learning; critical curiosity; meaning making; creativity; learning relationships; strategic awareness; and resilience (Deakin Crick et al., 2004a; Deakin Crick & Yu, 2008). In an Aristotelian sense, people have the capacity to act in a certain way by virtue of possessing the disposition to do so. People become strong or brave by doing strong or brave things, and by consistently choosing such actions, they become better able to act with strength or courage (Ackrill, 1973). Aristotle described a disposition as a habit (hexis), which is produced by similar acts and inclines to similar acts. Aristotle was primarily concerned with the development of character and its relationship to moral behavior, although he applied the same ideas to bodies of knowledge, for example, one who is trained as a scientist is disposed to act in a scientific way (Hope, 1960). In terms of learning how to learn, people become better able to ask questions by virtue of possessing the curiosity to do so; they become better able to make sense out of their learning by possessing the capacity for meaning making, more able to respond to novel situations by possessing the creativity to do so, and so on. These personal qualities of learning power in this sense are similar to Aristotelian “virtues” which, when practiced over time, lead to the “telos” of competence as a lifelong learner who is able to engage profitably with new situations and able to manage the tension between innovation and continuity (Haste, 2001). By practicing strategies and thought patterns which enable a learner to become strategically aware of their own learning identity and processes, they actually become more self-aware and more able to identify, select, and negotiate a range of formal and informal learning opportunities. These so-called soft skills, or virtues, are an integral part of values education in contemporary learning communities as entities in themselves (values) or as behaviors (virtues). As “virtues,” they provide the scaffolding, or the framework, which guides the process of knowledge construction – whether that is the scaffolding required to support the selection of an object or artifact of personal interest for inquiry, the formulation of a problem, or the process of devising a novel solution or negotiating and presenting a “product” for formal assessment. At the same time, they provide a framework for personal reflection, and mentored conversations, which move between the Self or identity of the learner and the “texts” of the curriculum, and for critical engagement with questions of values. When there is dissonance between the learner’s personal experience, the values of their community, and the values implicit in the narratives uncovered in knowledge construction, then learning

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to learn dispositions or “virtues” (such as creativity, curiosity, etc.) act as vehicles for personal development and the formation of personally chosen value judgments, enabling the student to identify and articulate their own values set.

A Language for Values Education One of the practical challenges for educators who wish to engage with values education has been the relative absence of a rich language for naming and describing the “soft” aspects of pedagogy. Without a language with which to name an experience, it is difficult to engage with that experience in a learning context. More significantly, it is impossible to assess because assessment requires the identification of something to be assessed and criteria with which to assess it. Since assessment is a driver of education policy, this is an important political issue and itself a question of value. Research studies, practice in learning how to learn, and citizenship education have begun to provide a rich language and increasingly sophisticated concepts and practices for assessment. The development and refinement of the concepts and assessment technologies for this aspect of pedagogy, or values education, is a pressing concern.

Negotiating a Locally Owned Language for Values One of the historical problems associated with values education has been the question of “whose values” should be promoted and espoused in any learning community. When coupled with the “myth of values neutrality” beloved of modernity, the language and practice of values education became obsolescent. The idea that the government, or church, could “prescribe” a particular set of core moral values ran counter to the ideal of learner autonomy and democracy. However, spurred on by moral panic and anxieties about breakdown in behavior in schools and morality in society, governments did begin to identify sets of core values (for example, the UK NCC, 1993; Australian Government http://www.curriculum.edu. au/values/) and recommended that they inform national curricula. In the United Kingdom, the introduction of citizenship education in the National Curriculum included an even bolder attempt to identify shared values, recommended as learning outcomes for students (Crick, 1998; McLaughlin, 2000). The justifications for these strategies were that societies can identify certain core values which are essential for healthy community and society – and much of this was translated from the world of business. For example, Macdonald et al. (2006), in a book on systems leadership, define a value as “that which has worth to a person or members of a social group” and argue that there are six universal values which are properties of constructive relationships. These are “love, honesty, trust, respect for human dignity, courage and fairness” (p. 17). They suggest that each of these can be adjectives describing behavior (as the virtues described above) or abstract nouns,

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constituting an ideal state to be aspired to. Whether or not it is the case that these values are universal is not the point – that may be the topic of further theoretical or empirical study. In the context of a learning community, it is the particular set of shared values which are important. When it comes to pedagogy for values education within a particular learning community, it is the underlying shared “myths” or belief systems which inform both the language and the identification of behaviors which manifest these values, that is, they form a crucial element of the pedagogical task. The term “justice” may mean nothing to a 7-year-old; however, most 7-year-olds are keenly attuned to the expectation of “fairness.” Making the connections between the lived values of the particular community and a set of “universal values” that can inform pedagogy is a discursive task of educators which can only be undertaken by careful dialogue and mutual purpose. Where unfairness, or lack of dignity, for example, has been structured into particular communities and societies – such as the colonization of Indigenous communities, or the structural discrimination against particular groups, the process of engaging with the “lived experiences” and stories of individual learners and their communities becomes a pedagogical imperative of values education, and an important aspect of assessment. The “lived experiences” of the learner, their affective, cognitive, and conative resources, and stock of memories and experiences are an underdeveloped, but crucial, aspect of Vygotsky’s (1934/1962, 1978) legacy which he described using the term “perezhivanie” (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002). When particular communities are genuinely engaged in the task of identifying “what really is of worth to us here, in our learning community, in this particular place, in the light of our particular story/s,” there is a much richer, more authentic context for the assessment of values education. In the light of what Bauman (2001) describes as the disembeddedness of postmodernity (p. 144), this pedagogical task takes on more significance. Each community will have gone through a different discursive process to arrive at shared values. Those values are likely to change over time, and the language and their representation will be unique to each community, even though there may be evidence to suggest that the same “universal values” will reappear across communities and cultures, albeit “dressed” differently.

Pedagogy for Values Education: The Challenges of Assessment Having identified three key aspects of pedagogy for values education, we are now in a position to address the challenges that these bring for assessment. To summarize, values education requires a complex, embedded pedagogy which critically holds a creative tension between the personal, idiosyncratic, local, and particular, on the one hand, and the public, consensual, universal, and global, on the other hand. The learner is a person embedded in a sociocultural, historical, and ethical trajectory, with a capacity for agency, intention, and capability in real-life contexts of achievement, lifelong learning, and citizenship. Values education is part of a complex process of sustainable human learning and change over time. The telos of the process is a person who is competent in a particular domain – for example, a competent mathematician, designer, or carpenter – and able to negotiate and renegotiate their

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Self-in-relation Identity Desire Motivation

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mentored movement between internal & external agency Dispositions Values Attitudes

Skills Knowledge Understanding

Competent agent Competent learner, Citizen, mathematician, scientist, etc.

mentored movement between personal & public Personal

Local Place

Public mentored movement between the local & global

Global Network

Fig. 28.1 Key elements in a pedagogy for values education

identity, values, attitudes, and dispositions over time while engaging with the world as a competent lifelong learner and citizen. In other words, the overarching purpose is that of human fulfillment and well-being in society. The focus is on learning as a dynamic process in the following way: . . . intelligence/thinking/learning is a single, dynamic, multi-faceted, functional capacity that is inherent in human consciousness [which] may be expressed in a variety of modes. (Clark, 1997, p. 29)

The following diagram outlines the distinct elements in the process of learning which require pedagogical attention – and thus assessment, in the context of values education (Fig. 28.1).

Issues in the Assessment of Values and Dispositions Assessment for values education raises important challenges and opens up space for a wider range of approaches to formative assessment and self-evaluation than pedagogy which primarily focuses on cognitive learning outcomes. How can what we value, such as truthfulness and the virtue of critical curiosity, be identified and assessed within each stage of the movement from personal identity and desire to public competence, rather than only via set pieces of performance at the end? If we are to try to summatively assess a person’s capacity to engage with, and articulate a set of core values, how can that be done in a manner which honors difference and diversity? Values, as virtues, are personal qualities which are constructed by a person in the context of relationships and communities over time. On the spectrum of personal to public, they are located at the personal end of the spectrum, inextricably linked with a person’s sense of identity and desire. On the other hand, shared values as “ideals to which we aspire” are located at the public end of the spectrum. One important assessment question in relation to the personal has to do with authority. The most valid form of assessment for virtues or dispositions is self-assessment because desire and dispositions are embodied and unique to each person. The person is literally the author of their own unique set of values and aspirations, and these shape their

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dispositions. What can be done “from the outside” is to suggest criteria for what good choosing might look like, or how curiosity might manifest itself1 (Deakin Crick, 2009a, b). The identification of a personal set of values to aspire to and the formation of the virtues which serve them are articulated through narrative. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) suggest that narrative attends to a “three-dimensional inquiry space” – the temporal, the spatial, and the personal-social (p. 50). They argue that human lives are woven of stories, and individuals construct their identity through their own and others’ stories. They experience daily encounters and interactions as stories. Every present moment has a storied past and a storied future possibility. Social phenomena become a converging point for individual, collective, and cultural stories. Values education is most potent when a personal narrative intersects with narratives uncovered in the process of inquiry, and the narratives “lived” within the particular, local community (Deakin Crick et al., 2004b, 2005; Deakin Crick, 2002). Where there is dissonance between these narratives, there is potential for deep learning and change, and this is also a site for the negotiation of values and for social transformation. When learning is “bottom up,” narratives are an integral part of the process of knowledge construction. The negotiation of value, and the formation, articulation, and defense of value judgments, is a stepping stone in the inquiry. Assessment events which use narrative thus provide a link between the personal and the public, between the autogenic and the formal. Describing, or “telling,” a learning process as a story enables the construction of a learning identity and the formation of learning dispositions through meaning making and identification. Criteria for the assessment of narratives include technical and esthetic considerations such as appropriateness of form and language, breadth and depth of view, continuity and consistency of “style,” range and coherence of narrative or “plot” between “arousal” and surprise at the new and “resolution,” or satisfaction in its relationship with the known. In the process of telling the story, the learner is embodying the virtue of “reflectiveness” in the context of an even stronger emphasis on learning relationships, and thus engaging in self-evaluation (Carr & Claxton, 2002). The critical questions for the learner in values education are “what really matters to me?” “why is it important?” and “what do I really want to know about it?” The readiness with which a learner takes up the challenge and identifies the object of a new inquiry, the energy aroused by curiosity, the acuteness of discrimination, and engagement with values might all be ultimately reflected in the quality and quantity of learning and its outcomes. The strength and salience of these dispositions can be observed by a mentor or a teacher but can only be validated by the learner herself, perhaps using criteria such as “strength of engagement,” “extent of commitment,” “degree of critical curiosity,” “quality of self-awareness,” and “potentiality of relationship” between the self and the object of interest (Small, 1990).

1

For a more detailed technical discussion of the assessment of dispositions, see Deakin Crick Assessment in Schools: Dispositions, The International Elsevier Encyclopaedia of Education 3rdEdn. Amsterdam, Elsevier.

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Values and dispositions are enacted in the process of learning, and any summative assessment of values or dispositions at the end of the process can only engage with what the learner describes has been achieved or what the teacher has observed to be the case, either directly or deductively on the basis of the evidence presented in the product of learning. Such evidence may be identified in learners’ narrative accounts of the “real life” issues they have explored in the formulation of their learning outcome, or in the metacognitive reflection on the process of learning. Polanyi (1967; Polanyi & Ignotus, 1961) argues that criteria for validating knowledge can be subjective while offering a valid basis for objective judgment, criteria such as beauty, simplicity, and coherence. Assessment criteria for summative purposes, at the end of a process, need not only be technical and subject-specific, but also ethical and esthetic, taking account of ephemeral evidence of the process as well as tangible evidence in its more durable products.

Validity and Reliability: Or Authenticity and Trustworthiness At the heart of the challenges of assessing values and dispositions is the question of the reliability of the judgments. Traditionally, this means a judgment that is consistent through independent observations, which are intended as interchangeable, and measured quantitatively. Thus, the measurements can be standardized and generalized across populations. Reliability is considered as a necessary condition for validity (American Educational Research Association, 1985; Feldt & Brennan, 1989). Important though, such reliability is for some purposes of assessment, such as comparing standards or performances using predetermined criteria across particular populations, it is only one alternative criterion of quality for assessment. Values education, especially the formation of virtues or dispositions and the ability to engage with questions of value, is not served easily by such concepts of reliability and validity. Moss (1994) suggests that the purpose of assessment should be to improve learning, and for this we should adopt an interpretive approach which would honor the purposes and lived experiences of students and the collaborative judgments and discernment of teachers. When it comes to assessing values and dispositions, people and communities are not the same and nor should they be. Thus, there is no ethical or educational purpose to be served by seeking a standardized, summative assessment measure of students’ values and dispositions, even it were possible to do so. The purpose of the assessment for values and dispositions is to enable and strengthen the individual learner, and to provide teachers and mentors with diagnostic information so that they can target their pedagogical practices more precisely. Authenticity and trustworthiness, not reliability, are necessary conditions for validity. Does this particular assessment represent an authentic picture of the individual at a particular point in time and in a particular domain? While there may be public agreement that curiosity or courage is manifest in certain behaviors, such as asking questions or standing up for one’s beliefs, their actual manifestation in situ cannot be generalized, nor can they be quantitatively compared across individuals or across cultures because of the

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presence of so many confounding variables, both internal and external to the learners. At most, a range of possible criteria for “curiosity” might be drawn upon in making judgments in relation to an individual and a context. Then, ultimately, the “face validity” of the assessment for the individual must be the final arbiter.

Modes of Assessment for Values and Dispositions There are at least three modes of assessment which may be relevant to values and dispositions. They include self-assessment by the learner; the analysis of self-report questionnaires or interviews; and observation of behavior by teachers, mentors, or peers. Information from these assessments for values and dispositions may be used formatively, in order to stimulate awareness, ownership, and responsibility or, summatively, in order to summarize learners’ achievements at a particular point in time. Classroom assessments for dispositions and values need to recognize the complexity of the development of values and dispositions and should use appropriate criteria. Facer and Pykett (2007) suggest depth – quality of contribution in an identified context, and range – and diversity of context, whereas Carr and Claxton (2002) refer to “robustness” and “sophistication.” Assessment events for values and dispositions also need to be valid and authentic: Do they measure what they claim to measure, and include the learner as well as the teacher in their validation? They need to be flexible and pedagogically useful: Can learners and their teachers adapt them to particular contexts and domains and to particular learners? They also need to be relational – since there is an implicit movement within the assessment of dispositions between the self of the learner and the formal “text” of what is being learned, requiring trust in pedagogical relationships which affirm and challenge the learner to take responsibility for their own journey.

Conclusion Values and dispositions have been described as contested, but important, aspects of education in the information age which require serious theoretical and empirical attention. The new technologies profoundly challenge educational paradigms devised in modernity and bring to the fore the challenges of integrating the personal and the idiosyncratic with the public and the consensual. This challenge, or tension, is evident in the changes in the way learners encounter and construct knowledge, and in the pedagogical imperative for students to engage with learning how to learn and go on learning throughout life. Both of these themes bring with them a tension between the local and the global, and both require the redevelopment of a rich language for learning which can underpin and provide a framework for values education. I have argued that such a language should be locally negotiated in order that it can connect with the “lived experiences” of learners in a rich, archaeological approach to learning. The worldwide focus on the need for formal schooling to produce “competencies” which enable successful functioning in real-world situations also requires a more complex, elaborated pedagogy which locates values, attitudes, and dispositions

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as part of an embedded and embodied journey over time, from personal identity, desire, and motivation to the achievement of “competence” in a particular public domain. Dispositions, values, and attitudes for citizenship and learning to learn are widely accepted as educational outcomes. Contemporary learning communities need to be identity enhancers which invite and encourage the formation of values, attitudes, and dispositions for learning and engagement in a manner which is integrated with the acquisition of traditional, formal learning outcomes. The challenge of assessing dispositions is rooted in their relationship both to the learning self, the deeply personal, and to the achievement of publicly recognized and validated outcomes. This entails validation of story and roots as well as contemporary cultural meanings.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Character Education Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adopt Add-On Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrate Ethics Discussions into Academic Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrate Process Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Implement a Whole-School Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Smart and Good Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toward a Smart and Good Schools Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Research-Based Teaching Strategy: The Four KEYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Character Needed for, and Developed from, Teaching and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Project-Based Learning: The Biography of a Senior Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Character Power for Teaching Math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Power2Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Power2Teach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Smart and Good Schools Approach to Assessing Excellence and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter explores the relationship between academic performance and ethical behavior. These moral and performance challenges can be reduced to two: How can we get students to do their best work? And how can we teach them to respect and care about themselves and others? M. Davidson (*) · V. Khmelkov Excellence with Integrity Institute, Manlius, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. Lickona State University of New York at Cortland, Manlius, NY, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_29

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Keywords

Character · Academic performance · Ethical behavior · Ethical challenges · Testing

Introduction All schools face challenges in two critical areas: academic performance and ethical behavior. Performance challenges include helping all students learn; improving students’ performance on standardized tests; motivating them to care about the quality of their work and work to potential, not just attain better grades or higher test scores; reducing dropouts; and preparing students for college and/or the workplace. Ethical challenges include teaching students to respect legitimate authority, rules, laws, and the rights of others; preventing peer cruelty and promoting kindness; fostering honesty, including academic integrity; reducing risky behaviors; and helping students become responsible citizens. These moral and performance challenges can be reduced to two: How can we get students to do their best work? And how can we teach them to respect and care about themselves and others? Where can schools find the “power” to meet these challenges? Booker T. Washington said, “Character is power” (Booker T. Washington Quotes, 2009). What is the power of character, and how can schools – and other key groups such as families, businesses, religious institutions, and the wider community – maximize the power of character to meet the performance and ethical challenges facing schools and society? We believe that the power of character comes from the integration of excellence and ethics. To become a person of character means to become the best person we can be. That involves doing our best work (the pursuit of excellence) and doing the right thing in our relationships (the pursuit of ethical behavior). Educating for both excellence and ethics is not a new idea. Throughout history and in cultures around the world, education rightly conceived has had two great goals: to help students become smart and to help them become good. They need character for both. They need “performance character” – qualities such as self-discipline, confidence, diligence, and determination – in order to develop their talents, strive for excellence, and succeed in school and beyond. They need “moral character” – qualities such as integrity, respect, justice, and compassion – in order to behave ethically, live, and work in community, and assume the responsibilities of active citizenship. Although teaching students to be both smart and good is the school’s oldest mission and highest calling, most observers would agree that much contemporary education falls well short of that ideal. Indeed, we would submit that integrating excellence and ethics as a central power source for school success and human flourishing would require a paradigm shift for the field of character education and school reform in general (see Davidson et al., 2008). At least in the USA, character education in recent decades (see Battistich et al., 2000; Beland, 2003; Lickona, 1991) has tended to focus mainly on moral character (doing the right thing) to the

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neglect of performance character (doing our best work). By contrast, general school reform efforts (see National Research Council, 2004) typically have a different deficiency: They tend to focus largely on increasing academic achievement, often narrowly defined as higher test scores, while neglecting the development of moral character. In this chapter, we describe what we call the Smart and Good Schools model of character education, which focuses on performance character and moral character in an integrated way. The Smart and Good Schools approach seeks to maximize the power of moral and performance character by viewing character as needed for, and potentially developed from, every act of teaching and learning. Character education thus conceived stands at the very center of schooling; it is not done parallel to academic instruction, but rather in and through the teaching and learning process. In explaining the Smart and Good Schools model, this chapter will present two classroom case studies; use them to illustrate both the “character-needed-foranddeveloped-from-learning” concept and four interlocking pedagogical strategies we use to help teachers maximize the power of character; introduce a middle and high school character development curriculum based on these ideas (Power2Learn, Davidson et al., 2009) and a corresponding professional development process (Power2Teach, Davidson et al., 2009); and, finally, describe an assessment instrument, CREE (collective responsibility for excellence and ethics) (Khmelkov et al., 2009), designed to help schools benchmark character and culture, monitor growth in those areas, and continually improve their character development efforts. Before presenting the Smart and Good Schools model, however, we look briefly at the current state of the field and what we might call “the character education dilemma.”

The Character Education Dilemma Many schools express their “character education dilemma” in this way: “We think character education is important. We’d like to do more, but we have to meet the state learning standards, get kids ready for the tests, reduce drop outs, prepare a twentyfirst century workforce, and so on. Where do we fit it in?” Academics and character education are experienced as competing priorities. In response to this “Where do we fit it in?” dilemma, at least four kinds of solutions have been offered, each having some value but none, in our judgment, being fully adequate.

Adopt Add-On Programs One approach has been to add a character education curriculum to the school’s existing educational programs. In their monograph What Works in Character Education, Berkowitz and Bier (2006) review a wide range of published character education programs that have been shown to make a measurable difference in some aspect of student character or school performance. But, such programs have

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at least three drawbacks: they must be added to a school’s already crowded curriculum; they require faculty training and another “class prep”; and they leave the school’s regular curriculum – the academic instruction that goes on for most of the school day – unchanged and untapped as a vehicle for character development.

Integrate Ethics Discussions into Academic Classes This approach seeks to integrate character education into the academic curriculum by looking for opportunities to bring out the ethical dimension of a teacher’s subject matter (Beland, 2003; Lickona, 1991, 2004). For example, a social studies teacher might discuss the moral decisions faced by public figures in history or look for current events that raise an ethical issue. However, the ability of most teachers to have these ethical discussions is limited by their lack of training in ethics and the pressure they experience to “cover the curriculum.” As the head of one high school science department commented, “I teach chemistry, not character. Occasionally, I might touch on an ethical issue, but I have only so much time for that.”

Integrate Process Strategies A third solution to the “where do we fit it in?” dilemma is to integrate characterbuilding “process strategies” such as cooperative learning (Kagan & Kagan, 2009; Slavin, 1995) and service learning (Billig, 2000; Lickona & Davidson, 2005). Berkowitz and Bier (2006) document the positive effects of these methods, but such strategies may not be a standard part of everyday instruction. Even cooperative learning, which has potential for regular use, requires training and planning time that keep many teachers from using it frequently.

Implement a Whole-School Approach The “comprehensive approach to character education” has the merit of being holistic, seeking to create a total school environment that fosters character development. Three examples are the Child Development Project (Schaps et al., 1996), the 12-point Educating for Character model (Lickona, 1991), and the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education (Beland, 2003; Lickona et al., 1995) promulgated by the Character Education Partnership (www.character.org). These models advanced character education by widening its conceptual lens to recognize that everything in the life of the school is a form of character education: the example of adults, the school’s sense of community, the content of the curriculum, the ethos created by rituals and routines, the approach to cocurricular activities, and the involvement of parents. These whole-school models also provided a great many practical examples, typically drawn from exemplary classrooms and schools (see Beland, 2003; Lickona, 1991, 2004; and the Character Education Partnership’s

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National Schools of Character, 1998–2009), showing how to use the above-named aspects of school life as opportunities for character development. However, even these more comprehensive approaches still tended to neglect character education’s direct contribution to academic learning (how does it build better students?) and to focus instead on its indirect contribution – that of creating a supportive social-moral environment for teaching and learning. (“Build a caring community and reduce discipline problems,” the argument went, “and you’ll increase academic achievement.”) These models, which guided our own work for a decade, also remained largely focused on developing moral character, those qualities needed for interpersonal success and ethical behavior. Still left on the margins was performance character – those qualities that enable us to pursue an ethic of excellence and do our best in any performance context (the classroom, cocurricular activity, workplace, etc.). This neglect of performance character and its direct contribution to academic learning is likely one reason why character education has had difficulty gaining traction in secondary schools (Leming, 2006). Finally, even though these models provided a plethora of examples of how to implement the individual components of the comprehensive approach, schools often still found themselves without a clear overall implementation plan that gave them guidance on questions such as: Where do we begin? How do we get faculty on board, and equip them with the skills to do this well? How does this fit with our curriculum? And where will we find the time to do all this, given all of our academic mandates?

The Smart and Good Schools The evolution in our own thinking about character and character education has emerged from our ongoing Smart and Good Schools work.1 In the first phase of this work, we conducted research on diverse, award-winning high schools in order to (1) develop a theoretical model of a high school that integrates the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of ethical behavior in all phases of school life, and (2) identify promising practices that would render character education relevant to the academic and behavioral challenges faced by high schools. Smart and Good High Schools: Integrating Excellence and Ethics for Success in School, Work, and Beyond (Lickona & Davidson, 2005) set forth our theoretical model and described more than a hundred high school character development practices, drawn from our research, showing how to implement the Smart and Good vision. (The full report may be downloaded from our website, www.cortland.edu/character.) Smart and Good High Schools called for a paradigm shift in character education – from focusing only on developing moral character (being one’s best ethical self in relationships) to focusing equally on developing performance character (doing one’s best in all areas of endeavor). We argued that these two parts of character are 1

Major support for the Smart and Good Schools research and development is provided by the John Templeton Foundation and the Sanford N. McDonnell Foundation.

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Fig. 29.1 Performance character and moral character

interdependent (see Fig. 29.1), both necessary for a life of character. Without moral character, we can easily fall into using unethical means to achieve our performance goals. Without performance character, we will have difficulty developing our human potential and enacting our moral values effectively. Various studies show the contributions of performance character and moral character to human development and achievement. In their handbook Character Strengths and Virtues, Peterson and Seligman (2004) identify the cross-cultural importance of performance character attributes such as creativity, curiosity, love of learning, and persistence. Longitudinal studies such as Talented Teenagers (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993) find that gifted adolescents who develop their talent to high levels, compared to those who do not, tend to show high levels of performance character qualities such as goal-setting and wise time management. Colby’s and Damon’s study, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (Colby & Damon, 1992), reveals how strong performance character and strong moral character work synergistically to account for exemplars’ achievements in fields as varied as civil rights, education, business, philanthropy, the environment, and religion. Such exemplars do good, and do good well. In a flourishing life, ethics and excellence go hand in hand. The Smart and Good High Schools report also introduced eight Strengths of Character, developmental outcomes that “unpack” the constructs of moral and performance character, offer schools more specific goals to work toward, and serve as a heuristic guiding further research, theory-building, and practical application. These eight strengths are: (1) lifelong learner and critical thinker; (2) diligent and capable performer; (3) socially and emotionally skilled person; (4) ethical thinker; (5) respectful and responsible moral agent; (6) self-disciplined person who pursues a healthy lifestyle; (7) contributing community member and democratic citizen; and (8) spiritual person engaged in crafting a life of noble purpose. We drew

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these eight Strengths of Character from our own grounded theory research; crosscultural research on character (Peterson & Seligman, 2004); theory and research on intellectual character (Ritchhart, 2002; Sternberg, 1997); classical conceptions of a meaningful life (e.g., Frankel, 1959); positive psychology (Seligman, 2002); moral psychology (Blasi, 2004; Kohlberg, 1976; Lapsley, 1996); research on socialemotional learning (CASEL, 2003; Elias et al., 1997; Goleman, 1995); educational research (Marzano et al., 2001; Pallas, 2000); research on service learning (Billig, 2000); and work on the development of purpose (Damon et al., 2003) and the role of spirituality in education (Kessler, 2000; Palmer, 1999). Much of the Smart and Good High Schools report was devoted to describing practices for developing these eight Strengths of Character. In addition, Smart and Good High Schools reported many practices for developing what we called an Ethical Learning Community (ELC), a partnership of staff, students, parents, and the community whose members hold each other accountable for doing their best work and being their best ethical selves. In the Smart and Good vision, the Ethical Learning Community provides the “culture of character” needed to support and challenge adults and students in developing moral and performance character. The Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC) provides the adult role models, collegial staff community, and school leadership needed to create and continuously improve the Ethical Learning Community. Together, the ELC and PELC fulfill Kohlberg’s exhortation to “change the life of the school as well as the development of the individual” (Power et al., 1991).

Toward a Smart and Good Schools Pedagogy A Research-Based Teaching Strategy: The Four KEYS Our work with schools since the Smart and Good High Schools report has helped us refine our thinking about the essential pedagogical strategies needed to develop performance character and moral character. We now believe that four key practices function as an “operating system,” or master strategy, driving the most effective practices: 1. Support and challenge. The combination of support and challenge is designed to build the Ethical Learning Community, a community/group of any size (partners, a small group, a classroom, a club, a team, the whole school, or the wider community). The reciprocal relationships, shared values, and mutual expectations of an ELC hold its members accountable for doing their best work and being their best ethical selves. The power of this kind of intentional community is demonstrated by Good to Great research (Collins, 2001) on high-performing companies that used a “touchstone” and related practices to develop a shared sense of purpose and identify around core values. Similarly, in Building an Intentional School Culture, Elbot and Fulton (2007) show how schools have brought about academic and ethical improvements by creating a values-based community that

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both support and challenge its members. Support and challenge practices go beyond a focus on the individual’s psychological assets to include a focus on the assets of the culture within which individual development occurs. 2. Self-study. This practice engages students in assessing their strengths and areas for growth (in performance character, moral character, or any other area of competence), setting goals for improvement, and then monitoring their progress. Self-study as a pedagogical strategy seeks to increase student engagement and personalization, moving the locus of control from outside the individual to inside. Self-study promotes a self-referenced task orientation (e.g., “How can I do better at this than I did yesterday?”), which in turn fosters self-reflection, intrinsic motivation, and positive efforts in response to failure (Duda & Nicholls, 1992). 3. Other-study. This practice helps students understand, internalize, and master the requisite skills for reproducing high levels of excellence and ethics in their own lives. Other-study means analyzing the positive and negative examples of other people and the products of their work (What led them to develop good or bad moral or performance character? What led to success or failure in any given pursuit?), and then applying lessons learned to one’s own work and behavior. Other-study builds on Bandura’s (1977) social-cognitive learning theory and the various ways – including imitation and social reinforcement – that individuals learn from others (Lapsley, 1996). 4. Public performance/Presentation. Public performance/Presentation serves as both experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) and authentic assessment (DarlingHammond, 1993; Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). Public performance involves authentic public performances that put into action one’s moral and performance character and other competencies. For example, service learning provides a public performance activity that enables students to demonstrate their moral and performance character “in the real world” as they serve others. Public presentation means sharing one’s goals, progress toward achieving them, and the products of one’s work with others (a partner, group members, class- or schoolmates, faculty, parents, outside experts, or the wider community). Berger (2003) makes a strong case for creating a classroom culture of excellence by having students regularly present their work to their classmates, thereby creating positive peer pressure to do one’s best work. We think that these four KEYS can be applied to school challenges as varied as increasing student achievement in core academic subject areas, reducing cheating, curbing bullying, strengthening advisories, improving discipline, getting students to take homework seriously, upgrading a service learning program, and maximizing the character-building value of cocurricular activities. Used well and especially in strategic combination, the four KEYS can help us get more power from any educational practice. Consider goal-setting a widely used educational practice, but one that varies greatly in the power it generates for educators and students alike. We would argue that to get the maximum power from goal-setting requires the judicious use of the four KEYS: for example, beginning with an other-study of a model, followed by a self-study (including self-assessment, setting personal goals, and

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making a plan for monitoring progress), followed by a public performance/presentation of our personal goal to a partner or larger group, followed by support and challenge from others who hold us accountable. Indeed, we would argue that when any educational practice – whether goal-setting, a classroom teaching strategy, or a practice such as an honor code aimed at improving school culture – is having only limited success, it is likely because the four KEYS are not being effectively employed and, as a result, “character power” is being lost. (For additional theory and research on the importance of the four KEYS in learning and development, see Davidson et al., 2008.)

Character Needed for, and Developed from, Teaching and Learning The next step forward in our thinking, after the four KEYS, was recognizing that character is needed for, and potentially developed from, every act of teaching and learning. This understanding helped us solve the “character education dilemma” (“Where do we fit in character education?”). If we view character as being at the very center of teaching and learning, we do not have to “integrate” it into academics; it is already there. Our task is rather to understand and maximize its contribution. In our Smart and Good work, we now identify four ways that performance character and moral character are needed for, and potentially developed from, every academic activity: 1. Students need performance character (for example, work ethic, self-discipline, organization, perseverance, and teamwork) in order to do their best academic work. 2. Students develop their performance character (the ability to plan, work hard, overcome obstacles, find satisfaction in a job well done, and so on) as they rise to the challenges of their schoolwork. 3. Students need moral character (for example, the ability to follow rules and directions, respect the teacher’s authority, exercise self-control, practice kindness toward classmates, and do one’s own work) in order to function in a classroom, resist the temptation to cheat, and build the caring relationships that make for a positive learning environment. 4. Students develop their moral character from their schoolwork – for example, by growing in their ability to follow directions, work with others, give and receive feedback, do their work responsibly and honestly, and bring out the best work and behavior from all class members.

Two Case Studies Let us look now at two case studies that show the Smart and Good pedagogy in action – the four KEYS and the insight that character is needed for and developed from teaching and learning.

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Project-Based Learning: The Biography of a Senior Citizen Our first case study comes from the work of educator Ron Berger (2003, 2006, 2009). Berger taught at elementary school for 28 years and is currently director of instruction for Expeditionary Learning Schools (www.elschools.org/), a school reform organization that specializes in helping high-need, underperforming high schools that use project-based learning to raise academic performance and foster character development. Berger (2009) cites evidence that students’ learning and test scores significantly improve when they are regularly involved in doing “good work.” As defined by Howard Gardner’s “Good Work Project” at Harvard University, good work has three characteristics: (1) It is engaging and fulfilling; (2) it is done well, with quality and excellence; and (3) it does some good, making a contribution beyond oneself (see also Good Work: Where Excellence and Ethics Meet, Gardner et al., 2002). In his book, An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students, Berger (2003) gives many examples of good work, projects we would view as both requiring performance character and moral character and developing such character to higher levels. In the senior biography project, for example, Berger had each of his sixth-graders conduct a series of interviews with a senior citizen, write that person’s biography, and present it in the form of a small book. Berger (2006) comments on how the nature of this project fostered a high level of intrinsic motivation for students to do their best work: No one needed to tell them the reason for doing a quality job. These books were to be gifts to the seniors, gifts that might become precious heirlooms. Because their work would have this public audience, students were motivated to seek critique from everyone. They read the drafts of their biographies to the whole class for suggestions. They labored, draft after draft, on their cover designs. They wanted their books to be perfect. This was work that mattered. (p. 3)

Berger does not use the language of the four KEYS, but they are very much evident in the projects he and his students do. They always begin with other-study, analyzing excellent examples of previous students’ work on the assigned project. This other-study has the purpose of leading to self-study, “What can we learn from these models of excellence that will help us as we undertake our own projects?” Berger’s carefully structured class critiques (“Be specific,” “Be kind,” and “Be helpful”), in which students take turns presenting their work for thoughtful peer and teacher feedback, play a major part in creating a culture of support and challenge. Finally, the biography project culminates with public presentation: giving the book as a gift to the senior, with the likelihood that this lovingly crafted record of that person’s life will be shared with family and friends and become a treasured possession. What character qualities were needed for the biography project, both to begin it and bring it to completion? Among performance character qualities we can see planning (the series of interviews), organization (of all the information gathered on the senior’s life story), creativity (in designing the book’s cover and other visual

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elements), courage (to interview an adult and present drafts of one’s biography for class critique), and commitment to excellence (willingness to do multiple revisions). Among the moral character qualities that students needed for this project, we could list respect (taking care to exercise courtesy in one’s interactions with the senior citizens), perspective-taking (preparing appropriate interview questions that would draw out important thoughts and experiences), personal and collective responsibility (for their own work and for improving the work of their peers), humility (to listen receptively to classmates’ suggestions for improving their drafts), and caring (to make their book, in every respect, as fine a presentation of their senior’s life as it could be). What character qualities were developed from this project? Potentially, all of the above. The very same character dispositions needed to undertake any learning challenge can be developed to a higher level by engaging that challenge. The degree of student development, of course, depends on the degree of engagement; character development does not automatically happen simply because a learner is confronted with a task. The greater a student’s effort on the senior citizen biography project, for example, the greater the student’s growth in those character strengths exercised in the course of that project. In addition to strengthening those character qualities that are needed to initiate and complete any given learning task, students also have the opportunity to develop new character qualities they may not have possessed at the start. For example, students who did a first-rate job on the biography project but had never before produced a school product of genuine quality would be likely to acquire a newfound pride in work – what Greene (1999) calls “conscience of craft” – and confidence in their ability to attain excellence on other projects. A student who had never presented work for class critique initially found that prospect intimidating may, as a result of the critique sessions, have a newfound courage to speak before a group and be open to critical feedback. Finally, all such character outcomes – character qualities strengthened and new ones acquired – can, with the teacher’s help, then be carried forward and applied to future learning challenges. The educational implications of having a “character-needed-for-and-developedfrom” mindset are, we think, far-reaching. The teacher who understands the central role that character plays in learning will not focus only on traditional pedagogical concerns, such as: “What’s the best way to explain this concept?”; “What learning materials will my students need?”; and “How can I keep them engaged?”. Viewing teaching and learning through a character-needed-for-and-developed-from lens will affect all phases of instruction: • How the teacher selects and plans a lesson or project (“How can I design learning activities that have high potential for both academic learning and moral and performance character development? For any given learning activity, what particular character strengths will my students need to succeed, and what steps should I take to develop those strengths?”) • What the teacher does to support student learning along the way (“How can I continue to highlight and develop the needed character strengths at strategic points in the learning process?”)

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• How the teacher evaluates not just the academic skills and content learned, but also the transferrable character qualities developed (“What evidence do I see that my students grew in the relevant character strengths, and how can I help them deliberately apply those enhanced character strengths to future learning challenges?”).

Character Power for Teaching Math For our second case study, we turn to a curricular area where most educators might not readily see character connections, namely mathematics. From the characterneeded-for-and-developed-from perspective, however, the character connections are clear. A thoughtful mathematics teacher would ask, “What is the character needed to succeed in my math class? If success requires character qualities such as a positive attitude, not giving up, attention to process and detail, diligence in doing homework, and ability to seek help where needed, what teaching strategies should I devise to maximize my students’ growth in these requisite character dispositions?” These were the kinds of questions asked by teacher Mark Schumacher (2009), chairman of the math department in his middle school. He tells the story of the transformation of his teaching in excellence and ethics, our Smart and Good Schools education letter, where he begins by describing what led him to change his approach to teaching seventh-grade math: “My classes were developing a stronger sense of moral character, but something was missing. I still bought into the idea that there will always be certain students who can’t be reached, and that I would always have a certain number who fail math. And those students continued to live down to my expectations.” Here, in an abridged version, are the steps he took to maximize the power of character to help all of his students succeed: 1. Teaching the concept of performance character. He began the new school year by talking to his students about performance character and why it matters. “Performance character,” he said, “means setting high expectations for yourself and doing everything in your power to meet them.” He told his students that he would expect quality work from them and would provide the opportunities for them to do their very best. Together, they then examined examples of past student work, asking, what is average? What is superb? 2. Encouraging revision. He explained to his students that “because we rarely do our best work the first time around, revisions will be necessary.” Students in his class would now be able to revise completed assignments and retake tests, earning the better of the two grades. 3. Setting classroom expectations. At the start of the year, students were asked to write down behaviors they would like to see in their classroom – behaviors that would help them develop their performance character and do their best work. The teacher then consolidated the recommended behaviors into a single poster, which students signed. 4. Partnering with parents. At the September “open house,” Schumacher met with parents of his students and asked them to raise their expectations for their

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children’s performance in math, talk with them every day about their progress in math (and ask to see evidence to support their claims), and stay in close contact with him. Teaching goal-setting. He helped all of his students set yearlong goals, quarterly goals that would support their yearly goals, and biweekly goals that would help them achieve their quarterly and yearly goals. He comments, “Some of my students are now trying to go the whole year without having a single incomplete assignment, some to earn an ‘A’ average for the entire year, and some to revise every assignment until it is ‘A’ quality work.” Students now record their biweekly goals on a Goals and Accomplishments Sheet. The class takes sample goals and brainstorms strategies needed to reach them. Students display their goals, grades, revisions from the most recent two-week period, and answers to a Self-Study Survey where they rate themselves on items such as, “I have worked to the fullest of my abilities over the past two weeks” and “I have been an asset to the class in my behavior and attitude during the past 2 weeks.” Goal partners. At the start of the year, all students now choose a goal partner who holds them accountable to their goals, offers suggestions on how to reach them, and praises them for progress. Goal partners meet every other week to review and sign off on their Goals and Accomplishments Sheets, which then go home to parents for their review and signature. Public presentation. Explains Schumacher, “I foster students’ intrinsic motivation through Success Posters that display their yearly goals, revisions they are especially proud of, and ‘A’ work.” Individual student contracts. With the minority of students who were still having difficulty completing and revising their work, he implemented individual contracts that required them to fill out their planner on a daily basis, have the teacher sign it, and then take it home to be reviewed and signed by their parents. As the new quarter progressed, most of the students under the new contract system began to improve. With those still having problems, he called the parents to elicit their support and soon saw improvement in this group as well.

Schumacher (2009) concludes his account: “Many parents have shared stories like that of a mother who wrote: ‘Because my daughter has never liked math, I strongly disagreed with your high expectations when you first explained them. However, she has completely changed her attitude about math. She now tells me that she knows what ‘A’ work looks like, and anything less is no longer acceptable to her.’ Moreover, my students’ test results are better than at any previous point in my career” (p. 3). How did Mark Schumacher use the four KEYS? First, he created a community of support and challenge by teaching his class about performance character and making that a new expectation in his classroom. He helped to establish that new expectation as an operative norm through policies encouraging revision of assignments and test retakes and through student-generated rules for classroom behavior that would help them do their best work. He further strengthened the culture of excellence by recruiting parents as partners to support and challenge their children.

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His revision/retake policies fostered self-study, since students had to analyze where they needed to improve in order to do better on the second try. Self-study was furthered by having students complete periodic surveys in which they rated their own academic effort and class behavior and by teaching students to set goals for the year, quarter, and two-week periods. Working together to brainstorm strategies for achieving one’s goals provided further support and challenge. Goals and Accomplishments Sheets permitted students to learn from each other (other-study). Having a goal partner also used public presentation to strengthen accountability by having partners sign off on each other’s sheets when goals were achieved. The public display of students’ goals, revisions, and grades on the classroom success posters made further use of public presentation. Finally, the individual contracts with students who needed that additional accountability structure made use of selfstudy (since students had to use their daily planner more conscientiously) and support and challenge (reengaging parents as partners). What was the character needed for and developed from learning math in Mr Schumacher’s classroom? In listing the many character qualities called into play, we note that even though this teacher set out to emphasize performance character (needed for quality work), he pursued that goal through classroom strategies that simultaneously developed many aspects of moral character (needed for quality relationships): • To function as a member of this new learning community, they had to respect the rules that they themselves had generated. • To meet Mr. Schumacher’s new expectation that they show performance character, students had to make a sincere, consistent effort to do their best work. • To rise to the challenge of doing revisions and retaking tests, they had to muster hard work, humility, and perseverance. • To engage in yearlong, quarterly, and biweekly goal-setting, they had to develop long-range thinking and the ability to make and implement short-range action plans that would take them toward their goals. • To do the self-assessments required by the biweekly surveys of effort and classroom behavior, they had to be honest with themselves and their teacher. • To function effectively as goal partners, they had to be responsible to and for someone else and develop their communication and collaboration skills. • To submit entries for the classroom success posters, they needed the courage that is always involved in going public with one’s work. Moreover, just as with Berger’s biography project, we can expect that the same character qualities needed to undertake learning in Schumacher’s classroom were also being developed to a higher level by the repeated application of those qualities day in and day out (the cumulative impact of this kind of repetition illustrates the principle, “We shape the culture; the culture shapes the character”). Once again, we can expect that many students also acquired new character strengths such as the ability to set goals and monitor their progress; the social and emotional skills involved in working closely with a partner; confidence that they could learn and even excel at math and perhaps other challenging subjects and tasks; and the

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capacity to take pleasure in helping others do their best work and being part of a true learning community. Finally, all these character assets are ones that teacher Schumacher could then help his students reflect on and intentionally bring to bear on subsequent challenges they would meet inside and outside school. Conceived and executed in this way, the classroom becomes an experiential opportunity for authentic character development, providing all the challenges and engagement of a ropes course.

Power2Learn To review: The four KEYS provide a research-based teaching methodology that can be used in any curricular or cocurricular context. The understanding that character is needed for, and developed from, teaching and learning provides a theoretical insight that helps us plan, carry out, and evaluate instruction with an eye to its character prerequisites and desired character outcomes. What else is needed to help schools maximize the power of character? Our experience convinces us that character-centered teaching materials – prescriptive, sequenced curricula with learning objectives and lesson plans – are also essential to advancing maximally effective character education. On the basis of our work with schools, we have little evidence that providing them with theoretical constructs (such as performance character, moral character, and the Ethical Learning Community), many illustrative practices (as in the Smart and Good report), and even a parsimonious methodology (such as the four KEYS) significantly changes what most teachers do. These are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for helping schools maximize the power of character. Therefore, we are now working to translate the theory and science into specific programming. Our rationale is twofold. First, our goal is to develop programming that has ripple effects, helping students to succeed in the academic curriculum. We hope to achieve this through lessons that develop character competencies – such as the ability to take initiative, set goals, and “work smarter” – that are the very character strengths students need to do well in their academic classes. Second, we believe that such programming for students, coupled with related professional development for faculty, has the potential to help subject-area teachers change what they do – so that they build on and extend the character competencies their students have developed through the character lessons. Once subject-area teachers see what students have learned about goal-setting, for example, they can help them apply those goal-setting strategies in math, science, history, and so on. Our long-range goal in designing Smart and Good programming is to develop a series of “Power 2” programs, each aimed at a particular part of the Ethical Learning Community: Power2Learn, for students (middle school and high school); Power2Teach, for faculty; Power2Lead, for principals and other school leaders; Power2Coach, for those working to capitalize on the character-building potential of sports; Power2Parent, for families and schools wanting to enhance parenting skills and strengthen the school-home partnership; and so on. Each application of the

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Power2 framework is intended to provide replicable, research-based programming that develops the character and culture needed for success. Power2Learn is the first of these programming efforts. It consists of sevenmonth-long units and 28 lessons (4 per unit), 50–60 minutes per week of total instruction that can be adapted to a variety of middle and high school structures including homerooms, advisories, leadership courses, and, if the school makes time, even regular academic classes. The character competencies Power2Learn seeks to develop are organized around eight broad expectations presented in the accompanying table: identify and manage your priorities; be self-directed and take initiative, commit to high standards and continuous improvement, and think outside the box; use critical thinking and effective problem-solving, establish positive and productive relationships, think ethically and act responsibly, develop self-awareness, lead and serve others, and a cause greater than yourself; and seek healthy life balance. (These eight expectations are informed by the eight Strengths of Character heuristic from the Smart and Good report, but rendered in simpler, more accessible language.) The specific character competencies within each of these eight expectations are crossreferenced to other school improvement frameworks and initiatives in the USA such as Twenty-First-Century Workforce Skills, No Child Left Behind, Social and Emotional Learning Standards, and PBiS (Positive Behavior Intervention System). Our belief is that unless and until we can show schools that a focus on character literally provides the power to enhance their other programs and outcomes, schools will not see developing character as a high priority.

Power2Teach Power2Learn targets students, but what is the general faculty’s role in character development? How can they be engaged in building a strong Professional Ethical Learning Community (Lickona & Davidson, 2005, Chap. 4) that helps create a total school culture that maximizes the power of character? Research on schools has shown that strong collegial relationships among faculty improve teaching and learning (Bidwell & Yasumoto, 1999). A strong professional community exists when faculty share professional values, collectively focus on student learning, de-privatize practice, engage in collaborative professional learning and reflective dialogue, and exercise collective control over curricular and other decisions (DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Louis et al., 1996; Secada & Adajian, 1997; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1994). Professional learning communities have been shown to enhance a variety of student outcomes (Fullan, 1999; Langer, 2000; Newmann and Associates, 1996). Our Smart and Good framework expands the concept of professional learning communities to include an explicit and integrated focus on both excellence and ethics, a focus shared by the members of what we call the Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC). A key distinguishing feature of a PELC is the sense of collective responsibility for excellence and ethics that permeates all collegial interactions.

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We are now developing and pilot testing a yearlong professional development program, Power2Teach, designed to foster the PELC processes that contribute to a strong sense of collective responsibility. While there are many important ways to develop that sense of collective responsibility (see Lickona & Davidson, 2005), Power2Teach will be testing the efficacy of a strategy that uses learning modules called “Essential Conversations.” These are 90-min monthly conversations (or, if a school finds it more feasible, two 45-min conversations) focused on issues that we believe significantly affect – positively or negatively – the character and culture influencing teaching and learning. These Essential Conversations are aligned with the Power2Learn program for students in that they address the big ideas underlying the student experiences without mirroring the content of the student lessons. In choosing topics for Essential Conversations, we have sought to identify ones that most school faculty will see as important in their work, that relate to character issues strongly impacting teaching and learning, and that represent aspects of school culture and the PELC where there will always be room for improvement – which is why such issues must continually be revisited. We expect that our selection of Essential Conversation topics will continue to evolve as we test them out with teachers, but based on our work thus far, we think the following topics are strong candidates: • As a professional community, do we have congeniality, collegiality, neither, or both? • Are we doing our best or just enough? • Do we have the character catalyst needed for teaching and learning? • Is this a safe and supportive learning community? • Is this a community dedicated to continuous improvement? • What are we assigning: work or work that matters? • “A/B/You ain’t done yet” – what’s our approach to grading and revision? • What are we shaping, a cheating culture or a culture of integrity? • How do we teach those we cannot reach? Our next challenge is to craft the conversation. As anyone who has been part of a faculty meeting (at any level) knows the quality of conversation can range from good to awful. A few people may dominate the discussion. The spatial configuration may be such that people cannot see each other. There may be no deliberate use of discussion strategies (pair-share, small groups, round-robin, and so on) that vary the format and maximize participation. And at the end of the discussion, there may be little sense of closure or next steps. In Power2Teach, we are striving to maximize the likelihood of quality conversation – conversation that is focused, respectful, participatory, and productive. Our hope is to do that through a eight-step process: (1) an opening community-builder; (2) review of guidelines for quality conversation; (3) overview of the current Power to Learn student focus; (4) posing the core question for the current Essential Conversation; (5) sharing pertinent school data from assessment surveys (if the topic were student effort, for example, what do student survey responses reveal about the current state of that?); (6) guided faculty discussion using a facilitation

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script; (7) having faculty take away a practical application of the discussion by considering a research-based practice to adopt or adapt (if the topic were student effort, for example, what does the research show about effort rubrics?); and (8) concluding by formulating individual and collaborative action plans (I plan to use the materials discussed today in the following ways: Our department plans to continue this conversation by).

The Smart and Good Schools Approach to Assessing Excellence and Ethics Why should character educators make assessment a high priority? There are at least five good reasons to do so. First, assessment enables a school to benchmark its current state (what do the data show regarding student effort, frequency of cheating, and prevalence of peer cruelty?) and then plan an intervention that addresses needs revealed by the data. Second, staff motivation and accountability will be greater if there is a plan to assess results; what gets measured matters. Third, formative assessment of faculty practices will enable the school to determine the extent to which its faculty is actually implementing the desired character education practices – crucial to know, since desired outcomes depend on strong implementation. Fourth, summative assessment of outcomes will reveal the extent to which the character education effort is impacting student character and school culture. Finally, both formative and summative data can be used to identify where and how a school needs to improve its ongoing character education efforts. One of our major goals in the Smart and Good Schools Initiative is to put tools in the hands of researchers and practitioners that can be used to assess the critical inputs and outcomes of a Smart and Good School. Our first step in this effort has been to develop and field test an instrument called the CREE (collective responsibility for excellence and ethics). Our most recent version of the CREE (4.0) has been modified to align with the competencies being taught by Power2Learn. There are student, faculty, and parent versions of the CREE, since all three of these stakeholder groups are important contributors to the Ethical Learning Community. The complete CREE instrument, including student, faculty, and parent surveys, can be downloaded from our website, along with an explanation of the underlying constructs and relevant research (www.cortland.edu/character/instruments.asp). Here, for purposes of illustration, we have chosen to present sample items from just the student CREE survey and to show only two of the seven Power to Learn competency areas we are assessing (see Table 29.1 for all eight). Since performance character and moral character are the two major desired outcomes of a Smart and Good Schools intervention, Table 29.2 shows student items designed to assess a character competency (“identify and manage priorities; be self-directed and take initiative”) that is representative of the performance character domain, and Table 29.3 shows student items for a competency (“think ethically and act responsibly”) representative of the moral character domain.

Expectations

Motivate yourself when things are not easy

Be self-directed learners21 Exercise critical thinking21

Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives21

Go beyond basic mastery of skills and/or curriculum to expand your learning21

Identify essential “drivers” and “preventers”

Think outside the box; Use critical thinking and effective problem-solving Think creatively21

Commit to hard Work creatively work with others21

Commit to high standards and continuous improvement Set internal standards of excellence

Establish a clear desired state or end goal

Identify and manage your priorities; Be self-directed and take initiative Benchmark current state or baseline starting point Respect cultural differences and respond openmindedly to different ideas and values21 Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions21 Communicate clearly and effectively21

Establish positive and productive relationships Consider the perspective of others and listen effectively

Table 29.1 Power2 Learn sample competencies: Twenty-first-century Skills indicated by21

Possess moral competence or “knowhow”

Develop an active conscience

Recognize moral obligations

Think ethically and act responsibly Discern what is right and wrong

Have a positive influence on the way others think and act

Lead and serve others and a cause greater than yourself Work hard for causes that inspire you

Recognize and overcome your limitations

Inspire others to reach their very best, by example and selflessness21

Identify and Use interpersonal develop and problemyour talents solving skills to influence and guide others toward a goal21

Develop selfawareness Know your character strengths and weaknesses Monitor and control your emotions

The Power of Character (continued)

Engage in rejuvenating leisure activities

Eat healthy

Exercise regularly

Seek healthy life balance Pursue broad life goals

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Set and meet goals, even in the face of obstacles and competing pressures21

Expectations

Identify and manage your priorities; Be self-directed and take initiative Monitor, define, prioritize, and complete tasks without direct oversight21 Utilize time and manage workload effectively21 Balance tactical (shortterm) and strategic (long-term) goals21 Reflect critically on past experiences in order to inform future progress21

Table 29.1 (continued)

Evaluate the feasibility of various solutions to a problem21

Exercise flexibility and willingness to make necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal21

Adapt to change21

Think outside the box; Use critical thinking and effective problem-solving Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, and points of view21 Solve problems efficiently and effectively21

Revise and continuously improve

View failure as an opportunity to learn21

Commit to high standards and continuous improvement Demonstrate initiative to advance skill levels21

Understand, negotiate, and balance diverse views and beliefs to reach workable solutions21 Stand up to peer pressure

Collaborate with others21

Establish positive and productive relationships Respect and appreciate team diversity21

Participate actively, be reliable and punctual21 Take responsibility for your mistakes

Think ethically and act responsibly Demonstrate moral courage

Commit to global awareness and social action21

Visualize the impact of your actions on others

Develop selfawareness Understand and carry out your role on a group or team Know how and when to ask for help

Seek inner peace

Leverage strengths of others to accomplish a common goal21 Demonstrate integrity and ethical behavior in using influence and power21

Lead and serve others and a cause greater than yourself Use your talents and skills to serve the good of the group/team

Develop appreciation of art, music, and culture Use productive strategies for reducing stress

Seek healthy life balance Take time to rest and reflect

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Table 29.2 Sample student survey items, CREE (collective responsibility for excellence and ethics), V. 4.0 Character competency: Identify and manage priorities; be self-directed and take initiative Please think about yourself. Please think about Do you agree or disagree Please think about students in this teachers in this school. Do with the following school. Do you agree or disagree you agree or disagree with statements? with the following statements? the following statements? Most teachers I1ve had in this school . . . I am able to . . . Most students in this school . . . ELC: faculty practices Character impacting competencies ELC: peer group character (reported by behaviors (reported by (reported by 1.1.1 students) 2.1.1 students) 3.1.1 students) 1) . . . organize my 54) . . . often spend their time time and materials doing what they want to to get my do, instead of what they assignments done should be doing 2) . . . complete tasks 55) . . . put off doing things 98) . . . teach students or assignments on they do not like to do how to manage time their time 3) . . . plan specific 56) . . . set goals for doing 99) . . . teach students steps and monitor better in school and keep how to set goals progress toward track of whether they are and keep track of achieving a goal improving their progress 4) . . . do what I am 57) . . . need constant supposed to do reminding to do what they without being are supposed to do reminded 5) . . . focus on a goal 58) . . . take initiative to get without losing things done without being track of my other asked or reminded responsibilities 6) . . . stay focused on 59) . . . fail to complete their a project for as homework long as needed to complete it

Our assessment strategy for all of the Power2Learn competency areas is to use three kinds of agree-disagree items. The first type assesses student self-efficacy regarding a given competency. The other two types of items assess aspects of the Ethical Learning Community that we would expect to affect student character. In Tables 29.2 and 29.3, the first column consists of self-efficacy items. Students are asked, on a five-point scale, to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with various completions of the operating system, I am able to . . . (e.g., from Table 29.2 on managing priorities: “plan specific steps and monitor progress toward achieving a goal”; from Table 29.3 on ethical thinking and behavior: “weigh the consequences of my actions for myself and others”).

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Table 29.3 Sample student survey items, CREE (collective responsibility for excellence and ethics), V. 4.0 Please think about yourself. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

Please think about students in this school. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Most students in this school I am able to . . . ... Character competency: think ethically and act responsibly Character competencies ELC: peer group (reported by behaviors (reported 1.1.5 students) 2.1.5 by students) 27) . . . discern what is right and wrong

28)

29)

30)

31)

32) 33)

34)

. . . weigh the consequences of my actions for myself and others . . . take a stand on issues involving right and wrong . . . stand up to bullying or hazing

78)

. . . resist peer pressure to do something I am not supposed to . . . resist the temptation to cheat . . . always do my part when working with a partner or a group . . . admit when I do something wrong and find ways to make up for it

81)

79)

80)

82) 83)

. . . try to stop their friends from spreading rumors or gossip about others . . . would support you if you tried to do something good . . . when seeing someone being picked on, try to stop it . . . encourage each other to follow the rules

Please think about teachers in this school. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Most teachers I1ve had in this school . . .

3.1.5 117)

118)

119)

120)

ELC: faculty practices impacting character (reported by students) . . . take time to discuss important ethical issues in our school, community, or world . . . teach students how to apply ethical thinking to real-life challenges . . . help students understand and do what is right

. . . challenge students to hold each other accountable for doing the right thing

. . . cheat on tests and assignments . . . help others on schoolwork, without letting them copy or cheat

Our rationale for using self-efficacy to assess Power2Learn competencies is that changes in self-efficacy (“I am able to do this”) can be expected to precede and predict changes in motivation and behavior (“I do this”). This approach is based on two decades of research showing that the relation of past performance to subsequent performance is heavily mediated by efficacy beliefs and other sociocognitive factors (Bandura, 1997; Bandura & Locke, 2003). For example, a recent study (Yeo & Neal,

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2006) indicated that interventions designed to enhance self-efficacy can be expected to help individuals set higher goals, persist in the face of difficulty, use more effective strategies, and, as a result, demonstrate accelerated rates of learning. In both Tables 29.2 and 29.3, the second column on “peer-group behaviors” uses agree-disagree items to assess an important aspect of the Ethical Learning Community (ELC), namely how students see their peers performing on items that are either the same as or psychologically related to the ones they have just answered for themselves. Now the item stem is, Most students in this school (e.g., from Table 29.2 on managing priorities: “set goals for doing better in school and keep track of whether they are improving”; from Table 29.3 on ethical thinking and behavior: “try to stop their friends from spreading rumors or gossip about others”). Finally, the student survey’s third column, the one on “faculty practices,” uses agreedisagree items to assess another important aspect of the Ethical Learning Community, namely the extent to which students perceive faculty as using teaching practices that we would expect to impact the competency behaviors being considered. In the “faculty practices” column, the item stem is, Most teachers I’ve had in this school (e.g., from Table 29.2 on managing priorities: “teach students how to set goals and keep t rack of their progress”; from Table 29.3 on ethical thinking and behavior: “teach students how to apply ethical thinking to real-life challenges”). The faculty CREE survey for Power2Learn/Power2Teach serves to assess both programs simultaneously. It consists of three kinds of items. The first are agreedisagree items assessing faculty perception of student behaviors parallel to those assessed in the student survey: Most students in this school (e.g., “set goals for doing better in school and keep track of whether they are improving”). A second set of agree-disagree items ask faculty to report their own practices: (e.g., “teach students how to set goals and keep track of progress”). The third set of items is designed to explore faculty perceptions of the strength of the Professional Ethical Learning Community (e.g., “There is a great deal of cooperative effort among the staff members,” “Staff members regularly evaluate each other’s work and provide constructive criticism”). These items will help in assessing the direct impact of Power to Teach on a school’s PELC, as well as the PELC’s indirect contribution to student learning and development.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have suggested that most schools can do much more to maximize the power of character. Our Smart and Good Schools work has helped us identify a number of steps we believe have the potential to help schools unlock the power of moral and performance character: (1) understand that character is needed for, and potentially developed from, all teaching and learning and must, therefore, be at the center of instructional planning; (2) lay a foundation for the faculty’s character development work through a well-designed student curriculum that helps students develop the performance character and moral character competencies that will help them succeed in school and beyond; (3) build a Professional Ethical Community

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distinguished by a faculty’s commitment to building character and culture, a strong sense of collective responsibility for excellence and ethics, continuing conversation about essential issues affecting teaching and learning, and teachers’ ability to use research-based pedagogical strategies such as the four KEYS (support and challenge, self-study, other-study, and public performance/presentation) to help students apply their character competencies inside and outside the classroom; and (4) monitor the effectiveness of all these efforts, using the data gathered to guide improvements. A formidable undertaking, to be sure, is one that we are only in the very early stages of trying to carry out with schools. In the end, we think it will make the work of schools more effective and more rewarding for all concerned. However, challenging such an effort is in the short term, we see no shortcut to the goal of developing young people – and societies – committed to excellence and ethics. And given the moral and performance challenges looming before our world in the twenty-first century, we can surely afford to do no less.

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Palmer, P. (1999). Evoking the spirit in public education. Educational Leadership, 56, 6–11. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. American Psychological Association. Power, F. C., Higgins, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1991). Lawrence Kohlberg’s approach to moral education. Columbia University Press. Ritchhart, R. (2002). Intellectual character: What it is, why it matters, and how to get it. JosseyBass. Schaps, E., Watson, M., & Lewis, C. (1996). A sense of community is key to effectiveness in fostering character education. Journal of Staff Development, 17, 42–47. Schumacher, M. (2009). Born again teacher: Transforming math class through the power of character. In Excellence & ethics: The education letter of the Smart & Good Schools Initiative. Center for the 4th and 5th Rs. www.cortland.edu/character Secada, W. G., & Adajian, L. B. (1997). Mathematics teachers’ change in the context of their professional communities. In B. S. Nelson & E. Fennema (Eds.), Mathematics teachers in transition. Lawrence Erlbaum. Seligman, M. E. (2002). Authentic happiness. Free Press. Slavin, R. E. (1995). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice. Allyn & Bacon. Sternberg, R. (1997). Successful intelligence. Penguin. Talbert, J. E., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1994). Teacher professionalism in local school contexts. American Educational Research Journal, 102, 123–153. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Yeo, G. B., & Neal, A. (2006). An examination of the dynamic relationship between self- efficacy and performance across levels of analysis and levels of specificity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1088–1101.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Journey So Far . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brief Review of Meta-Analytic Studies of Values and Wellbeing-Related Education Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Positive Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mindfulness Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Service Learning (SL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multicultural and Global Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anti-Bullying Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values/Character Education (VE/CE; see Davidson et al., 2010; Leming, 2010 for a Historical Overview of How VE has Manifested as CE in the U.S. Context, Inc. Implementation Challenges; see Lovat, 2010 for an Overview of VE in the Australian Context) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking for Universal Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Types of Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Value Around Which All Values Revolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ecology of Giving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To Give or Not to Give: That Might Be the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will We Be “Plastic” Enough to Change? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

There is a smorgasbord of values and wellbeing-related education programs to choose from in the world today, such as positive education, mindfulness education, social and emotional learning, service learning, environmental education, multicultural and global citizenship education, etc. While variety is a good thing (since different initiatives often provide different insights), it has also caused teacher fatigue in terms of the sheer amount of constantly changing “important things to do” to support students’ academic and wellbeing outcomes in schools. Moreover, often schools are operating with several pedagogical frameworks at the same time, and also frequently changing frameworks, sometimes due to staff turnover in the executive, all of which can negatively affect the consistent delivery of whole school approaches. Unless we understand from a bigger perspective where different frameworks might overlap and support each other, this fatigue and fragmentation will likely continue. In this chapter, drawing upon both our own as well as international meta-analytic and interdisciplinary research, we offer a synthesis of evidence-based core principles and practices that seem to run through successful values and wellbeing-related education programs. Appreciating the specific insights that various initiatives provide, we introduce a big picture framework – or “pedagogical compass” – that may assist educators envision how their current practices may be better streamlined to support one another. Keywords

Values education · Wellbeing education · Eudaimonia · Meaning · Giving

Introduction We don’t want to be too dramatic, but is there any way else to put this: we stand on a threshold. According to most scientists, humanity must address climate change meaningfully in this decade to have any hope of averting its worst effects, some of which are irreversible (IPCC, 2021). Democracies the world over, even so-called established ones, are threatened from within by dubious forces of populism and separatism (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2019; Somer & McCoy, 2019). Suicide and mental health disorders remain a sizeable problem in most parts of the world (WHO, 2021b, c). Throw in a global pandemic (WHO, 2021a), and it is clear that not all is well on planet earth. At the same time, we must not forget that there also seems to be a positive shift in human awareness and consciousness happening in the world. Children and young people are marching against climate change to encourage government action (Boulianne et al., 2020). Ordinary people are speaking up and taking to the streets in protest to defend democracies, even in countries that have never had them (Vanden et al., 2017). Our collective understandings of how to improve human

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health, psychological wellbeing, and resilience via preventative measures have seen a growing evidence base since the end of World War II (Catalano et al., 2012; Snyder & Lopez, 2002). It’s not all bad. What is noteworthy, however, is how certain opposing forces in the world seem to be increasing in confrontational intent. Research on social media, and the fact that artificial intelligence algorithms continuously feed us with information that tends to affirm what we already believe (and six times faster when fake news is involved), confirms that this polarization is happening at several levels of our social interactions (Spohr, 2017; Tucker et al., 2018). Such research also helps explain why, for example, party politics in many places appear to become more entrenched and oppositional in recent times (Pew Research Center, 2019). Yet, what exactly are these “opposing forces” to which we allude? Certainly, they are not the notions of “good” and “bad” in a traditional sense. We are only talking about these forces in the sense that if we care for evidence-based practices that improve human wellbeing and planetary health (i.e., helping others and working for sustainable practices in the world), then it seems necessary to equally understand that human behavior which directly undermines our collective health and wellbeing also exist (i.e., egotistical and/or ignorant behavior toward others and the environment). Working out which is which, fundamentally, is a task that demands the best of human reasoning, understanding, and knowledge – in a word, education. It is in the context of these global challenges and crises that the pursuit of an education that may assist our young to intelligently care for others and the world is of no small significance – whether we call it values and wellbeing education or something else. For centuries we have been locked into polarised views about education: religious education, sometimes dogmatic and exclusive (e.g., Leahy, 1998); materialistic education, sometimes devoid of morality and humanism (e.g., Giacalone, 2004). In our present struggles with impending environmental crises and deepening polarization permeating our social fabric, it seems imperative to understand that education does not have to be an either-or endeavor, as John Dewey, the American philosopher and educator, was one of the first to point out (Dewey, 1916). On the flipside, having such an ideal naturally raises the question of whether or not public education is capable of embracing important, shared human values without succumbing to dogma (e.g., Lovat et al., 2010). Put another way, it begs the question of whether or not education can include objectivity and understanding of relativity without emptying ourselves of the very essences of what might make us human(e).

The Journey So Far It is now more than a decade ago that one of the authors (Nielsen) was an advisor and researcher in the Australian Government funded values education projects (2004–2008; Australian Government Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011; Nielsen, 2005, 2010). A final report of the efforts of 309 schools in 51 clusters around Australia was produced (Education Services Australia, 2010). Several books and articles also document those efforts (Lovat &

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Toomey, 2009; Lovat et al., 2009, 2010). Aligning with much of the international research on values and character education, the overall findings of the values education projects in Australia showed that, when systematic and planned, this type of education can improve student wellbeing and academic engagement (Lovat et al., 2010). Values education was also found to have the potential to transform about every level of school life, from classroom ambience, school relationships, and environments to teachers’ own professional practice and parents’ engagement in their children’s schooling (Education Services Australia, 2010). However, when one goes into schools today (and not just in Australia), it is noticeable that there is often teacher fatigue in terms of the sheer number of constantly changing “things to do” to support students’ academic and wellbeing outcomes at the national and state levels (e.g., ACARA, 2019; Dilkes et al., 2014; OECD, 2014). No doubt this fatigue is in part due to a demanding curriculum and increasing focus on accountability and the monitoring and use of student performance data to judge school and teacher effectiveness on an international stage (Dworkin & Tobe, 2014; Jerrim & Sims, 2021). Yet, the fatigue that teachers are experiencing also seems related to the fact that things have rapidly moved on since the various values education projects were initiated at the beginning of the millennium, and that we now have a smorgasbord of values and wellbeing-related educational initiatives vying for attention in an increasingly crowded curriculum, such as positive education (Kern & Wehmeyer, 2021; Seligman et al., 2009), mindfulness education (Charlotte et al., 2014; Schonert-Reichl & Roeser, 2016), social and emotional learning (SEL; Corcoran et al., 2018; Zins & Elias, 2007), brain-based learning (Gozuyesil & Dikici, 2014; Jensen, 2008), positive behavior for learning (PBL; Mooney et al., 2008), anti-bullying programs (Ng et al., 2020; Silva et al., 2017), and trauma-informed interventions (Maynard et al., 2019; Thomas et al., 2019), just to name a few. Often, several of these frameworks and pedagogies are in “operation” at the same time within a school. Variety, in itself, is a good thing, of course, as there is usually something to be learned from all of the abovementioned initiatives. However, the variety has also created a sense of fragmentation and a tendency for frameworks and programs to go in and out of fashion, often spurred on by staff turnover in the executive (Mascall & Leithwood, 2010; Priestley & Biesta, 2013). Unless we collectively get better at understanding from a bigger perspective where approaches might overlap and support each other, this fatigue in teachers will likely continue. In this chapter, drawing upon our research since the Australian values education projects, as well as international research findings in several fields, we aim to create a level of synthesis between the many values and wellbeing-related education initiatives today. We do this with an aim to improve our collective meta-understandings of evidence-based core principles and practices that might run through successful programs, without downplaying the benefits of the many angles of insight that various initiatives often provide. Throughout this discussion, we also strive to keep in mind the global challenges and crises described in the beginning of this chapter. As we will come to see, a big picture view of why certain values seem so important to not only education but also our lives as a whole might be essential in

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order to understand the smaller, seemingly “isolated” initiatives discussed, and ultimately connect the dots between them in practice.

Brief Review of Meta-Analytic Studies of Values and Wellbeing-Related Education Initiatives In order to be able to “connect the dots” between various values and wellbeingrelated education initiatives, it seems necessary to first document some of the evidence we have for their effectiveness. In the interest of staying within the scope of this chapter, we refer to recent meta-analytic reviews conducted across a selection of values and wellbeing-related initiatives that have emerged and/or taken precedence since the Australian Government funded values education projects (Australian Government Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011). Upfront, we acknowledge that the labels used for these initiatives are broad and often overlapping and/or contested spaces, the nuances of which are unable to be sufficiently addressed in this chapter. However, for the purposes of the analysis to follow, the below headings are used in their most commonly understood form (as categorized by the meta-analytic reviews) to discuss shared principles and practices, with specific reference to overall effect sizes (ES) found across the initiatives (for more in-depth discussion of the operationalization of constructs, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and strengths and limitations of the research reviewed, we refer the reader onto the individual meta-analytic studies referenced below).

Positive Education A meta-analysis of nine randomized and non-randomized controlled trials of schoolbased multicomponent positive psychology interventions (i.e., variety of individual exercises targeting two or more theoretically relevant well-being components of a positive education program) found small effects for subjective wellbeing (0.24), psychological wellbeing (0.25), and depression symptoms (0.28), but not for symptoms of anxiety in 4898 adolescents aged between 10 and 18 years (Tejada-Gallardo et al., 2020). Interestingly, the effects found for subjective wellbeing, while large in the short term (just after the intervention), were found to decrease over time. In this review, the combination of a multicomponent positive psychology intervention with another evidence-based positive intervention (e.g., positive youth development) was found to be more effective than the single application of a multicomponent positive psychology intervention. However, in a preceding systematic review of 85 schoolbased positive education intervention studies involving 35,888 students aged 4–18 by Waters and Loton (2019), the authors concluded that “although school-based interventions (specifically strengths-based) are having significant effects on certain positive aspects of wellbeing (e.g., life satisfaction, self-esteem, positive affect), they have not been shown to diminish negative symptoms such as anxiety, depression and negative affect” (p. 21).

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Mindfulness Education In a meta-analysis of 24 studies involving 1348 grade 1–12 students in mindfulness (i.e., structured activities to enable one to focus attention on the present moment in a non-judgemental and open way by, for example, focusing on the breath and sensations in the body), mindfulness was found to have a significant effect on participants’ cognitive performance (0.80; moderate to high), stress (0.39; small to moderate), and resilience (0.36; small to moderate) compared to control groups (Charlotte et al., 2014). Another meta-analysis of 24 studies, comprising 3977 participants, found that mindfulness interventions in schools were helpful, with small to moderate pre-post effects (0.24) on mental health and wellbeing outcomes (0.24) compared to controls (Carsley et al., 2018). Interventions that were delivered during late adolescence (15–18 years) that involved various combinations of mindfulness activities (e.g., mindful eating, body awareness, breathing, walking meditation, and mindfulnessbased coloring) were found to have the largest effects. However, other meta-analyses have found that while mindfulness-based interventions have small, positive effects on cognitive (0.25) and socioemotional processes (0.22), these do not translate to significant school behavioral or academic outcomes (Maynard et al., 2017).

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) A meta-analysis on the follow-up effects of 82 school-based, universal SEL interventions involving 97,406 kindergarten (K) to high school–aged students in activities to better understand and manage their emotions, set and achieve positive goals, and promote empathy, positive relationships, and responsible decision-making found that at 6 months to 18 years post-intervention, participants had significantly better socioemotional skills, attitudes, and indicators of wellbeing compared to controls when accounting for sociodemographic differences (mean ES of 0.13 to 0.33; small to moderate; Taylor et al., 2017). Notably, post-intervention socioemotional skill development (i.e., intra- and interpersonal competencies) was the strongest predictor of wellbeing at follow-up. Most of the interventions included in this meta-analysis were observed to be sequenced (coordinated progression of SEL activities/practices), active (participatory SEL elements such as role-playing), focused (dedicated SEL time or specific program element), and explicit to develop SEL competencies, all of which have been viewed as best practice for SEL intervention (Durlak et al., 2011). Another review on the effects of 40 pre-K to year 12 school-based SEL intervention studies found a small to moderate positive effect on students’ reading (0.25), mathematics (0.26), and science (0.19) outcomes in comparison to traditional methods of teaching (Corcoran et al., 2018). The largest intervention effect found for reading and mathematics was for the “Positive Action” 6-unit curriculum taught in K-12 classrooms, which aimed to explicitly promote positive actions in students’ physical, intellectual, emotional, and social areas and of

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which a school-wide climate development, counsellor’s, parent, and community program formed part of the initiative.

Service Learning (SL) A meta-analysis of 62 studies involving 11,837 kindergarten to university students found that those participating in SL programs, which aim to integrate community service with the academic curriculum, had small to moderate significant gains (mean effects 0.27 to 0.43) in terms of attitudes toward self, school and learning, civic engagement, social skills, and academic performance compared to controls (Celio et al., 2011). Another meta-analysis of 11 studies, published and unpublished between 1993 and 2008, found that SL increased student learning (0.33; small to moderate effect) in 2129 undergraduates (Warren, 2012). SL has also been found to have a small to medium positive effect on university students’ understanding of social issues (0.34), personal insight (0.28), and cognitive development (0.52) (Yorio & Ye, 2012). Greater effects on students’ understanding of social issues were found when they were provided opportunities for discussion and reflection, as opposed to written reflection alone. Students’ gains in social attitudes were found to be influenced by their obligation/intentions to engage in citizenship behaviors.

Environmental Education A meta-analysis of 169 studies involving 176,007 adolescents found that environmental education significantly improved young people’s environmental knowledge (0.95; large effect), attitudes (0.38; small to moderate effect), intentions (0.25; small effect), and self-reported behavior (0.41; small to moderate effect; van de Wetering, 2020). In another meta-analysis of 59 experimental and 147 correlational studies involving 69,763 participants, human nature connectedness (HNC) was found to be negatively correlated with materialism/consumerism and political conservatism and positively correlated with naturalist knowledge, time spent in outdoor spaces, engagement in mindfulness practices, pro-environmental values, humanistic values, as well as happiness and good health (Barragan-Jason et al., Pre-print). The studies that involved direct contact with nature and mindfulness practices (i.e., focusing on oneself and surroundings in the present moment) had the largest effects (0.18; small effect) on HNC, whereas environmental education and virtual nature experiences had minimal impact. The authors hypothesized that this may be attributed to traditional anthropocentric transmission of scientific knowledge. In this regard, another meta-analytic study of 57 primary experimental studies involving 6237 students found that constructivist and active learning approaches had a positive and large effect (1.46) on students’ environmental education compared to traditional learning methods (Arik & Yilmaz, 2020).

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Multicultural and Global Citizenship Education A meta-analytic review of 31 intercultural competence (IC refers to knowing and appreciating cultural differences, understanding cultural practices, and how they influence individuals’ effective intercultural interaction skills) intervention studies published between 2000 and 2018 found that the two major types of IC interventions used in kindergarten to higher education populations were: immersion (i.e., experiential via study abroad programs) and pedagogical based (e.g., collaborative work, role-playing; Zhang & Zhou, 2019). The former (immersion) was found to exert a larger effect (0.47) on intercultural improvement compared to other types of interventions on participants’ intercultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills. Interestingly, out of the pedagogical-based interventions, those that employed intensive intercultural service learning and civic engagement experiences reported similar effect sizes (0.45; moderate effect). Another meta-analysis of 27 studies on US undergraduate participants found that diversity experiences (e.g., formal and informal interactions with diverse people and curricula such as ethnic and women studies) were associated with increases in civic attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behaviors (effect size of 0.10, considered small). This effect was found to be greater for interpersonal interactions with racial diversity than for curricular and cocurricular diversity experiences (Bowman, 2011).

Anti-Bullying Programs A meta-analytic review of 81 research reports containing 122 intervention-control comparisons of structured programs to reduce prejudice or promote positive intergroup attitudes (e.g., liking and sympathy) in children and adolescents found that these interventions had a small to moderate mean effect size of 0.30 (Beelman & Heinemann, 2013). The interventions based on direct contact experiences, along with social-cognitive training programs designed to promote empathy and perspective taking, showed the strongest effect sizes. In another meta-analysis of 13 studies involving 19,619 participants in school-based anti-bullying programs (e.g., curriculum-based approaches, social/behavioral skills training, and peer or professional counseling), programs were found to have a small to moderate effect (
0.15) on victimization (Lee et al., 2015). The authors identified that those studies involving training in emotional control (i.e., designed to control negative emotions related to bullying such as anger, anxiety, and depression), peer counseling, or establishing of a school policy on bullying had significantly larger effect sizes on victimization than those that did not. However, subsequent meta-analyses indicated that while there is some evidence for the effectiveness of interventions aimed at preventing school violence and bullying in terms of reducing the frequency of victimizing and bullying, intervention effects on students’ attitudes (i.e., in favor of and against school bullying and violence) were weak and insignificant (Jiménez-Barbero et al., 2016).

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Values/Character Education (VE/CE; see Davidson et al., 2010; Leming, 2010 for a Historical Overview of How VE has Manifested as CE in the U.S. Context, Inc. Implementation Challenges; see Lovat, 2010 for an Overview of VE in the Australian Context) Studies in the fields of business, developmental psychology and education, sociology, and sport science research have shown that moral identity – the degree to which morals such as honesty, compassion, fairness, generosity, etc. are important to one’s identity – is significantly associated with moral behavior (i.e., prosocial behavior, avoidance of antisocial behavior, and ethical behavior; small to moderate effect size of 0.22; Hertz & Krettenauer, 2016). In education specifically, a recent meta-analysis of 52 studies including 225,779 kindergarten to college (freshman) participants found that CE, which aims to develop students’ virtues, was associated with higher levels of educational outcomes, expressions of love, integrity, compassion, and selfdiscipline in the U.S.A. and internationally, with a significant, small to moderate overall effect size of 0.29 (Jeynes, 2019). Interestingly, the individual studies (see Flay & Allred, 2003; Soriano et al., 2011) that reported a moderate to large effect size with controls (0.62 and 1.16) implemented programs that specifically focused on the importance of making positive, healthy behavioral life choices and delivering this content via an intensive (e.g., four lessons per week for every grade in elementary school), integrated approach that targeted areas such as school reorganization, teacher-student relations, parent involvement, instructional practices, and the development of self-concept in students, teachers, and parents tailored to context (including cultural).

Looking for Universal Patterns From the above review it is clear that values and wellbeing-related education initiatives share many aspects of overall intent. However, in order to better understand if there are fundamental meta-insights across these initiatives that could assist and strengthen individual efforts, it might be useful to take a step back and ask if there are, indeed, universal ways in which we acquire values and wellbeing. We might also ask ourselves if there is a co-dependant relationship between values and wellbeing that helps us define these terms in relation to each other. For example, we all know that our values can be anything we choose as individuals, but that doesn’t mean that any chosen value has the same bearing on our wellbeing. Conversely, some might argue that wellbeing is many things to many people, and so if there is no constant in the equation, it seems near impossible to try and tie these terms to each other in a meaningful way. In terms of whether there are universal ways in which we may acquire wellbeing, the answer must be an unequivocal “yes” if we consider a medical-scientific definition of physical health and wellbeing. For example, there may be individual

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studies showing that one day coffee is good for us and the next it isn’t (Higdon & Frei, 2006); however, the overall pattern of research into what constitutes a healthy diet for longevity is very clear: It is best to eat lots of vegetables and whole foods in general, drink plenty of water, and limit processed foods (Benelam & Wyness, 2010; Liu, 2013; Monteiro et al., 2011; Moubarac et al., 2013). Similarly, a multitude of individual preferences for how to stay in physical shape exist; however, the overall pattern of research findings into healthy exercise is clear: One has to use one’s muscles and get one’s heart rate up, preferably for 30 minutes every day, and generally limit a sedentary lifestyle (Blair et al., 2004; Warburton et al., 2006). Thus, as a collective, we have a pretty good idea of what constitutes health in our physiology. However, are there “overall patterns” when it comes to our psychological health, happiness, and wellbeing? It turns out that there are, even though they may be somewhat hidden in the above review of values and wellbeing-related education. To more fully draw these patterns out, therefore, and to more fully understand exactly what kind of psychological health and wellbeing we are after in education, first we need to connect some dots between our past and present understandings of health, happiness, values, and wellbeing.

Two Types of Wellbeing Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle first helped us to understand that there are two distinct types of human happiness: pleasurable and meaningful (Aristotle, 1925). A pursuit solely of the former type, they believed, equates to hedonism and is of little longlasting value to both the individual and society, whereas a pursuit of the latter produces a more long-term, virtuously-based happiness, which they referred to as eudaimonia (eu ¼ the good, daimon ¼ spirit). While these ancient Greek philosophers didn’t have the empirical data to support their claims, positive psychology research over the last three decades, in particular, has shown that although these two types of happiness are not mutually exclusive, eudaimonia is indeed crucial for our psychological health, whereas hedonism on its own is not (Fredrickson et al., 2013; Huta & Ryan, 2009; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Sheldon et al., 2018). In fact, hedonistic lifestyles are associated with a variety of negative personal wellbeing outcomes such as lowered life satisfaction, affect, self-concept, and higher risk of anxiety, depression, physical health, and risk behaviors (Dittmar et al., 2014), whereas people who report high levels of eudaimonia, or meaningful happiness, have been found to be at reduced risk of numerous diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and myocardial infarction), mental health symptoms such as depression, and increased levels of resilience and post-traumatic growth (Ruini & Cesetti, 2019; Ryff, 2014a). If meaningful happiness, or eudaimonia, is key to our psychological health and wellbeing, it follows that we need to understand what exactly is meant with “meaningful happiness.” For example, what about the fact that what gives people meaning in life can seemingly be many different things? If one looks at the wellbeing research literature as a whole, there is one common denominator in the myriad of things of what people see as meaningful in their lives: It is that of being able to

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contribute or give to someone or something beyond oneself (Aknin et al., 2013; Delle Fave et al., 2016). Contributing, or giving, to others is not only one of the healthiest things we can do in life (see Post, 2005, 2011), it also gives us meaningful happiness – which is one of the healthiest states we can be in, and which in turn makes us want to give or contribute more (Mariano & Vaillant, 2012; Ryff, 2014b). In a word, giving provides us with meaningful happiness in our lives, which in turn makes us want to give more: It is a positive, reinforcing loop. When we realize the above distinctions, we are also better able to define what kind of happiness and wellbeing we should be nourishing as educators and caregivers. For example, it is true that there are studies showing that happy children can be more occupied with themselves and less interested in the plight of others (Baumeister et al., 2003; Brummelman et al., 2016). However, when one investigates a little deeper into how these studies have made the children “happier,” one notices that these interventions usually can be categorized as belonging to the category of pleasurable happiness – i.e., giving them lollies, stickers, non-specific praise, etc. In contrast, studies where the interventions involve contribution or giving to others, the meaningful happiness deriving from such activity does not make the participants more self-centered but rather more giving, more generous, than before the intervention (Silke et al., 2018). Thus, when we are talking about what type of happiness, health, and wellbeing we are after in educational settings, it must by definition be the more meaningful rather than just the pleasurable (remembering that the two are not mutually exclusive).

The Value Around Which All Values Revolve We have so far linked wellbeing to meaning, meaning to giving, and giving back to wellbeing, thus observing a positive, reinforcing loop. However, where do values fit into this loop? One of the core findings in the values education projects in Australia was that values must be enacted upon (Lovat & Toomey, 2009; Lovat et al., 2009). When values are only talked about, or dealt with in an intellectual way, they remain abstract to and have limited impact on students. What is giving (if not done with dubious motives) but manifested kindness, generosity, compassion, empathy, respect, tolerance, etc. – in other words, values? Giving, in its broadest notion, we might say, is what makes values enacted upon. This realization also helps clarify where this type of value (expressing kindness, generosity, compassion, etc.) best sits inside a postmodern worldview supporting relativity and the contextual nature of truth claims. Postmodern, or poststructuralist, discourse has been essential to disrupt long-held assumptions and decentralize unequal power structures, but it has also left many with the wrong impression that there are no universal truths (Peters et al., 2018). Of course, this is still true in the sense that everything is, ultimately, contextual, but it is also not true in a practical sense when it comes to our health and wellbeing. In the context of what constitutes health and wellbeing from an evidence-based perspective – that is, if we agree that it is wise to be healthy individually, collectively, socially, and environmentally – then

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there are certain universal values that stand out as being more important than others, it seems. These values are the ones that seem to denote giving and social and environmental concern of some sort; these might belong to the only type of value that must not be up to “choice” as a society, but which must be embedded in our political, educational, and societal structures to ensure a healthy future. As we have written about in earlier work (Nielsen & Ma, 2021), it might not be a coincidence that countries that have a high amount of individual, social, and environmental concern embedded in their political, educational, and social structures, such as, for example, Denmark and Sweden, are ranked as some of the happiest and most trustful places in the world.

The Ecology of Giving If giving is a lens through which we might better understand the relationship between values and wellbeing, it follows that it would be advantageous to understand the many ways in which it is possible to be living the “giving life.” Indeed, the aforementioned Greek Philosophers’ concept of the “examined life” – the only life worth living, according to them – was interchangeable with their notion of eudaimonia, or the meaningful life (Aristotle, 1925). In a similar vein, we might say that it is only when we fully understand (examine) the ways in which the “giving life” might manifest that we can consciously work to live, let alone educate for, such a life. Through observing and categorizing pedagogies of giving in previous work (Nielsen, 2011; Nielsen & Ma, 2016, 2018), we were able to identify five layers of giving ecology:

Whole

Altruism

Environment

Communities

Others

Self

Self-compassion

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An important thing to observe in the above model is how giving to self essentially exists on the same continuum as other ways of giving – from self-compassion to altruism. Research shows that we have a threshold where the health benefits from giving starts to decline (Oakley et al., 2011); this threshold is reached when we are not giving enough to ourselves of what is needed in order to have a surplus with which to give to others (e.g., sleep, exercise, time in nature, etc.). This realization also allows us to conceptually connect physical health to psychological health, since one’s sleep, exercising, etc. – one’s “looking after self” – essentially also can be a type of giving. However, with the insights distilled from the discussion so far, we can now better understand the difference between a giving to self that is sitting inside and serves a bigger picture of social and environmental concern, as opposed to a “giving to self” that primarily is driven by egotistical selfinterests (e.g., when our desire for new, cheap products comes, either consciously or unconsciously, at the expense of unsafe and unfair working practices for others, the introduction of environmental pollutants and degradation or exhaustion of local resources, etc.). The research would suggest it makes a big difference to our psychological wellbeing the kind of self-giving with which we engage. It is with this big-picture philosophy and ecological lens in mind that we can now better understand the potential, as well as some of the pitfalls, of the various values and wellbeing-related initiatives reviewed earlier.

To Give or Not to Give: That Might Be the Question Using the above-constructed lens, or pedagogical compass, we have over the years observed in classrooms the full potential of the meaningful life being nurtured in many values and wellbeing-related programs – and we have also observed many of the pitfalls in those same programs. Positive education can be an effective method with which to help students connect with valuable signature strengths of theirs (e.g., bravery, leadership, social intelligence; Peterson & Seligman, 2004), especially when those signature strengths are put into action. For example, it is valuable to become aware that one has kindness as a strength, and it is even more empowering when one is given the opportunity to manifest that kindness in a tangible and experiential way, whether that be in the classroom, school community, or perhaps the broader community. What seems less powerful is when a school becomes so focused on the individual that it forgets that signature strengths are of limited value unless they are put into action for someone or something other than just oneself (Schutte & Malouff, 2019). In such occurrences, positive education seems to lack the pedagogical inclusion of the meaningful life at best, and become slightly navel gazing and self-centered at worst. This observation is both a possible explanation for the relatively modest effect sizes in positive education initiatives and their differential impact on positive and negative mental health indicators in our review of meta-analytic studies, as well as a recommendation for more research on positive education initiatives that put strength-based learning into action for others.

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Mindfulness education, in its fullest expression of teaching students to fine-tune their mind’s attention, non-judgementally, to the present, is a powerful way for them to become more aware of self, others, and the world. Like with positive education, however, a sole focus on regulating the self can lead to a contentment with not going any farther than self (Poulin et al., 2021). In such instances, it seems imperative to understand that mindfulness practices that contain some sort of giving ecology might be more effective when it comes to improving health and wellbeing, compared to those that do not go beyond self. For example, this may be why mindfulness-based interventions have not been found to positively impact school behavioral or academic outcomes, which are intrinsically interpersonal in nature, even if they have small, positive effects on cognitive and socioemotional processes at the individual level (Maynard et al., 2017). One might think that socioemotional learning (SEL) would not have problems prioritizing the awareness of and relationship between self and this interpersonal context. However, unless educators have a strong, conceptual understanding of a giving ecology (even if they call it something else) and how to teach for this in developmentally appropriate ways, this type of education risks not operating at as deep a level as it could. For example, there is nothing wrong with getting younger children to describe their emotions through smiley, neutral, or unhappy faces as a starting point for emotional awareness and intelligence. There is also nothing wrong with talking about what one’s actions might make someone feel to promote empathy and positive relationships. However, to achieve a real depth to such learning, meaningful opportunities to put empathy into action must also accompany such activities. It seems no coincidence that SEL shows significant positive effects on both wellbeing and learning when it includes structured, active elements, and that the largest intervention effect found for pre-K to 12 students’ reading and mathematics was associated with promoting positive actions toward a type of giving ecology (students’ physical, intellectual, emotional, and social areas). Empathy and positive relationships might be front and center of SEL, but it might be the giving, or service, ingredient that fully enables such aspirations. It might seem natural to conclude, then, that service learning (SL) must be perfectly suited for optimal wellbeing effects, as giving is central to this type of education. However, because service learning traditionally has centered on the importance of giving to the community from an ideological standpoint, it is not uncommon to meet educators who are very good at giving to others but not so good at giving to themselves (i.e., self) – or even wanting to talk about, or consider, that dimension. We have met several SL educators who admit that they feel guilty thinking about the evidence-based areas in which we all need to give to ourselves in order to have a surplus with which to give to others (e.g., sleep, exercise, diet, time in nature, etc.). Many ask: What kind of giving is it, if we are motivated to benefit our own life – is this not a selfish “giving”? To that we have often asked the question back (politely, of course): What is the difference between knowing that giving is good for us, and knowing that broccoli is good for us? We don’t consider it selfish, in and of itself, to eat healthily, and to see such self-care as a means with which we can better be something for others – why, then, would knowing that giving is healthy for

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both the receiver and the giver be an obstacle? As we have illustrated in our discussion earlier, giving to self and giving to the outside layers of the ecology are not a dichotomy; they are part of a continuum. We see this evidenced in the review of meta-analytic studies, where the benefits of service learning can go both ways; service learning has the potential to improve attitudes toward both self and others/ civic intentions, which then impact actual engagement in citizenship behaviors. Having said the above, because giving is such a central part of achieving meaningful happiness and wellbeing, it also has to be acknowledged that initiatives that include forms of service learning and active contribution to others or the environment seem to be improved by such inclusions. Our review of meta-analyses indicates benefits from adding elements of service learning to environmental, multicultural, and global citizenship education. Again, such a comment is both an observation from the collated meta-analytic studies, as well as a recommendation for more research on the incorporation of long-term service and giving into such programs, and whether such inclusions would improve follow-up effects that often appear weak (such as seen, for example, in anti-bullying programs, which may be able to reduce occurrences of victimization in the short term, but not influence students’ attitudes toward school bullying and violence; Jiménez-Barbero et al., 2016). Likewise, notions of values and character education are not exempt from the pitfalls noted above. We mentioned earlier that the teaching of values and character remains abstract and intellectual unless they are acted upon. In schools, we have observed “values and character education” lessons that were behaviorist and didactic in nature (Nielsen, 2013), whereas we have also observed that, where educators know that values are a means to a higher end, rather than an end in themselves, efforts tend to more successfully nourish wellbeing and the meaningful life in both students and staff (Nielsen & Ma, 2016, 2018). Such an understanding might be reflected in the meta-analytic findings on character education, in particular: The development of students’ virtues seems effective when combined with making positive and healthy behavioral changes (action) in many aspects of life (ecology). Also, the fact that moral identity (thinking and feeling) is strongly associated with moral behavior (action) indicates that any kind of separation of the two might be ineffective and perhaps even oxymoronic. Whatever the values or wellbeing-related initiatives implemented in a school, having the above understandings might help with guiding students in all areas of their lives in ways that are deeply personal and transformative. With such a knowledge, as educators, we might have discussions about how to look after self without it becoming a hedonistic enterprise, and we might share some of the research showing that money and materialistic pursuits do not improve eudaimonia, our meaningful wellbeing, as long as our basic needs are met (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010; Myers, 2000). We might be able do all of this without moralizing or didactic teaching because all we have to do is share the research on wellbeing and happiness in a pedagogically sound manner so that students come to know such research insights for themselves through inquiry learning, constructivism, and experiential learning.

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It might be useful to underline that we certainly do not want to downplay other established factors identified in successful interventions, such as having a sufficiently resourced and/or whole-school approach, devoting time for the professional development of educators and having educators (as opposed to external consultants) deliver interventions, and implementing change in manageable increments using ground-up approaches. However, what we are pointing to in this discussion is the possibility that having an overarching philosophy of giving and meaning (or whatever we want to call it) might be the factor without which none of the other factors can reach their full potential. That is to say, positive education, values and character education, multicultural, global, and environmental education, and so forth all seem to fulfill their potential for improving individual and collective health, happiness, and wellbeing the best when they operate inside a big-picture ecology of meaning and giving. Indeed, when education settings seem to lack this bigger picture and pedagogical compass in their efforts, there is the risk that they (unintentionally, of course) might even strengthen the individualism and navel gazing so central to many of our modern problems framed by zero-sum thinking today.

Will We Be “Plastic” Enough to Change? We began this chapter by noting the significant challenges facing us globally, and that striving toward human “goodness” and wellbeing must not depend on being either religious or materialistic. Instead, by using science and connecting the dots between interdisciplinary research, public education has the potential to support what makes us want to get up in the morning, feeling that we have meaning in our lives, and what makes us want to care more deeply for each other and the world around us. We have also examined how values and wellbeing-related education programs can have many foci and specific agendas, but that they all seem to need an overarching philosophy of meaningful living to fulfill their full potential, simply because giving and being something for others are universal components of individual, social, and planetary wellbeing. In closing, it might be worth noting that we seem to have had the seeds of this understanding at our disposal for a long time, but that, as a collective, we are only starting to connect the dots of these seeds more recently, bringing together the philosophical and empirical traditions to support such a “knowing.” For example, attachment theory (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980) has long argued that without primary caregiving that is loving and supportive, infants do not develop secure attachment, which in turn presents a vast array of developmental difficulties into later childhood and even adulthood. More recently, neuroscientific research has shown that a lack of love and care in our early years literally damages our brains, thus affirming the fundamental tenets of attachment theory (Howard, 2012). Similarly, humanism first proposed that generosity, compassion, and humane behavior helps us to self-actualize and flourish as humans (Maslow, 1943, 1954, 1970) – theories that positive psychology, in particular, has since supported with empirical data, linking such behavior to health and wellbeing (Snyder & Lopez, 2002).

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Thus, although we may have had the clues in our possession for a long time, it is their connection that is needed to be able to observe the larger patterns of research across individual studies and various disciplines. In this chapter, we have tried to contribute to this beginning work by highlighting the global challenges facing us today, and that the solutions seem to lie in educating with a pedagogical compass that involves some sort of ecology of giving and meaningful living, simply because such an ecology seems to be “the value” around which all values must revolve in order to reach their full potential – not from a dogmatic or idealistic standpoint, but from an evidence-informed perspective. Do we have hope for the future? Just like the recent neuroscientific research has shown that while damaged brains are difficult to rewire, the plasticity and capacity of the brain to change throughout our lives gives us all hope that it is always possible to change – individually and collectively. Our hope lies in creating new “neural pathways” in how we approach the education of future generations. Certainly, beyond PISA scores (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2016) and national gross domestic product (GDP), values and wellbeingrelated education initiatives that create synergy by conceptually incorporating some sort of social and environmental concern as their pedagogical compass seem indispensable. Then it might not be so important what we call such a type of education.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Five Human Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Acronym, TEACHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T Is Transformation, Not Just Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E Is Exemplar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Is Awareness of Oneness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C Is Culture of Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H Is Head, Heart, and Hand (in Harmony) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E Is Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R Is Religion – The Unity Underlying All Faiths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toogoolawa School (Australia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Embodiments of Love Academy (Nigeria) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

There is now a rising tide of interest, not only in values-based education, but also in the impact that the character of the teacher has upon students in primary and secondary schools. Research into the role that spiritualty and neuroscience play in the development of the child and adolescent has also been growing in recent years. In this chapter, a form of values-based education termed Human Values Education (HVE) is described in the context of Toogoolawa School in Australia, an alternative school for boys whose behavior excluded them from mainstream schooling. This spiritually inclined approach aims to bring forth from within each student the universal Human Values of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence, which are said to subsume all of the human virtues and to have R. Farmer · S. Farmer (*) Toogoolawa Schools Limited, Ormeau, QLD, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_31

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endless depth and breadth akin to that of saints. The essential catalyst for a student’s evolution into a high-functioning human being of good character is, according to Human Values Education, the ongoing self-transformation of the teacher who applies the guidelines in the acronym TEACHER (Transformation, not information; Exemplar; Awareness of Oneness; Culture; Harmony of Head, Heart and Hands; Environment; and Religious unity). Keywords

Values-based education · Human values education · Love · Truth · Peace · Right conduct · Non-violence

Introduction Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man. . . (Swami Vivekananda, 1863–1902)

There is general consensus worldwide among advocates of values-based education that the teaching profession can play a major role in determining the future of the ecosystem and civilization itself (Lovat et al., 2010). Values-based education identifies teachers as pathfinders and change agents for the future. In fact, because they play such a major role in determining whether their students grow into becoming an asset or a liability for the societies in which they live, their profession is regarded by some as the most important of all (Caldicott, 2009). If enough teachers, parents, and members of the community play their part in shaping the character of the students toward humane and responsible citizenship, the downward slide in general wellbeing and quality of life worldwide will surely be arrested. All values-based education approaches decry the mere passing on of information (facts and figures) to students, reasoning instead that the development of good character needs to be a prime outcome of all schooling (Hawkes, 2013; Lovat, 2019). To effect this, the teacher will need to provide an educational environment in which the young can learn not only the academic curriculum but also the “inner curriculum” (Hawkes & Hawkes, 2018) of how to attain the higher qualities of being truly human. Most agree that this environment will need to include the moral and performance character of the teacher as well as the explicit teaching of values so that students will have a role model to guide and inspire them (Davidson et al., 2010; Lovat & Toomey, 2007). It could well be that teachers who have the courage and selflessness to commit themselves to an ongoing personal self-transformation for the sake of our children and the future of civilization will become the unsung heroes in our society for it is they, perhaps more than any others, who will have tipped the scales toward a more sane and humane society. When we reflect upon the state of the world with its struggles and suffering the solutions are obvious, but those in positions of power and influence seem to be unable or unwilling to change. The responsibility for this inability of so many adults

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to open their hearts and minds probably had its genesis, not only in the family home, but also in the classrooms of their childhood. The gravity of the latter cause was starkly pointed out in an address given by Pring (2013) at Maynooth University: The Principal of an American High School. . . sent the following letter to the new teachers joining the school: Dear Teacher, I am the survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and children shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans. Reading, writing, arithmetic (one might add “getting your leaving certificate”) are important but only if they serve to make our children more human

The words of this school principal can easily be adapted to describe the present situation across the whole spectrum of human behavior that allows, for example, the death through malnutrition of over five million children every year and the many other seemingly unsolvable crises facing civilization today. Clearly, our education system needs to change, to focus much more on the development of good character. In contrast to adults, children appear to embrace personal transformation, given the right environment. Extensive, high-quality research indicates that they respond well to values education programs that foster the growth of human excellence in not only academic matters but particularly those pertaining to social and emotional wellbeing, self-discipline, resilience, respect, responsibility, and so on (Davidson et al., 2010; Hawkes & Hawkes, 2018; Lovat, 2019; Lovat et al., 2011). The central question underlying all values-based education endeavors is this: How can teachers practice their craft in such a way that they inspire the young ones in their care to aim for excellence in being good, happy, and wise human beings while also applying themselves diligently to their schoolwork? What is clear from the extensive Australian research into values-based education is that most of the teachers in the studies committed themselves to becoming good role models of the values they were promoting (Lovat et al., 2011).

Human Values Education There are several forms of values-based education currently being applied across the world (Lovat et al., 2010). A number of them involve the teachers, parents, and the community in the selection of the values or virtues that the school will focus on (Hawkes, 2013; Lovat, 2019). Others, like those in the USA who highlight the respect

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and responsibility character dimensions (Lickona & Davidson, 2005), prescribe a set of values that are thought to include the full spectrum of virtuous behavior. This is the approach adopted in what is termed Human Values Education where the five universal Human Values of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence provide the underlying philosophy that guides everything that happens in the school (Farmer, 2009; Farmer & Farmer, 2015). Two “sister” schools which have adopted Human Values Education will be described in the present chapter, one in Australia (Toogoolawa School; see www. toogoolawa.com.au) and the other in Nigeria (The Embodiments of Love Academy; see www.joyvillages.org/tela.php).

The Five Human Values The definition of the five Human Values goes far beyond what their names might suggest, as implied by the use of capitals for the first letter in each value. In defining the Human Values, there are two main considerations. They are as follows: 1. The five Human Values of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence are of endless breadth and depth, embracing all possible human virtues, and lying within each one of us in full potential, equivalent to that displayed by the greatest saints and sages. Commentary The Human Values Education approach rests firmly on the assumption that there is a pure, indestructible, timeless essence – generally unperceived – innately present in all human beings that is variously referred to as spirit, soul, higher self, true self, universal consciousness, and so on. This timeless essence is thought to express itself in humans as the five Human Values. Our character – our beliefs, values, and behavior – is an indication of the degree to which we recognize and abide by these innate higher qualities. The values are umbrella terms subsuming all possible human virtues at their highest levels, including those pure and noble qualities extolled by all of the major religions, and these are prescribed in much of the ancient lore of indigenous peoples and embraced by humanism and the transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and early mystics such as Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), along with more recent ones such as Eckhart Tolle (2004). Because of how they are defined, the five Human Values naturally include in their fold the 52 virtues identified by the Virtues Project (Kavelin-Popov, 2000), which are honored by cultures and traditions across the world as “the best within us.” If we, as teachers of the young, can allow ourselves to believe that these five Human Values lie within every human being in full potential, in all of their power and glory, it will change the way we relate to our students. Looking for, and insisting on the heart and mind seeing, that which is magnificent and beautiful in each child paves the way for them to believe in themselves by identifying with and manifesting their innate wisdom and goodness.

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2. Each Human Value includes the other four values in its composition, with Love as the foundation of them all. Commentary To illustrate this essential interdependency between the values, there is the analogy of a pure mountain stream of Love flowing down and separating into the five rivers of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence. Each river is manifestly different, nourishing different parts of the land, yet every drop in all five rivers can only be Love. Another analogy is the four-legged table, with the top being Love and the legs being Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence – the table will not be functional unless all five components are present and interconnected, and it is Love (the top of the table) that unites all five. Throughout history, the writings of the mystical traditions and major religions have regarded love – pure, unconditional, selfless, and limitless love – as the foundational essence of all other human virtues (Easwaran, 2009; Huxley, 1945). This uniting of all human virtues under the banner of the Human Value of Love is a defining aspect of Human Values Education. Because each Human Value is defined as being of endless depth and breadth, it has of necessity both an esoteric meaning and a practical one, appealing to the intuitive and rational aspects of the brain, respectively. Both are necessary and depend upon each other, as McGilchrist (2019) so cogently argues in the same way that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can only function effectively, wisely, and lovingly, if both are active and allowed to influence the other. The esoteric meaning is often conveyed through metaphors, providing teachers with the deeper philosophical (even spiritual) basis of the Human Value. The practical meaning gives a number of basic human qualities that the teacher can use as guidelines for their own self-transformation and for integrating values into the subjects being taught. The esoteric and practical meanings for Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence can be found elsewhere (Farmer & Farmer, 2015).

The Acronym, TEACHER Having introduced the five Human Values, attention can now be directed to a more detailed description of how Human Values Education is practiced in Toogoolawa School in Australia and in the Embodiments of Love Academy in Nigeria. The acronym TEACHER provides the necessary framework for explaining this approach that has its roots in a universal spirituality: T E A C H E R

is transformation, not just information is exemplar – teacher as the role model is awareness of oneness is culture of countries is head, heart, and hand in harmony is environment is religion – the unity underlying all faiths

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T Is Transformation, Not Just Information The T in the acronym TEACHER is reminding teachers that the students graduating from school should not only have information, but also know how to continue the self-transformation that they have been initiated into during the school years. It is not always easy for teachers, parents, and government officials to recognize the importance of placing the all-round personal development of students ahead of the mere ingestion and recall of a vast array of facts and theories. There is concern that such a profound shift in priorities would result in lower academic standards. Even if this was the case, the question can be asked: Would society rather have more clever thieves, rapacious businessmen and self-serving politicians, or more honest achievers, fair-minded shopkeepers and selfless public servants? However, extensive research has demonstrated that academic performance does not reduce when more priority is given to values-based learning (Lovat et al., 2011).

E Is Exemplar It is generally the case that teachers engaged in values-based education find themselves improving on the ways in which they themselves live the values that they seek to promote in their students (Hawkes, 2013; Lovat, 2019). Human Values Education is proposing that, if a teacher sets out to become an exemplar – not just an example – of values-based living, the positive effect on the students of such modeling will be even greater. Consider this analogy: If we want some pieces of wood to come alight, we place in their midst a log that is already burning. The radiant heat of this log soon ignites the hidden fire in the other sticks, and they too are set ablaze. It is the fire of selftransformation taking place in the teacher that delights and inspires the students so that they too become alive with the transforming fire of the Human Values that have been waiting to manifest from within them. This is said to happen through imitation learning or what is known as the mirror neurons in the brain (Siegel & Bryson, 2012). Research into the effects on children of an unchecked virtual and online world indicates that the role models portrayed in TV, videos, and social media are too often responsible for young people’s self-destructive behavior and overt expressions of hate and rage (American Academy of Paediatrics, 2016). To arrest this slide of the vulnerable into the dark side of the human condition, it is the contention of Human Values Education that the teacher – and, where possible, the parents – will need to become a more attractive and compelling role model than all of those who are presently ensnaring their innocent minds and hearts. We must become “burning logs,” catalysts for the necessary self-transformation in our students so that, upon reaching adulthood, they can help steer our society away from the rocks of selfishness and indifference, toward caring for others and ultimate safety and harmony for all.

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A Is Awareness of Oneness Some might wonder at first what the notion of oneness – or unified field theory, as the quantum physicists call it (Bohm, 1995) – has to do with values-based education. Human Values Education is proposing that, when a teacher embraces the mindset of a unity underlying all of the apparent diversity, the choices he/she makes throughout each school day will result in a classroom that is more inclusive, caring, unifying, compassionate, and ecologically respectful. As teachers move toward deepening an awareness of oneness – of being one with the students and with all of humanity and nature too – they will not only model universal, unconditional love, they will automatically encourage the young to live and breathe an awareness of our common humanity and our inseparable bond with all of creation. Children can have practice in expanding their limited sense of self into oneness by encouraging them to imagine that they are the tree, the flower, the bird, the sunset, the thunder, all of the stars in the sky, and so on – in this way touching on the underlying reality of oneness.

C Is Culture of Countries It is the thesis of Human Values Education that only when education is blended with culture will it shine forth as true education. But what culture? Extensive research across many societies has led to the finding that the core values common to all enduring cultures throughout recorded history – wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence – are those that lead to a refinement of character (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Culturally responsive teaching is understood by most teachers in multicultural societies to be an essential factor in ensuring that all students feel at ease in the classroom, regardless of their family background (Gay, 2010), but what part of a minority student’s culture is the teacher to focus on? The customs, religion, food, rituals, music, art, and literature? The Human Values Education approach is for the teacher to research a particular child’s culture by looking for those particular societal traditions that are aimed at a refinement of character, for example, the insistence on a “fair go” for all in Australian culture; the universal practice in Japan of bowing to someone when greeting or departing from them; the encouragement of self-reliance in the USA; and behaving respectfully to others in pre-colonial Nigeria. When a teacher leads the class into discovering the finer, more noble elements of different students’ cultural backgrounds, this not only creates an inclusive, non-judgmental atmosphere but it also helps in the refinement of both the school and class culture.

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H Is Head, Heart, and Hand (in Harmony) The socio-emotional learning (SEL) model of head–heart–hands has proved to be a useful tool for assisting children to connect with their feelings and in this way to be happier and more proficient students (Zins et al., 2004). The Human Values Education model of head–heart–hand (in harmony) is, in some respects, a refinement of SEL in that it gives priority to the heart in establishing if a thought (and then the action) is in accordance with each one of the five Human Values of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence. That is, before taking any action, we can ask of each train of thought as it arrives into consciousness: Is this thought loving or is it harsh; does it promote open-mindedness and humility; will it enhance patience and equanimity; does it accord with my conscience; and is there any trace of anger or judgment in it? If the thought contravenes any of the Human Values, no action should follow on from it. To ensure unity and harmony between head, heart, and hand, teachers would need to practice vigilance within themselves in all of these three areas. The effect on our students and all those who connect with us will be nurturing, uplifting, and liberating if what we say, do, and feel are in harmony, arising from a warm and open heart.

E Is Environment Research studies into the effect of the school and classroom environment on the well-being of students are numerous and revealing (Narvaez, 2010). The research findings confirm the obvious about school ambience: that children learn best when they are happy and feel safe and trusting (Lovat et al., 2011, p. 192). What is not so well-researched is how proximity to and involvement with the natural environment enhances children’s overall development (Louv, 2010; Sukhomlinsky, 2016). Perhaps the school and natural environment are equally important. One of the philosophical tenets of Human Values Education is that nature is both the best teacher and the best preacher. Converging evidence from hundreds of studies strongly suggests that experiences of nature boost children’s academic learning, personal development, and environmental stewardship (Rivkin, 1997). Time spent in nature changes how we see and relate to it (Louv, 2010). If our students can be given the opportunity to be molded by the mystery and beauty of natural environments, they could become change agents in later life for the ecological challenges presently facing the world.

R Is Religion – The Unity Underlying All Faiths The examples of inter-religious bigotry and hatred throughout the world are legion. All of them bear witness to the need for a public education system having a

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curriculum imbued with values proclaiming the underlying unity of all religions. Human Values Education suggests that Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence can be employed as the common language of an interfaith or naturalistic theology – one that neutralizes religious bigotry by facilitating dialog between the faiths and with the non-faith (Dalai Lama, 2011); one that bears allegiance to all seekers after the one truth (Easwaran, 2009) and that is often referred to as the perennial philosophy (Huxley, 1945). This will require considerable self-reflection, self-analysis, and open-mindedness if teachers are to develop and speak a common spiritual language, which all can understand and feel included in. How are we to lead our students (without preaching to them) into a recognition that all religions are worthy of the deepest respect and that all are pathways up the one mountain of Truth? More importantly, how are we to do this without offending the sensibilities of some students and/or their parents who insist that their religious (or atheistic) beliefs are superior to all other beliefs? Human Values Education is saying that we must not let language stand in the way of unity – rather, our duty as teachers is to find a language that knows only unity. Quality teaching allows students, as much as possible, to discover things for themselves. Recent studies (Miller, 2015) suggest that children and adolescents will be interested in exploring this issue because of an innate yearning for a Truth that embraces all points of view. Further, the research identifies an innate, untarnished spirituality in children. Being in touch with this nourishes a child’s well-being and is a predictor of balance and harmony in the years ahead (Miller, 2015). Human Values Education suggests that, given their limitless depth and breadth of meaning, exploration of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence can nourish into awareness the students’ innate spirituality – that is, the Human Values are the very essence of spirituality. The above component parts of the acronym TEACHER describe the philosophical approach being adopted by schools embracing Human Values Education. Each school has its own prayers, rituals, non-academic activities, and teaching techniques, depending upon the country, the student body, and the architectural layout of buildings. Intertwined with the TEACHER guidelines are the seven teaching techniques that help manifest the five Human Values in students and teaching staff alike. Each one is described in detail in Handbook for Teachers in Human Values Education (Farmer & Farmer, 2015, pp. 83–201). They are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Quiet time Mindfulness (silent sitting) Wise sayings Storytelling Peaceful mind, open heart Service learning Unity of faiths

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Toogoolawa School (Australia) Toogoolawa School in Australia is a small (120 students), spiritually inclined, interdenominational, independent school offering an alternative form of education for boys aged 7–15 years whose behavior or anxiety disorder has excluded them from mainstream schools. Most are 3–5 years behind their peers academically. Toogoolawa is an ancient Aboriginal word meaning “a place in the heart,” and it is this principle of the highest form of loving that lies at the center of all that the school offers. The school logo (see www.toogoolawa.com.au) shows a teacher kneeling in front of the student, both enclosed in a heart-shaped space, indicating the self-sacrifice and respect for others required from the teacher for that role. Both figures rest in the hand of a higher power. The whole scene is encircled by the five Human Values, indicating the kind of educational environment required to draw forth and manifest these values in the lives of teachers and students alike. Everything that happens in Toogoolawa is based on the Human Values Education model, with a prime focus on teacher self-transformation. It is a foundational Toogoolawa belief that, when a teacher or youth worker shines with the luster of a soul fully committed to its own growth and development in order to be of loving service to others, the boys are given the opportunity to witness greatness, to sense their own higher potential. This in turn impels and heartens them to set out on the long and often arduous journey to make that potential manifest in their own life (Farmer, 2009; Farmer & Farmer, 2015). A recent survey of the priorities that Toogoolawa staff have about their work showed that most regard being a good role model of the values as more important than anything else. “We have to show these boys how to love, how to be patient and kind” was a typical comment. The staff also see the daily sacred rituals as essential for the boys’ healing and self-transformation, with perhaps the most powerful being the mindfulness practices and the prayer said in unison as the first activity of the school day: “We start the day with love. We fill the day with love. We end the day with love. This is the way we live.” This is said with the ten fingers shaped in the form of a heart. During the 24 years of Toogoolawa’s existence, over 1600 students have benefitted from the education program. Around 85% of the boys leave the school to take on some form of work or study. For some, the effect on them of joining Toogoolawa is quite dramatic, even in the first 2–3 weeks. When interviewed about how Toogoolawa has influenced her son, one mother had this to say: Since he was two years old our son was very vicious and violent. . .He was rude and disrespectful. . .He threw scissors at teachers; he hated them. . . He smashed the smart board. . . Truly, my child was a monster. He’d hurt kids and laugh and run away. I couldn’t take him to the shopping centre or the skate park because he’d try to hit kids with his scooter. No school wanted him. . . Now he’s twelve and he’s only been at this school for nine months. . .The change is 110 percent. He helps everyone in the class; he loves his teachers; he’s got friends for the first time in his life. . .He’s a completely different person. . .I don’t know what this school has

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done to him, but now he’s so kind and tries so hard to do his schoolwork. . .The teachers here are miracle workers. This school gave him the opportunity to be kind and loving, because deep down he always wanted to be a good boy. . .

The Embodiments of Love Academy (Nigeria) The Embodiments of Love Academy (TELA) in the district of Ebe, Enugu State, Nigeria, is the “sister” school (1200 students) of Toogoolawa School in that both have embraced Human Values Education. As with Toogoolawa School in Australia, all education is provided free of charge. TELA has adapted the seven teaching techniques mentioned earlier to suit the evolving culture of Nigeria. Ebe district is a strong Roman Catholic area where extreme poverty is the norm. There is a growing awareness in the community of the need for religious tolerance and the reclaiming of their pre-colonial culture of mutual respect. The impact of Human Values Education on the students in TELA has been quite profound. For example, throughout 2018–2021 many parents have been spontaneously expressing their gratitude to the teachers, telling them how much more respectful, cooperative, self-reliant, and helpful their children had become since attending TELA. Further, in the October 2021 national assessment, 6 out of the 18 students completing year 12 were granted full university scholarships through to the Ph.D level. This is an impressive accomplishment that identifies the Embodiments of Love Academy as the highest performing secondary school in Nigeria, even though its students come from the surrounding villages where illiteracy is commonplace.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have described Human Values Education as a form of values-based education that identifies the five universal Human Values of Love, Truth, Peace, Right Conduct, and Non-violence – umbrella terms for all human virtues – as the five facets of the “diamond” representing a person’s highest, inborn character potential. Human Values Education has a strong spiritual theme underlying the working framework of the acronym TEACHER, where T represents the focus on teaching students those lifelong tools for self-transformation that will allow them to connect with and manifest their innate higher human qualities and E stands for the teacher’s commitment to become an exemplar of the Human Values to be awakened in the students. A brief description has been given of two of the educational facilities applying Human Values Education: Toogoolawa School (Australia) and the Embodiments of Love Academy (Nigeria). With pure, unconditional, universal Love as the underground stream feeding the roots of Human Values Education, the results with “troubled” boys in Australia and poverty-level village children in Nigeria are promising indeed.

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References American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016). Virtual violence impacts children on multiple levels. Paediatrics, 138(2), 2016–2098. Bohm, D. (1995). Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge. Caldicott, H. (2009). If you love this planet: A plan to heal the earth. W.W. Norton. Dalai Lama, H. H. (2011). Beyond religion: Ethics for a whole world. McClelland and Stewart. Davidson, M., Khmelkov, V., & Lickona, T. (2010). The power of character: Needed for, and developed from, teaching and learning. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 427–454). Springer. Easwaran, E. (2009). God makes the rivers to flow: An anthology of the world’s sacred poetry and prose. Nilgiri Press. Farmer, R. (2009). Love changes everything. Toogoolawa Schools: Stories from the real education revolution. www.amazon.org Farmer, R., & Farmer, S. (2015). Handbook for teachers in Human Values Education: Scientifically grounded teaching strategies for a meaningful life. www.amazon.org Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice. Teachers College Press. Hawkes, N. (2013). My heart: Transforming lives through values. Independent Thinking Press. Hawkes, N., & Hawkes, J. (2018). The inner curriculum: How to nourish wellbeing, resilience and self-leadership. John Calt Educational. Huxley, A. (1945). The perennial philosophy. Harper & Brothers. Kavelin-Popov, L. (2000). The Virtues Project Education Guide: Simple ways to create a culture of character. Jalmar Press. Lickona, T., & Davidson, M. (2005). Smart and good high schools. Centre for the 4th and 5th Rs/CEP. Louv, R. (2010). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature deficit disorder. Algonquin Books. Lovat, T. (2019). The art and heart of good teaching: Values as the pedagogy. Springer. Lovat, T., & Toomey, R. (Eds.). (2007). Values education and quality teaching: The double helix effect. Springer. Lovat, T., Toomey, R., & Clement, N. (Eds.). (2010). International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing. Springer. Lovat, T., Dally, K., Clement, N., & Toomey, R. (2011). Values pedagogy and student achievement: Contemporary research evidence. Springer. McGilchrist, I. (2019). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. Yale University Press. Miller, S. (2015). The spiritual child: The new science on parenting for health and lifelong thriving. Picador. 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. 659–673). Springer. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues. Oxford University Press. Pring, R. (2013). What is an educated person? Address given to the Education Forum at Maynooth University, Ireland on 20th June, 2013-05-28. https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sites/default/ files/assets/document/Prof%Richard%Pring.pdf. Accessed 5 June 2021. Rivkin, M. (1997). The schoolyard habitat movement: What it is and why children need it. Early Childhood Education Journal, 25(1), 61–66.

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Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The whole-brain child: Revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. Scribe. Sukhomlinsky, V. (2016). My heart I give to children (A. Cockerill, Trans.). Holistic Education. Tolle, E. (2004). The power of now: A guide to spiritual enlightenment. New Work Library. Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Wang, J. C., & Wolberg, H. J. (2004). Building academic success on social and emotional learning. Teacher College Press.

Values, Wellness, and the History Curriculum

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Deborah Henderson

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining Values and Recent Approaches to Values Education in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Positioning of Values in the Australian Curriculum: History Years 7–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pedagogical Approaches to Valuing in History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exploring Values Through Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exploring Values in Relation to Cultural Memory and Memorialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deciding Which Values Are Selected for Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Valuing and Student Academic, Social, and Emotional Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the development of values pedagogy and methodologies that foster this approach in the history classroom. Drawing from curriculum theory, emphasis is placed on discipline-specific inquiry approaches in the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 and how they play a significant role in linking valuing processes with decision-making skills. Collectively, these approaches prompt the development of higher order historical thinking and reasoning which also impact on student wellness. In proposing some curriculum approaches to foreground values education in the history classroom, the chapter argues that the capacity to make informed value choices is a critical factor in preparing young people for the decision-making skills required for effective participation in a democratic society.

D. Henderson (*) Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_32

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Keywords

Values education · Curriculum inquiry · History curriculum · Pedagogy · Wellbeing

Introduction Although not always acknowledged in popular discourse, history is imbued with values, and the different ways in which past events are perceived and understood can prompt emotional responses and debates within and across communities. Moreover, representations of history in school curriculum documents are often contested. For example, in writing about curriculum reform in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan (the Kyrgyz Republic), Ismailova (2004, p. 251) observed: Of all school disciplines, history appears to be the most ideologically laden and controversial subject, which is used to shape and direct the minds of people . . . The history curriculum reflects and transmits the political values, economic interests and cultural priorities of dominant groups, who exert hegemony over other groups and are in a position to influence what is taught in schools.

Ismailova’s observations (2004) resonate with reference to public comments about the proposed revisions to history in the Australian Curriculum during 2021. For example, the (then) Education Minister objected to representations of past events as contested, asserting that students would leave school with a “hatred” of their country because the history curriculum for students in Years 7–10 (aged 12–16) “paints an overly negative view of Australia” (Tudge, 2021). It could be argued, however, that public debates about what is included or omitted in the nation’s curriculum are a sign of democracy at work. For when young people experience history in the classroom to investigate, discuss, and debate those values implicit in accounts of the past, the classroom becomes a site for citizenship; a place to “practice and develop abilities and experience the values necessary to sustain a democratic society” (Bron et al., 2022, p. 39). Moreover, given the cultural diversity of Australian society (ABS, 2021), and continuing debates about what constitutes the nation’s pre- and post-colonial history (Clark, 2022), it may be expected that there are divergent views about the past and how it is represented in the “official” Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 (ACARA, 2022a, b); the first national curriculum to be implemented in this country. In exploring the place of values pedagogy and its potential to impact on student wellness in the teaching and learning of history, the chapter is structured as follows. First, it refers to how values can be defined and provides a concise overview of approaches to values education in Australia. Second, to position this focus on values pedagogy, the chapter draws briefly from recent curriculum theorizing (Deng, 2018; Doyle, 1992; Kennedy, 2022), to cast light on the nature of curriculum and the seminal work of John Dewey (1938/1963), and his view that young people will experience personal and social development if they engage with society’s values

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through schooling. The third and final part of the chapter discusses the positioning of values in the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 (ACARA, 2022a, b), examines some pedagogical approaches to engaging students with this approach in the classroom, and then draws briefly from the literature on student wellness.

Defining Values and Recent Approaches to Values Education in Australia Values are foundational to all forms of human activity and are defined in various ways. One of the most widely cited definitions comes from Rokeach (1973), who refers to values as comprising enduring beliefs about what an individual thinks important and desirable in their personal and social lives. By extension, Halstead and Taylor (2012, p. 169) define values as “principles and fundamental convictions which act as general guides to behaviour, the standards by which particular actions are judged to be good or desirable.” Values relate to affect – the feeling component of human behavior – but are also linked to cognition. Some values are connected to deeply held beliefs about what is right or wrong. For example, if an individual values justice, he/she might consider it morally wrong when an injustice occurs. In this context, justice is a “moral value.” While values and morals are linked, they differ for the latter provides a convention for decision making about what might be considered good and/or bad in a broader context of personal and socially shared values such as fairness and justice. Discourse on the place of values in history education reveals a range of standpoints. Smith (1986) posits three value categories, namely, behavioral, procedural, and substantive. Behavioral values refer to how students are expected to conduct themselves in the social context of the history classroom, including during discussion and debate. Procedural values encompass those skills and techniques essential to the work of historians. In history, these include inquiry, interpreting and analyzing primary and secondary sources,1 deciding how valuable a source is according to certain criteria (such as relevance, representativeness, reliability), using evidence from sources to think critically and develop an informed explanation about the past. In the third category, Smith (1986) refers to substantive values as those which frame, define, and provide meaning to actions and generally involve a value judgment. However, Smith cautions that history teaching should focus on behavioral and procedural values and omit those values which are substantive, asserting that teachers must respect the moral autonomy of students to develop their own interpretations and perspectives on substantive issues. By contrast, Peterson (2011), argues that substantive values need to be discussed in the history classroom and 1

Primary sources include objects and documents created or written during the time being investigated. Secondary sources include accounts about the past that were created after the time being investigated and which often use or refer to primary sources. Secondary sources invariably include a particular interpretation, and encompass historians’ accounts, documentaries, encyclopaedia, history textbooks, and websites, among others.

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that the ability of students to reflect critically on values, moral questions, and issues as part of their studies is integral to learning history and to understanding the discipline of history itself. As Salmons (2003, p. 18) puts it, when young people engage in rigorous historical inquiry they are enabled to understand “the complexities of the world in which choices were actually made and decisions taken; only then can people’s actions (and inactions) be judged within the context of their time, and only then can we draw meaningful lessons for today.” Prior to further contextualizing this focus on values pedagogy with reference to the national curriculum context in Australia, the next section briefly examines the development of values education. Despite the significance of values in personal and social contexts, values education received limited attention in Australian education until the implementation of the Australian Government’s Values Education Program (AVEP) from 2003 to 2010. Prior to this, a common assumption was that young people experience character development when they are inculcated with society’s values during their schooling (Henderson, 2011). This view, together with a contrasting perspective, was noted in the Values Education Study: Final Report (Curriculum Corporation, 2003). The report distinguishes the two broad approaches identified in the international literature as follows: “The first approach, commonly called character education, concentrates on the development of particular attributes or “virtues”; and the second places emphasis on reasoning, problem-solving, and critical thinking . . . the former values transmission and placed emphasis on shared or approved values, whereas the descriptive approach, by contrast, emphasises the ways of thinking and reasoning children need to acquire if they are to be morally educated” (Curriculum Corporation, 2003, p. 175). Following the introduction of AVEP from 2003, values education received considerable attention as a means of framing a positive approach to teaching and learning in classrooms and, more broadly, as a way of embedding a climate of care and trust in schools and their communities. In this context, school leaders and staff were expected to model core values such as respect, consideration, care, and encouragement, among others, in their dealings with students. Several large-scale empirical studies were conducted to ascertain what had been achieved in those schools where a values approach was adopted. The reported benefits identified link to good practice pedagogy and its positive effects on students’ emotional and social wellbeing as well as their improved academic performance (see Lovat, 2017; 2019; Lovat et al., 2010, 2011). Of note in some of these findings were the inherent interconnections between values education and quality teaching (and its counterpart of quality learning) which Lovat and Toomey (2010, p. 6) liken to a “double helix” with intertwined strands. One strand involves a focus on building more positive relationships and explicitly teaching values to foster this in student-centered learning experiences, which in turn nurtures positive dispositions to learning in classrooms. The other strand encompasses an approach to teaching characterized by intellectual depth, communicative competence, and reflexivity, among other attributes. As noted, such empirical research (Lovat et al., 2009) confirms that relationships and discourse apposite to values education have the potential to impact positively on students’ academic

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engagement and can be regarded as effective teaching practice. Furthermore, insights from recent research in the neurosciences note the links between emotion, sociality, cognition, and reasoning (Immordino-Yang, 2011; Narvaez, 2014), thus affirming the positive learning effects of values pedagogy. To position the chapter’s focus on values pedagogy in the curriculum, the next section briefly draws from recent curriculum theorizing to cast light on this construct. In doing so, it draws from the seminal work of John Dewey (1938/1963) and his view that young people will experience personal and social development if they engage with society’s values through schooling. The Conceptualization of Curriculum Knowledge and the Place of Values While there is disagreement about a specific definition of curriculum, and the place of values in the curriculum, there is some consensus that they encompass distinct levels (Kennedy, 2022). Deng (2018) draws on Doyle’s (1992) knowledge classification scheme to theorize a multilevel view of the curriculum, which in turn is informed by Dewey (1897/1972, 1916/1966). As noted previously (Henderson, 2010), Doyle posits three levels of curriculum formation. These are the institutional level, encompassing the nexus of public policy with reference to society, schooling, and learners; the programmatic level, or school subject matter knowledge, as it is constructed in prescribed syllabuses; and the classroom level, where subject matter knowledge is encountered as disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or integrated forms of knowledge mediated by teachers and students. Drawing from this multilevel view of the curriculum, Deng (2018, p. 158) contends that at the institutional level, those values and priorities developed within societies to reflect what is deemed significant can be termed the “policy curriculum,” arguing that they not only govern society’s activities but also what takes place in schools. At the next level, society’s values and suppositions are conveyed into specific forms such as syllabus documents and companion materials including curriculum and assessment guidelines, the content of which is intended to reflect what society values for young people. Referring to this as the “programmatic curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158), Deng argues that this level makes explicit the knowledge, values, and skills young people are expected to learn at school. Deng refers to the third level of curriculum as the “classroom curriculum” (2018, p. 159), whereby teachers operationalize syllabus documents and related programs into a curriculum they design and their students experience. The notion that what students experience in the curriculum may in turn influence their capacity to operate in their social world was foregrounded by the philosopher and educator John Dewey (1916/1966). In emphasizing that learning was socially constructed, Dewey challenged traditional or academic rationalist views of the curriculum. The latter view emphasized the transmission of existing knowledge and values for the maintenance or reproduction of culture and students as submissive absorbers of information. By contrast, Dewey (1897/1972) foregrounded the primary concern of education as residing “with the subject as a special mode of personal experience for children, rather than the discipline as a body of wrought-out facts and scientifically tested principles” (p. 169), and he conceptualized subject matter as a particular and

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specialized domain of experience with three linked features. These are, first, subject matter was derived from the current experience of the learner. Second, subject matter should be encountered in various forms so that it ensures “the progressive development of what is already experienced into a fuller and richer and also more organised form” (Dewey, 1938/1963, p. 87). Third, the selection and organization of subject matter must concern social relations in and out of school. Dewey’s experiential conception of knowledge established the basis for constructivism, for it positions knowledge as developing from students’ experiences and activities rather than from a preconceived final product removed from the domain of human experience. Dewey also emphasized the significance of guidance and direction provided by specialist forms of knowledge as students construct their own knowledge and understanding as learners. Accordingly, knowledge cannot be separated from the knower and associated forms of meaning. Thus, Dewey’s work highlights the link between specialized knowledge, learners, and society (Tanner & Tanner, 1995). Dewey (1916/1966) also argued that education could be organized so that the learner’s “natural active tendencies could be fully enlisted” and that the curriculum benefits of this approach were far reaching, asserting that “the acquisition of information and the use of a constructive imagination is what needs to be done to improve social conditions” (p. 137). As will become clear, this view of curriculum knowledge, or what Deng (2018, p. 158) refers to students experiencing the “class curriculum,” has considerable significance in theorizing the place of values education and student wellbeing in education in general, and in teaching and learning history in particular. For example, Barton and Levstik (2004) draw from Dewey to conceptualize history as essential to a humanistic education, that is, one that provides the basis for participating in a diverse, democratic society. They contend that education should “promote social well-being and how to care for the public realm [which] are at the heart of participatory democracy and we believe history has an important part to play in preparing students to take part in such deliberation” (Barton & Levstik, 2004, p. 38). Traces of Dewey’s ideas are also present in the rationale for the “programmatic curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158) – the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 (ACARA, 2022a) – which posits History’s place in the curriculum in terms of a means of understanding the wider world and the nature of human experience. History is: a disciplined process of inquiry into the past that develops students’ curiosity and imagination. Awareness of history is an essential characteristic of any society, and historical knowledge is fundamental to understanding ourselves and others . . . It helps students appreciate how the world and its people have changed, as well as the significant continuities that exist to the present day. History, as a discipline, has its own methods and procedures which make it different from other ways of understanding human experience.

Dewey’s work continues to resonate with debates about the sort of knowledge students should encounter in the school curriculum at a time of increasing globalization and uncertainty. Climate change, the impact of COVID-19, and

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, among other contemporary challenges, symbolize much of this uncertainty. As Berson (2002) noted in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, in New York, ultimately, the sort of knowledge young people require in this context is that which enables them to “combat the doctrine of despair” and understand “that people have the power to spread compassion, understanding and hope throughout our nation and the global community” (p. 144). Berson’s observations reflect Dewey’s approach to education and knowing. And, as a way of knowing that is interpretative by nature, history promotes debate about human actions and events and encourages “thinking about human values, including present and future challenges” (ACARA, 2022a). Put simply, history can play a much greater role in students’ lives than simply as a subject for academic study. Short and Reed (2004) contend that history can address questions related to morality, while Arthur et al. (2001 p. 96) go further and assert that “no one can effectively study history without some form of moral deliberation or judgement.” Kitson (2001) and Hammond (2001) also contend that it is challenging to avoid moral questions in history teaching, given that students in the present are investigating human actions in the past. To do so requires students to understand the context of the period under investigation including the value systems at play within which such actions occurred. And in their thinking and reasoning about past events, students need to avoid “presentism,” whereby present-day moral and social values and perspectives are inserted to frame interpretations of the past. Contemporary standpoints on history education note that it is taught as both a body of substantive content and a discipline-based form of knowledge (Davies, 2017; Kitson et al., 2011; Wineburg, 2001). In history classrooms, students can inquire into the past by identifying values at work in past actions, events, and situations. They can investigate the development of certain value positions and critically examine what happens when some values are challenged and new values emerge, and students can discuss and refine their own value positions. Values were specifically identified at the level of the “policy curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158), in the National Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, (MCEETYA, 2008), which provided the policy context for the development of the first national curriculum to be implemented in Australia, termed the Australian Curriculum. Referred to as the Melbourne Declaration, this statement on national goals for schooling underscores the role of schools in playing a vital role in “promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and well-being of young Australians” (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 4). Similarly, the more recent Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Council of Australian Governments, 2019, p. 2), which informed the revision of the Australian Curriculum during 2020–2021, including history (see ACARA, 2022b), emphasized education’s role in promoting “the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians.”

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The Positioning of Values in the Australian Curriculum: History Years 7–10 It can be argued that values were embedded in the “programmatic curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158), of the Australian Curriculum from its inception. Indeed, values were identified as fundamental to thinking and reasoning about the past in the development and drafting of history as a discipline-based learning area in this curriculum. Informed by international literature (Lee, 2006; Seixas, 2006; Wineburg, 2001), the Shape of the Australian Curriculum (NCB, 2009), which guided this process, described historical understanding in terms of specific concepts that provide meaning and structure to ideas of the discipline of history (NCB, 2009, p. 131). Encountering values as integral to thinking and reasoning about past events and their representation was encompassed in the concepts of contestation and contestability, the latter of which were coupled together as one of the components of historical understanding. The Shape of the Australian Curriculum (NCB, 2009) noted that “History is a form of knowledge that shapes popular sentiment and frequently enters into public debate. [Contestation and contestability] requires the ability to connect the past with the self and the present and appreciation of the rules that apply to professional and public debate over history” (NCB, 2009, p. 5). In addition to contestation and contestability, the other understandings included concepts of evidence; cause and consequence; continuity and change; significance; historical perspectives; historical empathy and moral judgment2 – concepts that collectively make explicit the tentative nature of historical interpretation and shape the processes of historical thinking, reasoning, and explanation. These concepts, together with “historical knowledge” and “historical skills” (NCB, 2009, pp. 6–7), comprise the rendition of historical education in the Australian Curriculum. Version (8.4) of the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 (ACARA, 2022a) makes explicit the centrality of inquiry, interpretation, and engaging with different values and perspectives, noting it is “interpretative by nature, promotes debate and encourages thinking about human values, including present and future challenges” (ACARA, 2022a). Hence, the curriculum encourages teachers to provide opportunities for students to engage in the more challenging, often problematic, yet rewarding values-based characteristics of historical inquiry and of historical knowledge itself. In the current version of the revised curriculum, interpretations and contestability are linked as one concept rather than two and described as follows: “Explanations of the past about specific people, groups, events or developments use evidence from historical sources. Contestability occurs when particular interpretations about the past are open to debate; for example, as a result of a lack of evidence, the discovery of new evidence, different perspectives of historians, public commentators or groups” (ACARA, 2022b). Similarly, engaging with different values and

2

Moral judgment was removed from later versions of the historical thinking concepts in the revision of this document, as was proposed eighth concept, problem solving.

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perspectives are foregrounded in the revised Australian Curriculum as core components of thinking and learning in history (ACARA, 2022b).

Pedagogical Approaches to Valuing in History In examining some pedagogical approaches to valuing in the history classroom, this part of the chapter examines how teachers can engage students in historical thinking about historiography and conflicting accounts about the past. Three approaches to values education identified by the Australian Education Council (AEC, 1994, p. 5) are applicable in this context. First, values can influence what is selected for study; second, values can be the object of study; and third, certain values can result from a study. It must be noted that there are other useful values pedagogies (see Lemin et al., 1975), however, space limits the chapter’s focus to this tripartite schema to illustrate how it can be adapted for devising discipline-specific approaches to teaching values in the history classroom. Accordingly, it is briefly explored with reference to questions about the nature of historical interpretation and historiography, cultural memory memorial obligation, and decisions about what specific values should be taught in the history classroom. While each approach is discussed separately, in practice all three can interconnect.

Exploring Values Through Historiography Although contested standpoints about what should be valued about a nation’s past raise “troubling historical questions” (Curthoys & Docker, 2006, p. 220), they also present useful opportunities to foster students’ historical thinking and reasoning in the classroom. This is because students can actively engage with the value-laden nature of historical interpretation by examining how historians select and deploy particular sources as evidence and draw from their interpretative frameworks to construct historical accounts of the past in the present, referred to as historiography. Fordham (2007) argues that when students engage with historiography, and the ways in which different historical accounts about the same event or process in the past are portrayed, they develop their capacities to construct their own interpretations and to reflect on the role that value judgments play in this process. The following reference to Australian colonial history illustrates this point. It is generally accepted that until the early 1970s, many Australian historians shared the view that Australia was a continent free from conflict. This perspective posited that Australia was a country that had been colonized, not conquered and that it was settled, not invaded. However, the number of lives lost during the process of colonizing the country exceeded any other internal conflict and can be compared with the casualty rate in Australia’s involvement in overseas wars. According to Henry Reynolds (1982), the process of colonization was fraught with violence and the Australian landscape was transformed into a site of conflict. Moreover, Reynolds argued that such conflict over the possession of Aboriginal lands resulted in both

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“war” and “resistance,” estimating that more than 20,000 Indigenous peoples died violently in process of “settlement.” In her critical interrogation of the early history of relations between white settlers and Tasmanian Aborigines, Lyndall Ryan referred to the nature of violence and widespread destruction of Aboriginal society during the first half of the nineteenth century as catastrophic (Ryan, 1981). Other historians concurred with this standpoint (Curthoys & Docker, 2006). According to Attwood (2005), “frontier” conflict was not only widespread, but it also established the general pattern of relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians during this period and that this history continued to impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Conversely, the historian Keith Windschuttle (2002) posited a different view. In claiming that such interpretations of the treatment of Aboriginal people on the frontier of white settlement amounted to fabrication, Windschuttle asserted that academic historians writing about this period of Australia’s history were politically inspired. He also purported that the work of “frontier” historians was poorly researched and not sufficiently supported by evidence (Windschuttle, 2002). Such conflicting narratives prompted conservative commentators to praise Windschuttle’s standpoint, whereas other historians contested his claims and methodology (Attwood, 2005; Macintyre & Clark, 2003; Manne, 2003; Ryan, 2003). The eschewing debates about different interpretations of the degree of violence on the frontiers of European settlement in Tasmania during the early nineteenth century, and in other parts of Australia, referred to as the History Wars, provide fertile ground for student investigations in the classroom. This is because these disputes concern historical theory in terms of the nature of evidence, how historians engage with primary and secondary sources, how this is manifest in historical narratives and historiography about Australia’s past together with the ways in which accounts about the past are valued or contested. Similarly, as discussed below, such debates also relate to how past events are memorialized. Teachers can provide opportunities for students to inquire into the History Wars in Australia and the debates about representations of frontier encounters, by providing them with a range of primary and secondary sources to interpret, analyze, and discuss. Similarly, students can engage with recent archaeological evidence and new knowledge about black/white relations that continue to emerge, such as the mapping project to identify and record sites of frontier massacres of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people across Australia from 1788 to 1930 (see Ryan, 2021).

Exploring Values in Relation to Cultural Memory and Memorialization When students question and discuss what is most valued in the nation’s past together with debates about how it is remembered and represented, they are also engaging with a range of value positions associated with cultural memory. The term, cultural memory, is applied to encompass the variety of memorial forms and the transformations of experience that all forms of remembrance involve (Nora, 1996). Cultural

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memory directs attention to the multiple ways in which images and stories of the past are constructed, communicated, shared, and valued among members of a community or a nation. Despite efforts to “fix” the past by recounting a “collective story” of nationhood during and after a significant event, cultural memory is dynamic and fluid. This is because it comprises a composite of texts and technologies from commemorative rituals, historiography, literature, and other memorial media, through which images of the past are actively generated, circulated, received, and transformed. For example, students can consider broader notions of history’s role in recording the collective memory of Australia’s past. In doing so, they can also inquire into the debates about events such as Australia Day, held each year on 26 January to mark the coming of European people to Australia in 1788. Students can investigate and discuss why many Indigenous Australians continue to refer to 26 January as a Day of Mourning;3 a day that signifies the arrival of one group of people at the expense of another. Students can critically interrogate assumptions that the history of settler nations such as Australia is about progress and success, and they can reflect on the manner in which national historical narratives serve a role in harnessing national pride. This work can provide opportunities for students to consider whether history should play a part in nationbuilding by valuing and telling a particular story that purports to encapsulate its heritage. Similarly, students can investigate the memorialization of specific military campaigns and interventions and how they are commemorated to represent the nation’s values and identity. The representation of the first engagement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) during the First World War provides a case in point. When ANZAC troops took part in the allied invasion of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on 25th of April 1915, they suffered the loss of many lives, severe casualties, and the surviving troops were finally withdrawn in 1915. Despite the campaign’s failure and loss of more than 8000 lives, the commemorations of the events of the landing are now memorialized as one of Australia’s most important national occasions and day of remembrance on 25 April each year. Some argue that Anzac commemorations continue to be mythologized and politicized (Crotty, 2022). This was evident when (then) Prime Minister, John Howard (1996–2007), raised concerns about the manner in which the Gallipoli campaign was remembered and represented in historical narratives and how it was taught in history classrooms (Howard, 1996, 2006). Students can investigate and critique the ways in which the Gallipoli campaign has been portrayed and how this has been conveyed to generations of Australians who possess no direct memory of the Anzac landing, together with an analysis of whose voices have been included or excluded in sources about this event. Furthermore, students can examine the claims of those historians who suggest that the narratives and traditions surrounding the 3

On January 26, 1938, a group of Indigenous people in Sydney refused to participate in the 150th Anniversary of re-enactment of the landing of Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in New South Wales. This marked the first national gathering of Indigenous people protesting against the prejudice, discrimination, and violence that followed colonization and is regarded by some as the beginning of the modern Aboriginal political movement (see National Museum of Australia, 2021).

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memory work of Anzac are more mythic than historically representative in nature (Andrews, 1993; Stanley, 2008). In their investigation of how historians engage with primary and secondary sources about the Gallipoli campaign, students can also reflect on the ways in which historiographical accounts of Gallipoli can be critiqued as narratives that position cultural memory as referential and value laden.

Deciding Which Values Are Selected for Study Teachers can consider which values should be studied and promoted in the history classroom. As noted with reference to the multilevel view of the curriculum (Kennedy, 2022), at the institutional (Doyle, 1992) or “policy curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158) level, much of this decision making about what values are to be explored is made explicit. The Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5), for example, foregrounded that “national values of democracy, equity and justice” should be addressed in the curriculum. This emphasis on noteworthy values is especially significant for history education, for students can investigate the origins and development of such foundational values, many of which have different definitions and ranging levels of commitment. An historical investigation and analysis of the development of a particular value, such as democratic process, has the merit of focusing on the substantive knowledge base for the idea that everyone should have equal rights and be allowed to participate in making important decisions in their society. Establishing a knowledge base for learning about specific values is essential, for as Soley (1996, p. 10) observes, “it is useless . . . to learn how to think unless there is something important to think about.” Walsh (1993) also provides pertinent insights into the importance of establishing a basis in the history classroom from which students can consider substantive moral values. He notes that in pluralist societies “history . . . will be better for taking account of the pluralism of contemporary values, laying special emphasis on the values that are shared, being explicit about relevant more ‘personal’ values, and so forth – in other words, for adopting the manners and procedures of everyday ethical discourse in this kind of society” (Walsh 1993, p. 180). It is necessary to also consider Barton and Levstik’s (2004, p. 107) observation about the process of valuing and morality in history for they contend that “some aspects of morality will vary among groups,” while others are “rooted in the nature of . . . democracy.” For while a focus on selected core values is important; in immigrant, multicultural societies such as Australia where classrooms are increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse (ABS, 2021), teachers need to be mindful of the broad-ranging communities in which their students live and the range of family and peer group value positions young people encounter in their everyday lives. With reference to the examination of the commemoration of the significance of Gallipoli, previously discussed, there will be students of Turkish family origins in some classrooms. These students require opportunities to investigate how one of the Turkish commanders on the battle ground, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, emerged as the heroic founding father of the Republic of Turkey and why Gallipoli is now regarded

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as the birthplace of modern Turkey for many Australians of Turkish origin, and of course, for Turkish citizens. Given this inclusive approach, the final part of the chapter makes brief reference to the literature on valuing and student wellbeing.

Valuing and Student Academic, Social, and Emotional Health Various terminologies such as social and emotional learning, wellness, and resilience have been employed in the literature to describe the range of holistic and more specific approaches that influence students’ wellbeing and their learning outcomes in the classroom. Of the five dimensions that contribute to Eberst’s (1984) holistic notion of wellness, two have particular significance for teaching and learning in history through a values pedagogy. These dimensions of wellness relate to emotional/mental and social health. Mental health can be defined in terms of knowing or cognition, and emotional health as linked to the affective domain. Social “health” refers to social skills and social functioning. As noted in this chapter with reference to young people’s experience of schooling where an emphasis on values has been implemented, empirical studies in Australia note the impact of good practice pedagogy and its positive effects on students’ emotional and social wellbeing together with their improved academic performance (Lovat, 2017, 2019; Lovat et al., 2010, 2011). Previous studies also suggest that prosocial behavior in the classroom is linked with positive intellectual outcomes (see DiPerna & Elliott, 1999; Feshbach & Feshbach, 1987; Haynes et al., 2003). Conversely, it is claimed that antisocial conduct often co-occurs with poor academic performance (Hawkins et al., 1998). Similarly, Bernard (1991, 1997) has emphasized the role that school systems and specific teaching practices play in building resilience by promoting caring, connectedness, cooperation, and opportunities for contribution. Fuller et al. (1999) also emphasize resilience and define it as an individual’s capacity to deal proactively with a range of challenges in life. The literature notes that the classroom, in particular, provides a crucial socio-psychological context for student development (Hodge et al., 1990; Kuperminc et al., 1997; Kuperminc et al., 2001; Samdal, 1998). As Zins et al. (2004) suggest, it is in the classroom that young people have the opportunity to develop life skills such as making responsible decisions, managing emotional responses, identifying value positions in challenging situations, responding to such situations appropriately, and communicating their responses. In this way, the literature resonates with Dewey’s (1938/ 1963) view that when young people engage with society’s values through schooling, they experience social personal and social development.

Conclusion Mindful of Maxwell’s (2008, p. 80) caution that “most values-education initiatives . . . muddle through without much in the way of a theoretical base,” this chapter has drawn from multilevel curriculum theorizing (Kennedy, 2022) to examine values

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pedagogy with reference to teaching and learning the discipline of History in the Australian national curriculum for young people aged between 12 and 16 years. Its argument is that values were specifically identified at the “policy curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158) level in the National Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008), and in the most recent statement, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Council of Australian Governments, 2019). Similarly, the place of values in key learning areas, such as the discipline of history, was made explicit in the “programmatic curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 158) – the Australian Curriculum: History 7–10 (ACARA, 2022a, b). The chapter has argued that when history teaching practice focuses on engaging with and enacting this curriculum construct into the “classroom curriculum” (Deng, 2018, p. 159), via a discipline-specific approach to a values pedagogy, authentic student engagement with valuing takes place. The chapter has foregrounded how historical inquiry can develop transferable skills such as the ability to ask relevant questions, critically analyze and interpret sources, consider context, explain different perspectives, develop and substantiate interpretations with evidence. It contends that when young people are provided with learning experiences involving higher order historical thinking and reasoning about values during their inquiries into those sources that survive the past, they also acquire a vocabulary to analytically engage with those values embedded in conflicting accounts of the past. Addressing values in this way also assists students in deciding which values might guide them to act in ethical and morally just ways, as in their everyday lives young people need to be able to understand both contemporary contexts and future challenges where human values are at play. As Seixas put it (2009, p. 29), “we expect to learn something from the past that helps us in facing the ethical issues of today.” In sum, when a values pedagogy is implemented through inquiry-based learning in the history classroom, it not only fosters young people’s cognition, but also nurtures their social wellbeing and disposition to participate in the public realm; dispositions which are critical for participatory democracy.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sejahtera: The Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sejahtera: The Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sejahtera Academic Framework: The Manifestation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sejahtera Academic Framework: The Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . University Required Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERTL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Free Electives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Community Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Responsible Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mental and Spiritual Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whole Institutional Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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As much as there were negative impacts of the pandemic, it was also a wake-up call for many sectors. For education in general, it was a clarion call that it is time to reroot values with the aim to (re)humanize education. The Sejahtera Academic Framework is one such effort in reconstructing post-pandemic education at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). Keywords

Values-based education · Academic framework · Post-pandemic Education · Key performance indicators L. Borhan · D. A. Razak (*) International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_33

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Introduction Prior to 2020, the global higher education landscape has been largely focused on the employability and the marketability of its graduates. In Malaysia, for example, graduate employability was an annual key performance indicator (KPI) by which the public universities were assessed by the Ministry of Higher Education. A university is considered to have not performed well if, within 6 months of graduation, less than 80% of its graduates were not “employed” (the parentheses denote the play around the term as reported by some of the universities). The proliferation of private higher education institutions is yet another indicator of the economic bias in the system. True, it is not the presence of private higher education providers per se that is problematic, the problem arises when profit is prioritized over the true purpose of education. Simply put, values-based “learning“has been overtaken by “earning” in giving education an economic bias. Then, 2020 came. More specifically, the COVID-19 became a pandemic, creating disruption in so many aspects of life. Higher education was not spared at all (Abdul Razak, 2021a). With many universities moving fully to remote learning mode, and the minimal movement of international students across the globe, many universities suffered from loss of income. The question of the need for higher education also loomed larger than usual. One of the clearest impacts of the pandemic on education of all stages worldwide is the shift on emphasis from “livelihood” to “life.” The former has been the mainstay as education moves up the economic value chain, while the converse happens with respect to values. Yet, in the context of the pandemic, it is the absence of the former that is most felt in the attempt to spare lives all round. Most apparent was the failure to cope with emotional and mental consequences due to the coronavirus. Hence, as much as there were negative impacts of the pandemic, it was also a wake-up call for many sectors. For education, in general, it was a clarion call that it is time to reroot values with the aim to (re)humanize education. The Sejahtera Academic Framework (Borhan et al., 2021) is one such effort in reconstructing postpandemic education at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM).

The Context The sixth public university in Malaysia, IIUM, was established in 1983. From its inception, it was a public-funded university with an exception in its governance. The establishment was sponsored by the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and the representatives from OIC make-up almost half of its Board of Governors. The other uniqueness of IIUM was that while the other public universities in Malaysia uphold the Malay language as its formal medium of instruction and communication, IIUM was explicitly required to use English and, to a smaller extent, Arabic as the formal medium of instruction and communication. As such, it was established as a company instead of a government entity, allowing more leeway to maneuver its direction.

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The first intake consisted of 153 students in a small rented compound in the satellite area of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city. Almost 40 years later, the student body stands at almost 30,000 from the university foundation level to the doctorate level. The physical location itself has also expanded and IIUM now occupies its own properties in five separate campuses throughout the Peninsular Malaysia, with one campus playing the central role in administration and also university-level events such as the convocation. IIUM offers programs at all levels of tertiary education, with 51 undergraduate and 164 postgraduate programs. IIUM was founded under the ideals of a values-based education. Its vision of becoming a center of educational excellence based on holistic education was expressively toward “the betterment of human life and civilization.” Its second mission statement (out of 7) states that IIUM endeavors “to produce better quality intellectuals, professionals and scholar by integrating the qualities of faith, knowledge, and good character to serve as agents of comprehensive and balanced programs as well as sustainable development in Malaysia and the Muslim world.” The first educational goal is to “nurture graduates who are balanced and harmonious [. . .] crafted on valuesbased and integrated education for sustainable development” (Borhan et al., 2021). As a university bearing the term “Islamic” in its name, the core values are essentially based on the Islamic worldview; however, there is no compulsion to subscribe to the Islamic teachings for the non-Muslims in the university community, and the values themselves are applicable and universal, with one of the core Islamic values upheld by the university is “mercy to all the worlds” (rahmatan lil-alamin). Education in IIUM then is to be seen as a religious and social responsibility, not simply an economic venture. IIUM graduates must be ones who give respect to and deserve respect from others, willing to make good changes in societies.

Sejahtera: The Meaning The term “sejahtera” does not lend itself easily to be translated as “well-being.” As much as well-being is a major aspect of sejahtera, it is not the only element. Hence, translating sejahtera into well-being does a disservice to both terms. Sejahtera is an indigenous Malay concept. Although some may claim that the linguistic root is Sanskrit, the concept itself has been indigenized. The following discussion has merged the concept as explicated by Abdul Razak et al. (2018), Abdul Razak (2020), and Hassan (2021). Sejahtera essentially means “values in living,” which is mirrored in the specific situation. It is about living a meaningful and purposeful life that comes from an inner-self that is holistic and non-self-serving and non-materialistic. However, there is also the physical component of sejahtera and an interactive component. The 10 elements of sejahtera are spiritual, physio-psychological, intellectual, cognitive, cultural, ethical, emotional, ecological, economic, and societal (SPICES). This sense of well-being and purpose in life is not limited to the immediate life, but in the Islamic belief system, it is deeply rooted in the ultimate purpose of serving Allah by serving the humanity (Fig. 33.1).

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Fig. 33.1 SPICES (Abdul Razak, 2020)

Sejahtera: The Framework The element of sejahtera in a values-based educational approach is encompassed in IIUM through the Sejahtera Academic Framework (SAF). The Sejahtera Academic Framework is a consummate framework to encompass the necessary elements related not just to the management of academic programs, but also the management of the institution and the student and staff well-being. SAF came out after a 360-degree academic review involving the entire university – the first of its kind since the inception of the University in 1983. The review was not undertaken because of a decline in the quality of the academic programs, but it was done with the view that certain practices that have worked well when the University was smaller (in size and in function) may no longer be as effective and may even become obsolete in the changes that were expected to happen to the world. Hence, a documentation of what has worked and what was not going to be viable was needed to keep IIUM at the forefront of values-based higher education provider. The empirical findings, instead of perceptions, will then provide a basis to carve out a holistic strategy toward the future of education. That strategy is the Sejahtera Academic Framework, sub-titled Humanising education post COVID-19 disruption. This framework is applicable to all levels of study being offered by IIUM – foundation (pre-university), undergraduate, and postgraduate. It puts together the major elements – beyond academic – that make up a higher education institution to create a coherent jami’ah insaniah system (Jami’ah: university; insaniah: people). SAF highlights how each of these elements is important to nurture holistic human beings. IIUM refuses to be a degree mill intent on only “producing” employable graduates – IIUM is focused on nurturing a person who is not only going to be enriching his/her life and the lives of their loved ones, but the IIUM student-then-alumni will become someone who brings good to the world, unbounded by personal relationship, space, and time.

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Fig. 33.2 Sejahtera Academic Framework (Borhan et al., 2021)

The generic framework is illustrated in the diagram (Fig. 33.2). The crux of it is the drive to offer a transformative education experience to all students, while at the same time providing an environment that encourages personal development for everyone – the staff and the surrounding community members too – not just the students. The maqasid al-shariah is adopted as the major values that underlie the major activities and decision-making in IIUM. The maqasid al-shariah is the principles that underscores the preservation and promotion of faith (ad-deen, way of life), life, intellect, wealth, and lineage (the order of which will depend on the specifics of a particular situation). These five aspects of the maqasid al-shariah are also the five essentials of human existence. The University’s vision and mission should be readily manifested in the academic programs (which although needless to be said should be of high standard in that they are all to be accredited by an established accreditation body. The academic programs are also to drive forward the seven mission statements in various ways. Among the keywords in the seven mission statements are “reforming the contemporary Muslim mentality,” “to serve as agents of comprehensive and balanced progress as well as sustainable development,” “to exemplify an international community of dedicated [persons] who are motivated by the Islamic worldview and code as ethics,” and “to foster civilisational dialogue.” The pillars of learning espoused by UNESCO (2021) were also explicitly integrated within the framework so that they inform the pedagogical practices inside and outside the classrooms toward achieving the learning outcomes and also toward nurturing the person and developing society. The formal academic structure and the non-formal student life are to be designed in such a way that “a paper chase” becomes only a by-product of the transformative

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educational experience. An IIUM degree should not just be a credentialization of excellence in formal academic pursuits, but also a testimony of the person’s integrity, leadership, and commitment toward improving society, among other things. “Bi’ah” means ecosystem. The entire university ecosystem should be geared toward becoming drivers of the transformative education process. The learning and development do not occur in vacuums in the classrooms, nor should they only happen in the classrooms. Beyond the dorms, the other major physical spaces and institutions within the university have to step up their game. For example, the dorms are not just places to stay and sleep in, but they are areas to interact with others, to develop the intercultural understanding, and to become bases for community engagement projects, among other things. SAF requires the management to also play their part in providing the best facilities and support system for everyone. At the end of their formal academic journey in IIUM, the students are expected to embody the graduate attributes of khalifah, amanah, iqra, and rahmatan lil-alamin. Succinctly put, the IIUM graduate is a leader who will not just administer and manage the affairs of the world, but to develop and make the earth and the world flourish (khalifah) while being ethical, trustworthy, and conscientious in executing these responsibilities (amanah). These responsibilities demand that the graduate is and erudite person, well-versed, and competent and will continue to expand on the knowledge, also spread the knowledge, and use wisdom in discharging their duties and responsibilities (“iqra). All of these are discharged with the aim to effect changes and advancement in humanity regardless of the recipients” creed or background. The IIUM graduate will do good for all the world – persons, nature, animals, and the built environment (rahmatan lil-alamin). This is also aligned with the embodiment of sejahtera in the Malaysian National Philosophy of Education.

Sejahtera Academic Framework: The Manifestation When it was first introduced, one of the most common questions asked by the University community members was “Why do we need it? We have been doing okay all this while.” When probed further, they began to acknowledge that most of the time “okay” usually meant managing their own affairs in their own siloed work environment. Once they understood that SAF is not just about the various elements put together, but an opportunity to effect change for advancement, the changes began to be manifested. This understanding came about as they delved further and realized that SAF has an overarching principle and four major guiding principles. The overarching principle is a humanizing principle i.e., the belief in the potential of the human being and putting people first. Hence, decisions should not be made simply due to expediency, or changes should not be affected because “we should let sleeping dogs lie” – if the decisions and the changes are for the greater good in the long run, they are to be effected. With this, the futures of education are pulled into play. Everyone should be strategic in their thinking, things should not just be about the “here and now,” but the institutional has to be sustainable in the various areas. The four major guiding principles are empowerment, flexibility, innovation, and accountability.

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Empowerment – the authority or power given to someone to do something – implemented properly, would bring about an environment that enables everyone to be proactive and to take charge of their own study and work environment to effect positive changes. This may be manifested by empowering the instructors to make decisions regarding the best practices for her/his class without having to go through a bureaucratic red tape. It may also be manifested via the students taking courses outside of the program of study, again without going through the existing bureaucratic red tape. Although this may seem standard practice in many countries, this extent of empowerment is a major change in how things are usually done in a more prescriptive and hierarchy-oriented environment. Flexibility – the ability to be easily modified – is an important principle in order for empowered persons to exercise their choices. One of the major disruptions that came about was the lockdown due to COVID-19 and in-person classes were not allowed to be held. What was earlier deemed impossible (by virtue of “this is how we always do things”) had to be made possible. Those who firmly believed that learning could not happen without being in the same physical space and time now had to acknowledge there were ways it could actually happen, albeit with different issues to address. IIUM has also encouraged programs of study to apportion their programs for free electives – where students are able to take any course offered in the entire university. Innovation – a new idea, method, product, etc., for a better outcome – is one of the intended outcomes of empowerment and flexibility. Innovation may come in the form of coming up with new areas of transdisciplinary studies, or research projects, and it may come in pedagogical and assessment approaches. It may also come in the ways work processes are re-invented for a better university ecosystem. These are just some areas university members may innovate when they are empowered and encouraged to improve things in their field of expertise/area of work. All of the three principles listed above would be able to fulfill their intended goals only when there is accountability – being responsible and able to justify the decision made when one is empowered to make that decision. Hence, whether one likes it or not, there will be rules and regulations, and good governance has to be maintained. However, they are there not to restrict, but to ensure that within the flexibility, empowerment, and innovative practices taking place, no one is being taken advantage of, nor any negligence in upholding one’s roles and responsibilities is happening. Accountability is manifested when one is able to defend a decision made and provide evidence that it is implemented accordingly, and an assessment of the impact of the decision is done. Good governance is not about policing, but instead it is to provide an environment where people are able to develop. In SAF, good governance is person-oriented, but is if not individual-driven. Taken in its entirety, the SAF is intended to create a different kind of impact factor. Its manifestation should be able to be seen and the impact felt in the classrooms, the student’s spaces, the staff spaces, the public-access spaces, the virtual space, to list a few. Lively exchanges of ideas can be held anywhere on campus, and research laboratories become the germination grounds for ideas and solutions. Even when engaging in non-formal recreational activities, growth and development occur. Interactions happen between all members of the university community, and this camaraderie is extended to those outside the university. The

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Fig. 33.3 An example of SAF in the formal curriculum (Abdul Razak, 2019)

spirit is one of benevolence and ukhuwah (togetherness) – what has previously been alluded to as the jami’ah insaniah. When this spirit is extended beyond the university campuses, or the registered members of the university to the larger community, this gives rise to the communiversity. Figure 33.3 shows how the SAF may be manifested in the formal curriculum.

Sejahtera Academic Framework: The Impact After the publication of the SAF book, the university community did not waste time to have SAF manifested in their daily lives. Although still in its infancy, as previously noted, the underlying values continue to be the same and remain strong; hence, IIUM did not need to re-invent the wheel, and within a short period, various exercises can be seen, some of which are highlighted here.

University Required Courses One of the major ones involves a re-working of the University Required Courses (UniCORE) for undergraduates. Known as UniCORE 2020, this package is compulsory for all undergraduate students and is part of the formal undergraduate curriculum. With the objective to imbue IIUM students with a solid foundation of IIUM philosophy, vision, and mission, the specific objectives of UniCORE are as follows:

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• To deepen students’ sense of purpose and meaning in life. • To nurture students with adab (culture, ethics, and etiquette). • To develop students who are imbued with Islamic knowledge, values, and ethics and able to relate to contemporary issues. • To expand the culture of iqra (seeking knowledge). • To inculcate awareness on the meanings and responsibilities as abid (God-fearing) and khalifah (vicegerent). With these objectives, the learning outcomes of UniCORE 2020 are such that at the completion of the program, students will be able to • Engage in continual learning activities and the sharing of ideas with the community at large. • Engage in continuous self-development based on the knowledge-seeking spirit. • Make informed decisions in life using strategic thinking and practical skills. • Practice adab in their behaviors. • Initiate projects or activities that will lead to the advancement of society. • Participate in intellectual discussion on religious and contemporary issues. • Be steadfast in performing fundamental religious duties. • Demonstrate intercultural competence. To effect this, a 20-credit-hour program is crafted made up of different courses offered by different agencies, which students may take anytime throughout their study period. The courses are categorized into • Islamic fundamental knowledge. • Leadership and living skills. • Education for sustainable development. The anchor of the ESD is a hybrid classroom+community course called Sustainable Development: Issues, Policy, and Practices. The 60+ strength teaching team was made up of the academic and non-academic staff who volunteered to facilitate a section each, on top of their existing workload. It also serves as a transformative platform for post-COVID-19 sustainability education. It is an amalgamation of various pedagogical models, as it is a specialized learning science that includes delivery of content, behavioral analytics, learning psychology, and assessments and delivered through a hybrid model with flexibility to fit the learners. The conduct of the course is based on five fundamental criteria for future learning, i.e., transdisciplinary and integrated, formative, and summative assessment (without final examination), research-based, community-engaged, and action and solution-oriented. In its first year of offering, the course has received accolades in the form of getting a Highly Commended project in the category of Next Generation Learning and Skills in the 2021 International Green Gown Awards. Additionally, this course is also the first course on sustainable development offered as a university required course in Malaysian universities.

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Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERTL) The COVID-19 pandemic was a major disruption in the traditional pedagogical approach of in-person classes. As with all Malaysian universities, IIUM had to shift the in-person classes to virtual classes. Although then it was not formally adopted, the SAF spirit was already in the works. Hence, instead of instantly moving into a virtual platform, the University took the time to implement ERTL. This was an acknowledgment that there were lecturers who needed to be trained in a different way of delivering and engaging with their students. The ERTL was a policy put in place to enable resources in the University to be channeled toward training the lecturers, and classes were postponed during this period and only resumed when sufficient training was given. The ERTL policy looked beyond the classrooms to the assessment and the post-assessment period, with the intention to maintain the quality of education while also keeping the students’ and the staff’s mental health and wellbeing intact. The “emergency” element was later dropped as the situation stabilized, but the general remote teaching and learning principles were upheld. The term “remote teaching and learning” itself was specifically chosen instead of the commonly used “virtual learning” to underscore the University’s stand that the education process is not limited to the platform (virtual), nor is it limited to being in the same physical space.

Free Electives Another major initiative was the opportunity for students to take any course that is being offered in the University. Within this, the students may also carve out their own minor, by carefully choosing the free elective courses such that they are able to fulfill the requirement to be given a minor. Given that students are yet to graduate under this initiative, the number of students who actually take advantage of this flexibility given to them has yet to be generated. However, from the program perspective, many programs have now revised their curriculum to enable their students to take up the free elective courses. Some programs apportion up to 30 credit hours of at least the 120 total credit hours for elective courses. Again, this is a major move from a non-elective perspective or a “compulsory elective” approach.

Community Engagement Although UniCORE makes it compulsory for all undergraduate students to be involved in community engagement, many individual courses have also made this part of their learning activities. Going beyond learning to do and learning to know, the course instructors have crafted activities and assessment tasks that speak toward learning to live together, learning to be, and learning to become. Under SAF, community engagement shall be linked to formal education by design. The link between concepts, principles, and theories learned in the classroom should be

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translated into some form of community engagement to enable experiential and lifewide learning experiences to students. One such example was a project of 10 community vegetable gardens and 10 community projects conducted by students at their respective homes. Another class project was an entrepreneurship course in Sociology, which nurtured student entrepreneurs who are socially responsible. The students were tasked to develop their own business ventures. In one particular semester, the total sales from these various ventures went above RM200,000, which was beyond the instructor’s target, with a few of these becoming full-fledged companies of their own, contributing back to the community in financially and socially. This call for community engagement goes beyond the confines of academic activities. The United Nations University acknowledged Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) awards 2020 and 2021 received by the various members of the university are indicative of the nature of commitment shown by the university members in the spirit of SAF. The projects include LIFE (Living in Fortuitous Era (LIFE)), which is a collection of initiatives, each with its own objectives, e.g., helping frontliners by supplying Personal Protective Equipments (PPE), providing food assistance for the socially vulnerable group, i.e., indigenous community and refugees, caring for stray cats, providing better alternatives using technology to manage COVID-19 cases, enabling access to education despite virtual classes challenges, and to keep a strong social bond while practicing physical distancing. All of these initiatives emerge at one theme, to uphold humanity in time of trials and ensure no one is left behind in the battle of this uncertain, indefinite, and fortuitous thing called life. Another project is the To Lead for Peace (#2Lead4Peace) which addresses extremism via capacity building. It does this by empowering targeted vulnerable communities such as the youth to address the threat of Violent Extremism (VE) at the national level; collaborating with multiple Preventing Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) stakeholders on various PCVE activities; contributing to national security and public safety plan of action as expert consultants for the National Action Plan (NAP) for PCVE (2022–2025) and developing content for long-term PCVE and nation-building efforts via education, engagement, training, funding, and research. This project was a finalist in the International Green Gown Awards 2021. Again, it is not the accolades that matter, these came as part of the University encouraging these submissions as part of the motivation to keep going. The University cannot recompense the staff financially due to its limited budget, but the University plays its part to be the enablers, as part of the bi’ah (ecosystem) of SAF.

Responsible Research Responsible research is not just about the ethics of research. Its facets include upholding values and principles, engaging communities and sharing of knowledge generated from the research. The values to uphold by the IIUM researchers, as explicitly stated in SAF, include ensuring that no destruction, wastefulness, injustice,

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and other harm are effected to the world and its inhabitants before, during, and after the conduct of the research. Research in IIUM should adhere to the concepts of the maqasid al-shariah, even the ones conducted in the undergraduate courses. Responsible research also should be purposeful and bring about positive change or advancement to the society. Following the publication of SAF, the Responsible Research Guideline was established as an objective way to assess research proposals. This is an addendum to the existing research policy that has already covered the ethics and governance of research projects. The new element is to ensure that all researchers are able to plan how their projects would benefit society, while also supporting the sustainable development agenda and upholding the preservation and promotion of religion, life, intellect, wealth, and lineage.

Mental and Spiritual Health Given the pandemic, mental health became a front-runner in the issues to be handled. The abrupt move to remote teaching and learning, the various forms of lockdowns, and the limitation of physical interactions all contributed to a higher level of stress for many people. Under the provisions and the spirit of SAF, where sejahtera is a core value, effective running of the organization also meant taking care of the wellbeing of its members. The University banded together quickly. A university-level mental health task force was formed involving the many different agencies in the universities –academic and non-academic alike. The task force developed policies for staff and students, standard operating procedure for dealing with emergencies, and also an overarching strategic plan on mental health for the University. The IHSAN (IIUM mental and spiritual health framework) covered not just the policies mentioned previously, but also the various aspects of mental health (termed areas of action in the plan) – training and education, research, advocacy, services, governance, and consultancy. An IHSAN council was also formed to coordinate the initiatives undertaken by various agencies involved in the areas of action (Fig. 33.4). Fig. 33.4 Areas of action in IHSAN (IIUM Mental Health Task Force, 2021)

Training

IHSAN: AREAS of ACTION

Advocacy

Practice Consultancy

Research Governance IIUM_2021

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One such initiative – the IIUM Mental Health and Psychosocial Care Team (IMPaCT) – was also recognized in the RCE 2020 Awards with an Honorable Mention. The team created psychoeducational materials to help the community cope with the disruption that came with the pandemic. It also offered services to those who needed some help to cope with their mental health situation during the pandemic. The team members also had capacity building to train the students to be able to provide psychological first aid to their peers and also collaborated with the government to appear in mainstream media to discuss and promote mental health to the Malaysian public.

Whole Institutional Transformation SAF does not focus on the implementation of the formal academic curriculum per se. To truly become a higher education institution that manifests the humanizing education principle, the entire organization has to be working together to effect the changes – what has been termed as “whole institutional transformation” (WIT). The WIT involves everyone in the university, and transformations are to be made in connection with each other, if not in totality, instead of a piece meal or ad hoc approach. No one is to be left behind – not even the surrounding and far-off communities that are impacted by the existence of the University. SAF demands that each faculty and administrative agencies (including residential and business services) work together to provide an environment that leads toward the transformative education process. The WIT is the administrative imperative that drives the operational and strategic elements toward this end. For example, a green campus will be able to accommodate outdoor classroom activities, provide informal learning spaces, instill environmental values, and illustrate the university’s commitment toward sustainable development. The green campus though cannot be achieved if the responsibility is given solely to one agency – the one in charge of physical assets of the university – but it should be a concerted effort involving the expertise and collaboration of the entire university community and the surrounding community. To cement this effort with the external community, various initiatives were undertaken, and this has resulted in IIUM being recognized as the host of the RCE Greater Gombak. The morale to keep working on WIT was also further boosted when IIUM was awarded Sustainability Institution of the Year award in the International Green Gown Awards 2020. Under WIT and SAF, the University has embarked on various initiatives to make humanizing education a reality instead of just a slogan. One such effort is the formulation of spirituality as a major element in sustainable development that is values-based (Abdul Razak, 2021b). Although deemed over-ambitious by some that the university community is willing to get together to push through an agenda that is important for humanity, though may not be popular (yet), is testament that the university has made inroads in getting everyone out of their comfort zones and to challenge the accepted notions of what is and what is-not universal human values.

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Conclusion To recap, humanizing education as visualized in SAF means that students are not mere products, but are vital and active forces of the University’s existence. Students co-create their learning experiences and their educational environment. Within the IIUM worldview, this is done by glorifying Allah and seeking knowledge and acknowledging the responsibility of having that knowledge by putting it to beneficial use in society. Humanizing education also means instructors are not just mere robots whose function is merely to deliver content or conduct research to fulfill a performance indicator set by an external agency. Instead, instructors generate and propagate knowledge beyond the classrooms and laboratories and engage in effecting progress in the community in-campus and the community off-campus. As an organization propagating a humanizing education approach, the other members of the University community actively collaborate to provide an ecosystem that celebrates knowledge and activities related to it. It is not the position or rank that matters, but it is the commitment toward impactful contributions that are of importance. As a large organization that should also be evolving and organic in nature, the Sejahtera Academic Framework provides a vehicle to move together without sacrificing neither academic excellence nor humanity-based values. Although the language internally is Islamic in nature, the values and the principles propagated via SAF are applicable and amenable to various other institutions that are concerned with maintaining the true north of values-based education.

References Abdul Razak, D. (2019). Key-note at meeting of great minds symposium. IIUM. Abdul Razak, D. (2020). Essay on Sejahtera: Concept, principle and practice. IIUM Press. Abdul Razak, D. (2021a). The disruptive future of education: Post-Covid 19 pandemic. In Hilligje et al. (Eds.), The promise of higher education (pp. 407–412). Springer. Abdul Razak, D. (2021b). Proposed SDG18: Sustainability and leadership. IAU Horizon, 26(2), 26–27. IAU. Abdul Razak, D., Khaw, N. R., Baharom, Z., Mutalib, M. A., & Salleh, H. M. (2018). Decolonising the paradigm of sustainable development through the traditional concept of sejahtera. In Z. Fadeeva et al. (Eds.), Academia and communities: Engaging for change – Innovation in local and global learning systems for sustainability learning contributions of regional centres of expertise on education for sustainable development (pp. 210–219). UNU-IAS. Borhan, L., Azman, A. W., Mat Ghani, G., Abdullah, M. F., Abdul Rahman, Z., & Yusof, Z. (Eds.). (2021). Sejahtera academic framework: Humanising education for Raḥmatan lil-ʿĀlamīn postCOVID-19 disruptions. IIUM. Hassan, M. K. (2021). The Malay concept of Sejahtera from an Islamic perspective. IIUM Press. IIUM Mental Health Task Force. (2021). The IIUM Haikal li al-Sihhah al-Aqliyyah Wa al-Nafsiyyah (IIUM framework for mental and spiritual health). IIUM Board of Governors paper. UNESCO. (2021). Rethinking education and learning (unesco.org). Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://en.unesco.org/themes/education/research-foresight/revisiting-learning.

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A Bridge Between Ethics and Action Jeremy Leeds

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Service-Learning as Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Program Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Upper Division Service-Learning Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foundational Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Six Service-Learning Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dilemmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The Center for Community Values and Action (CCVA) at Horace Mann School, New York, was founded as a values-based program. Service-learning was envisioned as an integral part of the CCVA and it rapidly became the central vehicle for realizing the mission of “Connecting education, ethics and action.” The chapter will describe the evolution of the values statements that guided the CCVA service-learning program. Keywords

Service-learning · Values education · Moral education · Ethics · Action

J. Leeds (*) Founder and former Director of the Center for Community Values and Action (from 2006-2020), Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_34

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Introduction Service-learning is a powerful vehicle for translating values education into values action. The Center for Community Values and Action (CCVA) at Horace Mann School was founded as a values-based program. Service-learning was envisioned as part of the CCVA from the beginning, and it rapidly became the central vehicle for realizing the CCVA mission of “Connecting education, ethics and action.” It is essential to make values explicit if students are going to make a meaningful connection between the immediate experience and its broader significance. This chapter will describe the evolution of the values statements that guided the CCVA service-learning program.

Service-Learning as Values Education All teachers seek to help students create meaning that will carry into future years; but that future is uncertain, and planning for “the future” has often meant not paying enough attention to experience in the present. Service-learning provides a Deweyian framework for focusing on education, especially moral education, as presentfocused. Paradoxically, this is actually the best preparation for the future (Leeds, 2005, p. 55). As expressed in Dewey’s “My Pedagogic Creed”: — education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. . . — the moral education centers on this conception of the school as a mode of social life, that the best and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets through having to enter into proper relations with others in a unity of work and thought. The present educational systems, so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral training. (1897/1974, pp. 430–431)

A potential benefit of service-learning is to “show, not (just) tell” to create experiences in which participants would live the “proper relations with others” that Dewey spoke about. As Soviet psychologist Vygotsky said, Moral precepts, in and of themselves, will, in the student’s mind seem like a collection of purely verbal responses that have absolutely nothing to do with behavior. (1926/1992, p. 8)

Our objective was to create structures that give our values the best chance to be experienced, and then to teach and reflect on the experience: as Dewey advocates, a “unity of work and thought.”

Program Design A summary description of the school and the program is necessary to place the values statements and their evolution in context.

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The CCVA service-learning program began with the values-based recognition of the school as part of a wider community. This included an acknowledgment of both the wide gap in resources between the school and much of its surrounding community and the aspiration to create relationships of connection and partnership. Horace Mann School is an independent (private) nursery–12th grade school in the Bronx, New York. It has a challenging and extensive academic program, a wide range of extracurricular opportunities, beautiful grounds and facilities, and deep financial resources. The full single-student tuition, even before books, food, transportation, and other expenses, is significantly greater than the median family income in the Bronx (Leeds, 2016, p. 3). The school stationery had long listed “Riverdale, New York” (a neighborhood in the Bronx), as the school address. It was changed to “Bronx, New York,” by the current Head of School, who promoted this new sense of participation in the Bronx. The address was symbolic: is the school a part of a neighborhood, and if so, which one? In fact, “Welcome to the Bronx” became one of the first CCVA messages to incoming students, regardless of where they lived after they left school for the day. Our model of service-learning began with the goal of community engagement and participation. This was realized through long-term partnerships with local community agencies. The agencies and institutions we partnered with exist to address a wide variety of neighborhood issues and needs. They have committed and dynamic staff and administrators and enthusiastic participants – and, often, very limited resources. They are within walking distance or a short bus ride from the school; but with few exceptions,1 our students had minimal knowledge of them, their work, or of the wider neighborhood.

The Upper Division Service-Learning Team Initiated in 2007, the Upper Division Service-Learning Team (S-LT) was the CCVA’s first and longest running service-learning program. Though the CCVA and the service-learning program grew to encompass a variety of other programs, we will focus on the team as the most fully realized exemplar of the values approach.2 The S-LT involves high school students who commit to at least one trimester of weekly participation. Each week, students visited agencies after school on one afternoon (with one exception of an afterschool program that sent participants to 1

While most students did not live in the local neighborhood, we did in fact have regular participation by Horace Mann students who live in the Bronx, including from some who had previous involvement with our community partner institutions. 2 For a more detailed description of the CCVA’s first decade, please see the online “exhibit” at https://www.sutori.com/en/story/the-founding-and-history-of-the-center-for-community-valuesand-action-the%2D%2DdrPxJh7pMyoCRK7KxyTfEiLZ

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the Horace Mann campus each week), to lead and participate in activities. Most often the activities were initiated and developed by the students, in conjunction with the needs of the partner agencies. By 2019–2020, at the end of my time as Director (and pre-pandemic), the program worked weekly with four after school programs, one residential facility for young people, and one program for older adults. Studentinitiated activities over the years included art, science, music, magic, literacy, cooking and nutrition, drama, world cultures, physical education, and many more. On the second day each week, the team met on the school campus for reflection, learning, and planning. These required meetings included debriefing the previous trip; discussing interactions that raised interesting and important questions; planning for the upcoming weeks’ activities. Students and faculty met as a whole team, and also in smaller groups, by the agency they worked with; and by activity, to plan, for example, art projects across sites for the coming week. The program required, first and foremost, “showing up” regularly to play a part in group experience. For many of the participants, the service-learning program was their first “job” with attendant obligations of group planning, implementation, and evaluation. The “price of admission” to the program was intentionally low: if you commit to participate, you’re involved. Beliefs or belief systems beyond that were not required. And at the same time, students were encouraged to bring their own initiative to shape the program and their participation in it; and to reflect on individual and group significance. There were students who were specifically interested in, for example, education or working with young people; others who valued participation in the wider community; those who wanted to look at broader social issues; some who wanted to be with friends, or to find a peer group; and various combinations of these and other motivations. Everyone came together around the shared commitment and experience. In addition to students, a dedicated and energetic group of faculty members and staff from across the school also participated, as chaperones, supervisors, and as program participants. Over the years, alumni volunteers and fellows joined the program. And later, the CCVA was able to hire dedicated and enthusiastic staff who planned, led, and participated in all aspects of CCVA activity. The CCVA also had the enthusiastic support and participation of the Head of School, and the support of the school administration and the wider school community. The S-LT began in 2007 with participation of a small group: there were times when just one, maybe two or three, students and several faculty members travelled to a local community agency to participate in their after school program. By the time I stepped down as CCVA founding Director in 2020, on the way to retiring from the school in 2021, the program had grown to well over 100 students/year, with ongoing weekly connections with six local agencies and institutions. In its first decade, the annual spring All-School Service-Learning Day attracted many hundreds, and at times over a thousand, school and local community participants for culmination and celebration of the year’s community engagement activities. In the course of its development the CCVA received a generous endowment and is now the Mindich Family Center for Community Values and Action.

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Values Statements Next we’ll turn to the statements of values that accompanied the design and activity of the program. As the program grew, so did our elaboration and deeper understanding of the values. The CCVA was a learning lab for all involved, students, faculty, staff and administrators, and community partners. While the underlying values remained consistent, in later years we were able to first provide a more specific elaboration of the general values (Leeds, 2016); and then, a more explicit focus on ethical dilemmas as the condition of the program, and a touchpoint for experience and learning (Leeds, 2019).

Foundational Values The foundational values were summarized in the first edition of this Handbook (Leeds, 2010b) and elsewhere (Leeds, 2010a). These values stayed constant through the years. They are broad statements. That’s both because they reflect large aspirations and because they are a “first draft,” only just beginning to connect to a young program. The concepts of Mature Interdependence and Positive Ethics are central to the approach. Dewey’s “neighborly communities” provided context and substance for implementing these concepts.

Mature Interdependence A central value is the development of “mature interdependence.” This follows the work of the psychoanalyst W. D. Fairbairn (1952) and expanded and re-visioned by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2001, p. 224). Fairbairn called “mature dependence” a goal of psychological development. Nussbaum built on this with her revision, mature interdependence. According to Nussbaum, mature interdependence is the recognition of need and connection with others, along with an understanding, and even protection, of their separateness (Leeds, 2005, p. 54). Her expansion beyond the traditional psychoanalytic focus on the individual is crucial: People cultivate emotions in larger social and political groupings, and they need to learn the types of imagination and empathy suitable to those interactions. (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 225–226)

Our culture in general, and our schools, often overemphasize the value of independence and autonomy. Connection and dependence are devalued. This results in conflict with what is obvious if we only look – that learning in school is by nature interdependent. Emphasizing such catchphrases as “do your own work” means turning away from the web of connections through which that work is originated, supported, received, and evaluated. Drug dependence, overdependence, co-dependence,

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“peer pressure” are only a few examples of how connection with others is often associated with bad motives and outcomes. And to overly value “independence” is to reinforce mistrust, atomization, and alienation (Leeds, 2005). Interdependence needs to be recognized and nurtured.

Positive Ethics From its founding, the CCVA sought to base values education on a positive vision. The initial announcements of the creation of an ethics center at the school were often greeted with some version of “Boy do these kids need it,” and “Kids today. . .” All of which is understandable, perhaps valid, with two caveats. First, adults are themselves hardly exempt from “needing it.” The externalization of the values issued to “kids today” can divert attention from similar needs among “adults today.” Second, the program always endeavored to attract participation through a vision of the good, not a reaction to the bad. Think what the effect would be, if a teacher began a Chemistry or History class by criticizing the students for what they didn’t know. That’s why they’re there! As William James exhorted teachers: Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good. He who habitually acts sub specie mali, under the negative notion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave by Spinoza. To him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman. See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, wherever possible, under the notion of a good. (1889/1992, p. 821)

In the first edition of this handbook I referred (with some ambivalence) to this orientation as “Positive Ethics” (Leeds, 2010b, pp. 796–797). The unwelcome implication of the “positive” formulation is that it might be mistaken for an artificial “look at the bright side” way to avoid problems. Rather, the intent is that moral action – including addressing problems and dangers – should be connected to a vision of a better life, a “notion of the good,” and a practice that starts from this.

“Neighborly Communities” Prior to my arrival at Horace Mann and the founding of the CCVA, my work in service-learning had connected me with Ira Harkavy at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Community Partnerships (now the Netter Center for Community Partnerships) that he founded. Harkavy and his collaborators’ application and expansion of Dewey’s ideas in the current context provide an inspiration and a model for connecting education to democratic citizenship. Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett quote Dewey from his “Ethical Principles Underlying Education”: Interest in the community welfare, an interest which is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional. . . is the ultimate ethical habit to which all the special school habits must be related. (Quoted in Benson et al., 2007, p. 23)

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They identified Dewey’s idea that “Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community” (Benson et al., 2017, p. xiii) as a crucial starting point for thinking about substantive democratic practices. They updated the formulation to “democratic, cosmopolitan, neighborly communities” (2007, p. 53). This can be seen as an elaboration of the Deweyian idea of “proper relations with others” discussed above. Rabbi Joachim Prinz said in the speech immediately preceding Dr. King’s on March 1963 in Washington for Jobs and Freedom, “Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept.” The CCVA sought to apply this, as much as possible, in both internal functioning and in connecting with our neighbors. With Mature Interdependence, Positive Ethics, and Neighborly Communities, the foundational values orientation was clear: connecting education to life in a democratic community and to the improvement of life for each and for all.

Combining the three foundational values The values were often summarized in two CCVA catchphrases: 1. Living together is a fact; how we live together is up to all of us

The program is about recognizing this fact, and then creating and reflecting on the “how.” Experiencing collaborative relationships with people and institutions they otherwise might never have had the opportunity to encounter is both a vehicle and a goal. This meant, in turn, that the “how we live together” was connected to a broader idea of who “we” are. The CCVA offered an expanded view of who was part of us, our “neighborly community.” 2. A better life for each of us and a better world for all of us

The phrase was meant to capture both the distinction and the connection between the individual and the social goals of positive ethics. It was important that the experience be personally meaningful and enjoyable. It should contribute to each person’s living a good life. And it should point the way to understanding and addressing larger social issues. The CCVA aspired to embed the values that would be taught in the program structure and functioning. This would provide a living example of translating values education into values action. The program was designed as a community of participants, in which those who led were those who put in the energy and effort, not the oldest or longest serving members. A version of Mature Interdependence was necessary for team members to successfully implement their objectives – noone could do it alone. The initial CCVA brochure brought these concepts together: We live in an interdependent world – in our classrooms, our families, our communities, our nation, and the globe. Interdependence requires us to think about what we value, how we

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relate to each other and the environment, how our education prepares us to contribute to the world we live in.

Six Service-Learning Values Toward the end of the first decade, we connected the foundational values to the experience and needs of a growing program (Leeds, 2016). The team had moved well beyond aspiration, to a deeper level of impact and of responsibility. This prompted a restatement of values connected to the actual experience and its significance. What does Mature Interdependence look like in this context? Can the requirements be framed positively? And to what extent, however limited, can we envision and create a neighborly community? The result is codified in Six Service-Learning Values: Relationships and community Collaboration and continuity Understanding wider contexts Creativity and initiative Balance of structure and improvisation Creating positive impact for all participants

The values clarify the mission and the means to accomplish it. The program is based in ongoing relationships (Relationships and Community). Everything flowed from these. To experience relationships, participants needed to commit to continuous involvement (Collaboration and Continuity). Relationships exist between people as individuals, but also as part of groups and communities. It was important to understand what all participants are bringing to the relationship. Coming into someone else’s “house” (the agency) each week meant learning about, understanding, and participating within their mission and way of functioning. Participation in a specific program can provide a window into understanding and engaging with larger issues (Wider Contexts). Within this broad framework, the program invited participant agency and creativity. As most of the students were involved in designing activities, they were encouraged to “flip the switch” from their typical position as learners in structured classrooms during the school day, to initiators and valued collaborators with their agency partners (Creativity and Initiative). The creativity is based in hard work in preparation and reflection, balanced with ability to adjust to changing or unexpected circumstances when needed (Balance between structure and improvisation). All participants should feel involved in something meaningful to them and to each other (Positive impact for all involved). I regularly said in orientations at the beginning of each term that if the program doesn’t change your life, we’re not doing something right. The statement of the Six Values was important in two fundamental ways.

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First, and most important, the values provided a more elaborated framework for all involved to understand what the program is about, as they participated in the dayto-day experience. It is easy for program participants to lose track of the larger picture when occupied with day-to-day tasks. Students understandably focused on the details of preparation of activities. And just as important, they were concerned with finding a place in the group. Everyone entered with similar concerns: Can I do this? Will I be liked? Will my activity work out? Is it too long or short? Interesting or boring? These considerations are the initial building blocks of the service-learning approach to connecting values in action. This first level of feet-on-the-ground feeling competent and welcome clears a path for the broader exploration of meaning: Why am I doing this? What do I need to know? What are my next steps? And even broader questions arise: How does/can this experience relate to the rest of my education? What do I know about the lives of the community participants? What creates and causes the needs and the gaps that I now see? How do I expand and deepen work for a better world? This is where the explicit consideration of values becomes possible, and a clear statement becomes necessary. Values clearly stated became part of the ecosystem along with the planning and the experience. Given the many possible meanings of service-learning and the variety of individual experiences, the values provided the CCVA’s version of the “why.” Second, the six values clarified expectations for participants, intentionally expressed through the “positive” perspective on why the values are important: what we want to move toward. Consider these quotes from student “applications”3 to join the Service-Learning Team. They reflect the values as experienced by those who had already participated and were returning for another term: I really enjoy working with younger kids, and I really enjoy science so combining the two in a way that benefits both me and the Bronx community is a win-win. . . .the seniors greeted us with laughs and smiles, and welcomed us into their family. I loved visiting them every week, and hearing about their families and lives. I applied to the Team to learn more about what Service Learning is and how to make a difference, but instead found a family and a program that will forever be in my heart! It felt so good to know that the kids were looking forward to each visit and that it was their highlight of the day. I also learned a lot about working with others and being a leader. I really think it’s worth it to increase my awareness of the diverse experiences of those around me. I feel that, just by being less ignorant about what’s going on in my community, I’ll be better equipped to make a difference and help people. . . .I really want to do this at least once a year because I’ve seen the positive effects that it has had on other people. Plus, the SLT is working around the areas that I grew up before I came to Horace Mann so it would be such an honor to give back to my community in the Bronx. Thank you!!!

Though it was called an application, the form students filled out to join the team each trimester was more of a statement of interest. Virtually everyone who applied was accepted as a participant.

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I LOVE SLEARNING [the term students use for the program]! It has been such an important, even life changing, part of my high school experience!. (Leeds, 2016, pp. 2–3)

Stating the values did not guarantee either complete understanding or commitment; they are still goals to be aimed for. So, for example, “Showing up” was given above as one of the minimal “price of admission” criteria for participation. The six values provide a rationale as to why it’s necessary. But as minimal as “showing up” may seem, with high school students who are dealing with especially busy schedules and high stakes evaluations, showing up was a chronic challenge. Even among those who fully understood how important it was to participate regularly – and who wanted to – it was often an effort, sometimes a struggle, to make time and space to do so. The values provided a way to discuss this issue and continually assert the importance of consistent participation from a positive perspective. Another example: the six values clarified what it means to participate in servicelearning relationships: the goal was that the students were indeed participants as was everyone involved. It followed that programs should not be proposed or run solely based on our student’s interest; they needed to be in recognition of needs and/or requests from agency partners. This collaborative process needed to be worked on and learned by everyone. A final example of the values as goals to continually work toward can be found in the experience of the reflection sessions. They incorporated ways to focus on the values and were designed to represent them in action. Whether in the early years with less than 20 people, sometimes less than 10, or later with more than 60, sometimes close to 90, we created an atmosphere of group solidarity in which to learn, plan, and discuss. But making the “learning” as compelling as the “service” was not always easy. While the team always tried to connect the immediate experience with the wider meanings, attendance was less consistent for the reflection sessions than it was for the visits with community partners. Reflecting on doing was, not surprisingly, often less compelling than the actual doing. Additionally, time constraints meant that we were compelled to focus on what needed to be done to prepare for upcoming activities, with regret that there wasn’t more time to broaden the meaning. This, however, is all in the context of a high school program that provided a significant experience of living the six values. And we often took our own step back to look at the picture from the positive ethics point of view: CCVA staff, faculty, and students were enthusiastic in finding ways to make the meetings meaningful and engaging. The ethos that there was always more to be done, always another way to look at an issue, always another point to make, is also what kept things interesting and alive.

Dilemmas The next development in the articulation of values was a focus on dilemmas. Introducing the concept of dilemma into service-learning values may appear out of place: the activity seems straightforward in its commitment. If values are not being realized, it would mean that participants should work harder, do better.

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That’s true – to a point. It’s also the case that the terrain in which a program like the Service-Learning Team operates is filled with values dilemmas. In fact, this is a crucial aspect of the educational experience (Leeds, 1999, 2019, 2020). The initiative was known from the beginning to contain contradictions and challenges. This can first be seen as a broad philosophical question. When we talk about values and where they fit in our education and our lives, we are asking questions for which we have not (yet? ever?) found satisfactory, let alone ultimate, answers. As Sidney Morgenbesser said about philosophy itself, “All Philo is Philo 1”: Sidney Morgenbesser says that ‘All Philo is Philo l.’ He means, I think, that nothing is established in philosophy. At any time everything can be turned around, and the front line is pretty close to base camp. (Cohen, 1992)

The same holds true for a service-learning program. All along our journey we are asking questions that are still vitally important to ask; and they’re still questions. This has important implications for student agency and potential. It means that, in the absence of certainty and unquestioned authority, everyone’s contributions are needed, and they are all meaningful. Participants face choices where there are two or more legitimate paths to take – dilemmas, or as Dewey puts it, “forked road situations.”4 For Dewey, forked road situations are not necessarily a sign that something went wrong. They were the basis of education – and indeed, of thought: Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives. As long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, or as long as we permit our imagination to entertain fancies at pleasure, there is no call for reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related to one another. (1910, p. 11)

Distinct from the idea of dilemmas as thought experiments, service-learning provides a potential opportunity to live them; to reflect on them and make choices from a stance of active participation and commitment. It’s important to recognize that facing dilemmas doesn’t preclude commitment. It precisely requires wrestling with the interplay of commitment and uncertainty (Leeds, 1999). Dewey’s “forked road” is an effective way to envision this active process: when you come to a fork in the road, you must choose a path to take. The issues and challenges that service-learning addresses can lead programs into grandiosity and self-satisfaction on the one hand and minimization and selfdeprecation on the other. Yes, we are participating in and learning about major social issues, and we are trying to do good and make a better world. And at the same time, 4

I am indebted to Ira Harkavy, founder and Director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, for making me aware of this concept from Dewey.

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the questions are enormous, the responses are often partial at best, and their validity is in dispute. Actual solutions are beyond the purview or the power of small programs of students who come from different vantage points, with different motivations and sometimes conflicting points of view. But at the same time, changes can be made, connections can happen, learning and inspiration take place. The service-learning dilemmas identified are: Partnership and Resource Disparity Private Schools and Public Purpose Help and Participation Connection and Content Student Learning and Agency Mission Addressing Direct Needs and Social Change Pre-Determined Values and Educational Exploration. (Leeds, 2019)

In fact, “service-learning” can itself be added to this list of dilemmas: the hyphen represents an attempt to connect two distinct arenas in ways that are at the same time real, and aspirational, and always in tension (Leeds, 2019, p. 1). The first two dilemmas can be called Institutional, involving the nature of the participating institutions. The next three are Conceptual, involving how participants understand and navigate their roles. The final two are Political, related to the wider objectives that service-learning might or might not claim to address (Leeds, 2019, p. 8). The two poles of each dilemma are connected by “and,” rather than “or” or “vs.” This is meant to indicate that the relationship between them is not predetermined. For some of the dilemmas, it might be necessary to make a choice; for others, to combine the poles; and for others, to live with the experience of contradiction. Within each dilemma will be more than one possible “answer.” The dilemma concept speaks to the constant presence of forked-road situations in service-learning. There really are, for example, tensions between experiencing the value of helping and the value of participation. Both are important, but can they be done together, or do they conflict? What seems like help from one angle may be paternalism from another. The dilemma concept can open space for important discussion. Several papers and presentations describe service-learning dilemmas in more detail (Leeds, 2019, 2020). As an example, the sixth dilemma (Addressing Direct Needs and Social Change) has particularly wide significance. Brecht captures the sixth dilemma in his poem “Beds for the Night.” It begins with the narrator saying he has heard that A man stands every evening in the winter months And begging passers-by Gets a bed for the night for the homeless gathered there.

He goes on to say The world is not changed by this. . . But a few men have a bed for the night

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In the next stanza he says, A few men have a bed for the night. . .. But the world is not changed by this. (Brecht, 1931/2019, p. 433)

One reviewer refers to this as an example of Brecht’s love of “reversible logic” (Wood, 2019). It’s a powerful illustration of a dilemma. We may each make a choice as to how to address this dilemma: to work for larger social changes, to help a single person, to try to combine the two or do each separately, or to walk away. But whatever our choice, the dilemma persists. And that’s exactly why choices are so important. Rather than artificially providing one answer as sufficient, an education program should widen the field for participants to understand the possibilities and challenges. Service-learning provides a powerful vantage point from which to wrestle with the dilemma, with a combination of activity, in a context, and the opportunity for reflection. To return to Dewey, if “the best and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets through learning to enter into proper relations with others,” that opens a world of potential, as well as an abyss of uncertainty. Who can say they’ve adequately captured what “proper relations with others” consists of? That may feel daunting, but – and! – it is also the best reason to persevere. Another example of a productive dilemma. The Service-Learning Team was an attempt to offer an open door for students to wrestle with “proper relations with others,” even as we all try to do better.

Conclusion The history and progression of the CCVA’s Service-Learning Team and the statements of values can be read as a process that unfolded over time, and as a set of propositions and approaches that work together as a whole. The interplay over the years between experience and theory led to both greater program impact and greater specificity in values statements. It makes sense that the elaborations unfolded in the sequence that they did. The team began with general aspirations and guideposts and evolved toward more connection with experience. The Six Values sum up what connecting education and action is about and what it looks like, or should look like, in our context. And the dilemma concept brings both humility and deepened reflection to any program that undertakes a journey of service and learning. This was especially important as a larger program both increased its impact and faced meaningful choices. The program design and the values statements taken in combination constitute a suggested starting point for any program, both in substance and approach. They present a vision of education for a better life for each of us, and a better world for all of us. I hope that what emerges is a picture of service-learning as a model of connecting values education to values action, in a multitude of ways that can be meaningful for all participants.

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References Benson, L., Puckett, J. L., & Harkavy, I. (2007). Dewey’s dream: Universities and democracies in an age of education reform. Temple University Press. Benson, L., Harkavy, I., et al. (2017). Knowledge for social change. Temple University Press. Brecht, B. (1931/2019). Beds for the night. In T. Kuhn, & D. Constantine (Trans. and Ed.), The collected poems of Bertolt Brecht. Liveright. Cohen, G. A. (1992). Mind the gap. London Review of Books, 14, 9. Retrieved February 7, 2021, from https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n09/g.a.-cohen/mind-the-gap Dewey, J. (1910). Chapter 1. What is thought?. In How we think (pp. 1–13). D.C. Heath. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://bef632.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/dewey-how-we-think.pdf Dewey, J. (1897/1974). My pedagogic creed. In R. D. Archimbault (Ed.), John Dewey on education. University of Chicago Press. Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychological studies of the personality. Routledge/Kegan Paul. James, W. (1889/1992). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life’s ideals. Writings, 1878–1889 (705–887). Library of America. Leeds, J. (1999). Rationales for service-learning: A critical examination. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 6, 112–122. Leeds, J. (2005). Independence as a goal in education: Why we need less of it. Encounter, 18(3), 50–56. Leeds, J. (2010a). Infusing values in education: The Center for Community Values and Action model. Paper presented at Association for Moral Education, Cambridge, MA. Leeds, J. (2010b). Translating values education into values action: Attempts, obstacles and potential for the future. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. 795–810). Springer. Leeds, J. (2016). Six values of service-learning: A model for engagement and education. Paper presented at Association for Moral Education annual conference, Cambridge, MA. Leeds, J. (2019). Teaching the contradictions: Dilemmas in service-learning. Paper presented at Association for Moral Education, Seattle. Leeds, J. (2020). A place to sleep and a new world: Can we have both?. Paper presented at Association for Moral Education annual conference, virtual. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of thought. Cambridge University Press. Prinz, J. (1963). The problem of silence. Speech delivered at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from http://www.joachimprinz.com/civilrights.htm Vygotsky, L. S. (1926/1992). Educational psychology. St. Lucie Press. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1926/educational-psychology/ index.htm Wood, M. (2019). Angry or evil?. London Review of Books, 41, 6. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n06/michael-wood/angry-or-evil

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Lessons from the American Experience James S. Leming

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Brief History of Research and Practice in Character Education in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assessing the Impact of the Character Education Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Tale of Two Research Programs: Kohlberg’s Moral Development Program and Values Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cognitive Developmental Approach of Lawrence Kohlberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research in Character Education in the Twenty-first Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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This chapter will examine history and current efforts of research in moral/values/ character education and identify three characteristics of the research – practice environment, past and present, which have limited the development of a strong link between researchers and practitioners. The chapter will, in conclusion, assess the extent to which the current gap between researchers and practitioners can be overcome and propose a perspective on research into practice that might increase

This chapter is based on two recent writings by the author that covers the same subject matter (Leming, 2008, 2009). The line of argument and evidence is modified and extended below. J. S. Leming (*) Character Evaluation Associates, Ocean Ridge, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_35

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the potential for bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners in character education. Keywords

Values Education · Science · Technology · Research-based practice

Introduction Like a steady drip from a leaky faucet, the experimental studies being released this school year by the federal Institute of Education Sciences are mostly producing the same results: “No effects,” “No effects,” “No effects.” (Viadero, 2009, p. 1)

From the earliest days of the founding of the American Republic, a belief in the power of science to unlock the secrets of nature and thereby improve the lot of Man has been a part of the American ethos. Such founders as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and John Adams all were, in their own way, passionately interested in science. The founders even contained the world’s most well-known scientist, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s discoveries into the nature of electricity made him, next to George Washington, the most celebrated American of the eighteenth century. An example of the importance of science to the early American republic is found in the letters written between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson after both had retired from public service. In the 165 Jefferson/Adams letters written between 1812 and 1825, Washington is mentioned only three times, but Jacob Priestley, one of the founders of modern chemistry, is mentioned 52 times (Johnson, 2008). It was this abiding belief in science and technology, coupled with deep-seated commitments to free markets as a principle upon which to organize economic life, and individual rights and democratic governance that provided the basis for the emergence from a former collection of British colonies to the world’s only superpower at the end of the twentieth century. Recent efforts, notably within the US governments’ Institute for Educational Sciences, to pursue the development of scientific knowledge that will inform the development of “research-based practice” in American schools have raised as many questions as answers about whether such a pursuit will have the desired pay-off. This chapter will examine history and current efforts of research in moral/values/ character education and identify three characteristics of the research – practice environment, past and present, which have limited the development of a strong link between researchers and practitioners. The chapter will, in conclusion, assess the extent to which the current gap between researchers and practitioners can be overcome and propose a perspective on research-into-practice that might increase the potential for bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners in character education.

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A Brief History of Research and Practice in Character Education in America The application of the methods of science to the field of education in America began in earnest in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. While an earlier Office of Education had been established in the federal government to collect facts and statistics, President Hoover’s 1931 advisory committee on education in an effort to move beyond partisanship in educational debate optimistically argued that “. . . differences of opinion, tenaciously held, are dissolved by revelations of pertinent facts established by scientific method and presented in understandable terms” (as cited in Rudalevige, 2008, p. 17). The promise that progress in education would follow the same path that it had for agriculture and medicine, however, was not fulfilled for education and especially for character education. It has been widely accepted among scholars of character education that the impact of the signature research into study into character education (Hartshorne & May, 1928–1930) – the Character Education Inquiry – was devastating for the cause of character education. Such statements as “From a research perspective the death blow to character education was delivered by Hartshorne and May’s famous research on character . . . its effect was to debunk the very notion of character itself, thereby pulling the rug out from under the educators” (Power et al. 1989a, p. 127), “The results sent immediate shockwaves through the character education community” (Setran, 2000, p. 315), and “The impact of the Character Education Inquiry can hardly be overstated . . . this report became the scientific backbone of the liberal progressive character education movement and the chief empirical critique of conservative pedagogy” (p. 317) were based largely on the scholarly writings of educational progressives and a decline in number of citations for “character education” during the 1930s in Education Index. These assessments, however, failed to take into account the views of practitioners and what was occurring in America’s classrooms.

Assessing the Impact of the Character Education Inquiry By the time of the Character Education Inquiry (CEI), the shift toward the use of scientific methods in education and away from metaphysics and philosophy was nearly complete. When the President of Teachers College, Ernest D. Burton, initiated the Inquiry in 1923, it was placed under the immediate supervision of Professor Edward L. Thorndike, the director of the Division of Psychology of the Institute of Educational Research (Hartshorne & May, 1928–1930). Dr. Hugh Hartshorne, Professor of Religious Education at the University of Southern California, and Dr. Mark A. May, Professor of Psychology at Syracuse, were hired to serve as co-directors of the inquiry. The Character Education Inquiry ultimately became one

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of the most frequently cited and significant research studies of the twentieth century (Borrstelman, 1974). The attractiveness of the CEI to educational progressives of the era was based on the findings derived from the basic psychological research contained in the report. The particular finding that received the most attention was referred to as the doctrine of specificity: “a child’s conduct in any situation is determined more by the circumstances that attend the situation than by any mysterious entity residing in the child” (Hartshorne & May, 1930). Additionally, with regard to the efficacy of character and religious education in the promotion of character, the authors concluded that “ the mere urging of honest behavior by teachers or the discussion of standards and ideals . . . has no necessary relation to conduct the prevailing ways of inculcating ideals probably do little good and may do some harm” (Hartshorne & May, 1930, Vol. 1, p. 413). Given this critical view of character education, it is not surprising that many would concur with the assessment that the CEI was “bad news” for the character education movement. However, Leming (2009) has recently argued the first major effort to use the methods of science to study character education was less than a roaring success in clarifying the impact of character education programs on youth character or on the development and practice of character education. In this study, careful examination of educational documents of the era of the 1930s indicates that the current practice of character education was little influenced by the findings of the Character Education Inquiry. For example, 20 years after the publication of the CEI, Henry Lester Smith, Dean Emeritus of the School of Education of Indiana University, conducted a national survey of character education practices for the Palmer Foundation (Smith, 1950). It is worth noting that the respondents had no difficulty assessing their current character education efforts. Smith received 300 responses: 77 from colleges and universities involved in teacher training, 124 from public schools, and 41 from state superintendents of education. Smith concluded, “there is a decided variance in opinion as to the methods that should be used in character education” (Smith, 1950, p. 9). While many from the three groups above did not express an opinion regarding the direct versus indirect debate,1 of those that did, the state superintendents and colleges of education favored the indirect approach by better than two to one. Respondents from the public schools were evenly split between the two methods (35–35). Smith noted that practitioners were pragmatic in their appraisal of the effectiveness of the two methods:

1

Generally, direct methods accorded a more central role to teachers and their determination of the content of the lesson, teacher planning of the lesson, and the incorporation of the lessons into the formal curriculum (e.g., history, literature, and civics). Indirect methods tended to be more incidental and arise as the occasion dictated. Indirect lessons were based on student experiences. In indirect teaching, “preaching” and “moralizing” on the part of the teacher were to be avoided. Students were asked to locate the moral lesson for themselves, and children formed their own plans and solved their own problems. The basic difference between direct methods and indirect methods centered on the extent to which the lesson was teacher-centered or student-centered. Of course, even this distinction contained many shades of grey

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While many schoolmen in institutions of higher learning and in administrative positions in the public schools are so ardently pointing out that the direct method is ineffective and outmoded, there are schools all over the country – in large cities, in towns, in rural areas – actually making use of the method and enthusiastic over the good results obtained. In short while some are crying “It can’t be done,” others are going ahead and doing it. (Smith, 1950, p. 10)

There are three major reasons why the Character Education Inquiry did not, as has been presumed, send an earthquake through the educational establishment following its publication. First, many did not see the results of the study as either conclusive or compelling. There was sufficient skepticism among teachers, administrators, and university faculty regarding both the quality of the findings and the limited focus of the study. Beals (1950), in a history of the development of the early character education movement, noted that with regard to the development of school-based practice in the 1930s that: In harmony with the findings of modern psychology there was trend in the direction of the use of the indirect rather than the direct method. Research studies, however, failed to show, to any great extent, the superiority of the indirect method. (p. 158)

The frequently cited conclusion of Hartshorne and May regarding the lack of efficacy of character education programs was in fact an inference drawn largely from non-experimental comparisons of intact groups and was not consistent with a wealth of other contemporary educational research. A greater quantity of relevant, and in many respects better, research was available to teachers and educational leaders in this era that could be utilized to reach a very different set of conclusions about the practice of character education. There was a competing body of research that reached different conclusions regarding best practices, and it was easy for character educators, if they carefully read the research, to pick and choose from a wide variety of studies and findings (Leming, 2009). Evidence that research findings may be interpreted in multiple ways is found in Kenyon (1979) who claims that the results of the CEI were deliberately distorted in order to further the cause of those wedded to particular educational agendas. He makes a particular point regarding the distortion of the efficacy of the direct approach noting that the often cited sentence of Hartshorne and May that “prevailing ways of teaching ideals and standards by direct inculcation of probably do little good and may do harm” (Vol. 1, p. 413) is not the complete idea being presented. Hartshorne and May (1928–1930) go on to finish this idea with the recommendation that the focus for character education should be “. . . on the reconstruction of school practices in such a way as to provide not occasional, but consistent and regular opportunities for forms of conduct as make for the common good.” (Vol. 1, p. 414). This perspective is one that many proponents of the direct approach would approve of. Hartshorne and May did not argue, therefore, that direct methods had no place in a good character education program, but rather that such methods should take place within an educational environment that reinforces the same virtues as those being systematically taught.

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Second, the CEI, due to its length and complexity, was both inaccessible to many and the results were seen by many as more negative than positive when it came to implications for practice. Its length, 1782 pages over three volumes, and the relatively minor emphasis in the study on the impact of school programs on students would seem to insure that it would not achieve wide readership. It provided no practical suggestions for teachers on how to improve their teaching, but rather concluded that current effort are ineffective – “no effects” – and offered only vague injunctions to use indirect methods. Third, the common interpretation of the results of the CEI was that there is no such thing as character and teachers should not attempt to shape students’ conduct in a preordained manner. This common perspective on the implications of the CEI ran counter to the conventional wisdom in schools and as a result made little headway with practitioners. The persisting issue of the link between pedagogical practice and theory and research was a salient then as today. Issues of classroom management and teaching in “real-world” classrooms for many teachers made the application of indirect methods seem impractical. In the era under study, the calls for progressive pedagogy emanated largely from the cloistered halls of academe or the secluded offices of large city superintendents of schools. While the character education movement had strong grassroots, attempts to shape its development were largely top-down in nature with the advocates for change far removed from the perturbations of classroom life. The shape and evolution of the practice of character education were more a function of the requirements of life in schools than from the exhortations of theorists and researchers. As one of the perceptive observers of the era stated: . . . long before philosophy had defined the educator’s problem, the kindergarten child would have been an octogenarian nor can department of research bring immediate aid because time must always be the essence of their investigations the educator who desires to make a desirable social product from the seemingly riotous and sometimes lawless material sent today from home to school to be “educated, if you please” must assume an immediate and independent position. (Anderson, 1930, p. 308)

A Tale of Two Research Programs: Kohlberg’s Moral Development Program and Values Clarification When moral/values education resurfaced as a curricular area of interest in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the influence of E.L. Thorndike and his emphasis on measurement and experimentation in education had not waned. Campbell and Stanley’s (1963) highly influential book on experimental designs provided a sacred text for educational researchers of the era. In this book, they paralleled the argument put forth by President Hoover’s committee on education and succinctly presented their commitment to the experiment as: . . . the only means for settling disputes regarding educational practice, as the only way of verifying educational improvements, and as the only way of establishing a cumulative tradition in which the improvements can be introduced without the danger of a faddish discard of old wisdom in favor of new novelties. (p. 2)

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This perspective was a central component of the training of the researchers of the era (including this author), and as a result, research into moral/values education curricula was dominated once again by the experimental method. 1966 signaled the beginning of a new period of interest in the morals and values development of youth. Character had fallen from the lexicon in favor of the more psychologically and empirically friendly terms of values and morals. Merrill Harmin, collaborating with Louis Raths and Sidney Simon, co-authored Values and Teaching, the highly influential first statement of the theory and technique of values clarification (Raths et al., 1966). In the same year, the developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg began to turn his attention to educational settings (Kohlberg, 1966). Values clarification, along with the cognitive developmental approach to moral education of Lawrence Kohlberg, dominated the field of moral or values education for the next 20 years. As is typically the case with educational movements, it is difficult to judge exactly how much impact values clarification had on educational practice in America’s schools. It is clear that the values clarification approach was by far the more popular approach with teachers than the approach of Lawrence Kohlberg. For example, one handbook of practical strategies for values clarification sold over 600,000 copies (Kirschenbaum, 1992, p. 772) an almost unheard of figure for an education methods textbook of this era.

Values Clarification From the perspective of values clarification, the goal of moral education is for each student to achieve greater clarity regarding his/her values by following the prescribed seven-step valuing process. The theory of values education held that “. . . if we occasionally focus students’ attention on issues in their lives, and if we stimulate students to consider their choices, their prizings, and their actions, then the students will change behaviour, demonstrating more purposeful, proud, positive, and enthusiastic behaviour patterns” (Raths et al., 1966, p. 5). The teacher was urged to be only a facilitator of the valuing process and, for fear of influencing students, was to withhold his/her own opinions. Whatever values the student arrived at, they were to be respected by the teacher. A vigorous research program evolved based on the values clarification approach. Between 1969 and 1985, 74 studies using school-aged youth were conducted where values clarification strategies served as the independent variable (Leming, 1987). A consistent pattern of findings emerged from these studies; namely, there was only limited success at detecting significant changes in the dependent variables (Leming, 1981, 1985, 1987; Lockwood, 1978). The values clarification research program utilized a wide range of dependent variables. While the percentage of the studies finding the predicted results varies from dependent variable to dependent variable, the predicted change in a given variable is seldom found in more than 20% of the studies (Leming, 1987). For example, in the 14 studies that assessed the effect of values clarification activities in classrooms on self-concept only four found a

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statistically significant effect. Similarly, in the 21 studies that assessed changes in values as the dependent variable, only three detected statistically significant changes. One would anticipate that such a pattern of findings would be unsettling to proponents of values clarification and would result in the rethinking of theory, research, or method. In the second edition of Values and Teaching (Raths et al., 1978), published 12 years after the first edition, the theory was unchanged. Research into the values clarification pedagogy continued to examine the same hypotheses and dependent variables. In the case of values clarification, one reason why research findings had little impact on the practice of values clarification in schools or on its theory is that the approach was wildly popular with teachers and students2 and was consistent with the broader re-examination of the nation’s cultural mores taking place during the era. In addition, proponents of values clarification selectively interpreted the existing research, even though it was largely not supportive, as supporting their theory and pedagogy. For example, in a 1977 article entitled “In defence of values clarification” the authors state “80% of the studies lend credibility to the assertion that the use of the valuing process leads to greater personal value (e.g., less apathy and higher selfesteem), and greater social constructiveness (lower drug abuse, less disruptive classroom behavior, etc.)” (Kirschenbaum et al., 1977). This conclusion was reached despite the fact that between 1973 and 1977, in 29 values clarification doctoral dissertations, a positive effect for values clarification was found in only 20% of the studies (Leming, 1987). The proponents of values clarification tended to cherry-pick the research and rely on “reports” – unpublished studies that did not attempt to control potential sources of bias – rather than sources that utilized experimental designs. Additionally, the proponents of values clarification tended to interpret trends in the data that were not statistically significant as supportive of the methodology. In the end, however, it was not empirical research that resulted in the decline of values clarification. Analyses that pointed out the ethical relativism, therapeutic bases of values clarification, and potential threats to privacy rights (Lockwood, 1975, 1977; Stewart, 1976), coupled with a shifting political climate in the country, contributed to a state where values clarification became anathema in most schools. A positive view of authority, parents, or community was nowhere to be found in values clarification theory.

The Cognitive Developmental Approach of Lawrence Kohlberg Moshe Blatt, one of Kohlberg’s doctoral students at the University of Chicago, first demonstrated how the cognitive moral developmental theory could be applied to the practice of moral education. Blatt hypothesized that if children were engaged in the discussion of morally complex issues (dilemmas) and systematically exposed to 2

The author was a long-haired high school teacher during the late 1960s and can personally attest to the excitement and interest value clarification brought to the classroom. He can also attest to the concern of administrators and parents over the use of the lessons

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moral reasoning one stage above their own, they would be attracted to that reasoning and attempt to adopt it for their own. Blatt found that after a 12-week program of systematically exposing students to moral dilemmas and “plus one” reasoning, 64% of his students had developed one full stage in their moral reasoning (Blatt, 1969; Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975). In the moral dilemma discussion approach that developed out of Blatt’s research, the teacher’s role was to serve as a facilitator of student reasoning – to assist the student in resolving issues of moral conflict and to insure that the environment in which the discussion took place was one contained the conditions essential for stage growth in moral reasoning. Reviews of the moral discussion research program (Enright et al., 1983; Lawrence, 1980; Leming, 1981, 1985; Lockwood, 1978) have reached similar conclusions; namely, that in approximately 80% of the semester length studies a mean upward shift in student reasoning of 1/4–1/2 stage will result when students are engaged in the process of discussing moral dilemmas where cognitive disequilibrium and exposure to examples of the next highest state of moral reasoning are present. A 1985 review that utilized meta-analytic techniques with moral reasoning measured by James Rest’s Defining Issues Test found an average effect size of 0.22 for 14 junior high school studies and an effect size of 0.23 for 20 high school studies (Schaefli et al., 1985). An effect size of 0.22 represents a positive change of 22% of a standard deviation compared to the comparison group. Most statisticians interpret effect sizes in the range as “small.” The authors noted, in assessing the significance of the data reviewed that “To date, no studies have demonstrated directly that changes wrought by these moral education programs have brought about changes in behavior” (p. 348). Despite the relatively high quality of the research designs, from the perspective of the classroom teacher, research on the moral discussion approach was not seen as compelling. First, the stage growth found as a result of the moral discussion approach is in stage 2, 3, and 4 range and small – usually less than one-third of a stage for interventions one semester in length and on average two-thirds of a stage for year-long interventions. Second, none of the moral dilemma discussion studies used any form of social or moral behavior as a dependent variable. Moral reasoning was the only dependent variable. Kohlberg and his associates did argue that moral reasoning and moral behavior were related at the principled level (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984); however, analyses of the evidence have detected only weak associations (Blasi, 1980). Thus, even though it was found that the moral dilemma discussion approach “works,” it appeared to be of little practical utility with regard to achieving the character education objective of influencing students’ character-related behavior. The conceptual complexity of the developmental stage theory, the difficulty of managing productive dilemma discussions with school-age youth, and the lack of salience for teachers of stage growth in students, coupled with the realities of classroom life, comprised a triple whammy for the approach. Unlike the values clarification approach, the Kohlbergian approach to moral development never did receive wide attention in our nation’s classrooms. In the late 1970s, Kohlberg’s perspective on moral education underwent a major change. This change did not specifically grow out of the research program, however, but rather out of a realization that the approach did not address the more practical

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concerns – student behavior and discipline – of parents and school personnel. As Kohlberg noted in 1978, “I realize now that the psychologists abstraction of moral cognition is not a sufficient guide to the moral educator who deals with the moral concrete in the school world the educator must be a socializer.” (Kohlberg, 1978, p. 14). It is clear that the major impetus to change in the cognitive developmental theory of moral education came from outside the “plus one” research program. Kohlberg’s personal experiences with educational programs in prisons and experimental high schools in the Cambridge area, criticisms of the approach regarding its alleged value neutrality, and Kohlberg’s own increasing appreciation of the views of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1961) were all powerful influences that led Kohlberg to shift his focus to the moral atmosphere of the school – the just community (Power et al., 1989b). However, like the moral dilemma discussion methodology, the just community approach also seemed impractical to many school personnel and never did gain acceptance despite its appealing rationale. In the era of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a substantial body of research was produced on the values clarification and cognitive developmental approaches. This research, however, contributed little to the popularity of, or lack of, the approaches in schools. Although the pedagogy of the moral dilemma discussion “plus one” approach was clear and the research of high quality, it did not gain traction in schools because of the complex developmental understandings required of teachers and the difficult discussion skills required in implementation. In addition, its objectives did not seem relevant to the needs of teachers facing everyday character-related issues in their classrooms and schools. In this respect, it had much in common with the indirect methods proposed in the early character education movement. With regard to values clarification research, two characteristics are worth noting. First, interpretation of the values clarification research findings varied widely. The proponents viewed the results, many with weak designs and insignificant findings, as supporting the program’s efficacy. Second, it was clear that regardless of how the findings were interpreted, the research quickly became irrelevant due to shifting cultural and political factors. Political concerns regarding the approach value neutrality and quasi-therapeutic bent soon became the dominant concern about the approach. As one proponent of values clarification noted, values clarification had fallen so out of favor with educators by the early 1990s that “Some administrators today would rather be accused of having asbestos in their ceilings than of using values clarification in their classrooms” (Kirschenbaum, 1992, p. 772).

Research in Character Education in the Twenty-first Century In the late 1980s, the shift from the terminology of moral and values education back to the use of character education was given legitimacy in the United States when in 1987 the Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett, organized a conference in Washington, DC entitled Moral and Character Education (Pritchard, 1988). In effect, this

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conference signaled that, for the Reagan administration, education for the character of youth would be a national priority. Also, in the early 1990s, a number of publications signaled that character was now the preferred term for what the schools should be doing (Bennett, 1993; Kilpatrick, 1993; Lickona, 1991; Wynne & Ryan, 1993). Through the presidencies of Regan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr., character education has remained an area of interest of the US Department of Education. The first significant bi-partisan legislation of the Gorge W. Bush administration (2000–2008) was the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Frustration over lagging test scores and poor showings of American students in international achievement comparisons led Congress to take strong action. At the heart of this legislation was a focus on assessment of educational progress and an emphasis on evidence-based practice. The impact of the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 was that American education committed itself to a national effort to forge a strong link between research and practice. This drive for “research-based practice” was formalized when in 2002 the Education Sciences Reform Act was written into law. The general purpose of the legislation was to remove educational reform from partisan politics and establish scientifically based methods of identifying effective (and ineffective) educational practice. Within the US Department of Education, the Institute for Educational Sciences was created, which in turn gave birth to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The stated goal of the WWC is “. . . to provide educators, policy makers and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education . . . fulfilling part of IES’s overall mission to bring ‘rigorous and relevant research, evaluation and statistics to our nation’s education system.” http://ies.ed. gov/ncee/wwc/references/idocviewer/doc.aspx?docid 1. The WWC’s model for the advancement of educational practice is similar to that of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval process for drugs. Educational researchers will produce experimental studies, and the WWC will vet the studies with a view to evaluating their quality and claims regarding effectiveness. The WWC reviews of quality will then be made available to the educational community. While the WWC lacks the statutory authority to regulate or require specific curricular products for schools, it is assumed that good products/programs will be adopted and poor products/programs rejected. This implicit adoption model assumes that linking government funding to curricula judged to be effective will create incentives created for schools to implement WWC-certified curricula. The hope is that through the adoption of “proven” and “effective” methods and programs the education will be transformed in a way that scientific research resulted in revolutions in medicine, agriculture, and transportation in the twentieth century. This “review-certification-adoption” model, however, appears not to work as simply as imagined. It is gradually becoming apparent that the idea that practice can be informed and improved through assessments of “what the research says” is a much more complex task that it appeared at first glance. In a recent USA Today article, the following was concluded about the state of educational research:

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More than five years after President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law told educators to rely on “scientifically based” methods, the science produced is often inconclusive, politically charged or less than useful for classroom teachers. And when it is useful, it often is misused or ignored altogether. (Toppo, 2007, p. 6D)

For school personnel looking to educational research for guidance, recent headlines in educational publications such as the following must be disappointing: Math programs seem to lack a research base. Preschool education: Complications all over. Abstinence programs don’t work. Largest study to date concludes. Research on inclusion is inconclusive. Reading curricula don’t make cut for federal review. WWC takes stuffing out of Asian tiger (Singapore math). Proof of positive effect found for only a few character education programs.

It is apparent that after almost 100 years of efforts to improve educational practice through research the potential for developing a science of character education depends more on how teachers and curriculum developers view research than the quantity and quality of the research itself. The current state of research into character education reflects many of the same characteristics as educational research in general. One insight into how research is viewed in the field of character education can be gained from looking at the popularity of research versus non-researched programs. Three widely used character education programs – DARE (www.dare.com), Character Counts (www.charactercounts.org), and Learning for Life (www.learning-forlife.org) – report on their websites 26 million, five million, and 1.7 million students, respectively, enrolled in their programs annually. The DARE program research has repeatedly been found to be ineffective (Clayton et al., 1996; Lynam et al., 1999) and neither the Character Counts program and the Learning for Life program has a single research study that meets minimum standards for a controlled experimental design. On the other hand, two well-researched character education programs – Positive Action (www.positiveaction.net) and the Child Development Project (www.devstu. org/cdp) – cannot come close to these numbers of students nationwide of the three programs above. The Positive Action Program currently is in classrooms with approximately 390,000 students (C. Allred, personal communication, November 12, 2006). The Child Development Project, which has spent millions on highquality research, can count 20,000 classrooms today or approximately 440,000 students (E. Schaps, personal communication, October 23, 2007). Clearly, more than a solid research base and a carefully developed program are necessary for wide adoption today. Another perspective from which to make an assessment the role of research in shaping character education today comes from an analysis of the Character Education Partnership’s 2009 National Schools of Character: Award Winning Practices (Character Education Partnership, 2007). In this report, a Blue Ribbon panel of character education experts judged 10 schools nationwide to be exemplary with

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regard to the practice of character education. Each school and its practices are described in detail and references provided. It is apparent that each school has developed a program unique to their school. The general pattern is that no program rests explicitly on research-based “what works” criteria. It would be unfair to make too strong a statement regarding the role of research in developing these programs given the nature of the narrative, but the distinct impression is that these programs were “home-grown” and that research played little part in the curriculum development process.3 A final perspective on the current link between research and practice is drawn from the work of the What Works Clearinghouse. Reviews of the research, undertaken to ascertain what works in the field are demonstrating that the development of a science of character education, will not be an easy task. As of May 2009, the What Works Clearinghouse staff has identified 41 character education programs (http://ies. ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/). The WWC reviews were able to identify 93 studies of 41 programs that qualified for review. The results of the reviews are clearly written and easily viewed in table format. Seven studies met evidence standards, 11 met evidence standards with reservations, and 75 studies (80%) did not meet evidence standards. Research findings were reviewed in three outcome domains: (1) behavior (N 9); (2) knowledge, attitudes and values, and values (N 10); and (3) academic achievement (N 3). Of these, one program was found to have strong positive effects on behavior and on academic achievement, and one program was found to have strong positive effects on knowledge, attitudes, and values. Five programs were found to have potentially positive effects (a less rigorous standard) on behavior, one was found to have potentially positive effects on knowledge, attitudes, and values, and two programs to have potentially positive effects on academic achievement. Overall, in the 11 studies, in the three domains, of 23 possible effects, 10 were found to be positive or potentially positive. Within the scientific community, replication is a key to establishing confidence in a research finding or theory. Replication entails multiple studies using different subjects and different researchers. In only three of the 11 WWC character education curricula above did two research studies for a curriculum met WWC evidence standards for inclusion in the review. In eight studies, the WWC report is based on a single study. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) rigorous review standards have resulted in the elimination many studies published in high-quality peer-reviewed research journals. For example, many of the research studies on the Child Development Project did not make the cut of the WWC due to the fact that data analysis was based on school-level comparisons rather than classroom-level comparisons even though the curriculum was designed as a school-wide program. Battistich (2008) raises the issue that despite the weaker statistical claims that may be made if the unit of analysis for effects was clusters of students rather than whole schools “. . . the

3

In a confidential discussion with one of the Blue Ribbon Panel expert reviewers, it was communicated how frustrating it was to almost never hear any discussion of research from school personnel to support the award winning practice.

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preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that CDP had positive effects on students.” (p. 340) In other words, he claims that the findings are consistent across studies and of great practical significance even if the research does not achieve statistical significance in all cases.

Conclusion As can be seen from the above discussion, the relationship between research and practice in character education is frequently neither clear nor seen as compelling by practitioners. Three characteristics of the cultures of the practitioners and the researchers are at the core of understanding this disconnect within the research– practice relationship. First, such issues as the quantity and quality of the research are a particular issue of concern today, especially with regard to the summaries prepared by the WWC. Practitioners and policymakers alike can appropriately ask do we have sufficient research of high quality to make informed decisions about research-based practice? Questions regarding the utility of research findings for classroom teachers are today as much of an issue for the What Works Clearinghouse as it was with the Character Education Inquiry. With the CEI, as with the WWC, the research seems to point more to the conclusion that certain programs and practices do not work, rather than providing guidance for practitioners by identifying what does work. Second, one of the central goals of educational research is to develop context-free and generalizable knowledge, but as most teachers will argue, context matters a great deal. Researchers give great attention to sampling methods and research design with a view to the production of context-free knowledge about curriculum and pedagogy. However, for practitioners context is at the heart of their decision-making processes. At educational conferences in America, teachers will always flock to presentations of other teachers about what works in their schools than they will to sessions where research findings are being reported. Third, there exists a healthy skepticism among teachers about whether the research community can provide practitioners trustworthy knowledge to guide practice. Teachers are aware that there is frequently research on both sides of the questions and they do not either have the time, desire, or expertise to sort through and evaluate the competing claims. In conversations in 2007, the author held with 50 practicing teachers in central Michigan the depth in teacher’s minds of the disconnect between research and practice and the skepticism teachers hold about research was apparent. Representative teacher observations regarding how curriculum decisions are made and the role of research included the following: All (the curriculum) is driven by benchmarks and standards. We are driven to achieve these goals and the existing curriculum might not get us there. Different personalities often end up teaching very differently. Research doesn’t even show up on the radar screen when it comes to curriculum. We’ve got to do something and something quick with our students. We are not going to wait for research.

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If you have an idea there is research out there somewhere to support that idea, for example, research on middle schools has changed 180 degrees in two years. Kids change from year to year. Last year’s curricula often doesn’t work with this year’s students. There are really multiple curricula in many classrooms. Differentiated instruction (hot topic today) actually means multiple curricular approaches. High ability/low ability and high income/low income students are examples of the need to differentiate the curriculum. Q: What accounts for the curriculum that exists on your desk? A: Marketing – politics – affordability – administrative whim.

Today, as it was throughout the twentieth century, “what research says” or “what works” reviews are seen as not salient by many practitioners due to its failure to provide clear and consistent guidance, incomprehensibility, and lack of relevance to the classroom tasks that teachers face in their varied environments. More fundamentally, this failure to find a significant impact of research on practice in character education may be due to a fundamentally flawed assumption about the relationship between the two pointed out by John Dewey: The scientific content of education consists of whatever subject-matter selected from other fields, enables the educator, whether administrator or teacher, to see and think more clearly and deeply about whatever he is doing. Its value is not to supply objectives to him, anymore than it is to supply him with ready-made rules. Education is a mode of life, of action. As an act it is wider than science. (Dewey, 1929, p. 75)

Dewey went further to describe his concerns over a basing educational practice exclusively on science: The sources of an educational science are any portions of ascertained knowledge that enter into the heart, head, and hands of educators, and which by entering in, render the performance of the educational function, more truly educational than it was before. But there is no way to discover what is more “truly educational” except the continuation of the educational act itself. It may conduce to immediate ease or momentary efficiency . . . to seek and answer in some material that already has scientific prestige. But such a seeking is an abdication, a surrender . . . It arrests growth; it prevents the thinking that is the final source of all progress. (pp. 76–77)

From the author’s perspective, a more fruitful approach to understanding the role of research in improving practice will be found in the act of listening to teachers and trying to understand how they develop their classroom practice. This involves both understanding their perspective on the utility of educational research and how they apply it within the contexts where their craft is practiced. We as researchers must remain open to the possibility that our role may not be as significant as we might like it to be. Growing out of a more realistic view of how research is perceived and used may possibly develop a more salient role for our work. The chasm between how teachers approach the design of educational practice and how researchers view the process is apparent in the view that the value of researchbased and data-based decision-making is that it allows school leaders to avoid making decisions “through a trial and error method (or worse still making decisions

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in the dark – a not uncommon education practice)” (Fusarelli, 2008, p. 196). Fuscarelli’s out-of-hand rejection of teacher’s curriculum work based on past practice and trial and error reveals the depth of the gulf between researchers and teachers and unfortunately may close off a potentially fruitful area for study. A large part of the “research-into-practice conundrum” is based on the differing cultures of the researcher and the practitioner. From the researchers’ perspective, the goal is to develop context-free and generalizable knowledge. It follows, from this model, that research-based practices, being the best available and highest quality evidence, will be faithfully implemented (treatment fidelity) in classrooms to achieve the desired educational outcomes. From the educational practitioners’ perspective, the goal is to achieve the desired outcomes in a local setting that in many respects is unique and hence largely not generalizable. It is apparent that many teachers make adaptations to “curriculum as designed” that dramatically affect what researchers call treatment fidelity. Most elementary school teachers will report that there are often significant changes from year to year in their students that require that they significantly adapt their curriculum accordingly. High school teachers likewise will point to differences between and within classes in a given year that require pedagogical flexibility. In an ingenious study by Kennedy (1999), she developed two packages of articles consisting of the following genres of research: experimental, a non-experimental comparison of two approaches, autobiography, survey, history, and disciplinary study. Teachers were then asked to indicate which studies they found the most persuasive, the most relevant, and which influenced their thinking the most. Kennedy offers that the hypothesis that best fits her data is “that teachers find value in articles that address the relationship between what they do and what students learn” (p. 527). Kennedy concludes from her study that arguments for the superiority or quality of one genre of research over another are less important than the teacher’s perspective on the relationship between the study and their classroom situations. The practitioner who is focused on character-related outcomes will turn to research only under a limited set of conditions. Specifically, the research must be seen as salient, clear, and comprehensible, and utilitarian in meeting his/her real-world character development needs with students in the local classroom, school, and community. In an effort to develop a perspective that links research to the practical needs of practitioners Burkhardt and Schoenfield (2003) propose viewing educational research as an enterprise akin to engineering. An engineering approach would be less focused on developing generalizable views of how schools and pedagogy work and would instead be more directly concerned with the development of high-quality solutions to practical problems. From their perspective, “general theories are weak, providing only general guidance for design; nonetheless they receive the lion’s share of attention in the research literature. Local or phenomenal theories based on experiment are seen as less important or prestigious than general theory, but are currently are more valuable in design” (p. 10). James Shaver (2001) describes the differences between developing a science of education and educational engineering in the following manner: Engineering is technology, not science, not even applied science. It is a different type of research enterprise with a different epistemology. The purpose of engineering is (not to create more knowledge) practical and set in a social context. The purpose is to create artifacts

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that serve humans in a direct and immediate way. Knowledge is generated to be used in the design, production and operation of artefacts that meet recognized social needs. (p. 233)

According to Vincenti (1990), engineering is technology and technology is not a derivative from science, but is an autonomous body of knowledge different from science. The generation of engineering knowledge follows from a different type of research enterprise with a different epistemology. Campbell (1960) has described this different epistemology as “blind variation and selective retention.” Blind variation refers to the process by which alternative solutions to the practical problem at hand are selected and tried out. These variations do not take place randomly, but are selected without complete or adequate guidance. Selective retention refers to the process by which observed successes and failures become part of the knowledge base that leads to the design of useful artifacts. While some such as Fusarelli (2008) would denigrate such a process, I would argue that in fact this is how educational practice evolves and improves. Of course, with regard to the observed successes and failures, warrants must be established for the moral activity of teaching, and therefore, disciplined inquiry is required. As I have observed character education lessons in America’s schools over the past 25 years, I have been struck at how quickly teachers are in their adaptation of the existing print curricula. Some teachers are natural-born storytellers and constantly build that into their classrooms. Other teachers frequently incorporate examples from popular culture into their lessons. Some teachers do neither of the above, but stick with the curriculum guides. In one high school classroom in the St. Louis area, I observed a teacher that had made major changes to the character education curriculum I was evaluating. When I questioned the teacher she provided a rationale that appeared warranted, but it did not contain a single reference to research. Instead, she based her approach on prior experiences and insights into her students. I did not find this teacher mindless or blind about her decision-making, but rather relying on pedagogical content knowledge. Lee Shulman (1987) has proposed that the appropriate way to understand expert or effective (best) education practice is through the study of the cognition of expert teachers and their understanding of their practice. He describes “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK) as “that special amalgam of content an pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding” (p. 8). In this author’s interviews and focus groups with character educators (Leming & Yendol-Hoppy, 2004), it was noted that many of the most effective teachers had a well-developed understanding of what works with their students and were unhesitant and unrepentant in changing time, methods, and content to suit their understanding of effective character education. Lagemann (1989) has argued “. . .that one can not understand the history of education in the United States unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost (p. 185).” The experimental science paradigm has been, and remains, a highly influential perspective within the educational community with regard to how to improve educational practice. However, as I have argued above, the potential of educational science on educational practice is still far from a success story. So, how are we to know, if we adopt the educational engineering framework

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regarding how effective character education programs are developed, that once an effective program is engineered it comprises an effective program? The first step in this process will be to assess if the stakeholders are satisfied. If staff, administration, students, and parents are enthusiastic about the program, this by itself should be given great importance. In the process of assessing satisfaction, the selection of appropriate indicators will play a role. This will result in the second general step in the process, namely if the program is meeting its goals – if it results in socially valuable artifacts. Local data should be collected and evaluated in this process. If differences of opinion are detected regarding the value of the program, that information should go into the process of further consideration of growth of the program. Careful observation and measurement, and even experimental designs, have an important role to play in the above processes. However, if that knowledge is to be used in the further design and improvement of programs it will be just one of many sources drawn for the local context to be used by school personnel. The ideal role for educational researchers will remain little changed if the point of view presented in this chapter were to be adopted. That goal should be to produce high-quality and relevant research studies on questions that will have salience to teachers and other researchers and report those studies clearly. In addition, it remains important for teachers to have the knowledge and skills to be able to read educational research and conduct inquiries in their classrooms and schools to assess if their efforts are achieving the desired results. One issue facing research utilization today is the idea among many researchers and school personnel that research leads to some sort of settled truth. The very phrase “What Works” implies that we can achieve a degree of certainty, when in fact research knowledge is always provisionally held knowledge. Too often the quest for certainty, encouraged by effectiveness reviews, results in confusion and frustration and flight from research when simple answers are not forthcoming. If researchers and practitioners were to focus more on educational contexts and developing a deeper understanding of the processes that teachers engage in when acting as curriculum engineers, it is likely that these understandings would result in closer links between research and practice. The guiding question of this inquiry has been to search for a deeper understanding and conception of research-based best practice for the field of character education. While my analysis accords a place for research in the development and public warrant for best practices, I believe we must look beyond experimental research for the deepest insights into effective practice. I am drawn to Dewey’s notion of teacher reflection and experience as a broader and more fruitful perspective. Just as Dewey called for teachers to be aware of and utilize the educational conditions, physical and social, to design student experiences that lead to growth, so too should educators be driven by the ideal of continuing growth in their practice. Any view of the link between research and practice that presents research as “settled” knowledge and determinate of educational practice closes off the possibility of openness to further professional experience and growth and therefore may be more mis-educative than educative. Thorndike may have won, but Dewey was, in the end, right.

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Shaver, J. P. (2001). The future of research on social studies – for what purpose? In W. B. Stanley (Ed.), Current issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 231–252). Information Age Publishing. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Pedagogical content knowledge: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–22. Smith, H. L. (1950). Character education: A survey of practice in the public schools of the United States. The Palmer Foundation. Stewart, J. S. (1976). Problems and contradictions of values clarification. In D. Purpel & K. Ryan (Eds.), Moral education. It comes with the territory (pp. 136–151). McCutchan Publishing Corporation. Toppo, G. (2007, April 11). Education in search of answers: Research’s usefulness is called into question. Education Week (p. 6D). Viadero, D. (2009, April 1). No effects studies raising eyebrows. Education Week, 1, 8. Vincenti, W. G. (1990). What engineers know and how they know it: Analytical studies from aeronautical history. The John Hopkins University Press. Wynne, E., & Ryan, K. (1993). Reclaiming our schools: A handbook on teaching character, academics, and discipline. Merrill.

Integrating the Contours of Character From Moral Self to Moral Exemplar

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Bryan W. Sokol, Stuart I. Hammond, Kelly McEnerney, Melissa A. Apprill, and Marvin W. Berkowitz

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Development and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study and Thick Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman White – The Early Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intellectual Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman White – The Middle Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Affective Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman White – The Later Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Behavioral Alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moral Education: Integrating Self and Civic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The moral development literature is beset by splits between moral judgment and action, emotion and cognition, agency and communion, self and others, and theory and application. The overall result has been a disjointed, or “thin,” description of moral character that tends to isolate variables for study and B. W. Sokol (*) · M. A. Apprill Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. I. Hammond University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] K. McEnerney Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. W. Berkowitz University of Missouri, St Louis, MO, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_36

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analysis, rather than offer a holistic, person-centered integration of moral processes with practical implications. In an extension of our 2010 chapter, we present an alternative, relational approach to character that emphasizes “thick” description and a richer “study of lives.” To demonstrate our more dynamic conception of character formation, we provide a case study of the late Black scholar activist, Dr. Norman A. White (1953–2017), a criminologist at Saint Louis University in Missouri, and a prominent voice during the unrest that followed the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Key topics in character formation such as moral judgment, perspective taking, empathy, self-regulation, and agency are examined through the study of their role in an engaged life. We conclude with practical lessons for service-learning advocates and principles for educating the next generation of engaged citizens. Keywords

Case study · Moral character · Orthogenetic principle · Moral reasoning · Empathy · Self-regulation · Agency

Introduction . . .woven into the body of thick-description ethnography. . ..is [the aim] to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions about the role of culture. . .by engaging them exactly with complex specifics (Geertz, 1973, p. 28).

Much like famed anthropologist Clifford Geertz said about “thick” and “thin” descriptions of human social action in ethnographic research, a similar distinction can be drawn within the study of moral selfhood and agency (Sokol et al., 2013). Thick descriptions of moral selfhood are found, for instance, in the detailed case studies by Colby and Damon (1992). Their seminal work, Some Do Care, offered highly textured views into the psychological lives of moral exemplars and the nearly seamless connection between the moral thoughts and actions of such extraordinary individuals. In such cases, generalities are drawn from particulars, not through the usual quantitative techniques of abstracting and averaging across multiple cases, but by delving deeply into single ones, into the subtle details of individual people’s lives. Echoing Geertz’s assertions, Colby and Damon (1992) argued: “In order to explore the depths of moral commitment. . .we need to go beyond laboratory experiments, personality assessments, and discrete bits of family background. We need to understand the person’s life and how that person makes sense of it” (p. 8). Thin descriptions, by contrast, are more prevalent in moral psychology and mainstream developmental psychology more broadly (Rogoff, 2011). The field overall, apart from unique pockets that have elevated personological accounts of moral identity (Matsuba & Walker, 2004; Walker, 2014), has tended to examine psychological processes in more abstract “disembodied” terms, dealing less with questions of how these processes come to together in the moral character and agency of actual people. As Gordon Allport (1937) once suggested, psychology as a whole tends to privilege the

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“study of variables” instead of the “the study of lives” (see Walker, 2020, p. 383). When we first described “The Developmental Contours of Character” (Sokol et al., 2010), we adopted a definition of moral character that followed this narrower emphasis on variables: “the composite of psychological characteristics that serve to promote moral agency” (p. 583). That is, we took a “thinner” descriptive tack and focused on three areas of psychological growth – intellectual, affective, and behavioral processes – that generally serve as necessary building blocks for moral character to emerge. We claimed that growth in moral reasoning and perspective taking (intellectual processes), empathy and emotional literacy (affective processes), and self-regulation and autonomy (behavioral processes) were critical for children and young people to express their moral agency. Yet, we offered little insight as to how these processes were integrated into the richer “moral anatomy” (Berkowitz, 1997) of a person, nor how these psychological characteristics align over the lifespan and anchor the real-life moral commitments of actual people. What follows in this updated chapter is an extension of our original claims, with special attention to the intrapsychic principle of integration that operates throughout development to consolidate moral functioning within individuals. Developmental science has a long history of studying patterns of dynamic, self-organizing systems that progress toward increased differentiation and integration (Overton, 2013; Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2002; Witherington, 2007). In the field of moral psychology and moral education, the “moral self” has been understood as one such system (Lapsley, 2008). The two critical dimensions of the moral self, according to Krettenauer et al. (2013), are “(a) moral centrality, that is the extent to which moral values are important for an individual’s self-definition, and (b) self-integration, that is the extent to which moral values are integrated in the self-system” (p. 120). We will explore these psychological dimensions in the present chapter as well, but mainly to suggest that thick descriptions of moral selfhood have been neither central nor integrated into most accounts of moral character and moral education. To put flesh on the ideas of our original chapter, we have tried here to move toward a much thicker description that illustrates how intellectual, affective, and behavioral processes are aligned, both internally and externally, in the moral self of an actual person – one who demonstrated exemplary moral character. As we have argued elsewhere (Sokol et al., 2018), successes and shortcomings in moral character are systemic outcomes that are often tied to the internal integrations and external alignments of psycho-social processes. Positive moral character in a developmental relational systems approach, like our own (see also Lerner & Schmid Calina, 2014), emerges “when the psycho-social processes in these general areas [i.e., intellectual, affective, and behavioral areas] are properly aligned and operating in complementary ways” (Sokol et al., 2018, p. 238). We offer a case study of a “local hero” and social justice exemplar, Dr. Norman White (1953–2017) from St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States (Rivas, 2017). Professor White, or Norm as most called him, was a prominent voice during the civil unrest and racial tensions that resulted from the 2014 police-involved killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, which is part of the St. Louis metropolitan area. The study of Norm White’s life serves as a concrete way to explore alignments in moral character. Moreover, aspects of his educational vision

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also provide direction for programs intended to promote moral character, illustrating yet another form of alignment – the integration of self and community. We conclude with the lessons that Norm taught us about effective experiential learning and moral education.

Development and Integration Our original chapter (Sokol et al., 2010) described moral reasoning and perspective taking, empathy and emotional literacy, and self-regulation and autonomy as a way to map out the important areas in child development related to moral character. Since then, we (Sokol et al., 2015, 2018) have been more explicit about the need for a broader, unifying, relational systems framework in which to integrate these areas. We have not been alone in the field (see, for example, Lerner & Schmid Calina, 2014), though few have offered a comprehensive integrative vision. Those that have tend to see the study of the “moral self” (Hardy & Carlo, 2011; Krettenauer, 2013; Lapsley, 2008) as a generative psycho-social construct, and they have drawn heavily from the integrative terminology of Heinz Werner (1957) to describe its development. Werner, with his colleague Bernard Kaplan (Werner & Kaplan, 1963), provided a comprehensive account of what they called the orthogenetic principle: “wherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration” (Werner, 1957, p. 126). Lerner (2001) explained the orthogenetic processes of integration and differentiation using an example of children’s conceptual understanding of dogs. When a child first says “dog,” that identifier tends to be all encompassing and the child often mistakes all four-legged, furry animals as some kind of canine. That is, the child has a relatively global understanding. As the child’s experience and thinking grow, they eventually learn about other four-legged animals, such as cats and bears and giraffes, and their understanding becomes increasingly differentiated. Eventually, the child – in learning that dogs, indeed, share similar overarching features with other fourlegged, furry creatures – constructs a new label: animals. A similar argument applies to the development of a person’s moral concepts. For example, a young person’s initial notions of justice may be relatively global and framed only as fair outcomes that benefit one’s self. As cognitive development occurs, however, this view grows more nuanced and differentiated, becoming increasingly enriched from new experiences and real-life dilemmas that challenge their thinking. Justice eventually becomes a concept that includes layers of meaning related to rights, distribution of goods, diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as other virtues of honesty, reason, and truth. Development continues as they form higher-order categories prioritizing these differentiations. This process also occurs in other areas of growth beyond conceptual understanding, with many other integrations and alignments arising in individuals across their cognitions, emotions, motivations, and actions. Indeed, a holistic account of moral selfhood should work to integrate various intellectual, affective, and behavioral processes (Berkowitz, 1997).

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Such integrations are clearest, perhaps, in studies that have adopted a personological approach to moral development, like that of Colby and Damon (1992). Colby and Damon’s (1992) case studies in Some Do Care, as well as the followup, The Power of Ideals (Damon & Colby, 2015), revealed that the identities of moral exemplars were tied directly to their moral commitments. When asked what motivated them to support others and their communities, they often responded that they did not think very much about their actions. Their commitments were just part of how they understood themselves as individuals; they did not hesitate in their actions, suggesting a unity of personal and moral goals. In Why be Moral: A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology, Bergman (2002) further elaborated on the type of integration that explains extraordinary moral commitment. His “synthetic developmental model of exemplary moral functioning” is built upon features of Colby and Damon’s (1992) account. Bergman explained that conceptions of “what is good for the self” and “what is moral” are two separate dimensions of a person’s development that are largely unrelated in early childhood, but begin to converge in adolescence, and (for some) become deeply integrated in adulthood. Moral exemplars experience the former as commensurate with the latter. Their motivation to act morally is intrinsically tied to their identities: to deny their moral commitments would be to deny who they are as individuals. Where Colby and Damon (1992) failed to explicitly define the moral dimension, Augusto Blasi (1980, 1983), another key psychological theorist, incorporated elements of Lawrence Kohlberg’s cognitivist approach to argue that individuals and, to a greater extent, moral exemplars prioritize rational moral principles in such a way that they become integrated with their personalities. In Kohlberg’s approach to moral functioning, knowing the good should lead to doing the good (Kohlberg, 1970; reprinted in 2013). That is, one’s stage of moral understanding, which informs one’s principled judgments of right and wrong, should be predictive of moral action. Although Kohlberg acknowledged other factors influencing moral conduct, he argued that “moral principles are automotivating” (Lapsley, 2008, p. 33) and the main driver of moral action. Blasi’s (1983) moral selfmodel is often treated as a corrective to Kohlberg’s cognitivist leanings. As Blasi explained, moral understanding is only one motivating factor among many other dimensions of an individual’s personality and character. In circumstances when moral understanding is not the strongest motivator, a “gap” emerges between the individual’s level of moral thought and their behavior (Walker, 2004). Blasi was one of the first to clearly articulate how moral reasoning can coexist within the broader personality system of values and motivations and, thus, influence moral actions, even if not predict them directly. For Blasi, “the motivation for moral action does not spring directly from a cognition, but rather from a deeply felt sense of fidelity to oneself in action” (Lapsley, 2008, p. 33). Blasi’s model was based on two propositions: that individuals make judgments of responsibility regarding the self-relevance of matters of morality and that they do so through an organized self-system that prioritizes these matters in terms of higherorder moral desires, also referred to as a moral will (Frankfurt, 1988), which in turn regulates lower-order impulses. Blasi further distinguished between two distinct

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dimensions of this self-system: the extent to which moral desires are central to the self and the degree to which they become integrated within the self-system where they present as internalized motivations (Blasi, 1995). The former is accessible in children; the latter requires a self-system that prioritizes different moral values through an integrative process of reflective abstraction, which emerges developmentally in the more established identities of adolescents and adults. To better frame the developmental dimensions of Blasi’s model, other researchers have followed suit with their own integrative accounts. Walker and Frimer (2007, 2015), for instance, proposed that development of the moral self-involved integrating competing motives of agency and communion (Wiggins, 1991). These initially separate motives – one pushing for a sense of autonomy and individual control, and the other pulling for a sense of belonging and relationship with others – become the source of conflict during adolescence. The dissonance created by this experience is resolved by prioritizing one or the other, or through a process of reconciliation that generates a more holistic, higher-order motive, not unlike the moral will that Blasi (1983) described. Indeed, the moral exemplars studied by Frimer and Walker (2009) experienced a unity of agency and community: “agency imparts communal values with motivational oomph and communion imparts agentic inclinations with a higher moral purpose” (Walker, 2020, p. 391). Lapsley and Narvaez (2004), addressing Blasi’s views on moral centrality, likened the moral self to the process of learning habits. Their social information processing perspective is as follows: Individuals, who are novices in training, develop moral schemas informed by intentional experiences that involve making conscious decisions. These decisions become more automatic, as their schemas become increasingly elaborate and hierarchically structured, as would characterize expertise. This more organized structure of knowledge makes the process of accessing moral schemas more efficient and central to a person’s self-definition. When integrated within the self-system, these schemas become chronically accessible, influencing attention to moral concerns and motivating action. Krettenauer et al. (2013) delineated the moral self-construct still further, extending its application to describe behavior in younger children. He proposed three distinct, interrelated layers of selfhood to characterize prosocial conduct and moral actions: intentional, volitional, and identified agency. Each is associated with important developmental transitions in young people’s moral selves, although all three forms of agency may coexist at once depending on the social context and domain of activity. Evidence of intentional agency – the earliest expression of moral selfhood – is found at the intersection of 2- to 3-year-olds’ basic theories of mind (Wellman & Phillips, 2001), their impulses to help others (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989; Warneken & Tomasello, 2009), and their understanding of social conventions and moral rules (Nucci, 1981; Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1983). Children’s use of mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions allows them to harness their nascent prosocial impulses and conceptions of moral rules to construct their first moral desires. The motivational power of these early desires, however, is set against other competing impulses, making preschool children’s moral will unstable and inconsistent. “The young child’s moral will is not entirely her own, or, in Piagetian terms, it is more heteronomous than autonomous” (Sokol et al., 2015, p. 306).

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This begins to change, however, with what Krettenauer et al. (2013) called volitional agency. With this developmental transition, children experience a marked increase in their abilities to self-regulate, as evidenced in their success to delay gratification (Mischel, 1974; Tobin & Graziano, 2010) and to imagine themselves in the future (Barresi, 2001; Moore, 2010). These growing abilities are important for allowing children to reflect on the relationship between future conditions and their present decisions and then to prioritize particular desires over others. Such volitional prioritization resembles what Blasi (1983) understood as the emergence of higherorder desires and the construction of a more stable moral self. The most stable forms of moral commitment are associated with identified agency, usually evidenced for the first time in adolescence. Krettenauer’s (2013) notion of the identified moral self draws particularly from Deci and Ryan’s (2000, 2002) self-determination theory, which posits a close connection between internalization of social norms and self-regulatory processes. In self-determination theory, individuals with an “identified self” have begun to take personal ownership of particular social norms and values, treating them as forms of self-expression and part of their belief system. Autonomous moral action only takes place when moral desires become internalized such that their source of motivation is both the means and ends to action. This type of integrated action is characteristic of an identified agent, although, as we will show in the following case study, even the most developed form of agency requires alignments in intellectual, affective, and behavioral functioning that can be difficult to sustain and may take a lifetime to consolidate and stabilize across many different social contexts.

Case Study and Thick Analysis Although the moral self has been conceptualized in several different ways, the developmental processes of differentiation and integration have played critical roles in each. Indeed, these processes are often highlighted as key notions for distinguishing developmental change from other forms of human psychological growth (Overton, 1991, 1998). Developmental theory, especially an assumption about the relationship between process and organization, was woven throughout our original chapter: “. . .developmentalists study change and the patterns or system-like properties that emerge within such change. This means that a phenomenon like character. . .is seen as a dynamic process, and not a fixed feature of a person” (Sokol et al., 2010, p. 584; see also Berkowitz, 2014, on the tension between fixed and fluid features of character). The processes and outcomes of moral character also extend beyond the integrative features of moral selfhood and into the social environments in which people are situated. As the gritty details of real life often make clear, self and situation may or may not align to promote the growth and expression of moral character. Person and context also form an integrated, dynamic system (Lerner & Walls, 1999) through which self and community may or may not thrive (Lerner et al., 2003). Developmental theory remains our impetus now for describing the intellectual, affective, and behavioral alignments that must be in place, both internally and externally, for exemplary instances of moral character to emerge. Nevertheless, as Geertz

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(1973) once commented: “. . .the essential task of theory building. . .is not to codify abstract regularities, but to make thick description possible, not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them” (p. 26). For us, this means “generalizing within” the case of the moral exemplar, Dr. Norman White, and applying our theoretical assumptions to contextualize and organize the details of his life to illustrate how moral character develops and unfolds as a nuanced psycho-social system over a lifetime. We adopted a documentary historical style (Miller & Crabtree, 1992), focusing primarily on publicly available artifacts such as radio interviews, newspaper articles, and social media posts. Undergraduate students enrolled in qualitative methods and moral psychology course at Saint Louis University conducted field research through a semi-structured interview with Norm’s surviving spouse, Liz Murphy-White, who also provided informed consent and approval of the completed case study. Ethical principles for research were followed throughout our work, and we are grateful for the many thoughtful contributions of our students and the care they took with gathering additional details from Liz Murphy-White. We showcase many integrations and alignments throughout the case study, but particularly those that deal with the intellectual, affective, and behavioral areas we discussed in our original chapter (these form their own sections in the Early, Middle, and Later Years of Norm’s life). By adopting a person-centered approach, we aim to show, just as Geertz (1973) has insisted, that “seeing heaven in a grain of sand is not a trick only poets can accomplish. . .” (p. 44). In this case, unfortunately, Norm was too soon for heaven, though the legacy of his educational vision and civic commitments still endure.

Norman White – The Early Years Norm, as many people called him, was a well-known criminologist and social scientist working in the St. Louis community in August 2014 when the adjacent municipality of Ferguson, just 10 miles from his campus office, erupted in civic protests sparked by the death of Michael Brown. As noted by many since then, “. . .the fatal, police-involved shooting of Michael Brown. . . represented an historic

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crisis point for the region, which became an international symbol of modern-day struggles with racial inequality” (Purnell et al., 2018, p. 732). The tragic events gave rise to the Black Lives Matters Movement and galvanized the political activism of applied scholars like Norm. Several years later, in 2017, Norm received a prestigious community award from St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund and the St. Louis American Foundation, just a few months before he suddenly died from a heart attack at the age of 64. The award ceremony began by noting how a common greeting in African countries is “And how are the children?” (“Casserian Engeri” associated with the Maasai culture in Kenya and Tanzania). The greeting and response are understood as an indicator of a community’s well-being. If the children are well, so is the rest of the community. Both children and community figured prominently in Norm’s Afro-centric values, as well as his training as a developmental scientist. He particularly studied and applied ways to buffer African American youth from the harmful effects of being immersed in stressful, often crime-ridden, environments. Norm was also familiar with another African proverb, made well known by Desmond Tutu through his work with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “Umuntu ngumuntu ngamantu,” which means “I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours.” The shortened form of the saying is simply “Ubuntu,” and it speaks directly to why Norm White was an exemplary case study for moral character. Ubuntu, as characterized by South African philosopher Mogobe Ramose (2003), is said to be “the basis of African philosophy” (p. 270) and means “to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others” (p. 272). Norm was never one to put on airs, and he frequently resisted being introduced as “Doctor White,” despite being a university professor and holding a Ph.D. in criminology. Instead, he preferred that people know him simply as “Norm from the projects.” Norm was, indeed, born and raised in New York City and spent his childhood living with his mother, Betty, and his older sister, Marvina, in low-income apartments in Upper Manhattan. Norm’s father was part of the U.S. Merchant Marine and would spend long stretches of time away from home during Norm’s formative years. Norm developed a very close relationship with his mother, who instilled in him a deep-rooted sense of concern for others, as well as a very strong will. Betty recounted a story from Norm’s preschool days when he stopped traffic in the busy street outside the public housing complex waiting for his father to take him fishing on one of the rare occasions that his dad was home. Norm stubbornly refused to move until his father joined him. To call Norm’s modest home “the projects” betrayed the robust sense of community that surrounded him, as well as the natural beauty located in the nearby parklands where he learned to fish. Unusual for public housing, Norm and his family were surrounded by scenic park areas in between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. The quiet solitude that he would experience in outdoor landscapes, including the picturesque campus of Marist College in Poughkeepsie where he attended as a young man, stayed with him throughout his adult life. He would eventually settle, shortly before he died, in a home with his wife, Liz, that backed up to a wooded spiritual retreat center in Belleville, Illinois. Norm would sometimes escape to the forested paths of the retreat center and clear his mind while walking or sitting quietly among the towering oak trees and sounds of nature.

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As a youth, Norm was also surrounded by neighbors in the apartment complex that took care of each other. “Ubuntu” may not have been a word that was uttered there, but it was certainly practiced by the residents. Norm’s mom was an exemplar for care and moral character in her own right, at one point allowing a young boy who lived in one of the upstairs units to stay with her family. His name was William, and Norm would later refer to him as “Winky,” his brother, because they shared a room throughout most of Norm’s childhood. As alluring as some aspects of Norm’s early years appeared, not every experience was idyllic or filled with love. The ugliness of racism was prevalent and Norm could not escape it, even in places that should have provided sanctuary. Playing basketball 1 day at the gym of the Catholic church he attended, a priest singled him out (he was the only Black youngster in the group) and yelled: “You don’t belong here!” Norm, a spirited teenager by that time, countered by saying: “I do belong. I was baptized here.” Norm was rudely escorted from the gymnasium, but, demonstrating his steadfast will, he followed up the heated exchange with a letter to the priest explaining why he would never return to the church. That moment set into motion Norm’s enduring ambivalence toward the Catholic Church and the uncharitable feelings that he held for institutions he perceived as insincere in their claims to help and accept those in need. The experience also set him on a path to ensure that others, especially Black children, felt like they mattered and belonged.

Intellectual Alignments Encountering and integrating others’ perspectives play a central role in the theories of moral development of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan. In our earlier chapter (Sokol et al., 2010), we outlined how moral reasoning and perspective taking were interlinked, with perspective taking driving developmental changes in moral reasoning. We also noted that perspective-taking research had shifted from its constructivist origins in Piagetian-inspired accounts like Robert Selman’s (1980) accounts, which included how personal belief systems serve to coordinate perspectives about gender, sexuality, race, spirituality, social norms, culture, and history (Martin et al., 2008), to a much narrower “cognitivist” view focused on developing “theories of mind” (Astington et al., 1988; Wellman, 1992), which focuses on the generic mental states that guide behavior. Norm’s experiences in the Black community, particularly with the Afro-centric greeting “how are the children?,” highlights a concern with narrower cognitivist account of perspective taking. That is, a cognitivist approach not only tends to exclude questions about the formation of broader belief systems, but also how perspective taking and moral reasoning are suffused with emotion and motivation. With perspective taking and theory of mind often treated as synonyms in the contemporary psychological literature, we begin to see the hints of cultural bias in how many psychologists frame the “problem of other minds” (Wittgenstein, 1968). The dominant assumption in theories of mind research is that others’ psychological states are opaque and that people must develop the appropriate cognitive abilities to figure out what someone else is thinking and feeling. In the United States, for instance,

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when one greets another by asking “how are you?” the assumption is that the other’s mental and emotional states are private and unknown (unless publicly shared). The greeting points to a value of separation and individualist social norms. By contrast, to ask “how are the children?”, a different set of assumptions, tied to more communal social norms, is elicited. The alternative greeting shifts attention away from an individual to potentially vulnerable members – that is, children – of a person’s community and signals a value of relationship, and perhaps even a shared identity with others. Norm embodied the tension between these two greetings as an African American: a pull or yearning for both agency and communion. He also directly experienced other social tensions that surfaced as racism. Norm’s experiences showed how one in the same community, the Catholic Church, can bring both belonging and rejection, involve attempts to silence or overwhelm his voice, and later efforts to bring new voices into that religious community. The unresolved tension Norm encountered with the Church is what Piaget would call disequilibrium and prompts the need for coordinating different perspectives. Yet far from being coldly cognitive, disequilibrium suffuses these perspectives with affect and emotion. The feelings involved in moral reasoning play a role in whether we embrace aspects of being unsettled, and seek resolution in justice, or suppress and foreclose the conflict.

Norman White – The Middle Years Norm went on to study and major in history at Marist College, in the State of New York, and following his graduation in 1981, he became a counselor in New York’s Division for Youth, the public agency overseeing the state’s juvenile criminal justice system. He worked with young people in and out of detention facilities for over a decade while he studied and completed a Master’s in Public Administration, also from Marist College. He eventually completed his M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (2001) in criminology and criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany. Norm’s academic studies in criminal justice were balanced against the raw experiences of working with young people held in detention and struggling to rehabilitate themselves. He frequently saw aspects of himself in the black youth with whom he interacted. He also witnessed high levels of recidivism as most of the youth would simply return to the toxic environments that led them to be incarcerated in the first place. The vicious cycle in which these young people were trapped grew to be a chronic source of frustration and discouragement for Norm, and he wrestled with controlling his own feelings. He found himself in a dark place emotionally for several years, and his bitterness eventually took its toll on his first marriage, a volatile relationship that he could not salvage. The ugliness of the separation, in turn, drove a wedge between Norm and his two children, Michael and Patrick, who remained close to their mother. Norm grappled with becoming ensnared in his own vicious cycle of toxic emotions, and he started to turn too often to alcohol to numb his pain. He needed to rediscover the healthy sources of strength and peacefulness that had once kept him in better balance as a youth.

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Empathy is said to be “the glue that makes social life possible” (Hoffman, 2000, p. 3). Such social connectedness is ostensibly a good thing. Nevertheless, in the process of connecting to others emotionally, one’s own emotional state can sometimes be thrown off balance, particularly if one loses their own sense of self in that of others. That is, empathy operates by blurring the boundaries between self and other. In Norm’s case, the difficult emotions that had invaded his psychological life while working in the juvenile justice system were not all his own. He needed to create greater emotional distance between himself and others in order to restore a healthy sense of boundaries and reclaim who he was. This distance, for Norm, turned out to be more than just a figure of speech. He moved over 1000 miles in 1997 to take an academic position in the criminology program at the St. Louis campus of the University of Missouri (UMSL), leaving behind the emotional burden of his frontline role as a youth counselor. Although his new job at UMSL would not prove to be the best fit, his new home of St. Louis became a place of personal healing and transformation. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and a church Gospel choir. He brought his aging mother, Betty, from New York to live with him and began to care for her. Finally, after several years as an assistant professor at UMSL, he accepted a post as the Director of Criminal Justice Programs at faith-based, Saint Louis University (SLU). At SLU, his applied scholarship was well received and resonated with the university’s Catholic, Jesuit mission of “service to humanity.” He began to reconcile some of his mixed feelings toward the Church, discovering in himself a spiritual core that was fed by the Jesuit aspiration to unite faith and justice, as well as by the idealism of his students to make a positive difference in the world (White, 2015). The dozen years Norm spent at SLU became his most productive professionally, and he advanced in his leadership roles to become a highly regarded associate dean in the University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice.

Affective Alignments When we reviewed the research on empathy and emotional competence in our initial chapter, we remarked: “empathy is traditionally seen as an affective process. . .often set in opposition to ‘colder’ matters of pure cognition” (Sokol et al., 2010, p. 595). Echoing the tensions in perspective taking and moral reasoning, the split between emotion and cognition in empathy research is a “highly entrenched view in Western psychology” (p. 595). Still, as theological historian Dixon (2003) remarked, the psychological “category of emotions, conceived as a set of morally disengaged, bodily, non-cognitive and involuntary feelings, is a recent invention” (p. 3). Here, we side-step empathy as solely a form of emotion-based understanding and instead focus on its intrinsically relational aspect: togetherness and connection as a developmental starting point (Rochat, 2010). The focus on connection is present, albeit constrained in the body–mind split of Cartesianism, in the early work of philosophers such as Adam Smith (1970/1976). That more radically connected starting point defines philosophies such as Ubuntu, which Norm also espoused.

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For psychological and moral development, beginning in communion puts an emphasis on human beings as helpless animals, whose long period of growth is always with others who offer care and instruction. The starting point of togetherness establishes a different pathway for a moral self, one that involves not resolving “the problem of other minds,” but learning about, and often reforging connection to, one’s place in the world. Such a conception of empathy brings with it the challenge not merely of deficits, a focus of a more instrumental account, but of “surfeits” of empathy, as discussed by Zahn-Waxler and Schoen (2016). Certainly, at times in Norm’s life, an excess of empathy seemed to create moments of misalignment and disregulation. Successfully deepening empathy in this conception involves a voyage of situating a narrative of connections beyond the immediate. Philosophers like Smith (1970/ 1976) gave us a hint of these connections in the touching example of “a mother, when she hears the moaning of her infant . . .[i]n her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder” (p. 12). The saying “I am a person through other people” illustrates this far more powerfully. Norm’s career connected his understanding of the immediate injustices in his community in a historical perspective, an understanding he brought back to that community and to new communities, through the students he met at SLU.

Norman White – The Later Years The same empathic abilities that had once created difficulties for Norm had now become a rich source of strength, particularly as he connected to more and more people in the St. Louis community who were just as committed as he to lifting up the lives of children. Norm gave countless presentations to community organizations, both large and small, from the Urban League to women’s church auxiliary groups, on the stressors that negatively impacted youth in impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhoods of the city. He often began these meetings by leading the groups in song with his deep baritone voice, his favorite being George Benson’s tribute, “The Greatest Love of All.” The song, in addition to speaking to the promise of children and personal transformation, deepened his emotional connection to youth advocates throughout the city. With the eruption of protests over the death of Michael Brown, Jr., in Ferguson in 2014 – less than a dozen miles from Norm’s office at SLU – he was consulted by numerous media outlets and news organizations for insight on the root causes of community violence. He held strong views about the alienating impact that racialized law enforcement tactics had on people in St. Louis’ predominantly Black neighborhoods, and, as a social scientist, he had the evidence to support his claims (e.g., Hawkins et al., 2017). Norm emerged as a respected scholar activist and a powerful advocate for racial justice, combining his practical knowledge with his research training and scholarship. Over the course of his 20 years in St. Louis, he grew to what Judge Jimmie Edwards, the Director of Public Safety for the city, characterized as “a quiet giant in our community for change” (Rivas, 2017). Making stronger, more resilient children was the hope that St. Louis communities desperately

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needed. Norm believed, like famous African American social reformer, Frederick Douglass, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” In many ways, Norm’s legacy in St. Louis builds from, and continues that of, the great reformers and civil rights giants of the United States. Just as he had in New York, Norm could have easily grown bitter by the racial injustices that plagued St. Louis communities and negatively impacted Black youth. He certainly felt anger, but his experiences in St. Louis led him to channel his emotions differently. Although he was deeply troubled by the death of Michael Brown, he also recognized the “light” that the young man’s death cast on the urgent need for social reform (White, 2017). “We have come to live in the light shed by the death of Michael Brown. We understand the depths of racial inequality and inequity that exists not only in St. Louis but across America and the world. Since then, voices have risen that were not being heard; a new civil rights era began” (White, 2017, p. 10). Norm’s energies were directed toward meeting the goals of this “new civil rights era” in school outreach programs that he developed with support from students and other community-engaged scholars. One program, the Overground Railroad to Literacy, is still active and growing under the leadership of SLU undergraduate students who never knew Norm personally, but who, nevertheless, have been deeply touched by the stories of his commitment to the well-being of children and St. Louis communities.

Behavioral Alignments The behavioral processes of self-regulation and autonomy, at least as we defined them in our original chapter (Sokol et al., 2010), dealt with the conscious control of actions and their relationship to social demands and other external factors (p. 588). Some examples included a child’s compliance with caregivers’ requests, a person’s ability to follow rules, and one’s conformity to societal norms and standards. Internalizing social values, whether from family or other societal institutions, and developing a conscience to evaluate one’s actions are critical steps toward building moral character (Kochanska & Thompson, 1997). Norm’s work with youth entangled in the juvenile justice system exposed him to the harsh consequences that could follow from self-regulatory failures and violations of social standards. He also witnessed how many issues related to young persons’ behavioral control were tied to unsupportive social environments and toxic family conditions. His efforts to help, at least early in his career, were often thwarted by circumstances beyond his control. Norm’s conscience was troubled, and he experienced feelings of helplessness and self-doubt that disrupted his own self-regulatory abilities for a period of time. Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2002), as we discussed earlier in regard to identity integration and action motivation, describes how a sense of mastery and control are important contributors to psychological well-being and

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resilience. Still, as we indicated in our original work, these abilities are also situated within social environments that may or may not be supportive. The psycho-social dimensions of moral agency, as we have described elsewhere (Sokol et al., 2015), have “systemic, or relational, properties that may become unbalanced, particularly in cases where social conditions privilege or empower some individuals while disempowering and disenfranchising others” (p. 292). For moral character to emerge as an outcome, successful alignment of behavioral processes requires consideration of both internal and external factors. In Norm’s case, such alignment involved significant adjustments to his personal and professional life, as well as a re-energized commitment to community life that integrated his research and scholarship with his practical experience. This latter development in Norm’s life became an insight that he frequently tried to share with his students, particularly through service-learning opportunities in his classes.

Moral Education: Integrating Self and Civic Life Norm’s educational vision shared much with the notion of Ubuntu and the need to recognize each other’s humanity through actions that affirm and empower one another. He was fond of saying that “social justice is not a concept to learn, but an action to be taken,” and he incorporated this view into Overground Railroad to Literacy, a unique tutoring program that Norm and a group of university students founded to model best practices in community service. Norm was a firm advocate for service learning as a vehicle for moral education. Still, his approach would better align with the critical pedagogy of what some educators call “justice learning” (Butin, 2007), which aims to disrupt the status quo and encourages students to challenge unequal power structures and the unfair distribution of resources in their communities. Norm was critical of the notion that distressed communities required greater investment in new social “safety nets” – that is, the multiplication of more human service agencies – to catch children who fell into harm’s way. His practical experience had shown him that such nets simply had too many holes to be effective. Instead, he advocated for a way to draw the threads of existing nets – the lines of communication and collaboration between various community organizations and service agencies – tighter together to prevent children from falling through. His alternative metaphor was that of a “resource quilt” (White, 2016) that wrapped children in a community’s love and showed how all humanity is tied together as one: the heart of the Ubuntu worldview. Norm once remarked that community service must shift from a question of “how do I help?” to one of “how do I best serve in ways that respect the dignity and humanity of others?” (White, 2017, p. 10). Answering this question requires careful consideration of what dignity means as well as self-examination of how individuals wish to be treated themselves. Accordingly, service learning, insofar as its focus is on justice education, is much more than simply “doing service” or “offering charity.” For Norm, this involved practices that encouraged Overground Railroad volunteers

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to see tutoring as a relationship-building opportunity that is mutually enriching (see also Morton & Bergbauer, 2015). Prominent political scientist, Benjamin Barber (1992), commenting on the ways that volunteer experiences are often characterized by college students, has argued: “The language of charity drives a wedge between self-interest and altruism, leading students to believe that service is a matter of sacrificing private interests to moral virtue. [Alternatively] the language of citizenship suggests that self-interests are always embedded in communities of action and that in serving neighbors one also serves oneself” (p. 249). Similarly, Norm saw his students’ efforts as a form of civic engagement and citizenship formation, even if for him the understanding grew more from the interconnected vision of Ubuntu than American democracy. Optimal service-learning experiences – like the grand visions of society influencing Norm’s approach to education – are also about balancing tensions, working across differences, and, ultimately, integrating self and civic life. As we have argued elsewhere, “Personal and social, or individual and structural, changes can be a powerfully coupled outcome associated with service learning, especially if students and teachers frame their shared experience of learning as fellow citizens, growing in their social and political engagement to better their communities” (Sokol et al., 2021b, p. 69). Developmentally, this is precisely the kind of learning experience for which adolescents and young adults yearn. Far from fitting the exaggerated stereotypes of being irresponsible and self-absorbed (Arnett, 2007), many emerging adults are seeking a sense of greater purpose and belonging. Youniss and Yates (1997) have suggested, “instead of being focused primarily on the question ‘Who am I?’ youth are concerned about the society they will inherit and have to decide how they can best relate to it” (p. 22). The traditional question in identity research – “who am I?” – is reframed as a question of integration, one that is closely related to Norm’s quilt metaphor of belonging and experiencing community.

Conclusion Whether the origins are in Afro-centric principles or Euro-centric democratic ideals, moral education, and civic learning should be applied as an integrative whole in forming individuals’ moral character (Althof & Berkowitz, 2006). The study of civic engagement (Lerner et al., 2000; Sherrod et al., 2010) and civic education (Haste, 2010) indicates clear ties to promoting moral agency (e.g., Youniss & Yates, 1997) and moral identity (e.g., Hart, 2005). As Hart and his colleagues (Har et al., 2006) have pointed out: “Participation in community service provides a real-world context in which participants can explore moral questions, engage in moral discourse, perform moral actions, and reflect on complicated moral issues.” (p. 644). Similarly, Harry Boyte (2008) has claimed that civic learning emphasizes the capacities of citizens to work collaboratively across differences like partisan ideology, faith traditions, income, geography, and ethnicity to address common challenges and

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create common ground. Echoing a view taken by John Dewey (1916), learning and participating in democratic citizenship are more than just making political decisions; it fundamentally means making a public life together, “a form of associated living, a conjoint communicated experience” (p. 93; see also Saltmarsh & Zlotkowski, 2011). To build this common ground – this integrative sense of community and social responsibility – service-learning practitioners must not confuse activity with achievement (Sokol et al., 2021a). Although there are certainly many benefits to service learning, researchers have remained wary of assuming that the “mere doing” in service-learning contexts is sufficient to promote personal, moral, and civic growth (Hart et al., 2008). Additional means to guide and set meaning-making parameters on students’ learning are needed. We conclude with the following service-learning principles and recommendations, each of which Norm embodied in a particular way. Work to integrate intellectual, affective, and behavioral content into learning experiences. Just as we have shown that moral character emerges from these three areas of growth, programmatic service-learning efforts will benefit from a similar structure. Norm’s best work in St. Louis emerged when these areas of his life were aligned. Balance personal growth and community building. Service learning often provides opportunities to build a sense of individual self-mastery. Still, these personal skills grow in relationship with other people, which open pathways for experiencing richer community life. Norm’s exemplary character was enriched and supported by his community commitments, even if he sometimes struggled to find the best balance for himself. Create learning environments that promote personal agency and a sense of mutual empowerment. We are better together. Optimal learning is akin to democratic participation, where, according to Parker Palmer (2011), individuals learn “to hold tension creatively” (p. 71) in order to “generate a sense of personal voice and agency” and to further “strengthen our capacity to create community” (p. 45). Norm’s legacy, evidenced in the ongoing efforts of student leaders in Overground Railroad to Literacy, is a direct result of the trust he placed in young people, their energy and innovation, and their vision for a better future. Honor the dignity of all learners and community members. The pursuit of justice is sometimes framed as creating “right relationships” (Sokol et al., 2021a, b). Service-learning dynamics are always changing but should aim to promote equity, well-being, and inclusive excellence. This requires constant attention to the unique characteristics of individuals. Although Norm was not an ethnographic researcher, he paid close attention to and cared deeply about the “particularities” of people. He would have appreciated Geertz’s sentiments: “It may be in the cultural particularities of people – in their oddities – that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found” (Geertz, 1973, p. 43).

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Teachers as Key Players in Values Education Implications for Teacher Formation

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nature and Goals of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Profession, Vocation, or Both? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proposals for a Formation Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Teachers play a fundamental role in student formation 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. Thus, attention should not only be given to the development and administration of programs and/or to scholastic structures that facilitate the values education of students, but there should also be investment in the initial and ongoing formation of teachers. Keywords

Values education · Teacher formation · Holistic education · Student formation

A.-M. Gellel (*) University of Malta, Msida, Malta e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_37

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Introduction If we agree that schools and educational institutions are to take on the responsibility of playing a fundamental role in the holistic education and formation of students, then we must also agree that a better understanding of the role of the teacher is needed. A values education which comprises but is definitely not restricted to a curricular subject occurs in a wide context which presupposes an understanding of the human person and the human community, the goals of education and the relationship between schools, family, and society. While some might argue that this is too a wide a context, it is difficult to contend that without these precepts one can venture into the endeavor of educating for and in values. If the school were just to stick to the teaching of scholastic disciplines by giving a clear priority to the cognitive and skills components, it would be tacitly acknowledging a specific, restricted vision of education and of the human person. In this context, 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. Thus, attention should not only be given to the development and administration of programs and/or to scholastic structures that facilitate the values education of students, but there should also be investment in the initial and ongoing formation of teachers.

Nature and Goals of Education The human community has moved a long way before recognizing education as a fundamental human right (United Nations, 1948). For millennia, the ideal of an education that is as accessible as possible was mainly for visionaries and saints, such as the Latin educator and rhetorician Quintilian and St. John Baptist de La Salle. These were moved by an understanding of the human person and the human community. Thus, for instance, Quntilian firmly believed that all human beings could learn because the human mind is of divine origin (Quintillian, 1965). However, their ideals did not find resonance in their contemporary society. The history of schooling and of education in general is a history of fits and starts – a history which very much depended on rulers and social conditions. After all, for millennia, education was directed at the education of rulers and much of the work of philosophers and thinkers on education was precisely how to educate those who were to preserve knowledge and values and transform society (Oksenberg Rorty, 1998). However, there is no doubt that in this past century there have been great advances in education. The ideals and philosophies endorsed and propagated by the French Revolution had their fair share in making public instruction, at least at primary level, free on the European continent and eventually a principle that has been endorsed by governments globally. Mass schooling and in due course public education for all have supported and encouraged advancements in the fields of

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learning and instruction. Schools and education as we know them today are the product of a long human journey which is by no means yet over. This journey is influenced by myriad factors, mainly of social, economical, and political nature. The need, felt by various international organizations, to reiterate that education is a fundamental right (for instance United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1966; United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1999; World Education Forum, 2000) points to the frailty of this principle being truly accepted and implemented by all. Additionally, the acknowledgment in practical terms that “education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity” (United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1966 art. 13(1)) is not without problems. The concept that education should be directed toward the holistic development of the human person, as an individual, a member of a family, society, and state and a contributor to economy and progress has been reiterated various times (for instance Faure et al., 1972; United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, 1989; Delors et al., 1996) but such goals are nevertheless often seen as too idealistic and impractical to implement. Indeed, while more than a century ago Herbert Spencer claimed that education should be directed toward the holistic development of the individual and warned against giving emphasis to an area of knowledge to the detriment of other areas (Spencer as cited by Compayré, 1891/2002), a few years later the French educationalist Compayré offered the following comment: [Spencer’s definition] ... is wrong in being a little pretentious ... It is true, perhaps, if it is a question of the ideal to be attained in a complete instruction, accessible to a few privileged men, but it could not be applied to popular education. It soars to high above conditions and social realities. (Compayré, 1891/2002, p. 540)

The lure of the practical impacts of education on economic growth and on efficiency is too big, as is evidenced in most recent documents of the European Union. For instance, in presenting the European framework of key competences for lifelong learning, Ján Figel’, European Commissioner responsible for education, offers the following comment: We need to develop our skills and competences throughout our lives, not only for our personal fulfilment and our ability to actively engage with the society in which we live, but for our ability to be successful in a constantly changing world of work. (European Union, Education and Culture DG, 2007, p. 1)

The problem with such reasoning is that in Europe personal fulfillment has become a secondary end to economic and social cohesion that appear to be the primary objectives of the European Union (see for instance European Union, Council of the European Union, 2000). Reasoning in utilitarian terms that focus on an education that is subservient to the economy and to the demands of society leads to reductionism and a devaluation of the human person.

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While it is true that in the report on the future objectives of education, the Council of Education identified “the development of the individual, who can thus realize his or her full potential and live a good life” (European Union, Education Council, 2001, p. 4) as the first of the three main goals of education, it is also true that the anthropological understanding of the document is very restricted. The Education Council specifies that individuals are to “realise their potential as citizens, as members of society, and as economic agents” (European Union, Education Council, 2001, p. 7). It appears clear that the individual is understood only in subservient terms. No mention is made of an education that fulfills human dignity as was so eloquently agreed upon by all European Union member states in the various international conventions and declarations. In this scenario, education is shaped according to the needs of the state, social coexistence, and the economy as perceived by the political class. Without doubt, educating the person holistically includes corollary social and economic benefits. However, confusing priorities is detrimental not only to the individual human persons but, in the long term, also to institutions and to society at large. As Biedenkopf et al. (2004) commented, the prioritization of economic growth by the European Union has to a great extent eclipsed other priorities such as solidarity and unity. Biedenkopf et al. (2004) also note that while after the Lisbon Strategy, the political class is pushing competitive values in order to make the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, the general public does not seem to be moving on the same wavelength. The reason behind this is that markets are not capable of producing and fostering the values of integration and solidarity. Without ignoring the vital need of a strong economy, it must be said that the markets on their own are inept at promoting and sustaining intrinsic values of human dignity and development, and of solidarity and unity. Aware that various governments and policy makers were pushing the economic and financial agenda, in his presentation of the report to UNESCO, Learning: the treasure within, Delors (1996) insisted on the need of an education that fosters personal and social development. The Delors commission was fully aware that making education subservient to the agenda of economic progress was detrimental to sustainable development both on the individual and on the communitarian level. Furthermore, Delors (1996) insists as follows: ... education is at the heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop all our talents to the full and to realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims. (p. 6)

The promotion and the holistic education of the human person should always be at the center of any educational project. The primary aim of such a project should be first and foremost to help the human person become more human. This anthropocentric vision for education puts at the fore the belief in the intrinsic goodness of the

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human person and the trust in the potential of human capabilities of enhancing the goodness and beauty of life not only for oneself but for the whole of the human community and of creation. While the school’s business has been mainly understood to be the transmission and formation of the cognitive knowledge, the affective domain has been generally left for informal and non-formal settings such as churches and youth organizations. Martin and Reigeluth (1999) note that affective education many a times emerges as a response to social needs such as alcohol problems and teenage pregnancies. However, in recent years the affective domain has become more appreciated as research is consistently showing that it affects learning. On the basis of research, Lazarus (as cited in Snow et al., 1996) claims that the affective and cognitive functions play a central mediating role in learning and achievement. This assertion was corroborated by various other researches in more recent years (Beutel, 2006; Lovat, 2006; Martin et al., 2007). Therefore, by way of argument, the school is not only responsible for training and helping students to acquire knowledge and eventually for contributing to the creation of knowledge but above all, the school is responsible for the wider formation of students. The latter not only is a noble pursuit for education in its own right but mediates and enhances all forms of learning. These aims can only be achieved if the school is capable of setting a balance between the cognitive dimension of education and the formation of character of the individual student, particularly where feelings, relationships, attitudes, and values are concerned. Thus the school should not only contribute to the economic development of society simply by transmitting knowledge but equip students with ethical values that are also essential for the economy itself. As future workers and future consumers, students need to be equipped with knowledge and wisdom which enable them to make right and conscientious choices. Putting the human person first in any decision is an imperative for the development of any sector or dimension of society. In this regard, Martin and Reigeluth (1999) insist that rather than focusing on taxonomies and competences, education should focus on “affective development as both a process that addresses the individual growth and internal changes and as an end-product that addresses the ‘affectively well adjusted person’” (p. 492). The priority to contribute to the formation of the “affectively well-adjusted person” is to be considered urgent and essential in the awareness that the globalization of culture and society, the changing patterns of personal and family life, and the rapid development of information and communication technologies have all had, and continue to have, a significant impact on adolescents and young people. Consequently, in today’s Western society, taking care of the holistic formation and development of students means working hand in hand with parents/guardians and the wider community. Given the ever-increasing demands on the family and an increasing individualistic lifestyle, the school must take the onus of contributing to the nurturing of those aspects, including the formation of values and virtues which, if neglected, would eventually lead to the impoverishment of personal and communitarian life.

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Teacher Contributions As Manley (1996) comments: .. .throughout history teachers have played a role more profound and subtle than that of instruction. Bringing to their vocation a passion for ideas and values together with a love of children and an understanding of the process by which you plant the seeds of motivation, the profession has inspired millions of people to become everything from community activists to loving parents; from distinguished professionals to valued leaders in every aspect of a society’s life. It is imperative that we never lose sight of the teacher in this personal, interfacing sense as the critical instrument in the educational process. (p. 213)

However, the above statement is only partially true. From a historical point of view, the status and the type of teachers, and therefore their influence on and in society, very much depended on the importance society gave to education. For instance, Compayré (1891/2002) notes that in pre-revolution France teachers were merely considered little more than domestics; they had a very poor salary and were therefore compelled to do such jobs as beadles, bell ringers, sextons, and even grave diggers. Such a degrading understanding of the teacher was not only limited to France of the pre-revolution period. There are other testimonies coming from diverse periods and locations that demonstrate that society had no respect for teachers. Such was the case in Ancient Israel, where teachers were object of scorn and were considered stupid (Crenshaw, 1998) or in the third century Rome where teachers were very badly paid with salaries which were much less than that of a carpenter (Prellezo & Lanfranchi, 1995a). On the other hand, throughout Western history there were those who valued the profession of teaching as indispensable for the individual and society. For instance, in the sixteenth century Germany, Luther rebukes his contemporary society for disrespecting teachers and claims that teaching is the most useful and greatest profession since, according to Luther, to teach in a conscientious manner the children of others is one of the highest virtues (Prellezo & Lanfranchi, 1995b). However, even though we have to acknowledge that teachers were viewed ambivalently by societies throughout the ages, one must agree with Manley that the human element in education and in the act of teaching can be hardly contested. The school has never been a place where knowledge is imparted in an objective, neutral, and value-free context, even if some would like to have it this way. This is, for instance, the mentality prevailing in the French educational system, where the affective is rejected simply because it is considered to be part of the private and the individual’s personal life. The predominant philosophy in French education and among teachers, especially secondary school teachers, is that the school should only be concerned with reason and instruction (Audiger & Motta, 1998). However, even with this framework in mind, it is difficult to deny that there are no constituent relationships that develop in the classroom or in the school corridors. Even the most rigid and detached teacher or the most apathetic teacher will provoke feelings, and consequently attitudes, in students. Through schooling, education occurs in a context which is complicated and animated by human presence and

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human relationships. It is in and through these relationships that values and attitudes are confirmed or questioned. The ways this human component is understood to influence education very much depend on the understanding of the goal of education. It is interesting that in developing a policy about teacher education in Europe, one notes a slight, yet important, difference and emphasis in the conception of what is the teacher’s role. In a communication, the European Commission understood that teachers play a vital role in helping people develop their talents and fulfill their potential for personal growth and well-being, and in helping them acquire the complex range of knowledge and skills that they will need as citizens and as workers (European Union, Commission of the European Communities, 2007, p. 2). In this way the Commission put on the same level of human fulfillment and the utilitarian needs of the economy. If one were to read this statement out of its context, one would probably have no difficulty in accepting it and would probably praise the Commission for including a wider understanding of education and the role of teachers. However, on reading the whole text one immediately notes that utilitarian motives are highlighted while the importance of the holistic purpose of education fades away. On the other hand, the Conclusions of the Council of the European Union, which take into consideration the above-mentioned communication, widen the understanding of the teacher’s role by highlighting three main aspects: the ability to contribute to long-term economic growth, the social relevance of the teaching profession, and the ability to meet social challenges and to provide equal opportunities (European Union, Council of the European Union, 2007). While specifying the social relevance of teachers, the document notes the vital role of teachers in acquiring knowledge and skills, in developing talents, and in fulfilling personal potentials “as citizens throughout their personal, social and professional lives” (European Union, Council of the European Union, 2007, C 300/7). While the Council of Ministers does not put aside the fundamental contribution that teachers have to make to the economy, the document balances this contribution with other vital contributions, recognizing the importance of the human element.

Profession, Vocation, or Both? Indeed teachers have also moved a long way before being recognized as important contributors to personal and social development. This recognition has moved hand in hand with the increased importance that education and the schooling systems have acquired. Thus, it is not surprising that after that the European Union recognized the need for teachers to have a higher education qualification that is not restricted to a specialization in a subject taught in schools, but that also equips them with pedagogical skills (Council of the European Union, 2007), the European Teacher’s Union advocated that teachers’ initial education should be at least at master’s level (European Trade Union Committee for Education [ETUCE], 2008).

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Many find no difficulty in accepting that teaching is a profession. However, it is very probable that much fewer would be ready to accept the idea that teaching is also a vocation, perhaps, because of the religious connotations that the latter term has. However, some might be surprised to find that both terms have in fact a religious origin. While vocation, from the Latin vocatio, means a call, normally by God, to exercise or fill some position, the word profession, from the Latin professionem or rather professio, means a public declaration, normally a declaration of belief in a faith or a vow upon entering a religious order. However, in the early modern period the term profession was attached to the professions of Divinity, Law, and Medicine, but in any case it was understood as engaging in a calling, and thus closely attached to a vocation (OED, 1933). Should one resort to tracing the etymology of words in order to establish whether teaching is a vocation or a profession or both? While admitting that it is not essential, it is interesting to delve into the meaning of terms in order to clarify identity. In his celebrated work The Courage to Teach, Palmer (1998) re-appropriates himself of religious language in order to argue, to some extent in secular terms, for a spirituality of teaching. Palmer (1998, 2000) argues that the call to teach comes from the self. It is a call to be authentic and honor the true self. Thus, for Palmer, vocation is the search for wholeness, an acceptance of the treasure within. The concept of an inner call that leads to a profession is not new. It is surely not tied to the modern or late modern concept of the search for the authentic self. In a letter to Eudoxius, Gregory of Nazianzus (circa 330–390) comments on an ancient custom in Athens where adolescents were presented with tools representing the arts and according to which one they were drawn to and delighted in they would be taught that tool’s art. Gregory uses this account to underline an ancient wisdom “that what accords our nature leads to success, but what contradicts nature ends in failure” (Daley, 2006, p. 182). However, besides reclaiming this ancient wisdom of listening to the self and moving along with one’s nature, Palmer also acknowledges that the inner self cannot be disconnected from community. For Palmer (1998) “good teaching is always essentially communal... [since] community, or connectedness is the principle behind good teaching” (p. 115). Palmer explicitly claims that the belief in and the need of community stem from the same principle of wholeness of self and the longing of undividedness. For him it is only when one is in communion with oneself that one can create community with others (Palmer, 1998). In other words, Palmer is in agreement with an anthropological understanding that views the human person as an individual in relation with others, that is, an individual in need of connectedness. In a similar manner, if one is to take seriously the etymological root of the word profession, it could be well argued that being a professional teacher means being a believer. In this context, the term believer is not restricted to the religious realm but rather tied to a wider understanding that is true to the nature and mission of education and teaching. After all, pedagogical creeds are not new to education. The most noted creed would be that published by John Dewey, (1897). This creed, like any other creed, is founded on a specific understanding of the human person, of epistemology, of community, and the goals of education. Given that these understandings and frameworks touch the very essence of our being, of how we relate and how we vision

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the future, it is comprehensible that it is not easy to find a common ground for a common creed for the profession. In a European context one may draw from the different sources that have merged to form a plurality, although also a somewhat unified identity. The Greeks, the Romans, the Judeo-Christian tradition and to some extent Islam, the early medieval Franco-Germanic tribes, and the Enlightenment have all contributed to the formation of Europe. On the one hand, the debates surrounding the drawing up of a Constitution for Europe highlighted the centuryold struggles between Churches and states as well as the wars among the different denominations that led to a peculiar form of secularization seen as a victory of reason, progress, liberty, and worldly pursuits (Casanova, 2008). However, they also highlight the awareness among the European public of the role of the JudeoChristian traditions in shaping the past and their contribution in present-day society, as witnessed by the long list of sociologist and philosophers among whom are Casanova (2008) and Habermas (2006). There is no doubt that both the secular and the Christian traditions share an anthropocentric vision and understanding. This vision is shared by Christianity in the belief that humans are created in the image of God and that God became man so that humans may participate in divine nature. On the other hand, the Enlightenment tradition declares that the human being is vested with dignity and grandeur. It therefore stands to reason that were teachers to profess a creed before practicing their profession, they would be required to profess a belief in the goodness and potential of the human person and to declare that they will be committed to facilitate the full development of all those whom they encounter in an educational setting.

Teacher Formation The European Trade Union for Education’s belief that “teacher education is the bedrock of education system” (ETUCE, 2008, p. 12) is not only valid in recognizing the teachers’ contribution to the academic advancement and competence of students. It is because of the belief in the key role played by teachers in the education and formation especially of younger generations that special attention is to be given to the training and formation of teachers. In this respect, both the European Union and the ETUCE have made clear their commitment to the improvement of teachers’ initial and ongoing formation. Both institutions agree that there should be a stronger impetus toward the improvement of teacher education, which is ideally based on a unified system of initial education, professional induction, and ongoing formation (European Union, Council of the European Union, 2007; EUTCE, 2008). Consequently, in what way should teacher education programs nurture the profession and reinforce a sense of vocation? In declaring the common principles on teachers’ competences and training, the European Union, Commission of the European Communities (2005), after recognizing the crucial role played by teachers in implementing Europe’s aspirations of becoming the highest performing knowledge-driven economy in the world, it also recognizes their contribution to

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the personal fulfillment and betterment of social skills of learners. To this end, the Commission recognizes the following of the teaching profession: [It] is inspired by values of inclusiveness and the need to nurture the potential of all learners, has a strong influence on society and plays a vital role in advancing human potential and shaping future generations. (European Union, Commission of the European Communities, 2005, p. 1)

In agreement with the above statement, but also in line with the argument put forward throughout this paper, the basis of teachers’ ethos, sense of adherence to the profession and vocation should originate from the teacher’s fundamental contribution to the fulfillment of human potential. It is being proposed that any formation program for teachers should be based on the values of respect and dignity due to the human person. The main elements that one must keep in mind when dealing with any person are (i) the inherent ability and need to be in relationship, (ii) the essential element of autonomy, and, above all, (iii) the fact that every person is unique, unrepeatable, and therefore incommensurable. These three constituent elements developed over the centuries, mainly in Catholic philosophy and theology, are not in essence in contraposition to humanist and/or secular views of the human person. On the other hand, one should not be naïve and assume that the Catholic and secular positions are identical. There are considerable differences in the way one and the other interpret and emphasize each of these constituents. The modern emphasis on the individual highlights the reinterpretation of each of the three elements with less importance been given to relationality. A positive anthropological vision, shared by both Judeo-Christian believers and secularists, does not deny or minimize human frailty. Sufferings spurred by egocentrism, shortsightedness, pride, and envy are realities that create and perpetuate social problems. Ironically, these sufferings not only are an open wound in the lives of individuals, families, and communities but also have an impact on the economy. It would be too simplistic to believe that education can solve these problems and that it can eradicate human-caused suffering. However, education can bring about change. As Taylor (1991) would put it, we should be engaged in “a continuous battle for the mind and hearts” (p. 107). In discussing the validity of the Ideal of Authenticity, which means being true to oneself and discovering the true self so as to realize one’s full potential, and debating against what he calls the malaise that have been consequently created by the Ethic of Authenticity, namely individualism, instrumental reasoning, and loss of freedom, Taylor argues against confrontational positions. Following Taylor’s mode of reasoning, frameworks and paradigms are difficult to change, especially if one takes a confrontational model of instruction. It is only by retrieving what is good in society and in the underlying actions and meanings of communities and thereafter though persuasion, as against indoctrination, that one can hope to initiate a process of transformation that leads to the true nature of humanity. Indeed, it is with this belief in the goodness of human nature on the one side and the awareness that humanity is wounded by its fragility on the other side that teachers need to be formed. Only in this way can they truly become committed to their vocation and profession.

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Proposals for a Formation Program Having established the basis for a formation program that envisions a wider framework for teacher education than simply training and instruction in content and pedagogy, concrete proposals that value the teacher’s role in the formation of persons can now be made. Lately, constructivism and the contribution made by anthropology have pointed once again to the social and situated nature of learning and knowledge (Cole & Engestöm, 1993; Solomon, 1993). Notions of “situated learning,” “distributed cognition,” “person plus,” and “community of practice” have been studied only in these last two decades. Lave and Wenger (1991) have argued for a reappraisal of apprenticeship in educational settings. From their observations, they came to the conclusion that learning occurs in and through social practice, thus in community through relationships and intensive participation. Consequently, Lave and Wenger propose the concept of Communities of Practice defined in the following way: [Communities of Practice is] ... a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice. A community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive support necessary for making sense of its heritage. Thus participation in the cultural practice in which knowledge exists is an epistemological principle of learning. (p. 98)

Becoming a teacher is a process: a process that is sustained through practice and greater involvement with other members of the profession. In Europe, there are various models of teacher education but tertiary education is becoming a norm with a concurrent model, that is, professional formation given together with subject specialization, being more frequent (EURYDICE, 2005). In general, teachers demand greater link between theory and practice (Centre for Strategy & Consultation Services, 2008). This principle is supported by both ETUCE and the European Union. Becoming a teacher means becoming part of a Community of Practice that is involved in negotiating meaning, and therefore in a continuous understanding and re-understanding of knowledge, and in building identities. In this sense, participation is a key element of becoming. It implies an active process. It is an engagement that necessarily involves others and thus reflecting both action and connection. This concept requires that student–teachers live and experience schools and the dynamics of classrooms, corridors, and staff rooms. Indeed, while it is true that all initial education courses have some component of practice, it is being argued here that this is not enough, especially for the purposes of inculcating the values that are basic to the profession. Institutions are currently giving priority to the dimensions of skills and theory and much less, if any, to the creation of a culture that values the holistic education of the person and that offers a comprehensive values education that forms and takes care of individuals and communities. It is therefore suggested that teacher education

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programs should also provide the opportunity for the formation of communities. In order to create these communities there is a specific need to focus on the affective education of the teacher. Thus, short residential periods, social activities, and discussion groups could be among the techniques adopted to foster a sense of community and to help in the internalization of values that are intrinsic for one’s vocation and profession, and analyze, reflect, and internalize those attitudes already present in many schools that are at the basis of the teaching vocation. Since these should essentially be communities of practice, there should be no dichotomy. In some way these sessions should foster a sense of community with a constant reference to the practical and the theoretical, to ideals and reality, to philosophizing and doing. The space provided to create and initiate teachers in these communities of practice should allow for reflection, acquisition, and constructions of symbols, abstractions, stories, and concepts that are at the basis of the everyday life of the teacher and the school (Wenger, 1998). These programs would necessitate concrete links with schools and with practicing teachers. Thus it is almost imperative that these programs, integrated in, or organized in parallel to, formal teacher education courses, are led by teachers who have the language and are able to link with the school reality. There are various existing programs and/or proposals that can inform and contribute to shape this parallel/integrated formation program. For the purpose of this paper, we shall only outline the essential components of the program and make reference to other views and proposals that can enhance it. Given that teaching is understood as a vocation and a profession that is founded on the promotion of the human person, a formation program that takes care of the affective dimension of teaching needs to give importance to the following: (i) the teachers’ self, particularly the discernment of their vocation, their sense of connectedness, self-esteem, sense of initiative, and care for and love of others; (ii) an understanding of their role in the state and society, particularly in their relationships and roles with parents and communities; (iii) the valuing of the human person as an intrinsically good being with the potential of becoming better and of contributing to the betterment of society and creation; (iv) instilling respect and awe in front of the uniqueness of each student, valued as precious; (v) a sense of awareness and responsibility for the role they as teachers have in touching the lives of individual students; (vi) facilitating a passion for the subject taught in the awareness that advancement of knowledge is not per se a guarantee of progress, in particular, an awareness that most knowledge is not neutral; (vii) creating an attached importance to relationships, intrinsic for one’s sustenance and fundamental for learning and formation; and (viii) a respect for the autonomy and liberty of individual students.

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The work of Parker Palmer, together with the retreat sessions for teachers organized by the Center for Courage and Renewal (http://www.couragerenewal.org) on the basis of Palmer’s insights, can surely enhance the present proposed program. There are other valuable insights (see, for instance, Whitcomb et al., 2008; Lovat, 2005) that integrated with the fundamental principles enunciated in this paper can only enrich the program.

Conclusion The issue is not the shaping, or the contents of a formation program. Neither are the fundamental values upon which this program is outlined of major concern. The various intergovernmental documents attest that education and teaching are intrinsically linked with the full development of every individual. The real hurdle for concretizing such program is the distortion of priorities. For practical, economic, and, perhaps even, philosophical reasons, cognitive knowledge and the acquisition of skills are viewed to be more important. Even if the education of the whole person is not valued per se, it should be valued on the basis that recent research is confirming that educating and taking care of the affective dimension have major positive and practical implications, even on academic achievement. It is hoped that a re-evaluation of priorities is made for the benefit of individual students, and for advantage of the community and society. In this context, it is being argued that the role of the teacher is indispensable since education, especially in schools, is founded on relationships. The rediscovery and formation into a teaching that is not only a profession but also a vocation can guarantee that the human element in education is cared for and promoted.

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Values of Problem-Based Learning

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Perceptions of Facilitators in an Initial Teacher Training Program at Temasek Polytechnic, a Singapore Institution of Higher Learning Moira Gek Choo Lee

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Design and Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problem-Based Learning and Its Values, as Indicated in the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Major Themes Emerging from the Research About the Values of PBL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Engaging in Collaborative Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stimulating Thinking Through Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appreciating Diverse Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dwelling with Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rethinking Power Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultivating the Whole Person in Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter is based on analysis of a qualitative case study involving two experienced facilitators and 25 first-time facilitators attending a 2-day problembased learning (PBL) experience at Temasek Polytechnic Learning Academy, Singapore. The central research question was defined narrowly enough so that the research would be focused and yet broad enough to allow for flexibility and serendipity. The question was “What do you perceive to be the values of PBL?” Keywords

Values · Problem-based learning · Teacher training · Singapore

M. G. C. Lee (*) Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_38

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Introduction Problem-based learning (PBL) was pioneered at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) in 1998. A group of lecturers from the Diploma in Computer Engineering, School of Engineering, were keen to explore a learning–teaching approach that moved beyond transfer of knowledge to a wider repertoire of lifewide skills while not diminishing the quality of content. To facilitate the ongoing research and development of PBL, the Temasek Centre for Problem-Based Learning (TCPBL) was established in 1999. As part of the polytechnic-wide implementation of PBL, a team from the Diploma in Marketing together with TCPBL, co-pioneered a project “Educational Innovation for the Knowledge-Based Economy using PBL” which was awarded the Enterprise Challenge Award from the Prime Minister’s Office in 2000, the Innovators Award in 2003, and the Enterprise Challenge Shield (a top award for an innovation creating the most value in the public service) in 2003. In recognizing that amidst numerous interpretations of PBL, there is the need to have a sufficient measure of consistency in the practice of PBL across the schools in TP, the Temasek Centre for Problem-Based Learning crafted the TP PBL framework. The TP PBL framework comprises: (1) the TP PBL essentials – students should be responsible and plan their own learning; a problem is the starting point of learning new knowledge for the students; a lecturer’s role is to facilitate students’ thinking to achieve the learning outcomes; students should engage in collaborative learning; students should engage in reflective thinking; students should learn through a problem-solving process; (2) the TP PBL process – stage 1: group setting; stage 2: problem identification; stage 3: idea generation; stage 4: learning issues; stage 5: self-directed learning; stage 6: synthesis and application; and stage 7: reflection and feedback; and (3) a thinking template – namely, facts, ideas, learning issues, and action plan (FILA) chart. The Learning Academy (the staff development department) at TP conducts two PBL programs to induct lecturers to the PBL process. In the Teaching Higher Education Certificate (THEC) program for new lecturers, there is a 2-day segment on the PBL experience where the lecturers experience the PBL process as learners. In addition, for lecturers who are about to embark on their first foray as PBL facilitators, there is a 3-day PBL Foundation Programme encompassing five modules: understanding and experiencing PBL; becoming a PBL facilitator; problem design in PBL; curriculum design in PBL; and assessment in PBL.

Research Design and Methodology This small-scale research paper is based on an analysis of a qualitative case study involving 2 experienced facilitators and 25 first-time facilitators attending the 2-day PBL learning experience mounted by TP’s Learning Academy. My research question is defined narrowly enough so that the research would be focused and yet broad

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enough to allow for flexibility and serendipity. Qualitative research asks simple questions and reaps complex responses; “profound simplicity” (Weick, 1996) is a hallmark. I settled on one overarching question pertaining to the values of PBL – namely, “What do you perceive to be the values of PBL?” I chose the case study methodology which upholds participatory elements. Case studies constitute “a particular form of academic discipline, justified by its relevance to the practice of teaching and conducted in a such a manner that the evidence it marshalls as well as its conclusions are widely accessible” (Skilbeck, 1983, p. 16).

Problem-Based Learning and Its Values, as Indicated in the Literature The genesis of problem-based learning (PBL) is often linked to medical education at McMaster University in Canada and soon after it was adopted by Maasctricht University in the Netherlands. PBL premises itself on constructivist theory where understanding is gradually constructed through active engagement with real-life problems, issues, and questions (Barrows & Tamlyn, 1980; Norman & Schmidt, 1992). In essence, PBL is “the learning that results from the process of working toward the understanding or resolution of a problem. The problem is encountered first in the learning process” (Barrows & Tamlyn, 1980, p. 2). The literature on PBL (Barrows, 1983; Boud & Feletti, 1997) espouses that student learning is enhanced through this learning–teaching approach. First, learning is contextually valid in that the problems are gleaned from professional practice and students acquire knowledge organized around these problems. PBL develops self-directed, reflective, lifelong learners who are able to integrate knowledge, think critically, and work collaboratively with others. Second, learning is collaborative in that students help each other in both content and process skills. Third, students learn to solve problems in a more effective way. Fourth, PBL is purported to create a strong motivational effect on students who tend to feel that they are engaged in real-life situations across the disciplines and not just theoretical concepts (Lee & Lee, 2005).

Major Themes Emerging from the Research About the Values of PBL In using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to analyze the research data, major themes emerged as the values of PBL, as perceived by beginning facilitators. Through analyzing the interview data, some of the values which came through as a pattern included the following: engaging in collaborative learning, stimulating thinking through dialog, appreciating diverse perspectives, dwelling with questions, rethinking power issues, and cultivating the whole person in learning.

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Engaging in Collaborative Learning Several facilitators opined that PBL tends to nudge learners toward a shared learning process. One facilitator expressed that PBL “creates the opportunity for collaborative learning to happen.” Another commented, “co-operative learning takes place when learners have to work through the problem scenario, negotiate who takes on which topics for self-directed learning, etc.” From my own experience, I observe that often the terms “co-operative learning” and “collaborative learning” are used interchangeably. This has led to a minimizing of some of the differences which I would like to highlight. According to the literature on collaborative learning (Bruffee, 1993, 1995; Matthews et al., 1995), it is observed that collaborative learning in higher and adult education arenas complements the cooperative learning that children may experience in primary school. Most cooperative learning researchers and theoreticians are social psychologists or sociologists whose original work was intended for application at the 4–12 age levels. Second, cooperative learning approaches tend to be more structured and focused upon specific behaviors and rewards. In contrast, collaborative learning tends not to “micro manage,” not to break tasks into small component parts, and not to provide rewards. Third, these two learning approaches have different epistemological bases. Cooperative learning typically deals with traditional (canonical) knowledge. In contrast, collaborative learning holds to knowledge creation as a social act. Fourth, there is a major difference in the locus of authority. Cooperative learning authorizes the teacher to oversee student participation and to ensure that the process works as predetermined by the teacher. In contrast, collaborative learning emphasizes co-responsibility and the negotiating of agendas. There is perambulating authority and crossing of power lines. Learning tasks are deliberately “openended.” The “teacher” is facilitator and a partner-in-learning (Lee, 2005). The etymological roots of the term collaborate come from the Latin colabore which means to work together, implying a concept of shared goals. The term collaborate has an explicit intention to “add value.” For example, people create something new or different through the collaborative process as opposed to simply exchanging information or disseminating data. Collaboration requires “a mutual task in which the partners work together to produce something that neither could have produced alone” (Forman & Cazden, 1985, p. 329). In my doctoral research work on collaborative learning (Lee, 1998), I crafted a working description of collaborative learning as follows: Collaborative learning mobilises the social synergy that resides within a group of colearners engaged in a dynamic process of shared inquiry. Through dialogue, learning as shared inquiry evolves by critically exploring the perspectives of others. New dimensions of interpretations are fuelled, issues clarified and interdependence valued. There is an ongoing negotiation of roles among the community of learners.

The implicit assumption in collaborative learning is that adult learners are experienced social beings who can function in collaborative paradigms, possess intrinsic motivation, and are self-directed in their desire to unravel problems that have direct relevance to them (Knowles, 1980).

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Stimulating Thinking Through Dialog One of the recurring points made by facilitators is that PBL typically affords learners a platform where they are able to exchange their ideas about the issue at hand. In a focus group I conducted with five facilitators, the general sentiment shared was that PBL “helps learners with articulating and clarifying their thoughts through engaging in dialogue.” In PBL, learning tends to be transformed into an active process where participants are mutually engaged in dialog, often fueled by questions and a meaningful sharing of roles and responsibilities. Learners are exposed to different perspectives which could see them developing greater discernment. Dialog and critical openness are important to make thinking visible to people who are engaged in a journey of shared learning (Lee, 2004). The term “dialogue” is Greek coming from two roots words, dia meaning “through” or “with each other” and logos meaning “the word.” The origins of dialog go back to ancient Athens. It was the main teaching method used by Socrates and immortalized in Plato’s famous dialogs. This derivation suggests that dialog is a stream of meaning flowing among, through, and between persons. Many adult educators observe that adult learning is best achieved in dialog (e.g., Freire, 2000; Knowles, 1980; Vella, 1994). The etymological distinction between the terms “dialogue” and “discussion” often used interchangeably is instructive. “Discussion” shares its root meaning with “percussion” and “concussion,” both of which involve breaking things up. The term “discussion” stems from the Latin discutere, which means “to smash to pieces.” In dialog, there is the free and creative exploration of complex issues, a deep listening to one another, and suspending of one’s own views. By contrast, in discussion, different views are presented and defended, and there is a search for the best view to support decisions that must be made. Dialog and discussion are potentially complementary, but it seems necessary to distinguish between the two and to move consciously between them (Ellinor & Gerard, 1998; Isaacs, 1993). The term “dialogue” is more consonant with the discursive relational dynamics of collaborative learning; there is a constant movement towards “shared minds” rather than a single overpowering position. The concept of dialog spans a spectrum of discourses such as emancipatory education, literary theory, educational philosophy, feminist pedagogy, and organizational learning. In this section, I touch on some thoughts about dialog as espoused in emancipatory education, literary theory, and organizational learning (Lee, 2005). In adult education, Paulo Freire is best known as the emancipatory educator who popularized the notion of dialog as an educational form. Freire’s pedagogy articulates that the central feature of dialog is the recovery of the voice of the oppressed as the fundamental condition for human emancipation. For Freire, the essence of dialog is “the true word.” True words are unities of reflection and action “in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed, even in part, the other immediately suffers” (Freire, 2000, p. 87). To speak a true word is to engage in praxis: to transform the world in accordance with reflection: to name the world.

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Dialog is pivotal to Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) literary theory. A “dialogic penetration into the word opens up fresh aspects in the word” (p. 352). This occurs through interaction, which brings more and more features of the other’s word into understanding and into a position where it can be related to the listener’s own words and so create new discourses. Bakhtin uses the concept of dialog to focus on the continuous flow of interaction and response among individuals. Language, as dialog, is always in the process of becoming. His concept heteroglossia implies that culture and society, as well as individuals, are constituted by multiple voices. This legitimates differences of opinion and restores the individual’s voice in the creation of cultural patterns. Bakhtin points out that we do not use language; language uses us. The nature of discourse is that the language we encounter already has a history: the words that we speak have been spoken by others before us (“the internal dialogism of the word”). What we speak always means more than what we mean to say; the language that we use carries with it implications, connotations, and consequences that we can only partly intend. The words that others hear from us, how they understand them, and what they say in response are beyond our unilateral control. This relation of speaker, hearer, and language is reflected not only in spoken communication but with authors, readers, and a variety of texts. Several virtues and emotions are integral within dialogical engagements: concern – in being with our partners in conversation, to engage them in the flow of the dialog, there is a social bond that ignites a commitment to the other; trust – taking what others say in faith alongside the risk that comes with it; respect – a recognition that each person is equal in some basic way and entails a commitment to being fair-minded, opposing degradation and rejecting exploitation; appreciation – valuing the unique quality that others bring; affection – involves a feeling with, and for, our partners-inlearning; and hope – engaging in dialog with the belief that it holds much possibilities. In elaborating on the integral role of dialog in collaborative learning, Lee (1998) draws upon developments in contemporary management circles and organizational learning where dialog process is a linchpin. The interface of dialog and its application to organizational change can be traced to organizational theorists such as Senge (1993) and Isaacs (1993). Dialog process as articulated by Bohm (1996) and Isaacs (1993) entails four movements: suspension of assumptions, shared inquiry, generative listening, and holding tension of opposites. Dialog process facilitates and creates new possibilities for communication. The whole group is the object of learning, and members share the potential excitement of collectively discovering ideas that individually none of them might have thought of. Through dialog, people help one another to become aware of the incoherence of each other’s thoughts, and in this way, the collective thought becomes more and more coherent (from the Latin cohaerere, “hanging together”).

Appreciating Diverse Perspectives The value of appreciating diverse perspectives was echoed by a facilitator who said, “Inherent in the PBL process is the democratic process of working in teams, communicating and respecting that others have perspectives and experiences

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which are different from your own. PBL enables us to learn to appreciate other points of view and negotiate for a common outcome.” Another commented, “different points of view actually become very interesting, albeit at times it takes up a lot of time to listen to one another and appreciate that others may have perspectives which differ from ours.” The importance of appreciating diverse perspectives resonates with Lindeman’s (1926) proposition that intelligent personalities express themselves in individuality, uniqueness, and difference. In much the same vein, Kallen (1964) posits that the basic premise of adult education is “the recognition of (the adult learner’s) individuality, the acknowledgement of his right to be different” (p. 99). In terms echoing Wiltshire’s (1976) concept of individuation, Kallen (1964) views learning as equivalent to self-differentiation and education to be the nurturing of this process. He proposes that educators place before learners’ alternative beliefs and meaning systems since it is the provision of alternatives which will unfix beliefs and generate flexibility and openness of mind, which is one of the aims of education. In proposing that adults adopt transforming perspectives in seeking to relocate themselves in the world, Kallen foreshadows the development of the notion of perspective transformation propounded by Mezirow (1978). The theoretical rationale for encouraging an appreciation of diverse perspectives comes from the cognitive developmental perspective largely based on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. From Piaget (1978) comes the premise that socio-cognitive conflict creates cognitive disequilibrium, perspective-taking ability, and cognitive development. Vygotsky (1978) observes that human mental functions and accomplishments have their origins in social relationships. Vygotsky’s theory strengthens the perspectives of a group as they are arrived at through debate, argument, negotiation, and dialog.

Dwelling with Questions The research indicates that “dwelling with questions” is closely entwined with the notion of embracing ambiguity in the learning process. A facilitator opined that PBL “does not espouse certainty. It dwells with questions and embraces ambiguity and it celebrates differences.” The capacity to embrace ambiguity might surface through the passage of time. Another facilitator disclosed: “I am learning to live with ambiguity and enjoying it.” Echoing similar sentiments, a third facilitator commented: Perhaps part of the key to collaborative learning in PBL is an admission that we don’t have all the answers. I find myself increasingly comfortable with ambiguity. I don’t need to have all the answers all at once. There will always be some questions remaining unanswered.

Ambiguity signals a hermeneutical dimension which is open, moving, and resistant to arbitrary closure. There is sensitivity to revisions of judgments and an openness in leaving gaps where no obvious consensus is possible (Code, 1991; Hare &

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McLaughlin, 1994). “Productive ambiguity” (Gatens, 1986) recognizes that an idea is rich in possibilities. Learning involves dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity. It is about inquiry and deliberation, becoming critically minded and intellectually curious. The process of questioning is itself a paradox for an uncertain humanity in continual search of certainty (Bateson, 1994; Jarvis, 1992). “Difficulty, uncertainty and error are not necessarily flawed states to be overcome but ongoing conditions of the educational process itself they are educationally beneficent correctives to arrogance and complacency” (Usher et al., 1997, p. 25). Indeed, “the human craves for an absolute answer, and yet can discover nothing other than the relative” (Jarvis, 1983, p. 22). Several writers echo the importance of dwelling with questions. MacMurray (1957) remarks: “The rationality of our conclusions does not depend alone upon the correctness of our thinking. It depends more upon the propriety of the questions with which we concern ourselves. The primary and critical task is the discovery of the problem. If we ask the wrong questions, the logical correctness of our answer is of little consequence” (p. 21). Questions always bring out the undetermined possibilities of a thing. “To understand the questionableness of something is already to be questioning” (Gadamer, 1996, p. 375).

Rethinking Power Issues The research illuminates that one of the values in PBL seems to be the emphasis given to rethinking power issues in educational contexts. A facilitator remarked: The question of power is very much alive in all groups. The appropriation of power has to be discerned, thought about and handled well . . . it should not be an exhibition of personal power on the part of any one person.

The words “discerned . . . thought about . . . handled well” highlight the judicious manner with which power needs to be handled. The phrase “it should not be an exhibition of personal power” echoes Dewey’s (1938/1967) sentiments that the will or desire of any one person should not be that which establishes order. Rather, order should arise from the moving spirit of the whole group. Dewey goes on to suggest that the primary source of social control should reside in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility. A facilitator observed that “some teachers find it difficult to give up power and control.” Facilitators who neglect to rethink issues relating to power often impede collaborative learning. There is the tendency to elevate themselves as the “authorised and authoritative signifier of knowledge” and as the ones who “embody both engendered power and authority” (Luke, 1996). They tend to cling onto their stratified roles. Unfortunately, some facilitators accrue a substantial amount of pleasure in their supposed status and embodiment of knowledge. “Just as the

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omniscient narrator has disappeared from the modern fiction, so will the omniscient teacher disappear from the classroom of the future” (Bruner, 1996). The notion of power dynamics intimate that power relations are invariably reproduced and maintained throughout the educational process. However, it seems to me that the PBL process nudges the learning community, particularly facilitators, to rethink power issues. In a chapter entitled “With Respect to Use of Power,” Lindeman (1926) points out that no human being can safely be trusted with power until she has learned how to exercise power over herself. Power itself, that is, directive energy, is not to be condemned, but there is the need to ask pertinent questions concerning the manner in which it is used. Power-over, even when exercised by the most benevolent, usually debases those who command and those who obey. Forces which deprive others from participation belittle the personalities of others. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) argue that all pedagogic action is symbolic violence inasmuch as it is “the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by a cultural power.” If teachers assume that they have full authority to present the “inalienable truth” and are legislators of what is correct knowledge, they are running the risk of placing themselves on too high a pedestal since they are, according to Bauman (1987), likely to be no more than interpreters. They might be claiming a false status for the knowledge they present and also utilizing their position to persuade students to subscribe to what they are advocating. In the same vein, Jarvis (1997) points out that when teachers use their dominant position for their own self-interest, a form of teaching has occurred, but educators might question whether education has actually taken place. The phrase “dialogue of authority” (Romer & Whipple, 1991) aptly describes the perambulating authority that might occur in collaborative learning communities such as during the PBL process. It suggests that just as a knower who has developed a unique voice need not lose that voice in order to listen to another, one who has developed an authority does not abandon that authority while collaborating. She merely silences it while absorbing the authority of another or while constructing a new group authority. In collaborative learning communities, there should be no “permanent leading caste” but “reciprocal authority.”

Cultivating the Whole Person in Learning This research reflects that in general PBL facilitators embrace the humanistic vision of personhood where whole person learning is emphasized. A facilitator remarked: PBL invariably draws upon more than the cognitive dimension of a person. The dynamics, the interactions, the clarifications, dealing with difficult team members can at times be quite a challenge. Invariably the whole person is engaged in the dynamics and the learning that should happen . . ..

Concern for the development of the whole person is a characteristic feature in Jewish education. To the Jews, the idea of knowledge embraces the whole human personality. The Hebrew verb yada “to know” means to encounter, experience, and

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share in an intimate way. The term “holistic” has entered the educational arena to promote a view that an attention to wholeness is more important than attention to the separate and contributory parts. Deriving from the Greek holos – whole – the concept refers to an understanding of reality in terms of integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units. Whole person learning seeks to restore an appropriate balance to the different dimensions of life. It enfolds “personal integration” (Miller, 1976) and an “informed heart” (Bettelheim, 1971); it involves the training of “eye, hand and heart” (Reid, 1986) and encompasses an “all- round development” (Van Der Zee, 1991) where “rationality and feeling, memory and perception are not opposed” (Moyle, 1997). PBL seeks to affirm a holistic view of persons in which thought, feeling, and action are “conceptually, not contingently, connected as aspects of the person’s conduct” (Astley, 1994, p. 234). For Bergevin (1967), the term “maturity” refers to the “growth and development of the individual towards wholeness in order to achieve constructive action in the movement from mere survival to the discovery of himself both as a person and as a responsible member of society” (p. 7). The appeal for the affective dimension to be valued as an integral component in learning is consonant with Lindeman’s (1926, pp. 105–106) emphasis that “emotions and intelligence are continuous and varying aspects of a single process and that the finest emotions are those which shine through intelligence, and the finest intelligence that which is reflected in the light of its appropriate feeling.” He goes on to elaborate: “We cannot feel and then understand; feelings may predominate over intelligence but they cannot annihilate it; likewise, to understand anything always partakes somewhat of getting the feel of its properties and qualities. Feeling adds warmth to understanding and understanding gives meaning to feeling” (p. 106). Likewise, MacMurray (1957) argues that the significance of feelings for human action is crucial. Reflecting on “emotional rationality,” MacMurray points out that it is a “serious mistake to think that rationality has only to do with our intellectual capacities. On the contrary, our feelings and emotions have a reference to the real world, just as our thoughts do” (p. xxi). Although our emotions are epistemologically indispensable, they are not epistemologically indisputable. Like all other faculties, they may be misleading, and their data, like all data, are subject to reinterpretation and revision. A facilitator’s comment about personalities in collaborative learning who “might use their emotions to control and manipulate the group” describes a deceptive use of emotions. This is a reminder that discordant emotions, if not attended to seriously and respectfully, could hinder the learning process (Lee, 2003).

Conclusion The genesis of PBL in medical education came about in the hope that there would be a more authentic, holistic educational experience for learners. Several educational institutions have experimented with the PBL process and designed variations to suit their purposes. In the words of several facilitators I interviewed for this small-scale

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research, PBL “enables learners to become more actively engaged in their own learning journey. It is more about the journey of learning and not just the product.” It is not just a perfunctory model to adhere to but provides learners with an engaging experience which stretches them as persons in a holistic manner. In essence, the PBL process and the interactions that take place should become a way of life.

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Teach Our Children Well A Social Work Perspective on Integrating Values Education in Schools

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Lessons from the Crime Reduction in Schools Project (CRISP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Values Education Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

A values education project led to a range of intervention programs in a number of disadvantaged schools in South Africa soon after the post-apartheid transformation of school education policy. The National Education Policy Act (1996) sought to involve all stakeholders in the management and administration of education and to give parents a voice in this process. It sought a cultural change toward inclusiveness, democracy, and participation. This was an ambitious undertaking given that schools had yet to learn how to accommodate the changes to a non-racially based education system entailed. The chapter reflects on findings from the program in making application to the field of social work. Keywords

Values education · Teaching · Social work practice · Wellbeing

M. Gray (*) University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_39

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Introduction Although teachers are often surrounded by “value-talk” in which “values education” has become something of a buzzword or cliché, the lists of values displayed on posters on school walls come to be seen as what “values education” is: A lesson to learn or teach. Few teachers – or social workers for that matter – have grounding in moral philosophy or ethics. Few would understand that the lists of values plastered on school walls are a result of a long history of moral theorizing which has attempted to reduce moral complexity to rationally defined lists of values and principles. But, most teachers know implicitly that values education is a complex endeavor (Bigger & Brown, 1999; Haydon, 1997; Leicester et al., 2000; Passy, 2005) and that translating these values or principles into practice is no easy matter. Though schools are not just about teachers, but are complex systems which involve principals, administrators, managers, pupils – children and young adults – parents, and a surrounding community, there is some agreement that teachers play a central role in values education (Copeland & Saterlie, 1990; Revell & Arthur, 2007) and that teaching is a value-filled endeavor (Lovat, 2009). Though much of the literature focuses specifically on teacher education and teachers as the main purveyors of values education, if values education is to have any purchase or currency, it has to become part of the lived experience of people in all school-related systems from policy makers through management to teachers, pupils, parents, and the surrounding community. A school and an education system will achieve this when it becomes common knowledge that our school stands for , that is, our school lives and breathes the words on its badge or pledges. This was the type of thinking that motivated the values education project that led to a range of intervention programs in a number of disadvantaged schools in South Africa soon after the post-apartheid transformation of school education policy. The National Education Policy Act, 1996 (Republic of South Africa, 1996), sought to involve all stakeholders in the management and administration of education and, most importantly, to give parents a voice in this process. It sought a cultural change toward inclusiveness, democracy, and participation. This was an ambitious undertaking given that schools had yet to learn how to accommodate the changes to a non-racially based education system entailed. In any event, this applied most visibly to the schools in which the Crime Reduction in Schools Project (CRISP) was implemented (Gray, 1999; Gray & Collett van Rooyen, 2002). They were disadvantaged schools, three primary and three high schools, chosen for their proximity to the university to allow ease of access for the researchers and students involved in this intervention research project (see Table 39.1).

Some Lessons from the Crime Reduction in Schools Project (CRISP) The Crime Reduction in Schools Project (CRISP), funded by the Innovation Fund of the Department of Arts, Science, Culture and Technology in South Africa (1999–2002), was based at the University of (KwaZulu) Natal in Durban. It brought

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Table 39.1 Overview of research projectsa Research Research on prejudice and intolerance

Projects Culture, conflict, and control: Interactional dynamics

Preliminary research: Needs study learners’ profile

Monitor crime in schools provide demographic profile of learners

Prejudice and Accommodating diversity intolerance: through whole school Survey of current development practices

Perceptions and experiences of crime among school children AIDS and sexuality

Aggression and violence in schools

Program evaluation

Aims and objectives Establish the locale and nature of conflict within schools Establish reasons for conflict Develop a database of incidents of crime and conflict in the school Scrutinize the nature of crime and conflict in schools

Examine classroom policies and practices reflecting diversity and their impact on learning Examine interpersonal relationships and participation of learners in their schools Crime I have seen project Establish baseline information media surveillance on crimes witnessed by learners Document media incidence of crime Perceptions of sexuality and Establish nature and extent of early sexual experience early sexual activity among teenage female learners Awareness of AIDS among Use information to inform high school learners intervention on sexual rights and safe sex practices Pre- and post-test intervention to measure AIDS awareness intervention and its effectiveness Measuring levels of Measure levels of aggression aggression and the impact and tendency toward of violence on learners aggression among learners Establishing the impact of aggressive and/or violent experiences on learners Developing and evaluating Assess the effectiveness of service learning using service learning for psychological interventions in psychology students evaluating service learning crime prevention Assess the effectiveness of CRISP at one high school

Discipline Anthropology

Anthropology

Development studies social work Education

Development studies social work

Social work

Anthropology

Nursing

Social work

Psychology

Education (continued)

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Table 39.1 (continued) Research Gender conflict

Moral education

Project penetration

Projects Gender conflict among adolescents

Aims and objectives Explore existing gender conflict Describe resultant behavior Establish reasons for gender conflict Character building and Explore learners and teachers social responsibility perceptions of moral problems development Develop a moral education program Interim program evaluation Determine the extent of knowledge, awareness, and “reach” of CRISP in the target schools

Discipline Nursing

Philosophy social work

Social work

a

The purpose of all the research projects was to inform interventions within schools aimed at crime prevention. To this extent, the research was primarily developmental

together a multi-disciplinary group of academics and researchers to develop and implement an intervention research program for crime prevention in schools. The academics were drawn from the professional and academic disciplines of psychology, anthropology, social work, nursing, architecture and town planning, education, adult education and development studies. A developmental approach was taken to understand the range of issues that arise for children through their life course from beginners to graduates. For example, identifying abusive home situations was a priority for primary school teachers learning to understand why some children in their classes were withdrawn, unhappy, or disruptive. There were similar challenges for high school teachers but often the cause and solution were quite unexpected. There were some classrooms in which young white teachers were intimidated by older black students, some of whom were well beyond what might be considered normal school-going age in developed Western contexts. Completely by chance, a psychology student researcher discovered that many of these pupils simply could not read or write and engaged in recalcitrant behavior to mask this inadequacy. Often the solution to complex problems is quite simple and, in this case, a group of students instituted a literacy program, which achieved immediate and startling results. Another totally unanticipated empowerment objective was achieved through a steel drum band, which initially the school principal said there was no time for in the normal school curriculum so pupils who wanted to be involved would have to do so before or after school. The musician cum project leader decided to run the program before school. The pupils had to start early. As well as learning to play the steel drums, their responsibilities involved arriving on time, unpacking the equipment, listening to the instructor and unleashing their creative talents. They learnt discipline. Soon the enthusiastic Jamaican rhythms began permeating the early morning airwaves and attracting an audience. More children than could be

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accommodated wanted to join. So impressed was the instructor with the children’s natural talent, musical ability, and sense of rhythm that he decided to enter them in the Durban school band competition, which included competitors from the affluent private and public schools with the luxury of music teachers and music in the school curriculum. Now the school had something to strive for. The principal began to include the drumming in the school assembly and the pupils went on to win second prize in the band competition. This was a thrilling moment and little did anyone know how music would prove to be the common language to overcome diversity. The overwhelming lessons learned were that the most successful and exciting and empowering programs were those which were unplanned and unanticipated. And there are many examples. The nursing students came to the project expecting to run a health education program for parents but, on meeting with the mothers who attended the first meeting, they quickly realized that this was not what the mothers had in mind. They were busy trying to start a market garden and seized on the opportunity to use the nursing students’ program to meet their own ends. Being just as enterprising, the nursing students decided to use the opportunity of the market garden to teach the parents about healthy eating and nutrition and to encourage them to grow foods that contributed to a balanced family diet, which, traditionally, tended to be dominated by cheap meat cuts and processed starch, especially maize meal and bread. The social work students, rather than only running their counselling and education programs, ran an entrepreneurship program with adolescents, each of whom with a small amount of start-up capital had to produce something marketable and sell it at a school flea market at a profit to be ploughed back into school funds. The architecture and town planning students, following their interactions with school staff and participant observations, identified the hotspots for conflict on the playground at break time, but did not redesign spaces as expected. Instead they brought along a few footballs which dispersed children to more sites where everyone who wanted to play could be accommodated. Conflict diminished. They also observed a rush to the toilets, a constant problem in these schools due to excessive use and demand, and vandalism encouraged by poor lighting. The school in question was already surrounded by barbed wire with an armed guard at the gate during school hours. At the completion of their project, the students presented the school with an architectural plan of how school spaces might be economically redesigned, including better lighting and more toilets, to minimize opportunities for conflict. The anthropology students sought to encourage teachers to build English and maths exercises around issues of direct relevance for the pupils, for example, to develop reading study or comprehension exercises and maths problems around AIDS and HIV. The projections being proposed by researchers as to the “multiplication” or spread of this pandemic in the population became far more meaningful when students were required to reflect on them through exercises in the classroom. What, one might well ask, has any of this to do with values education? We deduced that values education was a fancy name for life skills, for self-esteem building, for empowerment and for cooperative coexistence. These were not skills

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that needed special lessons. They were strengths or capacities that needed to find expression and this they did when a conducive environment was created or facilitated, that is, “a space of dialogue and possibility” (Greene, 1988, p. xi), for imagining a better school and community. Minimal resources were required. Even disadvantaged schools could provide opportunities for life-skills development, for adolescent boys to learn how to treat adolescent girls with respect, to understand AIDS and safe sex practices, to learn budgeting, literacy, and numeracy skills, and to develop their creative talents. A school must pulsate with energy for then there is no time for mischief! There were times, however, where more directive programs were needed, especially when helping teachers deal with the newly created diversity in the schools and to seize on opportunities for values education in the classroom, at the time when problems arise. For the most part, teachers from different races had difficulty mixing. The school common room seemed to have invisible dividing lines and unmarked chairs appeared to have teachers’ names on them because everyone appeared to have a rightful place. Even a blind person would know exactly where to find Mr X or Mrs Y. If this were the situation between staff, how much more difficult was it for teachers in the classroom? They needed the confidence to confront value issues head on when pupils lied or cheated or treated one another disrespectfully or when racist comments were made. Thus, a targeted values education program for teachers was devised and implemented by a social worker and philosopher who developed a manual for this purpose, introducing teachers to Beauchamp and Childress’ (1994) ethical principles and to rudimentary philosophical theories about morality and ethical decision making. But, cultures do not change overnight or after a single program and teachers struggled to cope with the complexities of the new situations they found themselves in. Another important lesson for all involved in CRISP was the realization that, in the face of apparently insurmountable problems – against all odds, including teacher hijackings, vandalism, blocked toilets, broken windows, Fort Knox like barricading making schools feel like prisons with high walls or barbed wire fences – everyone came to school. Teachers wanted to teach and pupils wanted to learn. There was dedication and commitment and abundant strength and good intention. And children managed to concentrate even though many lived in social turmoil and most had witnessed or experienced gross violence. Many were still in violent or abusive situations. This was borne out by the Crimes I Have Seen project which invited older students to submit essays and younger pupils to provide drawings of the crimes they had seen. So abundant was the data collected that to this day, it has not been properly analyzed. I have deliberately pitted this introductory discussion at the level of generality, first to protect confidentiality and second, to introduce my ideas on values education in schools from my social work perspective. However, further reading on values education in schools reveals greater complexities regarding how one builds sustainable values education programs in schools. It is to some of this educational literature that I will now turn.

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The Values Education Literature With reference to my title, we cannot teach our children well until we have taught our teachers well and there appears to be some agreement in the educational literature that values education in schools begins with the education of teachers in training. Teachers are the essential role models of values education and their behavior has a strong influence on pupils (Copeland & Saterlie, 1990). Reporting on a task force involved in designing and implementing a values education program, Copeland and Saterlie (1990) define values education as follows: All education is infused with values. The ultimate goal of education is the positive influence of student behavior, and each student’s values guide and help determine that behavior. In the process of teaching, the teacher’s values are demonstrated to the students. In every class and throughout the school – indeed, throughout the school system – values are demonstrated through actions, procedures, policies, and attitudes from the board of education, to the superintendent and his staff, to the principal and teachers, to the cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and to the students. (p. 48)

As Lovat (2010) notes: This would mean restructuring the whole learning environment for the benefit of student achievement and would involve: pedagogical strategies and techniques used by teachers; catering for the diverse needs of students; organizing of schools for the express purpose of student achievement (school coherence); professional development of teachers; and, the creation of a trustful, supportive ambience in the school. (p. 490)

This also means that an appreciation of the all-pervasive nature of values needs to be part of teacher education in the same way that it is for social work students. Unless teachers have a sense of moral obligation and a deep sense of responsibility in shaping children’s values, lists of values, such as those promulgated by the Australian Government’s National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools, will remain just that a framework with the list of values framed somewhere on school walls, which soon goes unnoticed. However, as Revell and Arthur (2007) note, there is no conclusive evidence that teacher education courses have an “impact on teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about teaching. If character education is an implicit requirement of the curriculum then it would be useful to understand how teachers develop their understanding of character and whether teacher education courses can impact on this understanding” (pp. 79–80). But, there is some evidence that values education programs have an impact on pupils’ acquisition of personal values of respect, honesty, trust, courage, responsibility, and so on (Dílmaç et al., 2007; Perry & Wilkenfeld, 2006). While character education is distinct from other forms of values education, both are informed by the belief that moral behavior should be taught (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Revell & Arthur, 2007), that is, that it does not happen automatically or without some sort of training. As in social work, teachers believe in the moral superiority of their personal values and are unlikely to develop an appreciation of the diversity of values without moral education in which they learn to reflect

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critically on their own values and on the impact of their behavior on others (Gray & Gibbons, 2007). In the absence of moral education, teaching values becomes a rulefollowing, behavior management approach, where teachers are more likely to discipline pupils when they break the rules (Revell & Arthur, 2007) rather than proactively use everyday situations and experiences to teach them the importance of living harmoniously with others, which lies at the heart of moral behavior. Thus, it is that moral education is not so much education about morality as it is about teaching pupils how to get along with one another, how to treat one another with respect, how to respect one another’s beliefs and values, and so on. It was this that lay at the heart of the CRISP Values Education Program referred to above. Character education helps in this process because it teaches the virtues of a good person, that is, one who cares about others, feels responsible for others’ welfare, and is able to take responsibility for their own behavior. Lapsley and Narvaez (2006, p. 269) outline eleven principles in their whole-of-school approach to character education: • Principle 1 asserts that good character is built upon a foundation of “core ethical values” – caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect, which are often endorsed by national organizations, such as the Australian Department of Education and Science (Home Economics Institute of Australia, 2006) and seek to foster “pillars of character” – trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Such policy documents assume that these values are universally valid, promote the common good, affirm human worth and dignity, contribute to individual welfare, deal with issues of right and wrong, and facilitate democratic practices. • Principle 2 states that educational programs should teach these core values. • Principle 3 states that they should be taught “holistically,” that is, with attention to their cognitive, affective, social, cultural, and behavioral components in a way that engages school stakeholders at all levels in a deliberate, proactive, and comprehensive way. • Principle 4 emphasizes the importance of creating caring school communities. • Principle 5 asserts the importance of providing students with opportunities to engage in moral action, such as community service and outreach. • Principle 6 argues for the integration of effective character education in a rigorous, challenging academic curriculum. • Principle 7 holds that a stimulating curriculum fosters intrinsic motivation to do the right thing by building a climate of openness, trust, and respect, encouraging a sense of autonomy and responsibility, and building shared norms and commitment through dialogue, discussion, and democratic decision making. • Principle 8 focuses on the importance of engaging all school staff. • Principle 9 emphasizes the need for shared educational leadership, which provides for ongoing and long-term support for moral education initiatives. • Principle 10 brings in the engagement of parents, families, and community stakeholders. • Principle 11 promotes continuous assessment and evaluation.

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The burning question is “how will values – and character – education become an intrinsic part of the teacher’s responsibility if values and ethics remains peripheral to professional training and if, as Revell and Arthur (2007, p. 85) found, ‘moral discourse plays such a marginalized part in the training of teachers’?” So while moral education might have gained a new prominence within curriculum policy via the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005), as in the UK, “the nature of that education is characterized by an emphasis on behaviour and responsibilities rather than moral reasoning or philosophy [based on the belief that] responsible behaviour should be taught” (Revell & Arthur, 2007, p. 80 emphasis added) and the promotion of certain values in schools is obligatory. In their study of trainee teachers’ understanding of moral education, Revell and Arthur (2007) found several contradictions: First, while teachers and educators consistently referred to their professional identity and teaching and learning within schools in moral terms, educational ethics and moral discourse were absent in the courses under study and perceived as peripheral to their training. Second, there appeared to be tension between trainee teachers’ understanding of the moral nature of teaching and their willingness to act on that understanding. Most respondents believed that teachers should encourage pupils to reach their own conclusions rather than those that were sympathetic to those held by the school. Yet, a key tenet of moral education is that teachers should intervene by providing moral guidance to pupils (Arthur, 2003; Revell & Arthur, 2007). As already mentioned, most were only prepared to intervene when school rules were breached and few took proactive measures by deliberately seeking opportunities for moral education other than by allowing “pupils to express themselves” (Revell & Arthur, 2007, p. 87). Further, teachers have proved unwilling to consciously influence children or to contradict parental values even where they may be contradictory to school or family values (Passy, 2005). This suggests that they take an uncritical approach to moral and values education (Carr & Landon, 1998). This is because most have been ill-prepared to deal with moral issues in the classroom (Strike, 1996; Tirri, 1999).

Teacher Education If the quality of values and moral education in schools is to improve, that is, if quality teaching is to be promoted, and if teachers are to deliver values education in consistent rather than arbitrary ways, then these issues must form a pivotal part of teacher education (Lovat, 2009). Here is where education might learn from social work, where the importance of social work as a discipline and profession is taught and where social work is shaped as an intrinsically moral and value-based endeavor (Gray, 1991, 1996; Gray & Stofberg, 2000; Stofberg & Gray, 1988). Thus, professional ethics and values promotion is an essential part of the social worker’s identity. Gaining insight into personal values and beliefs via critical reflection is an important part of social work education as is focused learning on professional values and ethics as a first step (Gray & Gibbons, 2007). But,

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professionalism requires the ability to think beyond the personalized, individualized domain to seeing one’s professional role as situated in a broader community, cultural, social, and political context from which moral authority and professional and public accountability arise (Blackburn, 2002; Popkewitz, 1987). It requires that student teachers be given opportunities to engage with moral and value issues that underlie teaching practice (Tomlinson, 1995), that they understand their affective dimensions (Dílmaç et al., 2007), that they develop the ability to make professional judgements (Nixon, 2004), that they see teaching as a moral enterprise (Pring, 2001), and that they become accountable professionals (Sockett, 1999). If teachers are to be able to teach values education confidently in the classroom, to reflect on their practice and be professionally committed to promoting moral thinking and sound values as part of their professional identity, then providing student teachers with opportunities to explore moral issues and their own personal and professional values and beliefs is essential (Hollinsworth, 1989; Korthagen & Lagrwerf, 1996). A solid grounding in moral education and professional ethics enables teachers to make autonomous decisions guided not merely by their personal experiences, but also by their comprehensive, in-depth understanding of moral issues in relation to their field of practice (Bull, 1990). It also leads them to challenge their own preconceptions and prejudices (Edwards & Protheroe, 2003) and those of others, including parents, fellow teachers, and pupils, where appropriate and necessary, for example, when racist or derogatory comments about others are made. As noted by Revell and Arthur (2007): “If teachers are to retain any professionalism in the area of moral education then the presumption that they should engage with the ideas that inform models of moral education as well as the delivery of that education should be an integral part of their training” (p. 89).

Teaching Values Education Haydon (1997) claims that much of the literature on values education is extremely vague and hortatory, proclaiming what must be done rather than how it might be accomplished. Several more recent papers have been identified wherein the teaching of values in particular contexts has been outlined, for example, Hartsell (2006) in relation to environmental values, Bills and Husbands (2005) in relation to mathematics, Paterson (2009) in relation to civic values, Aplin (2007) in relation to heritage studies, and Passy (2005) in relation to family values. Hartsell (2006) notes that the teacher plays a pivotal role as a caring individual who facilitates values education by creating an atmosphere in the classroom to teach and encourage the development and exercise of values clarification skills. Moral and values education is not a process of indoctrinating moral principles into children, but of opening up talk and reflection on values so as to encourage value awareness. It provides students with opportunities to identify moral issues, to become aware of their own values and those of others, and to analyze their own thinking on morals and values. The university classroom provides an opportunity to model what

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happens in the classroom situation and to teach student teachers how to identify and understand class dynamics so as to recognize and capitalize on opportunities for values education in situ (Gray & Gibbons, 2007). Paterson (2009) believes that education is one of the main sources of civic values and engagement, which equips people with, among other things, the capacity for abstract thought and the opportunity to develop value awareness in a climate of open discussion. Most importantly, however, education tends to lead people to acquire socially liberal views. That said, a myriad of factors determine the level of civic engagement, including social class, parental interest in politics, cognitive ability, and social networks. Paterson’s (2009) study shows that those schooled in the social sciences, arts, and humanities tend to be more left wing, antiracist, libertarian, tolerant of non-traditional family forms, concerned about the environment, and politically engaged. Her findings make a strong argument for trainee teachers to have a solid grounding in the arts and social sciences if a liberal mindset is what is required for values education which rests heavily on a non-judgemental attitude. She also shows how teachers from different disciplinary backgrounds come to the school with different teaching cultures and values. Those from science, business, and technology tend to be more conservative than their social science and arts colleagues. What, one might ask, is distinctive about what is taught in the arts and social sciences? Hursh (2008) believes it has to do with engagement in “social and philosophical analysis,” with triggering the “sociological imagination” through which “we examine the larger structural forces that affect our lives and make sense of our experience as not idiosyncratic but societal. It is the way in which we come to understand our personal troubles as public issues” (p. 21 emphasis in the original). For Hursh the primary goal of education is not to produce obedient citizens, but imaginative thinkers, who can imagine and create a better world, that is, to produce fully rounded human beings with the “ability to imagine a better world and to do something to make it better” (Bauman, 1999, p. 1). Values education offers a means to “develop learning activities that are meaningful that build on the students’ experiences in schools” (Hursh, 2008, p. 33). It is this broader understanding that teachers need to have. They need to be able to see their pupils not only as faces in the classroom or part of a school, but also as members of families and part of the broader school community and wider society. This is why values education needs to include an element of community outreach, of engagement with the broader community through involvement first of parents and then of the wider community. In the schools where CRISP was located, that is, in communities with a high incidence of crime and violence, one measure to improve social conditions is engagement with the community such that the community feels a sense of ownership over the school and its activities. Of course, there is also need for simultaneous intervention at a structural level, that is, for government input, but the cumulative input of teachers, pupils, school administrators, and parent bodies quickly adds up to an integrated whole-of-school approach which makes the teacher’s work at the coalface of the classroom all the more meaningful, valid, and fulfilling for all involved.

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Conclusion This chapter has drawn on lessons from a school-based intervention research program and a social work perspective to make some suggestions as to the importance of values education in schools. It has focused particularly on the teacher’s role, which, to be effective, requires the support of the broader school and community. It argues that some grounding in arts and social science subjects is a necessary part of teacher education as is study of moral philosophy and professional ethics. Though not developed more fully in this context, the social work literature on values and ethics offers a rich resource for educators that would provide fortification for values education not only for teachers in training, but also for pupils in schools. There needs to be communication between families, schools, and communities to ensure that values education is being supported at all levels and to avoid the oft-heard “the parents should be teaching them this” or “the school should be teaching them that.” Values education is needed to give meaning to the list of values promoted by the National Framework for Values Education in Australian schools and to make them part of the lived experience of everyday school life throughout Australia and beyond.

References Aplin, G. (2007). Heritage as exemplar: A pedagogical role for heritage studies in values education. Environmentalist, 27, 375–383. Arthur, J. (2003). Education with character: The moral economy of schooling. Routledge. Bauman, Z. (1999). In search of politics. Stanford University Press. Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (1994). Principles of biomedical ethics (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. Bigger, S., & Brown, E. (Eds.). (1999). Spiritual, moral, social and cultural education: Exploring values in the curriculum. David Fulton. Bills, L., & Husbands, C. (2005). Values education in the mathematics classroom: Subject values, educational values and one teacher’s articulation of her practice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 35, 7–18. Blackburn, M. (2002). Talking virtue: Professionalism and virtue ethics. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.lipe.org/conference2002/papers/Blackburn.pdf Bull, B. (1990). The limits of teacher professionalization. In J. Goodland, R. Soder, & K. Sirotnik (Eds.), The moral dimension of teaching (pp. 87–129). Jossey-Bass. Carr, D., & Landon, J. (1998). Teachers and schools as agencies of values education: Reflections on teachers’ perceptions. Part 1. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 19, 165–176. Copeland, B. S., & Saterlie, M. E. (1990). Designing and implementing a values education program. NASSP Bulletin, 74, 46–49. DEST. (2005). National framework for values education in Australian schools. Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). Available at http://www. curriculum.edu.au/values/default.asp?id¼8757 Dílmaç, B., Kulaksizoglu, A., & Eks¸i, H. (2007). An examination of the humane values education program on a group of science high school students. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 7, 1241–1261.

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Values Education and Restorative Practices A Comparative Case Study

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Australian Values Education Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Context of the Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rationale for the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter reports the findings from a study investigating the effects of implementing Restorative Practices (RP) in a learning community of eight schools. Change was measured over a three-year time period on a cohort of students and teachers using the school climate dimensions of safety, teaching and learning, interpersonal relationships, the institutional environment, and professional relationships among staff. In this chapter, RP is premised against the background of Values Education and its varied pedagogical practices. The overarching finding was made that RP has the potential to support school climate improvement when it is understood as encompassing all elements of school culture, and where implementation is effective. Effective implementation requires RP to be embedded within a holistic wellbeing pedagogical approach, where RP is aligned to restorative principles, and commonly understood core values, J. Rosser (*) The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_40

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behaviors, practices, pedagogy, and systems. Findings were highly reflective of the need for schools to understand that RP is an ideology that requires deep cultural understanding and buy-in to be implemented effectively. Keywords

Restorative practices · Values education · Wellbeing · School climate · Pedagogy

Introduction The empirical and theoretical research that examines the multi-dimensional construct of school climate has been expanding in recent times in order to examine the inter-related domains and dimensions of school learning environments. Such research has more recently focused on the impact of positive learning experiences, safe schools, and healthy school environments on students’ social-emotional wellbeing and academic outcomes (Cohen et al., 2013; Hopson et al., 2014; Kutsyuruba et al., 2015; Thapa et al., 2013; Voight & Nation, 2016; Wang & Degol, 2016). The belief is growing that schools with climates of enhanced safety, support, quality learning, and healthy relationships will thereby nurture social, emotional, civic, and academic growth for all students. This belief is represented in recent empirical findings, thereby attracting the attention of educational policymakers, researchers, and practitioners around the globe. The notion that Restorative Practices (RP) in schools can contribute to the overall positivity and health of a school’s climate is the fundamental concept explored in the comparative case study that lies at the center of the study reported in this article, bringing together the evolving empirical fields of school climate and RP. The goal of implementing RP in schools is to sustain and maintain harmonious relationships between people and so to build community, with the underlying philosophies and psychology grounded in the values of compassion, equity, responsibility, and respect. Giving back is essentially represented within many of the practice domains of RP, particularly when applied in the school context to address wrongdoing, whereby participants come together to achieve the following outcomes: to take responsibility for their actions and subsequent consequences; to repair damaged relationships; to improve conscious understanding and wellbeing from the harm caused by wrongdoing; and to reintegrate into community after relational trust has been compromised. Put simply, these goals all represent giving back and restoring relationships between individuals and community. RP is increasingly being supported within many educational systems across the world as an effective whole school approach to developing supportive, respectful, and peaceful school learning environments. In particular RP is being linked to offering an equitable and positive approach to discipline and behavior management in schools where low socio-economic status (SES) is considered a significant disadvantage to student outcomes (Cavanagh, 2009; Fronius et al., 2016; Gomez et al., 2020; González, 2012). SES is recognized as a predictor of a multitude of life outcomes, including physical, psychological, and psycho-social outcomes, with

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educational systems and schools increasingly focusing on improving interventions and programs to help reduce the risk of poor student outcomes in communities of low SES, with the premise that low SES has been linked to negatively impacting educational achievement, increased bullying, anti-social behavior, and poor health (American Psychological Association, 2017; Armor et al., 2018; Hemphill et al., 2010; Jansen et al., 2012; Lampert et al., 2020; Letourneau et al., 2013; Piotrowska et al., 2015; Tippett & Wolke, 2014). Therefore, offering RP as a proactive intervention to address some of the psychological, behavioral, and social challenges faced within low SES schools to improve school climate is increasingly found within the field, again reinforcing the need for more empirical research of RP in schools. The philosophy, values, and beliefs that form the cornerstones of RP are ultimately representative of an ideology disposed to principles of social and community norms that go beyond a set of “practices” that address the relational aspects of wrongdoing. Research is looking beyond the original innovative concept of restorative practices as merely an approach to addressing wrongdoing, whereby RP is now being evaluated as a philosophy that establishes or changes culture. This is represented in RP being viewed as establishing, determining, and instilling a relational, values-rich culture within communities, so enabling positive social norms to thrive (Drewery, 2016; Finnan et al., 2003; Hopkins, 2015; Shaw, 2007). The research herein was informed by the Australian Values Education Program (DEEWR, 2008; DEST, 2006; Lovat et al., 2009).

The Australian Values Education Program The promotion, understanding, and importance of values within schools has become of increasing interest in the Australian context, with schools being given government direction around their responsibility for developing the whole child through a student’s interpersonal skills, citizenship, positive relationships, and overall socialemotional learning (SEL). This focus has been articulated through policy, within the curriculum and support programs, guided most recently by the Australia-wide focus across states, territories, and educational sectors to form agreements about the goals of education, such as the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council on Education, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Council of Australian Governments, 2019). In these ministerial documents, the purpose of schooling is clearly articulated as going beyond the traditional learning of content and skills, such as literacy and numeracy, to being values-rich and capable of developing the social-emotional capabilities and wellbeing of students: Our education system must do more than this – it must also prepare young people to thrive in a time of rapid social and technological change, and complex environmental, social and economic challenges. Education plays a vital role in promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians, and in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion. (Council of Australian Governments, 2019, p. 2)

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This educational policy focus in Australia focuses on ensuring that schools educate the whole child has been driving research agendas within the domains of student wellbeing, school climate and values education, as educational leadership and management practices have increasingly looked to promote an environment where teaching, learning, and wellbeing are maximized. Lovat and Toomey (2009) originally introduced the concept of “wellbeing pedagogy” in Australia, highlighting the power of explicitly understanding the interconnection between values education and quality teaching in schools in enhancing the teaching and learning environment. Understanding the critical role of the teacher within a wellbeing pedagogy framework asserts that effective teachers do more than manage the technical, procedural, and administrational components of teaching. Effective teachers promote the significant importance of developing learning environments rich in values education principles in maximizing student outcomes. Teachers thereby constitute a powerful influence over school climate by the way they operate within the school (Lovat & Toomey, 2009). Furthermore, within the concept of wellbeing pedagogy, it is argued that teachers have the power to create environments of high interpersonal engagement, strong relationships, emotional safety, belonging, and positive dispositions to learning that create optimal conditions for student learning. Therefore, according to this concept, the role of the teacher is greater than the mere functional one of curriculum delivery to achieve teaching and learning outcomes. By the terms of the concept, teachers also contribute significantly to the development of a student’s character, principally through enriching the values within the culture of the environment (Lovat & Toomey, 2009). Values are explicitly taught in Australian schools both through the implementation of the general capabilities within the Australian Curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, n.d.) and through a raft of available school-based values education and wellbeing programs in local school contexts. A school’s values are often referred to within an evaluation of the school’s culture and can often be seen to guide the social and behavioral norms and experiences within the local context of a school. This explicit focus on values education in building and sustaining school culture and the quality of school life is supported in New South Wales (NSW) Public Schools by the Values in NSW schools policy (NSW Department of Education, 2004) and the Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) initiative (NSW Department of Education, August, 2020). PBL focuses on the core values necessary to teaching positive behavior in all areas of the school, with many primary (Kindergarten to Year 6) and secondary (Year 7 to Year 12) schools in NSW adopting PBL. Most recently, the NSW Department of Education has combined both PBL and RP to be collectively referenced as effective whole-school approaches to developing positive learning environments in schools, through the recently launched 2021 Student behaviour strategy (NSW Department of Education, 2021). This systemic policy, curriculum and local school focus on school climate and RP establishes the context for the current study, which is a comparative case study researching the effect of implementing RP on school climate, which is highly relevant within education in NSW.

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Context of the Case Study The case study herein investigates the implementation of RP across a group of public schools, known as a “learning community” in NSW, Australia. These schools form a group that is linked on the basis of geographical zones for student enrolment and includes one comprehensive high school, seven primary schools, and one specialist behavior school, all located within a low socio-economic, regional area. Students from the seven primary schools are locally zoned to attend the high school. The specialist behavior school within the participant group of schools is a district resource, where student enrolment is managed through a specialized panel placement process. Therefore, students from surrounding schools outside this local community group can apply to attend this specialized behavior support school, based on students having a high level of behavioral need. The group of schools within the study simultaneously implemented the RP framework and philosophy across the learning community. Implementation of RP commenced in 2012, when all staff in the learning community were trained in RP by Terry O’Connell, one of the original founders of RP known worldwide in the field. During the three-year period of the study (2013–2015), all schools took a locally developed approach to implementation in their own schools after the initial training occurred, with a learning community steering committee formed to assist the leadership of the program across the community over the implementation phase. The concept for the simultaneous, learning community-wide implementation of RP across these schools was initially developed by the school counsellor working across all the schools in 2012. It was endorsed collectively by the eight school leaders (school principals) who committed to implementing it within their own schools through the development of a shared vision. The shared vision and strategic plan for the implementation of RP was promoted as constituting a strategy for cultural change in the schools and across the learning community known as “A Framework for All.” As a part of the promotion and vision for “A Framework for All,” the collective motto was developed and promoted as RP being a framework for everyone to “change the DNA” of the community. This vision was aligned as the strategic goal for all the schools and promoted in the learning community. The use of the word DNA in this context represented the original idea of changing the fundamental make-up of the community in the way relationships exist, with many parts of the learning community representing a low socio-economic demographic and experiencing challenges in their relationships. Therefore, the school counsellor and school leaders believed that implementing RP would be a positive approach to addressing many of the challenges of schooling in this low socio-economic demographic and aligning a common framework and ethos for relationships in the learning community. The RP vision in the eight schools aimed to empower the community in developing positive relationships between students and among staff, and thereby improving the climate in each school. Through embedding an inclusive, relational, values-rich, and shared communication framework based on the principles of RP, the goal was to support harmonious relationships and Australian values in all of the schools.

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At the time of developing this vision, the core values being actively promoted within these schools through the schools’ PBL initiatives were common and aligned, including the shared values of respect, responsibility, and cooperation. At the time, within all the schools, PBL was a strongly endorsed and supported values-based initiative of the NSW Department of Education. Ultimately, the vision was geared towards improving school climate by building positive and harmonious relationships and strengthening values. This focus on harmonious relationships and improved school climate was intended to improve student wellbeing, engagement, positive behavior, and positive affect between students and teachers.

Rationale for the Study While existing research has established the importance of student wellbeing, values education, and teacher-student relationships in improving student outcomes (Hattie, 2003; Hepburn & Beamish, 2019; Hopson et al., 2014; Lovat et al., 2011; Lovat & Toomey, 2009), there is a need to explore how a specific framework such as RP can be effectively implemented in schools to enhance the school environment. The factors of interest in this study that may enhance student and teacher perceptions of the school climate were identified from the literature to explore changes over time in school climate while RP was being implemented. The school climate dimensions of interest within the study are from the broad school climate categories identified within the literature including safety, teaching and learning, interpersonal relationships, the institutional environment, and professional relationships among staff. The overall influence that the implementation of RP can have on these school climate dimensions is of specific interest to the case study. It is also hoped that the findings from this investigation about the relationship between school climate and RP will assist other school communities to understand the crucial elements that contribute to school climate and school cultural change for the improvement of both affective and cognitive outcomes for students.

Research Objectives The main research objective of the study was to investigate the implementation of RP in a learning community and measure the influence of RP on specific school climate dimensions over 3 years. Contributions to the field of knowledge about school-based implementation approaches to RP were intended.

Research Questions The study aimed to explore student and teacher perceptions of school climate during the implementation of RP between 2013 and 2015. The research questions were:

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1. How does the implementation of the Restorative Practices framework influence student perceptions of school climate? 2. How does the implementation of the Restorative Practices framework influence teacher perceptions of school climate? 3. What are the implications of the findings for Restorative Practices in schools?

Methodology This study employed a comparative case study approach, with survey data collected from students, teachers, and school principals (school leaders). The mixed-methods sequential explanatory design approach was used, surveying school climate on a four-point Likert scale and using open-ended questions for teachers over a three-year time-period. Additionally, a semi-structured interview of principals was conducted at the conclusion of the study in order to evaluate trends over the three-year time period. The data were analyzed and reported, separating the results into two parts. First, the combined school learning community data, including data for all eight schools were analyzed. Second, four of the eight schools were selected as cases of interest and these are presented here as a comparative case study, to help explain the findings from the learning community analysis.

Results The students, teachers, and principals who participated in the current study were from a learning community in a regional area of NSW, Australia. All eight schools were NSW Public Schools, including one high school, one specialized behavioral support center and six primary schools. These schools form a learning community, where students from the six primary schools transition to the high school after Year 6, linked together by their geographical zones for school enrolment and partnerships in learning across a Kindergarten (aged 5 years) to Year 12 (aged 18 years) continuum of a students’ education. These eight schools implemented RP in their respective schools commencing in 2012. Therefore, the data collected in Year 1 of the study (2013) was at the end of the first year of implementation. The schools were all similar in socio-economic demographic, geographically close together, and united by the learning community connection and partnerships they formed. The student sample size in the learning community of all eight schools across the three-year research period of 2013–2015 was n ¼ 1483. The teacher sample size across the three-year research period of 2013–2015 was n ¼ 218. The total number of teachers who responded to the teacher open-ended questions for 2014 was 46 and in 2015 it was 41. Half of the school principals responded to the semi-structured interview in 2018. Based on the absence of scoring advice, scales, or detailed supporting advice about the construct dimensions being measured by the original survey items, the literature was used to identify the school climate dimensions of interest to this study.

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The National School Climate Center’s (NSCC) commonly referenced dimensions of school climate were chosen for this purpose. The NSCC’s dimensions of school climate are widely referenced in the literature as robust (Cohen et al., 2013; Hopson et al., 2014; Kutsyuruba et al., 2015; Maxwell et al., 2017; Rudasill et al., 2018; Thapa et al., 2013; Voight & Nation, 2016; Wang & Degol, 2016) and informed the analysis of the results within this study. From the NSCC’s (2020) 14 Dimensions of school climate measured by the comprehensive school climate inventory (The National School Climate Center, 26 April 2021) six dimensions were selected to match the items in the student survey and seven dimensions were selected for teachers. Restorative Practice, the intervention in the study, was considered to form its own factor and was based on three researcher developed questionnaire items. For students, the school climate dimensions included were: Engagement; School Connectedness; Peer Relationships; Teacher-Student Relationships; Rules and Norms; and Support for Learning, with the addition of Restorative Practice. For staff, the school climate dimensions included were: Engagement; School Connectedness; Student Social Support (Peer Relationships); Professional Relationships (Staff Only); Teacher-Student Relationships; Rules and Norms; and Support for Learning, with the addition of Restorative Practice. Four of the eight schools were selected for the comparative case study exploration based on their sample size and the completeness of their data sets. Student and staff data were analyzed from descriptive statistics, regression, and correlations to render insights regarding trends over time. The use of contextual information from teacher comments from the open-ended survey questions in Year 2 (2014) and Year 3 (2015) was incorporated in these insights, along with school principal interview comments, where available. The correlation analysis for student and teacher data in all schools indicated that Restorative Practice had the potential to improve all of the school climate dimensions for students and teachers. However, this potential was not realized in all cases and the success or failure of the RP implementation appeared, in some part, to be linked to school leadership. The results revealed that three of the four case study comparative schools had a school principal leadership change and these schools generally reflected poor results in most of the school climate dimensions, indicating that an improvement in overall school climate did not consistently occur in these three schools (Schools 1, 2 and 7). Within School 1, 2 and 7 there was evidence of an inconsistent implementation and a failure to build knowledge about RP after Year 1, reflected in the teacher and principal comments. School 6 was the exception to this, where improvement in school climate was found, where the principal leadership remained the same throughout the study, and where there was evidence of consistent implementation and knowledge about RP. Within School 1, all six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice declined over the study for students, which was statistically significant for five of the school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice. For teachers, there was no statistically significant change in any of the seven school climate dimensions or Restorative Practice.

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A similar trend was observed in School 2, where all six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice declined over the study for students. The decline was statistically significant for five of the six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice. For teachers, there was no statistically significant change in any of the seven school climate dimensions or Restorative Practice. Within School 7 for students, four of the six school climate dimensions improved over the study for students, which was a statistically significant improvement for three of these school climate dimensions. Two of the six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice declined over the study for students. There was no statistically significant change in all seven of the school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice for teachers. In contrast, within School 6, all six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice improved over the study for students. This improvement was statistically significant for Restorative Practice and for two of the school climate dimensions (School Connectedness and Rules and Norms). Although there was no statistically significant change in any of the seven school climate dimensions or Restorative Practice for teachers, the statistically significant improvement for students reported School Connectedness, Rules and Norms, and Restorative Practice indicated that with successful implementation, Restorative Practices has the potential to improve school climate. Within all four of the case study schools, varying degrees of positive correlation were reported between the school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice for both students and teachers. As was found within the learning community data, moderate and strong correlations suggested that Restorative Practice had the potential to improve all of the school climate dimensions. The strongest positive correlations measured within the case study schools from student data were with Student-Teacher Relationships and Support for Learning (r ¼ 0.77), School Connectedness (r ¼ 0.72), and Engagement (r ¼ 0.71), identifying the significant importance of relationships in schools to engage students and the importance of creating learning environments where students feel a strong sense of belonging and connectedness to school. When considering the teacher and principal comments about the implementation and potential impact of RP, it is evident that RP was known to be influencing aspects of positive school climate through improving relationships and behavior, as reflected in comments from one teacher: “My teaching practice has changed based on students knowing the Restorative Practice and being able to work their issues out. Allows me to supervise rather than be directly involved. This also changes student behaviour.” The regression analyses for the learning community results and for six of the eight schools indicated that from the student’s perspective Restorative Practice and the school climate dimensions had declined over the 3 years, while teachers perceived no change in Restorative Practice or school climate. However, moderate correlations of Restorative Practice with the school climate dimensions were found for both the learning community and individual school data. These findings suggest that although positive effects on school climate were not widely observed in all schools in the current study, apart from one school (School 6), Restorative Practice appears to have the potential to support school climate improvement.

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One reason why School 6 achieved greater success with the RP intervention appeared to be consistency in school leadership and consistency among the school staff in implementing the program. The word “consistency” came up repeatedly within the teacher open-ended responses from most schools in Year 2 (2014) and Year 3 (2015). The teachers generally reported that the approach seemed to be having a good effect on student behavior and school climate when the program commenced, but because the RP practices were not consistently applied all the time or by all staff then the effects started to wane. The principal of School 1 noted they felt that the RP program was “positive and supportive”; however, the implementation in his school was hampered by inconsistencies in practices across the school.

Discussion Results from both the learning community and comparative case study investigation over time indicates that the RP implementation approach taken in each school was contextually unique and that the degree of both the “whole school” and “whole community” approach taken did not meet the original vision established by the eight school principals in 2012 to implement “A Framework for All.” The concept of a “whole school” implementation of any program or intervention and how consistency is reached in a school context is highly problematic, with the word consistency being defined by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole; harmony of conduct or practice with[in] a profession” (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, n.d.-a). Gregory et al. (2020) proposed a variety of mis-implementation models of RP explored in the literature review, and it could be stated that this case study found elements of mis-implementation in most of the schools. Examples of these mis-implementation indicators consistently evidenced within the schools included poor administrative support for RP; poor school-wide buy-in and distributed leadership; and minimal on-going professional development. In consideration of the school principal (school leader) turn-over alone, the consistency issue can be somewhat resolved by stating that a significant change in principal leadership across six of the eight schools may account for a large amount of this perceived issue with implementation consistency. This absence of leadership consistency is critical to understanding the comparative case study findings within. Of additional significance is that the perceived consistency issue regarding the RP implementation approach taken in many teacher comments, did not occur for School 6, making this a case of particular interest in the results. School 6 is viewed as the school where the most consistent approach to RP implementation occurred and where the school principal remained in the substantive role for the duration of the study and strongly supported RP as an ideology in their school. Results in both the learning community and individual schools varied between student and teacher participant groups, indicating the unique lenses the adult versus

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child perspective provides to the dimensions of school climate. The way students versus adults perceive the school environment and the influence of RP was therefore found to be unique.

Conclusion The study aimed to investigate the implementation of RP in a learning community comprising eight schools in a regional area of New South Wales, Australia. Specifically of interest was the influence of the implementation of RP on the multidimensional construct of school climate measured in each school over 3 years. It was hypothesized that if RP was successfully implemented within a school, then the school climate would improve. This was hypothesized because RP was ultimately agreed upon to represent an effective approach to explicitly focusing on developing, sustaining, and maintaining healthy relationships, which would thereby improve student and staff perceptions of the targeted dimensions of school climate. The learning community results showed that students felt the school climate had deteriorated significantly after the first year of the RP implementation. In addition, teachers reported no change in the school climate. This same finding was reflected in three of the four case study schools. Across all schools and within individual cases, correlations of Restorative Practice with the six school climate dimensions measured for students and the seven school climate dimensions measured for teachers ranged from weak to strong, indicating that RP had the potential to improve all school climate measures had RP been successfully implemented. In both the student and teacher data Restorative Practice had the strongest correlations with the school climate dimensions of Teacher-Student Relationships, Support for Learning, School Connectedness, and Engagement. This finding suggests that RP could be effective in establishing more harmonious relationships between students and staff, and in creating engaging and supportive learning environments where students feel connected. Within School 6, where implementation was deemed successful, improvement was reported over time for all six school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice for students. The improvements were statistically significant for School Connectedness, Rules and Norms, and Restorative Practice. Similarly, improvement was reported over time for all seven school climate dimensions and Restorative Practice for teachers, however none were significant. The overarching finding was made that RP has the potential to support school climate improvement when RP is understood as encompassing all elements of both surface and deep culture, and where implementation is effective. Implementation where RP is embedded as a holistic approach to school life, aligned to RP principles, core values, behaviors, practices, pedagogy, and systems within a wellbeing pedagogical approach is critical to realizing any potential improvements in school climate or culture. This is all highly reflective of the need for schools to understand that RP is an ideology that requires deep cultural understanding and buy-in, it is not a “program.”

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Four Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Application to the Four Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Meant by Ethics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Meant by Culture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Relativism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Culture and the Need for Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethics Within This Cultural Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Application to Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the experiences of a values education intervention in four clusters of schools that were part of the Australian Values Education Program. Three of the clusters were situated entirely in South Australia. The fourth included schools from Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Each cluster had its own particular ethos and pursued the aims of the project in an individual way. The chapter will recount the experiences and the University Advisor’s reflections, employing a Habermasian lens. Keywords

Values education · Ethical dilemma · Sociability · Habermas

R. Crotty (*) University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_41

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Introduction This chapter and its reflections have developed from the experience of dealing, as the University Associate Network representative, with four clusters of schools engaged in the Values Education Good Practice Schools Stage 2 (see DEEWR, 2008). Three of the clusters, the Yorke Peninsula, the Edmund Rice Ministries, and Sea and Vales were situated within the confines of South Australia. The Cross Borders cluster was coordinated from Victor Harbor but included schools from Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Each cluster had its own particular ethos and pursued the aims of the project in an individual way.

The Four Clusters The Yorke Peninsula cluster, consisting of three primary rural schools, chose sustainability as the mainstay of their project. They linked particular values, chosen by the school community, with sustainable activity and then further linked these values to specific sites and specific elements of the school curriculum. When it came to practice, the three schools in the cluster paralleled a project promoted by Australia Zoo called “Wildlife Warriors.” Students had been encouraged by the Zoo project to identify as Warriors in their role as protectors of wildlife. On this basis, the cluster constructed the idea of “Heroes for Seven Generations.” This concept was intended to give the student cohort, by identifying themselves not only with the present but also with the future, a sense of empowerment to (a) construct personal values, (b) to have a vision and goal beyond themselves, and (c) to look beyond immediate needs and interests. The values associated with this project were presented to the students as reaching out into the broader local community where many of the students will eventually live and find employment. One of the objectives is that in the vision for the Yorke Peninsula community, the students could be a powerful agent for change. They could make a difference in the community. In this way, strong links have been forged within the three school communities and also between the individual schools and the local communities that surrounded them. It was this sense of self-identification and this ability to project themselves into a future that they could affect that I found most remarkable. A second cluster had its lead school at Seaford, on the outskirts of urban Adelaide. This Sea and Vales cluster consisted of five schools in the local area. Their specific project has enabled the students to forge links with the community outside the school by either becoming involved in environmental sustainability or by becoming involved in some aspect of citizenship. In this way, the individual students have developed a personal moral code and achieved a standard of social conscience and responsibility. The teaching staff, the student body and the local community have been linked into the project. The students have been allowed to choose their own specific values by discussion and they came up with the following: Fair Go, Care and Compassion, Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, Honesty and Trustworthiness, Freedom, Doing Your Best,

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Understanding, Tolerance, and Inclusion. The students also brainstormed ideas to come up with sustainable actions that related to these values. The basis for the project consisted, in the main, of partnerships. The Project had begun with the teachers who underwent professional development that would enable them to develop and deliver a curriculum where values were the actual framework for the students’ learning experiences. This professional development had been shown to affect curriculum design and teaching practices in the schoolroom. This changed schoolroom environment affected student behavior and reaction to the teaching experience. Teachers and students together were able to look beyond the school to the wider community with an enhanced sense of social responsibility. A series of focus groups were held to gain some evidence relating to this change. The students’ understanding of values was pursued by questioning them on the value of Respect. Each focus group was able to describe, first of all by positive examples, what was meant by having a value of Respect as a key requirement. They were also able to respond negatively by describing what they would call disrespectful behavior. In the main the activities described turned out to be personal – allowing others to speak and express opinions even if they were not mainstream, helping people when in need, not invading personal property. Three of the cohorts extended the list of actions under the value of Respect to acceptance of ethnic difference. This seemed to be an advanced awareness of respectfulness and demonstrated higher knowledge than would be expected prior to teenage years. The Cross Borders cluster included disparate schools across Australia, linked by the characteristic of remoteness. The lead school was at Victor Harbor, a country town south of Adelaide. Other schools were Birdwood High, also on the outer fringes of Adelaide, Spearwood Primary School in Western Australia, Chrysalis Montessori School also in Western Australia, and Mataranka Primary School in the Northern Territory. The latter school was by far the most remote. There has been very astute interaction between the teaching of values and a related Project across the cluster. Environmental studies was chosen as the instrument for delivery of values education and formed the heart of the curriculum. The technical possibility of linking these remote schools to achieve anything like a comparable project was achieved by IT. Two programs in particular, Centra and Moodle were used. The former enabled teachers and students to speak synchronously and be visible to each other. The latter enabled the participants to communicate interactively. There are a number of specific examples that could demonstrate the learning that was achieved. An example from Birdwood involved a regular home economics lesson in making a fruit salad. In the course of this curriculum, the students were asked to investigate the source of the strawberries and then consider the carbon footprint that was made to bring out-of-season produce to their kitchen and what possible alternatives might be considered. One of the teachers spoke to them about the school vegetable garden which ran on sustainable principles. Student discussion turned to “When you teach, you teach yourself!” Teachers involved in this teaching realized that they were models and they were transmitting values by modelling. Teachers and students were unexpectedly caught up in a quite new educational venture.

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At Mataranka students learnt ecology through their construction of a “Home Sweet Home” habitat for turtles. As soon as the turtles were removed from a self-sustaining system, however, it was only too clear that humans needed to intervene to reassert the functions of the environment. The students quickly realized that this sustaining of the environment was complicated and ongoing, with a delicate balance in play. Their comments showed that they were well aware of the complexity of dealing with nature. Still with this cluster, one of the best examples of how a project in values education can move out of its original setting and forge wider relationships involved work at Spearwood on constructing a frog pond. The original micro-project ended in disaster when, over a holiday period, the pool dried up and the frogs died. The students were shocked. The educational challenge was to decide what would be needed to sustain this ecosystem. Year 6 students learned from their previous setback that plants and living creatures need to suit environments. Even native plants need time to establish before they can manage on their own. From this experience they learned not only responsibility, but also the value of resilience. They also decided to decorate the area with a mural collaboratively planned with assistance from an Aboriginal elder and suddenly the project took on an even wider value. It is clear that what was achieved went far beyond environmental studies and knowledge of science. The students were playing with responsibility and resilience and doing so at high level of achievement. In fact, the teachers were surprised by the knowledge that emanated from the project. What has been achieved within the Edmund Rice Ministries cluster (a group of three secondary, single-sex Christian Brothers colleges) relative to the values education project does not make sense unless it is seen as constructed on an earlier Service Learning context and its culture of promoting justice and charity. Service Learning within the Cluster has been described thus: The boys (the schools involved are single sex) are encouraged to assist and stand in solidarity with the poor and marginalized in our world, and to be aware of and respond to social justice issues. (Lynne Moten, Service Learning Coordinator, Rostrevor College)

The Service Learning has been situated as an outreach for the Religious Education and Retreat programs within the schools. By Year 11 the students have been required to complete 50 h of service within a wide variety of charitable organizations. Every second year, staff and students travel to India to be very practically involved in quite arduous social work. The project has made use of already existing partnerships within the three schools making up the cluster. The grant for values education was used to provide professional development and time for Middle School staff to write specific units of work relative to values education. This writing was done in the areas of Social Studies, English, and Religious Education. The intention was that, once a small group of teachers has been initiated into the project, they and the curriculum outcomes they produced would be used to bring about change in the wider school community. The good practice achievement of this cluster is that the values framework has been utilized in such a way as to link the Service Learning framework and the curriculum.

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It seemed to me as an external observer that the intention was to rewrite curriculum in a particular way. I will refer to special items in the curriculum-writing program. The most engaging curriculum item was a simulated sweatshop at one of the schools. A study of overseas sweatshops led to the re-creation of an actual location where sports materials were supposedly manufactured under conditions that could only be classified as extremely unethical. The interaction between students and this simulated environment generated a knowledge of improper practice. There was a dilemma, however: if this sweatshop was not available, then many people would have absolutely no access to necessary pay. The students were asked: What can be done? As with most ethical dilemmas, the students contemplated answers that pushed them beyond their comfort zones. Can a person in a first world country prop up a system that takes advantage of the poor while providing those very poor with the minimum to live? They proposed answers that once they had not thought feasible. What struck me in the four clusters, with all of which I had close contact, was that the students were developing their own particular knowledge. I compared this to the knowledge that I had acquired in my own schooling and to the knowledge that I had become acquainted with as an educationist in a variety of classrooms. I became aware of a critical mode of thinking that vigorously challenged socialization that I had not noticed in either of these other contexts. I, therefore, set out to find a framework to describe this knowledge.

Human Knowledge What is meant by human knowledge? That question is at the hub of this enquiry. At this point, I would like to introduce the theoretical subtlety of Jurgen Habermas and his threefold typology of human knowledge (1972, 1974, 1984, 1987 and 1990). Habermas set out to realign the consciousness of human agents. His epistemology claimed that humans can construct reality by means of knowledge-guiding interests. Basically, he wanted to demonstrate that all knowledge is interest-bound and people can, by critical enquiry, come to see whose interests are being served. Humans constitute what is “real” for them, and organize their experience in terms of these knowledge-guiding interests. In other words, knowledge, for Habermas, is directly and intimately related to what we intend to do with that knowledge. We humans are caught up with the need to survive and thrive in our daily existence. We must, first of all, produce from nature whatever is required for physical life and, in so doing, we must come to predict, control and manipulate the environment. This is a technical interest or disposition. It constitutes that body of knowledge that will keep production of necessities under technical control. It is the sort of knowledge that is embedded in technologies and work. The technical interest gives rise to a range of empirical-analytical sciences. But, to survive and thrive requires not only the practical necessities of life. Humans need also to communicate, and they can do so only if there are agreed symbols to guide inter-subjective understanding. This is the second knowledge-

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guiding interest: It is focused on the cultural and social reality that surrounds us like a web surrounding a spider. This interest involves the knowledge embedded in social devices such as language, cultural symbols and social structures. Historical and hermeneutical sciences result from this interest. But Habermas emphasizes a third interest, which is emancipatory. This knowledge-guiding interest is the human capacity to be self-reflective and critical. It brings about a knowledge that informs human responsibility. The emancipatory interest gives rise to a conscious self-reflection which becomes aware of the ideologies that influence humans; it offers freedom that can acknowledge the relations of dependence and allow the person to make choices. The technical and the communicative interests are focused on the present and the past. The emancipatory interest is focused on the future, an imagined future. It is only this focus on the future which gives full meaning to the technical and communicative interests. The third knowledge-guiding interest gives rise to the critical sciences. It is precisely by imagining a future and taking steps to achieve the imagined future that humans can break out of the cultural system into which they have been socialized. The cultural condition can be circumvented. This is a revolutionary thought and because of it Habermas was considered by some contemporaries to be threatening the very structure of society. He was promoting the need for drastically original thought that could subvert the prevailing culture. Taken alone, the first two interests are committed to maintaining the status quo. In contrast, Habermas stressed that humans will only achieve real freedom if their interests are informed by the emancipatory interest. He took psychoanalysis as a model of critical knowledge. Mental patients are assisted in psychoanalysis to reconstruct their life history. Patients review their life histories and become aware of unconscious desires at work in them, distorted perceptions and unhealthy dependencies. Critical knowledge allows the thinker to perceive the interests that are being served. Just as the patient, assisted by the psychoanalyst, engages with a future no longer dominated by the past, so too the critical thinker finds an emancipation in the imagined future. Ultimately, self-reflection on personal behaviors, and on those social institutions within which such behaviors take place, will give rise to modification of culture. I consider this to be a matter of vital importance.

Application to the Four Clusters In the four examples of values education, I have found that the third Habermasian interest, the emancipatory interest, has been fostered. This knowledge-guiding interest concerns the human capacity to be self-reflective and self-determining. The knowledge that is produced by interaction with the interest informs human responsibility. The self-reflection makes the individual aware of those ideologies that influence humans and it offers a way for the individual to deal with them. It seems

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obvious to me that in the four clusters this particular mode of knowledge is shared by teachers and students. For example, the Yorke Peninsula students were aware of how they themselves were part of the future and what they did now, with the attitudes that they presently possessed, would affect that future. The acknowledgement by the Seaford students in their focus groups that the value of Respect should be applied to ethnic difference shows a deep awareness of the ideology of prejudice and differentiation. Within the Cross Borders cluster, the statement by Birdwood High students that “when you teach, you teach yourself” upturns the normally accepted classroom status. Students have shown deep self-reflection. The Mataranka and Spearwood experiences with human interference in natural ecosystems have bred the same sort of deep reflection with outstanding results. Finally, the Edmund Rice Ministries cluster’s construction of the sweatshop has brought about a knowledge of improper practice which then gave rise to an ethical dilemma of profound proportion. Can an improper practice be supported because it has a good consequence (minimal return for the desperately poor)? In short, habits of self-reflection have been fostered, ideologies have been recognized, and higher order thinking has been taking place. This consideration of what is happening in classrooms has raised an ethical question. Do we as educators have a right to enable young students to modify culture? The new knowledge in which the teachers and students are involved can be classified as dangerous. The student and the teacher have been enabled to break out of any traditional schooling paradigm. This means that a school that has successfully embraced values education could well be at odds with the society that surrounds it, with the educational paradigm into which it is supposed to fit. There is a prima facie case that this raises an ethical issue and that values education is involved in an ethical dilemma since it disturbs the cultural relationship of the school community and the other attendant societal groups. This ethical question links the two contested areas of ethics and culture. I will now endeavor to deal with each in turn (see Crotty, 2007).

What Is Meant by Ethics? Ethics is the human endeavor to determine whether human actions and intentions can be adjudged good or bad, right or wrong. It defines a system that informs humans as to what is right or wrong in a particular situation. Ethical theory and ethical reasoning have subsequently developed because it is not always clear how a human should rightly respond in a particular situation, how the human should be informed. Historically in the western world, there have been three standard approaches to ethical reasoning. First, there is consequentialism. Consequentialism takes regard of the consequences that will follow from making a certain response to a human situation. Its basic premise is that the consequences of a particular human response determine the morality of that response.

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An important subcategory of consequentialism has been called utilitarianism. This theory goes one step further and holds that consequences that promote human welfare are ethically preferable to those that do not do so, and those consequences that promote welfare more are ethically preferable to those that do not maximize welfare. Following from this, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principle (as refined by John Stuart Mill) was that so long as people do not interfere with the freedom and happiness of others they should be allowed to think and do as they like. Another approach has been to focus on the duties and obligations of those who perform human actions. These are called deontological theories. Immanuel Kant held to the principle of unconditional respect for other people, treating people not as means to an end, but as ends in themselves. Kantians struggle to do what duty demands as against what the human spirit wants to do. Yet, another approach has been called virtue ethics, which concentrates on the particular qualities of the person involved in making a human decision as to what is right and what is wrong. A response is deemed good and right if it is what a hypothetical good person would normally do. The virtue ethicist, therefore, must identify those virtues which good people should possess if they are to live fulfilling lives. Each of these broad approaches has its problems. How does the ethicist who follows consequentialism or utilitarianism decide on the relative value where there is more than one consequence of an action? The decision maker’s duties and obligations, given precedence by the deontologist, can themselves sometimes seem to be in conflict. And who decides the necessary virtues of the morally upright person for the virtue ethicist? The three approaches seem to hang in the air, each without a foundation. I would like to take another approach and begin by the claim, later to be defended, that human life is inextricably dominated by human culture. Human culture is similar to a software program within a computer. It directs the output of the hard-wired computer. If a glitch develops within the software, then inevitably the output is skewed. So, it is with human culture. I will now develop my thinking on culture further.

What Is Meant by Culture? Without controversy, I understand culture to mean the total shared way of life of any given human group; substantially, culture is composed of that group’s modes of thinking, acting, feeling, and valuing. Perhaps more controversially I see culture as a human construct, a system of symbols. It is not something static; having been constructed, it develops and adapts to its environment, just as the human group, within which it has its being, develops and adapts to a changing physical environment. The development and adaptation of a culture and the development and adaptation of its attendant human group are not separate issues. Without human beings there could be no culture; development and adaptation of culture and humans happens synchronically.

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Some anthropologists would even claim that without culture there would be no human beings; the very notion of being human requires being programed by culture (see Geertz, 1973, Chap. 2). Why should this be so? While other animals, to a large extent, have their behavioral patterns predetermined by their genetic code, the behavior of human beings is regulated genetically to a far less extent. The cat, for example, does not need to be taught its various miaows. Instinctively it acquires a range of recognizable utterances that serve to express contentment, intention to hunt, and so forth. The cat may learn a small range of behaviors and values from its mother and companions but, to a great extent, these are learned by instinct. The human baby is the opposite. It does have a few instincts (the instinct to eat by sucking, to grasp objects with the hand), but most behavior and values are learned. Because of this need to learn, humans have a need to put a construction on those events in which they are involved and they do so by means of this system of symbols that is a culture. They need to construct reality, to achieve order; culture enables them to do so. This dependence on culture has been claimed to be species-specific (Lumsden & Wilson, 1981); as stated above, other animals are not so dependent on learned culture to find order in everyday living. Perhaps, some would argue, humans are actually directed by their genetic make-up to find this order through culture.

Cultural Relativism Hence, looking across the contemporary world we can review such different cultures as Chinese, Japanese, European, and Aboriginal Australian – even granted that there are many sub-variants within each of these. Looking back in time, we can reconstruct, from texts and artefacts, ancient Greek culture, ancient Mesopotamian culture, and ancient Celtic culture. They are different. Are they real? Are there levels of validity in them? Are they comparable? Common, universal characteristics have been confidently identified as existing in all cultural systems (Kluckhohn, 1953, pp. 507–523). For instance, even in the 1970s Melvin Spiro (1978) was able to identify “invariant dispositions and orientations” which stemmed, he claimed, from “pan-human biological and cultural constants” (pp. 330–360). He cited abhorrence of incest, rejection of murder, and gregariousness as examples of these universal cultural traits. On the basis of “invariant dispositions and orientations” he was able to postulate “a universal human nature” underlying all human cultures (pp. 349–50). Human cultures derived their reality and validity by reference to this universal human nature. However, there are other scholars who hold that any such perception of a universal human nature is illusory. Every culture, they maintain, is unique, formed within the parameters of the life experience of a particular group and variously shaped by non-recurrent historical events. Each element of a culture can, therefore, only be judged by what it contributes to the totality of that culture. A particular form of government (which is a cultural artefact), such as ancient Greek democracy, cannot meaningfully be compared to a similar form of democracy in another culture, such as Australian democracy; each cultural element only has meaning within the

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total cultural framework of its own group. No cultural element within one cultural system can be compared, on this argument, with what might seem to be a similar cultural element in another cultural system. Such complete cultural relativism has, of course, its own philosophical difficulties (see Geertz, 1984). A variant, more moderate relativism has been proposed and deserves attention. The case could be put that while the behavior patterns of animals are for the most part genetically determined and the genetic code orders their activity within a narrow range of variation, human beings are genetically endowed with very general response capacities. These are not the cultural universals proposed above by Spiro and others; they are response capacities that allow humans to learn and to adapt within broad ranges of activity. These would be similar to the list of “innate modules of the human mind” identified by Steven Pinker (1994), which he also calls “families of instincts.” Pinker (1994) writes, for example about language: Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term “instinct.” It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs. (p. 18)

In this sense, we have an innate response capacity or “instinct” to speak, but our capacity to speak English, for example, is culturally determined. Perhaps this principle can be applied to the whole of culture: Response capacity is determined and controlled by the biological species; how this capacity will be activated and manifest itself will normally depend upon the culture into which the individual has been socialized. However, a hypothetical human being with capacities simpliciter would be an incomplete animal; it is culture that completes the human being by activating these capacities in a number of quite specific ways. Following this line of thought, culture would be “learned” in a way analogous to language: “Culture” refers to the process whereby particular kinds of learning contagiously spread from person to person in a group and minds become coordinated into shared patterns, just as “a language” or “a dialect” refers to the process whereby the different speakers in a group acquire highly similar mental grammars. (Pinker, 1994, p. 411)

Moderate relativism does not require its followers to be uncritical of their own learned culture or even of alien cultures. However, in the case of alien cultures, care must be taken. For a critique of an alien culture to be valid, a cultural proposition must be evaluated within its own cultural framework and context, just as it could be critiqued spontaneously by adherents within their own cultural parameters. In other words, when critiquing an alien culture, the canons of evidence and epistemology proper to that particular cultural discourse need to be respected (Hanson, 1979).

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Culture and the Need for Order What does culture, understood in the way proposed, offer to the human being? The human individual has a need for order. To make sense of the universe, self and others, the individual within the group requires order in the sense of a construction of meaning, a direction, a purpose. All cultural activity takes place in the context of the construction of a cultural “world” of meaning. These constructed worlds, shaped according to perhaps significantly different configurations of values, power relationships and knowledge, achieve viability because they are supported by a group which, by its general acceptance, gives plausibility to such constructed worlds. The supportive group commits itself to its “world” and defines its own roles and identities vis-à-vis it. Culture, every enduring culture, offers this advantage to its adherents. To find meaning and direction, individuals and groups accept and then adapt themselves to this cultural heritage of a constructed world. When the group has achieved meaning and direction, it will struggle to retain its cultural heritage with the same tenacity as an individual displays in maintaining personal, physical life. Hence, there is always a strong element of adherence and continuity in culture, together with a less utilized capacity to adapt and change. It is the universal need for order (which can now be defined as the most tenacious of all general response capacities) together with other human capacities that give rise to the impression of so-called cultural traits or universals. The general response capacities of the human group are activated and directed in quite specific and indeed idiosyncratic ways by a particular culture. Because of these two factors, general response capacities and idiosyncratic activation, there will be both similarity and diversity when any two human cultures are compared.

Ethics Within This Cultural Framework Returning to the question of ethics, I want to hone in on the central idea that human culture exists to provide order or meaning in human affairs. I now identify ethics (still definable as a system of principles by which human actions and intentions can be adjudged good or bad, right or wrong) with the system of principles that determine how a particular person can achieve what is ordered in human affairs and avoid what is disordered in human affairs. For the purposes of this exercise, I am going to pretend that humans live their lives in separate groups, each with their own everyday culture. That is never or rarely the case in reality. To achieve order in everyday life, humans must marshal thinking, acting, feeling, and valuing towards that end, ensuring that they think, act, feel, and value in such a way as to bring their ordered life in line with an ordered community. Such a human being, I now maintain, is an ethical one. The person whose thinking, acting, feeling, and valuing are disordered is out of line with the ordered community; that person would be unethical. A human culture, contemporary (e.g., Chinese culture) or in the past (e.g., ancient Mesopotamian culture) has been refined over time to achieve this

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end – to bring ordered individuals in line with an ordered community. Cultures that endure over a length of time have endured precisely because of their capacity to achieve such a purpose. In this light, the three broad theoretical approaches to ethics as mentioned above begin to make sense and, indeed, to coalesce. Consequentialism is based on the output. An ordered individual should live harmoniously within an ordered community; if the consequence of some human thinking, activity, feeling, and valuing is to bring about disorder for the individual or the community, then it is wrong and bad. But how can that disorder be identified? The answer lies within the thinking, activity, feeling, and the valuing patterns of the individual culture. There are general response capacities, but their expression is culturally determined in this particular culture. The ethicist can only decide about consequences for this particular culture, arguing back from particular human patterns of thinking, acting, feeling, and valuing to those general response capacities. Carrying out this work, the ethicist may, in the end, uncover certain constant ethical principles across all or most cultures (“Thou shalt respect human life”; “Thou shalt not kill without due reason”; “Thou shalt protect the weak and helpless”), but these will relate to a variety of actions that could be judged either right or wrong, good or bad. The disparate cultural expressions of this ethical principle may differ markedly from one culture to the next. Hence, in one community, the killing of a convicted murderer will be judged as part of the ordering of the community and fulfilling the ethical dictum “Thou shalt not kill without due reason”; in another community, the same action will be judged as part of the disorder of the community and contrary to the dictum “Thou shalt not kill without due reason.” For both communities, the ethical principle remains constant; its expression differs radically in the two constituencies. The ethicist cannot migrate from one cultural group to another without changing the focus of decision-making on ethical behavior. The second group of theories, the deontological, looks to the duties and obligations of the decision makers. From where do those duties and obligations arise? They too derive from the cultural need for order. They are based not only on the general response capacities, but also on particular expressions of those capacities. We should remember that there are those who would want to say that these general response capacities are genetically determined and no further argument for or against needs to be advanced. In fact, cultural relativism affects any deontological system since the duties and obligations arise from the culturally derived expressions of the response capacities. Kant would undoubtedly disagree. Virtue ethics, as one proponent has put it, declares as immoral what every rightminded person considers to be immoral. But who is this “right-minded person?” This is an appeal to a society as a community of ideas that has a certain cultural/moral foundation. In other words, it is an appeal to an accepted culture: common ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and valuing. But this is dependent on the general response capacity or a particular expression of such a capacity adopted over time by the community. Lord Devlin, who espoused virtue ethics, pointed, as the exemplar of the right-minded person, to “the man in the Clapham omnibus” (Devlin, 1965, p. 15).

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That is fine for defining the culturally determined order within a very particular variant of European culture; it would not solve the ethical dilemmas raised within an Inuit society. In short, the three main approaches to ethical reasoning, each of whose proponents would claim some degree of objectivity for their favorite, end up in a form of comparable relativism once the inevitable cultural ambience is taken into consideration. Consequentialism is based on the recognition of disorder in the cultural system, but that recognition is always relative. Deontological theories are based on particular expressions of response capacities and every one of these is culturally determined. Virtue ethics relies on the “right-minded person,” but this person will always live and act within a relative cultural situation. The three approaches are very similar. They are somewhat different descriptions of the same matter.

Application to Values Education If this conclusion on ethics is accepted, namely that ethics is the maintenance of order within a cultural system, then values education needs to be appraised from an ethical perspective. If, in fact, both in theory and in practice as seen in the discussion of the outcomes from the four clusters above, values education demonstrates that cultural boundaries are questioned and stretched and perhaps even breached, surely there is an ethical issue. Earlier, a conclusion was stated that ultimately selfreflection on personal behaviors, and on those social institutions within which such behaviors take place, will give rise to modification of culture. That is precisely what values education is all about. We have students who are not satisfied with the status quo, who are actually educated not to be satisfied with the status quo or with the cultural condition. They are educated to disturb the existing order, the accepted cultural direction. This requires ethical circumspection. The existence of numerous contemporary cultures means that there is no obligation to maintain any constant cultural definition of order and direction. However, the existence of numerous past, defunct cultures means that a cultural system can become irrelevant. There is no other reason for the death of a culture. Surely, the ethics of training for this dangerous task of stretching the cultural boundaries would require preparation, informed oversight, and vigilance. The teacher’s role in values education appears to many as a suspect transfer of responsibility for learning to the student. On the contrary, it now appears that the overall responsibility is more firmly placed in the teacher’s ambit. But there is a further ethical dilemma. On the one side, if values education is recognized as developing a higher order knowledge whereby the student achieves, much earlier than would be expected, an emancipatory knowledge which is seen as specifically human knowledge, then there would be an ethical obligation to develop this. It is not as if values education could then be seen as an optional extra. The school would have an ethical obligation to develop it. But this must go hand-in-hand with the further ethical obligation to prepare students, to oversee the procedure and

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to be vigilant in case there are unforeseen results. The two ethical obligations to facilitate and to invigilate will inevitably cause conflicts in the real world. No more can be said. Values education, in its explicit form, may be a modern educational development. Having been recognized for what it is by means of Habermasian theory and its outcomes acknowledged as they occur in actual fact, the ethical dilemma has to be accepted as part of the total education scenario. Education is by its nature a dangerous occupation. There is no other way to see the totality of education.

References Crotty, R. (2007). The multiple sites of ethical reasoning. Journal of Religious Education, 55, 2–7. DEEWR. (2008). At the heart of what we do: Values education at the centre of schooling: The final report of the Values Education Good Practice Schools project – Stage 2. [Report for The Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)]. Curriculum Corporation. http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/values/val_vegps2_ final_report,26142.html Devlin, P. (1965). The enforcement of morals. Oxford University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1984). Distinguished lecture: Anti anti-relativism. American Anthropologist, 86, 263–278. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1974). Theory and practice (J. Viertal, Trans.). Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans., Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society). Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action (T. McCarthy, Trans., Vol. 2: Lifeworld and system – A critique of functionalist reason). Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenhardt & S.Nicolson, Trans.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Hanson, F. A. (1979). Does god have a body? Truth, reality and cultural relativism. Man NS, 14, 515–529. Kluckhohn, C. (1953). Universal categories of culture. In A. Kroeber (Ed.), Anthropology today. University of Chicago Press. Lumsden, C., & Wilson, E. (1981). Genes, mind and culture. Harvard University Press. Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. Penguin. Spiro, M. (1978). Culture and human nature. In G. Spindler (Ed.), The making of psychological anthropology. University of California Press.

The Unhappy Moralist Effect A Story of Hybrid Moral Dynamics

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Effect: Little Moral Weakness or a Loss of Accumulated Gains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Happy Fare Dodgers, Unhappy Moral Bounding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philosophical Terms and Psychological Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conditions of the “Unhappy Moralist Effect” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Unhappy Moralist Effect in Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adults Caught in the Trap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Additional Effects and Additional Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Inner Moral Happy Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Primacy of Morality: A Solution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Moral rightness can entail a measure of unhappiness. In this understanding, our appreciation of the quality of moral character can be enhanced. This is an important feature of a values education that is truly designed for student wellbeing. The chapter will outline the debate and justify its assertion. Keywords

Moral dynamics · Developmental growth · Motivation · Moral individualism · Moral rightness

F. Oser (*) University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_42

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Introduction Moral psychology today goes beyond discussion of stage structures and developmental growth; it also includes motivational (responsibility motivation, Curcio, 2008) and emotional (moral sensitivity) dimensions (Tirri, 2007). It also contains aspects of domain differentiation (Nucci, 2001). Moreover, there are elements of what is called a shadow morality, which is a kind of moral individualism with respect to non-codified moral rules (Oser & Reichenbach, 2005). This chapter discusses an extraordinary moral psychological effect, namely a phenomenon that goes beyond the reflections of Aristotle, as well as Senggen (2008), Höffe (2007), and Seel (1999). These authors believe and rationally “prove” that morality and happiness go together. We would like to show that it is not as simple as that and that there are many cases wherein choosing moral rightness can entail a measure of unhappiness. In this understanding, our appreciation of the quality of moral character can be enhanced. This is an important feature of a values education that is truly designed for student well-being.

The Effect: Little Moral Weakness or a Loss of Accumulated Gains If in a situation of possible account or gain (with the respective future possibilities), persons forget the involved moral duties and obligations but suddenly (often through others like partners, parents, and friends) become aware of it and see that to comply with it would lead to a loss of the accumulated advantage, they can become unhappy. They believe that on the one hand if they do not tell the truth fully or not tell all that would be necessary, or if they cheat only a little bit, or if they keep quiet in a witness account or if they do not declare the full amount, this might bring with it some advantage to them. On the other hand, if they refrain from doing this and take the morally right path, they feel unsatisfied if not unhappy. They feel that, because of their moral choice, they forego some of their more gainful options. This effect we call the “unhappy moralist effect.”1 In this effect, morality is no more an absolute idea steering behavior in a clear and non-hybrid way. Rather, it is a rule system that inhibits success or gainful advantage of some sort. Mostly, the effect becomes visible in the moral gray zone that means in domains where the norms are not fully clear and decisive. For example, to earn $30 million a year as a banking manager while at the same time disadvantaging small entrepreneurs is not against the law. It is, however, unfair and, in a loose sense, immoral. It belongs to the moral gray zone but might well leave the manager feeling quite happy with himself/herself. If, however, the manager was to refrain from such action under the constraints of moral pressure, he/she might well feel a career failure and so not at all happy, even if knowing that the moral right had been pursued. A Polish proverb says: Any good deed has its punishment. In the manner of a social phenomenon, the effect is written in double quote; “unhappy moralist effect.”

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Happy Fare Dodgers, Unhappy Moral Bounding Another example of the “unhappy moralist” effect is in the following: in a study on “happy cheating” (Oser, 1999; Oser et al., 2006), each student of a vocational training class in the age of 16 and 17 was seduced to not use the fare for a tramway trip given to each student for going to another place in the city, but rather to use it to buy a beer. The experimental subjects did not know that the seducers were in position with tickets in case they were caught and that all tickets had been paid for in advance. The results were that six out of the 11 students dodged the fare while five resisted. Results of the pilot study showed that in general the fare dodgers were on a fixed moral stage, while the non-fare-dodgers were in transition, according to the Kohlbergian schema. The fare dodgers were rather stable emotionally and more reality related; they had a higher sense of self-worth and were rather modest in their general behavior (polarity profile). They were less severe in their judgment toward others, but more sensitive, and they rejected illusions to a lesser extent. They appeared to be less frustrated and were more popular, as seen by the rest of the group; they were less dependent on the group than the non-fare dodgers. In regard to the life satisfaction scale, we found that the fare dodgers had slightly higher satisfaction values than the non-fare dodgers (m1 1.43; m2 1.25, on a scale of 2 to +2). In a word, it seemed that the “immoral” fare dodgers felt happier, more satisfied about their actions, and especially more integrated within the group of the other 16-year-olds than the “moral” non-fare dodgers. The non-fare dodgers did not feel very accepted, very stable, and were not very happy with their decision; especially through the qualitative instruments (interviews after the happening), they expressed that they felt less free in their decision-making process and basically had only pursued the “moral right” because they were too afraid of being caught otherwise. In addition, some of the non-fare-dodgers said that finally they felt the decision was OK, but that they also felt unhappy about not being accepted. On the other hand, the fare dodgers were more satisfied that they had overcome the fear of being caught; they felt they were somehow heroes in consideration of the fact that the state was demanding too much money from students anyway. They also had many other stories about having been successful with other types of adolescent cheating behavior (Oser et al., 2006, p. 151). This result shows clearly what is meant by the unhappy moralist effect: The ones who were keeping the rules and resisting the seduction were feeling that they were afterward less seen as heroes, less satisfied, and less integrated. This also elicits the crucial point that happiness is not just a mood or an intuitive feeling, but is related to external acceptance of what we do or have done. With respect to trivial offenses like fare cheating, the ones who did opt for the risk-taking behavior were afterward the happier ones. In contrast to the unhappy moralist mentioned above, we could call them “happy immoralist.”

Philosophical Terms and Psychological Effects In the philosophical tradition of ethical reflection, moral correctness and happiness go together, not as if one is the condition for the other but, rather, that they are complementary states. Happiness is a formal character rather than a feeling. For

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philosophers, the happiness conception is rooted in the notion of a good life, and to be virtuous leads according to Aristotle to such a good life; the good life is fundamentally connected to any justification of eudaemonia or happiness. On the other hand, if we think of happiness in the way psychologists do, namely as a subjective feeling rather than a state of character, it is obvious that moral rightness and happiness do not necessarily go together. Indeed, they have potential to exclude each other in the sense that a morally correct person can never have the freedom that unfettered happiness implies. One is always bound to moral laws that are generated by a tradition, a society, or a culture. This binding can actually inhibit happiness. While psychologists refer to happiness if they speak about good feelings using correlations to all kind of measures like self-efficacy, belief, self-concept, moral identity, and level of moral judgment, philosophers refer to happiness in the sense of being involved in a process, doing good, or being virtuous in concrete and often difficult life situations. For them, happiness is neither a cause nor justification for being virtuous. Rather, it is a byproduct for striving toward a prosperous life, realizing virtues in the moment of complicated decision-making. In addition, in recent years, both ethical philosophers and moral psychologists refer in different ways to the “situatedness” of moral decision-making. They call for moral sensitivity and for virtues as the basis for new concepts of moral education, which go beyond stage theory preconceptions.

Conditions of the “Unhappy Moralist Effect” The most correct notion for the tension between a moral stance and not giving up in the face of seduction is “moral resilience.” Resilience connotes the resistance to not abandon one’s own moral principles because the gain of conforming is the ultimate reward, a reward quite beyond feelings of happiness. As we described above, there are situations where a person caught in a real moral dilemma decides to opt for external advantage rather than underlying moral good. In these cases, they actually felt proud of having gone beyond their own principles, whereas those who acted according to the “correct” moral principles, with high moral resilience, felt bad about their action. In recent years, moral educational research has moved from positions of structural universalism wherein immutable principles apply regardless of the peculiarities of the situation at hand to context-based positions that focus on specific human situations wherein the virtuous character has to make relative, contingent, and often difficult choices. In these situations, important questions include: Does moral sensibility inhibit success? Is a moral person weak or strong by nature? Does moral decision making tend toward happiness or unhappiness, as determined by psychological and philosophical positions? What does moral resilience mean and what are its consequences?

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These questions are juxtaposed with the Aristotelian “good life” metaphor. They are important questions for educators to ask and have satisfied for effective pedagogy around values education.

The Unhappy Moralist Effect in Childhood Situational criteria for the unhappy moralist have always to do with the perspective of having regard for the feelings of others. The unhappy moralist has in mind that he/she has lost an opportunity to gain advantage materially or in some other way. This effect has a counterpart, namely the “happy victimizer” effect. Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988) explored the status of 4- to –8-year-old children with respect to investigating their emotions when others behave immorally. They relied on the findings of Barden, Zelko, Duncan, and Master (1980) who found that children attribute positive feelings to wrongdoers, this being in spite of Turiel’s (1983) finding that a 4 years old knows about the consequences of being immoral. Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988) were able to replicate the Barden study in a more sophisticated way; they showed that 75% of 4 years old and 55% of 5 years old attributed positive feelings to the wrongdoer. This inclination became less prevalent with age. For the 6 years old, only 40%, and 8 years old 10% were attributing wellbeing to the wrongdoer. The majority of older children were anticipating negative feelings in the wrongdoer owing to the knowledge that sanctions would apply (Nunner-Winkler, 1989). This result is independent of situations of severe transgression or the condition of having engaged in purposive and serious wrongdoing. Arsenio and Kramer (1992) confirmed that children will often attribute to the wrongdoer’s positive feelings and the victim’s negative feelings, at least in nonsevere situations. In a replication study from Keller, Lourenço, Malti, and Saalbach (2003), an interesting explanation emanated. These authors were able to elicit the fact that younger children attributed happiness to the wrongdoer because they make judgments based on the satisfaction of obvious need, whereas older children make judgments around the violation of rules. These studies focused on children, whereas the unhappy moralist effect occurs mostly beyond the age of childhood because it includes the capacity of introspection.

Adults Caught in the Trap In coursework on negotiation, we simulate a divorce case in which two lawyers defend the case of the man (Paul) and two other lawyers the case of the woman (Barbara). The central issue for this learning process is that the two parties have different hidden information about their client: one positive and the other negative. The negative information concerns the lawyers of Barbara; this material shows her in bad light (e.g., she hits the kids, is not caring about the baby, locks the children in a room if her friends visit, and has a relationship with a playboy). Furthermore, the children in question do not want to stay with her after the divorce. On the other side,

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the lawyers of Paul have no negative information about him (e.g., he still loves Barbara, wants her to come back, and cares about the children). Both sides of the dispute want custody of the children. The lawyers of Barbara have only three choices: one, they fight for Barbara and do not use the negative information (i.e., Barbara is our client, and we do all that is best for here); two, they give the case back and refrain from treating such a person (i.e., moral conscience demands that such an immoral person not be defended); or, three, the lawyers of Barbara take the information seriously and begin to negotiate with their client; in this case they can diagnose how much chance she will have in front of a judge, and what would in all likelihood truly be best for her, namely starting a new life and leaving the children with Paul. The effects that are at stake are called the “information availability bias effect” and the “information devaluation trend effect.” The first effect concerns the lawyers of the man; they should strive for more information against the other party and ask if they know something concerning the well-being of the children. In this case, the other party must open their hidden information, or they must actively lie (which seems to be more difficult than just hiding some information). Instead, the lawyers of Paul mostly are convinced that both parties have positive information, and their positivity makes them blind. The “information devaluation trend effect” states that we as humans strive to put the positive interpretation on otherwise pessimistic data (e.g., you can never trust the judgment of children, or Barbara was a good mother for 20 years but now is having a crisis, and all will come good if she gets the children). Such denials are ways of avoiding the negativity of what is confronting us and niggling at our consciences. In our study, we found that 30% of the subjects (N 110 adults in management or higher political positions or lawyers) decide to give all the children to Paul, 12% give the custody of all the children to Barbara, 28% give the two older children to Barbara, 10% give the two older children to Paul, and 20% do not find a solution. The most challenging result is that the quasi-morally resilient persons, those who use their information against the interests of their client and, therefore, indirectly help the attorneys of the opposite party, are largely unsatisfied with the result of their negotiation. They feel that they have done the right thing but are not convinced that their decision-makes the world any better or that they are successful negotiators. They do not feel successful even when they are convinced that they have done the right thing. One of them said, “I am so exhausted; I will never become a good negotiator. I think it was the right thing to do but I am wondering how we could have brought things together.” This seems to be the key issue: On the one hand, the negotiator should be a winner with good tactical abilities, but on the other hand he should have a “moral stand” (Oser & Reichenbach, 2005). Additional data underlie these effects. Those who decide to give the children to Barbara exhibit a highly significant correlation between the statement “Morally, I completely did what was right” and “I am satisfied with the outcome” (0.707). When the children were separated (e.g., the older children to Barbara, the younger children to Paul), the correlation was less high (0.459). When the children were given to Paul, there was no significant correlation (0.219). This again leads to the assumption that a complementary phenomenon to that of the “happy victimizer” exists, namely the resilient “unhappy moralist.”

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What is the role of resilience in these scenarios? Resilience is what allows these people to retain their moral standards even when against their feelings of being unsuccessful. Those who act in morally correct fashion do not show positive correlations with being content about the solution they reached. This can be sustained with another significant correlation: “The solution is in the interest of all concerned parties” correlates positively with “We were lying” if the children were allocated to Paul (0.389), but negatively if the children were given to Barbara (0.637⁎). That means that for Paul’s defenders there is a positive relationship between lying and interests. They believe that lying could help, whereas the “true liars” do not believe that. There is no significant correlation between the ones who do not find a solution (Oser et al., 2006, pp. 154–155). This is a typical case of the “unhappy moralist effect,” namely that the lawyers of Barbara, according to our interview, state that they first had a problem with this information, that they second tried to brighten up respectively to weaken it, and, third, if they decided according to a certain “care and justice” concept to accept the allocation of the children to Paul, they felt unsuccessful as lawyers, being weak in decision-making and exposed to ridicule in their professional circles. Intellectuals often cite in this regard a witticism of Hannah Arendt, saying that good people have a bad conscience, but bad people have no bad conscience. The ones who took the moral decision often state that they did the right thing badly, and they would never be successful professionals. One said: “It took me quite a while to understand that she is not a good mother and that she just wants to go off the track and to get away from the responsibility of these children. The problem was that she wanted the children, all five, and that she was not able anymore to care for them. This was a tough situation.” Another said: “Afterwards I felt relieved but somehow not satisfied; you know, you often cannot be successful and at the same time moral. You often just need to be hard with the world, but afterward it would be as if you have a stone in your stomach. Who cares later? But the weight is nevertheless on your shoulders. I fought enormously for the case of Barbara, but after listening the arguments of the other I gave up, and got lost in morality.” This is a strong statement, including all the elements of the unhappy moralist effect, namely the gray zone of personal decision-making, the likely reaction from one’s profession, the moral consequentialist dilemma, and the fear of being perceived as a failure. Again, morality can hinder effectiveness and therefore happiness, at least as a feeling.

Additional Effects and Additional Studies If we look more closely at the case and the process in it, we find two additional elements, namely (a) the fact that the more the lawyer gets attached to the case and exercises “role taking,” he gets into the moral trap. In the “moral contact hypothesis,” the conflict gets bigger and bigger the more one considers the children. The contact hypothesis states that the closer someone gets to another person, the less aggressive he/she becomes and the less prejudices that are retained. A classical example consists of the Milgram situation in which the learner receives less electrical shocks if he/she is

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touched by the shock giver. Here, of course, the contact means taking the information about the children seriously. The other additional element is (b) the moral resilience hypothesis that, for sound moral intuition, a person prefers the moral solution and not the economical one, even if he/she foregoes other options. Resilience means taking the moral path even if the other is more seductive and more attractive. In another study, children of the age of 7, 9, and 11 years, and adolescents of the age of 13 and 15 years, were represented in moral vignettes in which the moral dimension conflicted with the success dimension (Schmid, 2003). One example was seen in the selling of a motorbike, which had been involved in an accident but damage was not visible and so the potential was there for the “full value” sale to be effected. The moral question is as follows: Should the seller tell the truth and earn less money or not tell the truth and earn more money? Children attributed to the “immoral” person (i.e., the one who did not tell the truth) mostly positive feelings, whereas the attribution to the morally correct person (i.e., the one who told the truth and suffered the price loss) was in general negative. Again, there was a significant age effect in this study. In a further study, Hattersley (2005) relates the decision in which morality stands against success to strong and weak norms (Garz, 1999). The result was that 89% of the subjects were satisfied with the moral outcome when it relates to a strong norm. However, with respect to weak norms, a majority of the subjects were dissatisfied with the more morally correct action.

The Inner Moral Happy Life Whatever happiness means, it is not true that morality leads to it in every case. There are cases in which a person is not able to balance the two domains of interests, namely to be good and to be successful. Especially in cases where we believe that the law is on our side, we reject often our moral intuition (Haidt, 2006) and justify wrongdoing precisely on the basis of possessing the right to do it. On the other hand, the one who listens to the inner voice of conscience and stays on the morally correct path as their moral perceptions guide them is less successful and not so happy in the immediate and shallow sense, but appeared to be satisfied in a deeper sense. This clear difference, until now hidden in the observations and interviews we did, namely between satisfaction and happiness, becomes important. Perhaps this is what Aristotle meant when he spoke about the dangers of the virtues, namely that none of them can be taken and dealt with in isolation. Each is dependent on the other. Until now, we have never done research in the field of the inner moral happy life of mankind, but we have done research on what subjects say or express or feel (see also Hascher, 1994). This is in accordance with the unhappy moralist.

The Primacy of Morality: A Solution? The question on the primacy of morality in the situations of the German philosopher Seel (1999) gives in the last chapter of his book “Essaie on the form of happiness” convincing proofs that morality must prevail over all the other domains of life, even

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personal relationships. He develops seven serious objections against the idea of the primacy of morality and disproves all of them simultaneously. Seel (1999) accepts that morality and happiness do not always correlate positively (he speaks about the fragility of happiness) but he presumes nonetheless the primacy of morality over all life spheres. How does he justify this? The answer lies in the fact that he does not use the metaphor of happiness as such, but the metaphor of the “good life,” and this is a profoundly different concept. The good life metaphor includes that even a morality of personal relationship (Honneth, 2008) must engage in the dynamic of coordination of interests, which is inevitably painful. That means that the unhappy moralist effect is actually part and parcel of a good life concept. Within this, it is accepted that we suffer if we cannot obtain the direct way to gain a good, and this is, as a central human capacity, in the interest of all. In other words, the unhappy moralist effect is a sign of moral sensibility (Tirri, 2007), and this psychological capacity starts with the delay of gratification and stands in turn for a long tradition of culture, namely to prevent us from relying only on the linear and the immediate, but instead on the multi-sided and long term.

Conclusion The primacy of morality over all life spheres is weakened by the fact that sometimes morality is important and at stake and sometimes not. In all theories of morality, and also within the concept of the dynamic system model, the situational aspects are left out (Collins, 2009). That is why in the title, the word “hybrid” refers to the fact that in addition to the unhappy moralist effect the influences of situational constraints are given. To buy a chocolate in a store is less morality driven than to steal the drogue for saving the life of Heinz’s wife. The issue of happiness thus does not refer to an absolute standard; it is a state that waits on a rational justification, and states are passing, whereas morality as a system of rules is not. This is then the task of the modern-day values educator, namely to nurture students to appreciate that their own well-being is dependent not on short-term stimuli related to feelings of happiness, but on long-term issues of character and integrity. The latter are the true indicators of morality.

References Arsenio, W. F., & Kramer, R. (1992). Victimizers and their victims: Children’s conceptions of the mixed emotional consequences of moral transgressions. Child Development, 63, 915–927. Barden, R. C., Zelko, F. A., Duncan, S. W., & Master, J. C. (1980). Children’s consensual knowledge about their experimental determinants of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 968–976. Collins, D. C. (2009). A multi-level model of moral functioning revisited. Journal of Moral Education, 38, 299–313. Curcio, G.-P. (2008). Verantwortungsmotivation zwischen Moralität und Gerechtigkeit: eine empirische Untersuchung zum Entscheidungsverhalten von militärischen Führungskräften. Waxmann.

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Garz, D. (1999). Also die Annahme, dass die Welt gerecht ist, das wäre sehr irrational. Urteilen, Handeln und die Moral des Alltagslebens. In D. Garz, F. Oser, & W. Althof (Eds.), Moralisches Urteil und Handeln (pp. 377–405). Suhrkamp. Haidt, J. (2006). Die Glückshypothese. Was uns wirklich glücklich macht. VAK Verlags GmbH. Hascher, T. (1994). Emotionsbeschreibung und Emotionsverstehen. Zur Entwicklung des Emotionsvokabulars und des Ambivalenzverstehens im Kindesalter. Waxmann. Hattersley, L. (2005). “Unhappy Moralist”: Doing right and feeling wrong. Eine empirische Arbeit zum Phänomen des unglücklichen Moralisten in Zusammenhang mit verschiedenen Normbereichen und anderen möglichen Einflussfakoren. Lizentiatsarbeit. Universität Freiburg, Departement Erziehungswissenschaften. Höffe, O. (2007). Lebenskunst und moral. Oder macht Tugend glücklich? Verlag C.H. Beck. Honneth, A. (2008). Von person zu person. Zur moralität persönlicher beziehungen. Suhrkamp. Keller, M., Lourenço, O., Malti, T., & Saalbach, H. (2003). The multifaceted phenomenon of ‘happy victimizers’: A cross-cultural comparison of moral emotions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21, 1–18. Nucci, L. P. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge University Press. Nunner-Winkler, G. (1989). Wissen und Wollen. Ein Beitrag zur frühkindlichen Moralentwicklung. In A. Honneth, T. McCarthy, C. Offe, & A. Wellmer (Eds.), Zwischenbetrachtungen. Im Prozess der Aufklärung (pp. 574–600). Frankfurt. Nunner-Winkler, G., & Sodian, B. (1988). Children’s understanding of moral emotions. Child Development, 59, 1323–1338. Oser, F. (1999). Die missachtete Freiheit moralischer Alternativen: Urteile über Handeln, Handeln ohne Urteile. In D. Garz, F. Oser, & W. Althof (Eds.), Moralisches Urteil und Handeln (pp. 168–219). Suhrkamp. Oser, F., & Reichenbach, R. (2005). Moral resilience: What makes a moral person so unhappy? In W. Edelstein & G. Nunner-Winkler (Eds.), Morality in context. Elsevier. Oser, F., Schmid, E., & Hattersley, L. (2006). The ‘unhappy moralist’ effect: Emotional conflicts between being good and being successful. In L. Verschaffel, F. Dochy, M. Boekarts, & S. Vosniadou (Eds.), Instructional psychology: Past, present, and future trends: Sixteen essays in honor of Erik De Corte (pp. 149–166). Elsevier. Schmid, E. (2003). “Unhappy Moralist”: Das Phänomen des unglücklichen Moralisten. Eine entwicklungspsychologische Arbeit zur Emotionsattribution im moralischen Bereich. Lizentiatsarbeit. Universität Freiburg, Departement Erziehungswissenschaften. Seel, M. (1999). Versuch über die form des glücks. Suhrkamp. Senggen, N. (2008). “Happy Victimizer” und “Unhappy Moralist”. Eine pädagogischpsychologische Arbeit zur Moralentwicklung con Kindern Im Zusammenhang mit intergruppalem Verhalten am Beispiel der Sprache. Masterarbeit. Universität Freiburg, Departement Erziehungswissenschaften. Tirri, K. (2007). Comparison of academically average and gifted students’ self-rated ethical sensitivity. Educational Research and Evaluation, 13, 587–601. Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Moralità and convention. Cambridge University Press.

Re-Valuing the Shadows: Reimagining Possibilities for Alternative Futures through/with an Agentifying Education for a Planet in Crisis

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Contents Introduction: Setting the Scene – The Problem of Values and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revaluing the Shadows: Moving Back, Moving Otherwise, to Move Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialoguing with the Historical Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education and Values Education in Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Education in This Politico-Historical Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education, the International, and Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ubuntu: A Philosophy of Becoming Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The last decade has seen distinct ideological shifts in particular geopolitical contexts and in global/local relations across the globe, with increasing instability witnessed in social, political, ecological, material, and economic systems. Efforts to advocate for democracy and justice of various kinds have become increasingly harder despite some celebrated wins. Yet, across the globe, there are simultaneously emerging sites of resistance and repair and courageous moves by individuals and collectives to seek alternatives to dystopias in the present and on the horizon. What is becoming self-evident, however, is that conventional education systems and institutions are still locked in modes of operation that do not reflect, are not responsive to, and are not up to the task of the intertwined glocal challenges we face in this historical present. Even more concerning is that educational institutions and discourses themselves project

D. M. Swanson (*) University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_43

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values, commitments, and advocacies that, in the main, are either too shallow, instrumental, or technocratic, or indeed are out of alignment with the complexly interconnected realities and urgencies we face. Likewise, curricula, pedagogical practices, institutional structures, and measurement and assessment regimes reflect wide-scale failure in living up to the purposes and promises of education in its role to enable reimagined possibilities of a world of justice, decency, and ethical relationalities. This chapter revisits the original chapter of 2010 – Value in Shadows: A Critical Contribution to Values Education in our Times. In dialogue with that historical moment in which the 2010 chapter was written, I ask now what might have shifted, what might still be relevant, and what might need new emphasis. I therefore ask what might need to change in our conception of Education in the context of a world gripped by interconnected, catalytic crises. The contradictions borne by the politics of crisis need further interrogation. This call is happening in consonance with the call to address increasing ideological polarizations, the rise of authoritarian democracies, and a planet facing an increasingly apocalyptic future under climate change. Such competing discourses have implications for how contradictory values operationalized in “Education” may not be suited to the task of a “transformative” response to the grip of complex crises that our planet is facing. Certain questions might underpin advocacies for a values-led responsive educational praxis: What role is there for revaluing curriculum, pedagogy, and educational praxis toward reimagining alternative, hopeful futures in which all may thrive? What can decoloniality, indigeneity, and posthumanist ecologies offer as means of creating agentive spaces for such reimaginings, and what actions might be necessary to enable education for futures beyond dystopias? In other terms, how might we “work the shadows” to remake “the possible” and engage “radical hope”? The chapter asks what “good education” might look like as a contribution to a debate with Values Education that demands of it openness, self-critique, and a commitment to plurality and complexity. It offers as one alternative to contemporary educational practice driven by economic development, the Southern African ethico-onto-epistemology of Ubuntu. The intention is not to supplant one dominating, singularizing vision with another but to offer an agentifying space of possibility to reimagine radically hopeful futures. Values Education has a role to play in this dialogic endeavor of “walking alongside” while reimagining Education. Keywords

Education · Values Education · Ubuntu · Alternative futures · Radical hope · Reimagining · Agency · Global crisis · Global Citizenship Education (GCE) · Sustainability · Sustainable (Development) Education · Sociopolitical · Socioecological · Ethical relationalities

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Introduction: Setting the Scene – The Problem of Values and Education The last decade and more has seen distinct ideological shifts in particular geopolitical contexts and in global/local relations across the globe, with increasing instability witnessed in interconnected social, political, ecological, techno-material, and economic systems (Bremmer, 2022). Western news media, policy briefs, and academic articles are replete with commentary registering an acceleration of political polarization, “Alt Right” conservatism or indeed even trends toward fascism, nationalist populism (Gamal and Swanson, 2017), distrust of democratic governance systems and political institutions more widely, instability in global trade and markets, climate change, global conflict and warfare, cybersecurity threats, and other crises such as migration, energy, water, environmental, humanitarian and disaster risks, food insecurity, and more (Global Economics Intelligence Executive Summary, 2022; Economic Conditions Outlook, 2022; Gourinchas, 2022). While neoliberal economic globalization was the focus of attention, increasingly since the 1980s, for its dominating effect on cultural and material systems worldwide, this has given way to increasingly divisive and polarizing discourses, as well as deepening conservativism and right-wing and far-right authoritarianism (Gallo, 2022). Despite some significant rights gained over time, and momentum generated through flashpoints of collective resistance, such as the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the #Me Too movements arising in the USA but spreading worldwide, there also has been an increasing trend in what the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) have categorized through their Democracy Index as “flawed democracies” (The Economist Intelligence Unit, Annual Report, 2022) in particular, toward a slow dismantling of those rights. This can be witnessed in the recent reversal of the 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade landmark legal decision in the USA that gave women rights over their own bodies and the freedom to have abortions, with new legal restrictions in place in many predominantly Republican-run US states (Durkee, 2022). In consonance, there has been an emergence of what could be referred to as “authoritarian democracies” (Repucci and Slipowitz, 2022) developing across the globe, democracies that have become increasingly flawed, and with democratic gains becoming increasingly restricted by governments of states that were previously relatively robust liberal democracies. Alongside these emergences, there has become simultaneously an increased risk and prevalence of global warfare (International Monetary Fund, 2022). This is most immediately self-evident in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of territories within it, putting European states and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in direct confrontation with the Russian Federation. At the same time, resistance and efforts to advocate for democracy and justice of various kinds have become increasingly harder despite some (often) short-term wins celebrated in contexts more receptive to such shifts, such as gender and LGBT+ rights in some Western democracies (Angelo & Bocci, 2021). Yet, simultaneously across the globe,

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in the face of devastation and increased brutality, there are emerging sites of resistance and repair and courageous moves by individuals and collectives to seek viable alternatives to dystopias in the present and on the horizon (Powers, 2019). In recognition of this background context, I argue that what is becoming selfevident here is that conventional education systems and institutions are still locked in modes of operation that do not reflect, are not responsive to, and are not up to the task of the intertwined and mutually invested glocal challenges we face in this politicohistorical moment (UNESCO, 2021). Even more concerning is that the educational institutions and discourses themselves project values, commitments, and advocacies that, in the main, are either too shallow, instrumental, or technocratic, or indeed are out of alignment with the complexly interconnected realities and urgencies we face. Likewise, curricula, pedagogical practices, institutional structures, standardized policies, and measurement and assessment regimes reflect wide-scale failure in living up to the purposes and promises of education in its role to enable reimagined possibilities of a world where all may thrive (Human Rights Watch, 2016; Roser, 2022; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2012).

Revaluing the Shadows: Moving Back, Moving Otherwise, to Move Forward This chapter revisits the original chapter of 2010 – Value in Shadows: A Critical Contribution to Values Education in our Times. It does so while deepening previously articulated arguments and introducing newer ones that attempt to address global trends and ideological shifts over the last decade. In dialogue with that historical moment in which the 2010 chapter was written (from a place of writing, which was Canada), I now ask in this historical moment (in a place of writing, which is the United Kingdom) what might have shifted, what might still be relevant, and what might need new emphasis. In considering these questions, I further ask what might need to change in our conception of Education in the context of a world gripped by interconnected, catalytic crises. While the whole notion of “crisis” in itself should be interrogated in relation to its role in development politics, especially the way in which “development” and “crisis” work in consonance with each other (Nederveen Pieterse, 2010), nevertheless the contradictions borne by the politics of crisis as performed, pedagogized, reproduced, and normalized in dominant Euromodernist design projects (Mignolo, 2012), such as global capitalism, need further interrogation. This call is happening in consonance with the call to address increasing ideological polarizations, the rise of authoritarian democracies, and a planet facing an increasingly apocalyptic future under climate change, perhaps even exacerbated by competing discourses on/within the new climate regime. These competing and contradictory discourses are evidenced in the rise of technoscientific discourses (e.g., carbon neutral, green energy, and green careers), which tend to act as “green washing” (Priesnitz, 2008) and ignore the deeper sociological, political, and socio-ecological discourses and analyses that would better address sociopolitical constraints and contradictions between “the ecological” and the “socio-political” that

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are invested in relations of power (Swanson and Gamal, 2021). Such competing discourses on climate have implications for, indeed may even reflect, how contradictory values operationalized in “Education” may not be up to the task of a “transformative” response to the grip of complex crises and “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber, 1973) that our planet is facing. [I capitalize “Education” in this chapter intentionally to highlight it as a conceptual entity that can be reimagined. I use “transformative” here contingently and as a placeholder word for undertaking hopeful and justice-oriented, pluralist reimaginings of Education, alternative ways of being and cosmologies, and life on this planet as an act of repair, renewal, and possibility. At the same time, I hold “transformative,” especially the interpretation of “transformative learning” underscored by Jack Mezirow (2000), up for critique (Bowers, 2005; Swanson, 2011; Lange, 2012).] Certain questions might underpin advocacies for a “values-led” responsive educational praxis: in a social media world of woke and cancel cultures (Zilber, 2021; Bilkis, 2022), what role might there be for re(e)valuing curriculum, pedagogy, and educational praxis toward reimagining alternative, hopeful futures in which decency and integrity are the overarching tenets for relational being with each other, all ecological others? How might we reimagine educational spaces of possibility (Helfenbein, 2021) on our planet where all may thrive? What can politically conscious understandings of this historical present, in glocal context, offer as a guide to discerning a way to “the possible” with Education? I use “with” pointedly here as I do not mean a messianic approach to Education (Rushdoony, 2014) in the sense of Education’s creating a funnel toward some utopian absolute, but walking alongside Education, even with a difficult gate, toward the collective purpose of finding viable alternatives and spaces of possibility. This is a walking alongside Education while searching, together – in “humble togetherness” (Swanson, 2007), for moments of light, flickering light that throws up dancing shadows, but through the emerging contrasts places of authentic hope are delineated. This provokes critical questions: What can decoloniality, indigeneity, and posthumanist ecologies offer as means of creating agentive spaces for such reimaginings, and what actions might be necessary to enable education for futures beyond dystopias? In other terms, how might we “work the shadows” (Derrida, 1994) to remake “the possible” and engage “radical hope” (Lear, 2006; Swanson, 2015a; Swanson and Gamal, 2021)?

Dialoguing with the Historical Present In 2010, I asserted that Values Education comes across as a non sequitur. I argued that it was like saying “Sahara Desert,” when “Sahara” (or sahrā) means desert in Arabic. Undoubtedly, all of Education is an investment of values and power. Values constitute Education. Education transmits values. The set of knowledge bases that are privileged in the processes of constituting educational curricula, their methods, the ideas, the pedagogies and praxes, the mindsets, and indeed the ideological orientation toward what constitutes legitimate knowledge and what is worthy of knowing are all invested in relations of power. Yet, the role and extent of power

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relations in educational investments is consistently ill-considered, underestimated, and, relatively speaking, inadequately analyzed in educational discourses across policy and the academic field. This is despite the theoretical turn toward decolonizing methodologies, pedagogies, praxes, curricula, or ontologies (Smith, 2021; Arshad, 2021; Muldoon, 2019). Nevertheless, a greater sociopolitical emphasis in the public sphere in recent times has provoked questions for “Education” as to whose knowledge counts; whose coming into being with/through “Education” is being validated, accepted, recognized; and for whom is the educational experience an act of structural (Galtung, 1969) or slow violence (Nixon, 2013). In a more critical and interrogative vein, questions are raised around whose voices are being legitimated, heard, responded to, comprehended, in the constitution of “the educational”; whose vision of “Education” is being endorsed, and to what/whose ends; and what purportedly “transformational” possibilities are being made possible or undermined. More importantly, who decides what even constitutes “the educational,” and by extension “inclusive and equitable quality education,” such as is stated as selfevident in the United Nations Sustainable development Goals, Goal 4 (https:// sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4). This provokes allied questions about the nature of “inclusivity” and “equitability” and commonly accepted understandings of these, as well as the question about legitimacy: on behalf of whom are such understandings accepted? In effect, “the educational” within a global sphere gestures toward particular competing values, purposes, and ideals, with wider implications for reimagining possible, hopeful futures. Yet, values and ideals are beyond the limits of what we think might constitute “the educational.” They are germane to how we might think we should lead a worthy life, of how we might comport ourselves with others, all ecological others, and what our relationship to ecology and land might be. These ontological understandings of educational values extend to local/global relations and all that this might mean in varying contexts of their understanding. To restate, Education not only is “valueladen” but it is values; it enacts values in process and in form; values undergird all that education is and does, and all that it discursively performs, officially and unofficially. In these ways, Education is imbued with a specific set of political values, not only because all aspects of discursive and material life are political but because “mass education,” quite specifically, has been taken up throughout history in ideological terms. Nation states have exercised moral paternalism as justification for their control over Education, and in “the West” particularly, under a banner of “citizenship rights” to exercise dominance and implement national ambitions in the search for “competitive economic advantage” over other nation states (Kromydas, 2017). In its conception, discourses, implementation, and practices, however broadly or narrowly defined, Education presents a number of diverse, interrelated values that are either relatively explicit, as might be recognized in Global Citizenship Education (GCE), albeit that there are competing ideologies at play even here, or are somewhat implicit, as in the “hidden curriculum” (Jackson, 1968), although these can often operate together (Swanson and Gamal, 2021; UNESCO, 2021). In other words, enactments of GCE, as an example, might attest to justiceoriented educational values but hide an undercurrent of other interests, such as

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economic conservativism and national authoritarianism, at odds with the stated purposes of GCE (Gamal and Swanson, 2018; Swanson, 2011).

Education and Values Education in Dialogue As I testified to in my earlier chapter (Swanson, 2010), the term, Values Education, may operate as having tri-signification. Firstly, in the performance of the term, it makes explicit the values-laden nature of pedagogy and practice, and, secondly, it highlights the need for debate as to what values might need to be made explicit or indeed what values need to be rebuffed, countered, unlearnt, or undone. We cannot assume through performance of the term “Values Education” that such education is uncontestably for the public good. Some stated “values” for education may even be beguiling but ineffectual, and as incendiary as this may sound – even dangerous and untrustworthy. This can be evidenced through critical analysis of the Department of Education’s (DfE) mandating that “British Values” be taught in schools in England (DfE, 2014). In fact, Values Education may not be able to escape the multiplicity of faces or masks of education but rather contribute to the confounding and masking through the performance of “values.” An example of this is Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and Learning for Sustainability (LfS) discourses in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) (see Swanson and Gamal, 2021; Gamal and Swanson, 2018; Gamal and Swanson, 2017; Swanson and Pashby, 2016). Despite the potentially schizophrenic identities of Education when values are brought into consideration, there is no escape from this conundrum, for denial of values compounds the threat of destructive values becoming installed in Education under a veil of “neutrality.” [See Swanson (2004, 2010) for more extensive discussions on the veil of educational neutrality, especially through the lens of mathematics education.] I assert that there is a third (re)action that “Values Education” discursively performs, one which has a critical affordance for imagining Education otherwise: it creates an-Other of Education. Values Education highlights what is often not said about Education. It brings to the surface the values of Education that are rendered non-values, “neutral,” or as “balanced” (by those who hold sway over Education), those values deemed as being without “ideology,” considered “universal,” incontrovertible. In foregrounding an “Education” that is of/with “values,” as in Values Education, what is being effectively highlighted through distinction from it is that mode of “Education” that is being valued as dominant, as the accepted understanding of what Education is. It disturbs this singularity. In the process, Values Education highlights an understanding of this mode of Education as being without the kinds of values that offer up the possibilities of radically hopeful, alternative futures. It marks such Education as validated but valueless. Continuing this argument: by instituting the term “Values Education,” in effect “the gaze” from the center of what has come to be accepted as “Education” is disrupted and deferred, and a form of reflexivity installed. This operates in a similar way to Derrida’s (1978) gestures toward différance. The slippage between “Values Education” and “Education” serves to give permission to ask questions more

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acceptably about the nature of a universalizing “Education” that would not hold possibilities for more radically hopeful futures and that would not be accountable for the ways in which it may complexly contribute to crisis rather than undo it. Evoking “Values Education,” while it needs critical reflexive engagement itself in what we come to understand by it, nevertheless presents an important opportunity for exposing the many myths and contradictions of a dominant “Education” that fails in the original intended principles of “public good” and, by extension, eco-political “sustainability.” “Values Education” in effect offers the potential for making visible the dominant globalizing (often-privatized/privatizing) economic interests that “Education” serves in the name of political neutrality, quality, standardization, and universality. For this purpose alone, it offers the potential for hope and spaces of possibility (Helfenbein. 2021). In continuance of a dialogue with the 2010 chapter, I turn my attention to the geopolitical, ecological, and historical moment in which we find ourselves, in 2023/ 2024, and ask relational questions about the value of Values Education in these times. To do justice to this endeavor, at least in small degree, it is important to give some key contextualizations of this political moment in global/local relations. Not only is the historicizing important to declare, albeit this is very partial, but recognition of “the place” from which such writing arises is also critical, as it is this “place” that informs the selectivities, emphases, relationalities, and contingencies that inevitably shape the nature of what is selected, but also how it is interpreted and argued – it reveals the place we “think from” (Mbembe, 2021) and by extrapolation from which we speak. In the interests of a “place-based” reflexivity, I acknowledge that my own life experiences (living and working in various locales on four continents) inevitably influence what is brought forward and the ideological positionings revealed in arguments made. But, in this chapter, I am choosing to foreground the arguments I feel are necessary to articulate in a contemporary discussion on Values Education rather than emphasize the reflexivity and relationality that underpin such argumentation (as I have done in other relational writing), albeit that this exposes the ever-present danger of mere “confessionalism” (Bleakley, 2000) in such an undertaking.

Values Education in This Politico-Historical Moment In this section, I pay attention to five interrelated global/local challenges that we collectively face, which I believe are among the most major thrusts of concern for a planet experiencing catalytic crisis. I recognize here that my act of selecting, emphasizing, and sequencing them undoubtedly forecloses as much as it reveals, including exposing many absences. Nevertheless, I believe these glocal threats, in large part, mark this moment in our present history, and any “Education” for which we advocate, including Values Education, and the purposes and ideals that are enacted or distributed through it need to help in providing agentifying possibilities to respond to these glocal crises. This means responding to them with courage and conviction, critical knowledge and understanding, a sense of political responsibility,

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ideological literacy, good judgment, a humble and reflexive disposition, and an ethic of care toward others (all ecological others) and the world. Appreciation of these glocal challenges also demands that we value an education system that facilitates the development of “critical consciousness,” to draw on Freire (2000). I argue that it needs to provoke such a consciousness in ways that help each one of us not only recognize contradictions within political, economic, and environmental (as opposed to “ecological”) systems, but also learn to accept and respond with humility and agency to our own complicity in systems of oppression and then act upon those understandings with collective capacity and in solidarity, a solidarity-without-hubris. It would be a consciousness that helps us appreciate more fully our inextricable inseparability to the ecologies in which we are entangled. It would foster an awareness that we owe a commitment to act in the world with integrity and political responsibility toward a more just world. While such qualities and dispositions are subjective and require an openness to a plurality of perspectives, voices, knowledges, and ontologies, they are arguably the most important values any educational system could help to bring into being. The five glocal threats I articulate here are: (1) the named “global security crisis” and the so-called threat to the “liberal international order”; (2) the threats exposed by ideological shifts, growing political polarization and populist attitudes, and increasing authoritarianism with a slow dismantling of democracy and civic freedoms; (3) the cataclysms of climate change, ecological devastation, and the incommensurability between global sociopolitical trends and politico-ecological imperatives; (4) demographic challenges, migration and bordering; and, lastly, (5) the complex interconnectedness of the glocal challenges. I include this last challenge as a distinct threat because I believe that to see the first four as separate and to not recognize the way in which these threats are intertwined is, in itself, an Euromodernist threat. While I touch on aspects of all five glocal challenges in various places of this chapter, given the constraints on space, I focus on the first and last challenges with more emphasis below here, as they articulate for me the challenges of the historical present in which I write this chapter most forcefully. Glocal challenge (1) in this historical moment: Writing currently from a European context, and indeed a Brexit-polarizing United Kingdom (Stanley, 2022), we face a return of an East/West Cold War and the increasingly real possibility of nuclear apocalypse (Deni, 12 October 2022) with the advent of Putin’s 20thcentury-style imperialist war (Andrejsons, 22 February 2022) on Ukraine. These newest hostilities started on the 24th of February 2022 with Russian troops invading Ukraine on multiple fronts but are an extension of hostilities and the annexation of Ukrainian territory in 2014. In 2014, one argument that can be put forward for why Western nations turned a blind eye, among other contributing factors, was that they were more concerned with “economic recovery” and the shoring up of globalizing capitalism that could still be traced to the worldwide economic systems collapse of the 2008 global financial crisis than the longer-term security threats of global warfare between nuclear powers. While the newest hostilities have seen greater galvanizing support for Ukraine, a Western ally, global economic slowdown still plays a dominating role in the consciousness of Western nations (Ahir et al., 2022). The 2008

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economic crisis was precipitated by the casino economics of Wall Street and had a domino effect around the world, exposing the interconnected interests and vulnerabilities of transnational systems under globalization. It is a crisis from which the world still has not fully recovered, and which, in the case of the United Kingdom at least, heralded in long-term economic austerity and entrenched conservativism (Stanley, 2022). While the current war in Ukraine concentrates our attention on the dystopias of global warfare and highlights the ongoing crisis of democracy, democratic institutions, and democratic relations within and between nation states and within everyday life (Repucci and Slipowitz, 2022), it also draws attention to the newly fueled grind of the global (What is the Military Industrial Complex?: https:// www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/what-is-the-military-industrial-complex.php) and the privatized capitalist interests afforded by the newest global conflagration. At the same time, political polarization, the diminished dominance and faith in liberal political institutions, the eroding trust in Science, and in particular Western Science, and the exposed failures of globalizing capitalism, concomitant with a retraction of liberal democratic gains (Repucci and Slipowitz, 2022), have threatened the “liberal international order” (LIO), if ever this truly existed in reality. In this sense, “democracy, hierarchy built on legitimate authority, institutional binding, economic interdependence, and political convergence” (Glasser, 2019) as a set of global political ideals and causal logics of the LIO have become increasingly vulnerable to authoritarian threats and have become subject to deepening contradiction, instability, and ineffectiveness. In fact, even as “the order” has been flawed since inception (Swanson, 2016), Boyle (2016) has warned of an impending “illiberal order,” indeed “disorder,” which arguably is upon us. Some political commentators have abandoned the descriptor of “liberal” in LIO and instead refer to a “global rulesbased order,” with the rise in political and economic might of China, a predominantly capitalist entity without democracy (Glasser, 2019). This shift, with less than half the world now representative of democracy, and a new global order emerging that is outside of the “democratic world,” irrespective of how flawed this democratic world is, poses particular challenges for Education, its purposes, and the ideals it responds to, no matter how contested these ideals may be and how much Education may fail in such responses. Nevertheless, attention needs to be paid to what such challenges mean for Education globally. Within this, critical consideration of the value and place of Values Education in this new world (dis)order has become even more important. In the process, I assert that a greater political consciousness of this glocal challenge should exact a sharper political resolve to ensure that a Values Education we “walk alongside” toward alternative, radically hopeful futures is worthy of that aim. Glocal challenge (5) in this historical moment: The complex interconnectedness of a “crisis of crises” is an intricate assemblage of glocal challenges and webs of influence that need immediate and holistic attention. I reiterate that I have included this last challenge as a distinct threat as I believe that to see the other glocal challenges named as separate and to not recognize the way in which these threats are complexly intertwined and reciprocally informing, and where the local and global are in constant interplay (glocal), is by default an Euromodernist threat.

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A technological “solutionist” approach (Morozov, 2013) that attempts to address the four named areas of threat, each in isolation to each other, reinforces the failure of techno-modernist global strategic think that often does not take into account the webbed multiplicity of unintended consequences that would be set in motion as a result of chained events leading from isolated political events and decision-making. Triumphant techno-scientism tends to disregard the fact that consequences to catalytic events set in motion, such as run-away global heating, cannot be solved in separate, disconnected ways. Arguably, even Western Science on its own cannot provide the full gambit of “solutions” to wicked problems through a “systems approach” (Hammond, 2010) that takes as its necessary starting point a purview of “the system” in which we, the purveyors, are but a small part. The assumption of control over our destinies and that of our planet is one of the modernist myths. Overcoming the last of the five main challenges, as I see them, is perhaps the most significant in enabling pathways into “the possible” in transcending the complex interrelated glocal crises we face in this historical moment. For without a paradigmatic shift in our global/local relations, we are unlikely to witness openings toward pedagogies of repair and hope that would offer alternative ethico-onto-epistemological possibilities of ways of being beyond mere survival. In fact, not even “survival” can be assumed, given the return of a new Cold War and global nuclear conflagration, and the accelerating climate emergency that has seen a number of “turning points” on a heating planet being consistently passed with limited collective political will of governments globally to stop it. The environmental activism of Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement, despite its involving young activist participants missing out on some of their schooling, represents the motivating power of values in an education system that is more than being predominantly about economics, the labor force, national ambitions, or about purported-ideological neutrality. This, again, is where Values Education might hold possibilities for doing, being, and knowing otherwise, but also for undoing and unlearning. While we should always hold it to account and engage with it critically, Values Education offers transformational and agentifying possibilities for youth today, but also intergenerationally, in the context of an increasingly uncertain future for all, human and otherwise.

Education, the International, and Markets I now return to discussions in the previous chapter (Swanson, 2010), and, by way of dialogue with it, summarize arguments made in that text, which are still highly relevant in this historical present. In fact, the current political context in which Education operates today on a global scale has meant that the trend outlined in the previous text has deepened rather than been ameliorated. Transnational Education (TNE) (see: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/insightsand-publications/uuki-insights/scale-uk-transnational-education) and the neoliberal rhetoric that animates it is ever more present in the ongoing marketization of Education. This is despite, or because of, the deepening economic conservativism

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that accompanies that trend, one which is intertwined with an uncomfortable mix of neoliberalism and political conservativism. The relationships, however, between the market, Education, and the political landscapes in which Education is enacted is never straightforward. There are always competing ideological milieus in which Education operates. Education has always been exploited for national ambitions and interests, and even TNE, contradictorily, follows that pattern as an exercise of a nation state’s “soft power” in the global arena and to maintain cultural hegemony. The politics of knowledge is intricately tied to the politics of glocal relations. Despite a push toward “North/South” cooperation and the pervasiveness of language around “decolonization” of curricula, educational systems, and knowledge, TNE or Global Education maintains its currency, and this mode of transmission, through “knowledge transfer” or “knowledge mobilisation,” continues to be prevalent. This thrust aligns with an ongoing economic and managerialist trend toward efficiencies, and standardized and evidence-based practices in the educational field inherited from corporate philosophies and marketization. In this internationalizing and (trans)national thrust, the commodification of educational programs whose purposes are underwritten by national economic motivations renders insignificant any genuine, transformative discussions that have at their center questions and concerns about education as ethical, relational, ecological, or values-based. When it does happen, through discourses on GCE or Sustainable Development Education (SDE), it tends to remain superficial, restricted, or still caught up in the hegemony of the market and ideologically constrained by it. It is in the contemporary globalizing context of mass education that assumptions on “effective content” and “delivery” have become foreclosed and underscored by “best practices” that precede philosophical engagement, divest educators of their right to professional judgment, leach intellectualism and spirituality from educational processes, and preclude a plurality of alternatives. The neoliberal agenda for education has not been significantly interrupted by the political imperatives and glocal challenges of this historical moment. Modernization and economic development, often mixed in with political conservativism and authoritarianism, continue at the cost of other vitally important considerations of the human condition, such as ethics, democracy, justice, ecological knowing, and socio-ecological well-being. Education has been held to ransom by a set of values that dictate the terms of its elaboration and interpretation. They restrict the form of its discourses, debates, and practices. These values have become a pre-discourse where the means to debate the terms of implementation or practice are forestalled as they are held to the mandates of economic forces that advance global competition over socio-ecological cooperation. They also promote technoscientific industrialized “progress” over ecological sustainability and global social justice. In this way, they maintain existing social inequities as a “natural” condition of market forces over concerns for democracy and egalitarianism, and underscore an ideological status quo that reproduces capitalist relations of production on an increasingly global scale, even as the cracks in capitalism as a sociopolitical, cultural, and economic system become more exposed with every global economic shock. Nevertheless, as capitalism works to repel

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alternatives, possibilities for resistance to its hegemony arise in many local places and collective spaces across the globe. The current global political condition provokes a number of questions: With this historical moment in mind, how do we redirect attention to issues of purpose and the place of debate within the educational field? What might be required to stimulate debate around advancing forms of education focused on principles of democracy, well-being, ecological knowledge, indigenous wisdoms, and glocal social justice? Once we have interrogated the values and non-values in/of Education that are not up to the task of responding to a planet in crisis, what values are worthy of considering in our advocacy of a Values Education that offers radically hopeful and life-affirming alternatives. With these questions in mind, I enter into a discussion about an African ethicoonto-epistemology as a contribution to Values Education as worthy, educational ideal. It is an ideal for Education that I believe would serve a different purpose as currently practiced in its dominant economic mode and reconstitute its purpose toward an ethic of care. I have written extensively on this Southern African ethicoonto-epistemology of possibility, hope, and conscience (see as examples Swanson, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2015a, 2015b), though I need to qualify this intervention here. It is not that this cosmology is the only valuable contribution that can be made to Values Education. There are many wisdoms, spiritualities, philosophies, and ecological ways of being that have value and offer an important invitation to Values Education and to a reimagined Education. The intention is not to shut down pluralities and futurities, but instead to begin a process of reimagining, making possible viable alternatives – giving space to think, to think differently, to feel differently to reprioritize and rethink what is important and good in Education, and to offer different, more meaningful, and life-affirming ontologies. I draw on this Southern African way of being from my lived experience growing up in South Africa and have witnessed it practiced among many indigenous and local people in lived contexts of its expression. I have also recognized the limitations of its manifestation in contexts of slow and structural violence, and where it has been misappropriated to underscore institutional or national ambitions. But, I have seen where it has transcended such oppressions too, through the power of its relational ethic and the agency within which it manifests in those that live it. I believe that this form of indigeneity offers a contribution to an ideal of “good education” within the consideration of worthy human and ecological values. It also offers a viable alternative to the universalized status quo promulgated through such tropes as “quality” or “standards” or “key performance indicators.” Biesta (2009) remarks that the “problem of stories that express a quasi-consensus about good education is also that they suggest that there is no alternative.” He argues that it is, however, “not too difficult to see that instead of economic competitiveness, we could also argue that as a society we should give priority to care – care for the elderly, care for the environment – or to democracy and peaceful co-existence.” Insightfully, Biesta notes that “such priorities suggest a complete different set of educational arrangements and articulate radically different views about what good education might look like” (p. 7).

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With these thoughts on an alternative for “good education” that places values of care above economic imperatives, I draw this chapter to a close by describing Ubuntu toward a philosophy of educational practice as a contribution to Values Education. Again, I do not make this offer by way of singularizing a contribution to Values Education but because, as I argue it here, such a contribution pluralizes possibilities and opens up viable alternatives. Opening up viable alternatives and staying with the difficult work of reimagining rather than too quickly moving to “applications” and unintentionally foreclosing on those alternatives and possibilities is crucial here – crucial to the struggle of deep reimagining, and crucial to the struggle of making possible viable, life-affirming futures for all. I argue for Ubuntu specifically, as one viable option, because this cosmology offers a relational and ecological way of walking alongside Education, or in other terms, being with and for Education. This is an “Education” that may respond to this historical present with radical hope for a reimagined future in which justice, decency, and integrity have a worthwhile chance of prevailing.

Ubuntu: A Philosophy of Becoming Human Ubuntu is short for an isiXhosa proverb in Southern Africa. It comes from Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: a person is a person through their relationship to others. Ubuntu is recognized as a Southern African philosophy or ethico-onto-epistemology, linking the individual to the collective through “brotherhood” or “sisterhood.” In this sense, Ubuntu makes a fundamental contribution to indigenous “ways of knowing and being.” With differing historical emphasis and (re)contextualization over time and place, it is considered a spiritual and relational way of being in the broader sociopolitical context of Southern Africa but is not restricted to this region. This approach is not only an ethical way of knowing and being in relation with an-Other but is an expression of daily living. That is, it is a way of knowing that fosters a journey toward “becoming human” (Vanier, 1998) or is a way of being that “renders us human” (Tutu, 1999), or, in its collectivist sense, it is a greater humanity that transcends alterity of any form (Swanson, 2007). Nobel Prize laureate, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, who, in 1995, became the chairman of postapartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), was a strong advocate of the philosophy and spiritual power of Ubuntu in the recovery of “truth” through narratives of atrocities from the apartheid era. He also viewed it as necessary in the more important and subsequent processes of forgiveness, reconciliation, transcendence, and healing that arise through the cathartic process of truth-telling. In this sense, the extension of notions of “truth” in respect of the TRC’s mandate exceeded a forensic notion of “truth-finding” to include three others of truth-seeking that encompassed personal or narrative truth, social or dialogic truth, and healing or restorative truth (Marx, 2002, p 51). A sense of “African epistemology” resounds through these postulations of “truth” in their formulation and exposition. As a philosophical thread of African epistemology, Ubuntu focuses on human relations, attending to the moral and spiritual

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consciousnesses of what it means to be human and to be in relationship with an-Other, including ecological others. This is voiced in the TRC’s announcement that “It shift the primary focus of crime from the breaking of laws or offences against a faceless state to a perception of crime as violations against human beings, as injury or wrong done to another person” (as cited in Marx, ibid.). Again, the TRC’s imperative of truth-seeking is underscored by a conception of African epistemology and Ubuntu in its incorporation of personal or narrative truth, social or dialogic truth, and healing or restorative truth. While a number of critiques could be offered about the limitations of Ubuntu in its realization in the TRC in transcending injustice, offering possibilities of more substantive structural change, and fostering the kind of authentic forgiveness that might release both victim and perpetrator from the shackles of oppression and trauma, nevertheless it offered a possibility of relationality that moved beyond retribution to repair and hopefulness. As I have grown to understand the concept, Ubuntu is borne out of the philosophy that community strength comes from community support and solidarity, and that dignity and identity are achieved through mutualism, care, generosity, and commitment to the other beyond alterities. The adage that “it takes a village to raise a child” is aligned with the spirit and intent of Ubuntu. Just as apartheid threatened to erode this traditional African way of being – although in some instances it ironically strengthened it through galvanizing collectivist support and creating solidarity among the oppressed – so increasing industrialization, urbanization, and globalization threaten to do the same (Swanson, 2007, 2010, 2015a). Yet, what can Ubuntu offer in the reimagining of Education? How might Ubuntu be fostered in educational contexts as a counter to industrialized and postindustrialized ideologies that attempt to subordinate the socio-ecological and ethico-relational in the forward thrust of “economic growth” and “development”? Perhaps this may be a focus of a Values Education debate that places such an ethicoonto-epistemology at the forefront of concerns about what might constitute a “good,” valuable, and worthy Education, and which operates counter-logically to current implicit assumptions. Such a cosmology offers an entryway to reimagining Education for futures of hope, repair, affirmation, and possibility. It also offers ways through the hubris, abuse of power, and intersectional oppressions to ethical relationalities of decency, integrity, and the possibilities of justice.

Conclusion Values Education may offer a route into facilitating the search for alternative, viable futures in which radical hope becomes possible and might be realized as an exercise of educational endeavor. Questions about values, whose values, and to what purposes should always be at the forefront of a Values Education that offers lifeaffirming alternatives. Values Education should not foreclose on assumptions about ideology and core questions of how we might be in the world with others, all ecological others in intricate inseparability, and what it might mean to foster an ethical relationality of care. I believe it should maintain these questions at the

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forefront of any further questions about educational discourse and practice, but it should do so with recognition of multiple alternatives, of a plurality of thoughts and ideas about what is for others’ educational good, and even who or why these questions might need to be asked, continually, or not. I believe that it should also be self-critical and internally reflective, and that such a critical process should recognize the ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes, and divergent perspectives that inhere in any advocacy on behalf of others, society, and the ecology. Such an endeavor, I believe, should never waiver from the key thematic principles and worthy human values of freedom, democracy, wellbeing, care, and justice, but it should do so with acknowledgment of the complexities that such approaches underscore. For to ignore the complexities, pluralities, ambiguities, and contingencies is to suppress the shadows and ghosts (Derrida, 1994) that wander mournfully through our discourses and debates. To be of value, Values Education, should not just be another form of advocacy for Education in itself as much as offer a place for critical debate as to what values should be both the purpose and engagement with, for, and walking alongside an Education reimagined. Values Education should be that process of reimagining Education. It should be that process of reimagining as response to a planet in crisis in this historical present and thus a process of reimagining the future. I conclude by quoting the introductory words in the UNESCO (2021) report: Reimagining Our Futures Together: a new social contract for Education. The words act as a reminder of this historical present, of efforts that have been made, should be made, and are being made, to reimagine Education otherwise. The words speak of intent and they offer radical hope: Our humanity and planet Earth are under threat. The pandemic has only served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness. Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures. . . . We face a dual challenge of making good on the unfulfilled promise to ensure the right to quality education for every child, youth and adult and fully realizing the transformational potential of education as a route for sustainable collective futures. To do this, we need a new social contract for education that can repair injustices while transforming the future. This new social contract must be grounded in human rights and based on principles of non-discrimination, social justice, respect for life, human dignity and cultural diversity. It must encompass an ethic of care, reciprocity, and solidarity. It must strengthen education as a public endeavour and a common good.

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The Five Pillars of Learning An Integrative Values-Based Approach to Teacher Professional Learning in Higher Education

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Instrumentalist Postsecondary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Personal, Professional, Public, and Planetary Learning and Enrichment via the Five “Holarchical” Pillars of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Integrative/Holarchical Ontological and Epistemological Foundation to Support the Five Pillars of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Possibility of Taylor’s Open and Integrative Secular “Super-Nova” Reality . . . . . . . . . . The Possibility of Habermas’s Integrative/Holarchical Kinds of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Practical Starting Point: Designing and Building Integrative Education via Integrative Values Teaching and Learning Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter utilizes Delors’ adapted “five pillars of learning,” Charles Taylor’s “super-nova reality,” and Jurgen Habermas’s “integrative knowledge” concepts in building a case for integrative education and applying a values-based approach to teacher professional learning in higher education. Keywords

Integrative education · Values-based education · Teacher education · Higher education · Charles Taylor · Jurgen Habermas · Educational development

O. Salim (*) Durham College, Oshawa, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_44

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Introduction The poet Rumi tells a story of a drunken man whose neighbor finds him crawling on his hands and knees looking for lost keys under a streetlamp. The neighbor immediately joins in the search, but without success. When the neighbor asks, “are you sure you lost them here?” “No,” replies the drunk, “I dropped them in front of my yard – but there’s more light here!” This story has relevance for how society and in particular students, teachers, administrators, employers, and governments are currently searching for the “keys” to a sustainable, prosperous, and democratic future through the means of higher education (PSE).

Instrumentalist Postsecondary Education As Salim (2020, 2021, 2022) contends, our current postsecondary education (PSE) systems, inebriated by an instrumentalist vision and practice of education, search for the “keys” under the “street lamp” in which we undermine our ability to deliver an efficacious and holistic education. More troublingly and arguably, we are “institutionalizing stupidity” (Haidt, 2022) and degrading, if not obliterating, our movement towards a democratic, egalitarian, and sustainable planet. Today’s planetary challenges demand more than ever that we nurture and draw on our moral imagination, critical thinking, and conscience listening, combined with the ability to appreciate unity in diversity. Instead, we are hijacked by an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation dangerously leading us towards what Said (2001) calls a “clash of ignorance” and what Salim (2020) proposes as an “unnecessary clash of realities.” In the context of higher education, Fischman and Gardner (2022) tell us that today’s PSE sector suffers from a “mission sprawl” and has “lost its way and stands in considerable peril” (p. xi). Many PSE institutions in Canada and across the world are not only disconnected from their intended purpose, but they are unable to deliver and prepare students for a personal, professional, and public enriched education (Salim, 2020). As Knapper (2010) affirms, “there is increasing empirical evidence from a variety of international settings that prevailing teaching practices in higher education do not encourage the sort of learning that contemporary society demands, and indeed that most university professors claim they would like to see” (p. 230). According to Christensen et al. (2010), despite the extraordinary research advances that have taken place in our understanding of knowledge, learning, and teaching in PSE in the Canadian context, the “impact of educational research on faculty-teaching practices and the student learning experiences has been negligible” (p. 4). As several more recent studies confirm, many of today’s Canadian colleges and universities are unable to deliver either the informative or transformative kinds of learning that allow students to thrive, prepare, and succeed within and beyond the campus grounds of higher learning (Salim, 2021, 2022; Weingarten et al., 2018; Grayson et al., 2019; Grabove et al., 2012; Mackay & Devitt, 2021; MacKay, 2014; Polster & Newson,

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2015; Spooner & McNinch, 2018).1 Here, Lovat (2019) aptly captures the paradox of this educational failing, when he writes as follows: “We live in an era that is blessed with the scientific understanding of learning . . . (yet the irony is that) . . . many modern educational regimes have the evidence before them but ignore it and establish regimes of learning that are actually hostile to efficacious learning” (p. 10). This widening gap between what we need and want of higher learning and what its current educators and structures provide comes at a time in which the looming climate crisis, the gross inequity, the rise of authoritarian nationalism, to name a few of today’s challenges, call for more sophisticated responses than ever before. The failure to provide such responses gives rise to questioning the relevance and future direction of higher education and, by extension, teacher professional learning. Hence, the call for an integrative kind of education, a holistic college and university teaching and learning experience that nurtures a balanced society and inspires a selfauthorizing and truth-deciphering graduate who can develop a philosophy of ethics, democratic vocation, and pluralism. Not to mention, learning how to fashion entirely new and sustainable ways of living and working in the world. As Tagg (2004) points out, today’s planetary challenges, combined with advancements in pedagogical research call for, “not just acquisition but also transformation, not just more facts but also metamorphosis” (p. 8). Subsequently, this chapter proposes that today’s higher education systems must seek and deliver on a holistic educational mission, with related pedagogical practice and teacher professional learning, so nurturing a community of reflective learners who are open to change. As Salim (2020, 2022) makes the case, the instrumentalistinspired foundations of today’s higher education systems deny students, and hence society, of a progressive understanding of reality built around the integrative nature of knowledge, learning, and teaching. While much of our higher education systems

1

For example, Arum and Roksa (2011) research study of more than 2,300 undergraduates revealed: “Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. . .large numbers of U.S. college students can be accurately described as academically adrift. They might graduate, but they are failing to develop the higher-order cognitive skills that it is widely assumed college students should master. These findings are sobering and should be a cause for concern” (p. 5). Thus, they argue: “Limited learning in the U.S. higher education system cannot be defined as a crisis because institutional and systemlevel organizational survival is not being threatened in any significant way. . ..No actors [students, parents, professors, administrators and government] in the system are primarily interested in undergraduate student academic growth, although many are interested in student retention and persistence. Limited learning on college campuses is not a crisis because the institutional actors implicated in the system are receiving the organizational outcomes that they seek, and therefore neither the institutions themselves nor the system as a whole is in any way challenged or threatened” (pp. 123–124). However, as Salim (2020, 2021) makes the case, while Arum and Roksa’s diagnosis about the broken “system not being threatened nor challenged” may have held true in 2011, such dysfunctional learning outcomes in PSE is increasingly challenged by both students, industry, and the broader society. In fact, today’s PSE systems are not only expected to deliver much greater learning outcomes and teaching accountability, but such pedagogical shortcomings have manifested in a growing debate about the value and relevancy of today’s college diploma and university degree.

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(along with contemporary society) persist with an instrumentalist world view, more and more scientists are shifting to an interdependent or systems thinking understanding of existence (McGilchrist, 2019; Capra & Luisi, 2014; Palmer & Zajonc, 2010; Wheatley, 1999; Senge, 1994; Lovat, 2020). As Palmer and Zajonc (2010) contend, the architects of the “new physics” have, through compelling experiments in quantum mechanics and relativity, “forced many to abandon the naive materialistic paradigm in favor of one that puts experience in the place of object, and see relationship no longer as mediated solely by conventional forces between or isolated entities; a deeper holism is at play” (p. 66). Here, Senge (1994) tells us, systems thinking could be described as the notion of interconnectedness in which “nature (and that includes us) is not made of parts within wholes. It’s made of wholes within wholes” (p. 371). In context of education, Salim (2020, 2021, 2022), drawing on the ideas above and combining with Koestle’s thesis, argues our view of reality and knowledge, especially in the field of education, might be better served if we look at phenomena through a holarchical and paradoxical (rather than hierarchical or binary relationship). According to Koestler (1970), “All complex structures and processes of a relatively stable character display hierarchic organization, and this applies regardless whether we are considering inanimate systems, living organisms, social organizations, or patterns of behaviour” (p. 133). Thus, Koestler argues, these complex structures are composed of a “holarchical” phenomenon in which each holarchy is composed of “holons” or units that are autonomous and self-reliant, but also dependent on the greater whole of which they are part. In other words, a holarchy is a hierarchy of self-regulating holons that operate both as autonomous wholes and as dependent parts. In light of this holarchical approach, a wide and growing body of research evidence from a transdisciplinary field of research indicates that our ways of knowing involve an interconnected and “holarchical” constructive process that exist in a contingent or unified relationship between cognition and our physical, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions. Thus, we must acknowledge that our notion of knowledge and reality (and to some extent truth) are both a “described” [read “objective”/empirical view of reality] and also “prescribed” phenomena [read interpretative/constructive view of reality], in which both new physics (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010) and premodern thinkers reminded us over 300 years ago, “questions of knowledge could not be asked without question about being, such that epistemology becomes identical with ontology” (Rezaee & Mansur, 2009, p. 21). Here, as Fig. 1 below illustrates, it could be said that what we know (epistemological holon) is always filtered through who we are (ontological holon), and who we are will always be filtered and determined of “why,” “how,” and “what” we know through our chain of conscience saturation and influence (not to mention our source or notion of verifying truth – axiological holon). Subsequently, this chapter builds a case that societal integrity and balance accompanied by planetary sustainability might be achieved through Jacques Delors’ (1996) five adapted pillars of learning (learning to know, to be, to live and work with others, and to impact people, society, and the planet). Moreover, the chapter offers a brief summary of the integrative education model and proposes that the five “holarchical” pillars of learning can be ontologically established and fully

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Fig. 1 Integrative or holarchical view of existence. (Adapted figure from Salim, 2020, p. 550)

pedagogically supported through the seminal work of Charles Taylor’s (Taylor, 2007) open secular inclusive humanistic thesis, accompanied by Jurgen Habermas’s (Habermas, 1972, 1974, 1984) integrative theory of knowledge (instrumental/technical, communicative/interpretive, and critical/imaginative/emancipatory). These sections are then followed by a summary and related findings of Salim’s (Salim, 2020) research study in which he: (1) theoretically designed; (2) pedagogically delivering (to college educators and administrators); and (3) qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated a heuristic integrative teacher professional learning model that included the five pillars of learning built on Taylor’s inclusive ontology thesis and Habermas’s integrative knowledge interests.

Personal, Professional, Public, and Planetary Learning and Enrichment via the Five “Holarchical” Pillars of Learning Salim (2020, 2021) proposes that we revolutionize and rebuild our postsecondary education systems on a concept and practice of an integrative or holistic education, holism connoting a broad and balanced model of education committed to an understanding of the full potential of human beings and an approach to learning and teaching that “prescribes” personal, professional, public, and planetary enrichment (of 4P Purpose). Subsequently, Salim recommends this 4P purpose aptly and historically supports (1) Canada’s egalitarian and democratic aims; (2) fits with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG); and (3) can be represented in today’s PSE systems by the holistic and humanistic vision of learning introduced just a few decades ago through UNESCO’s conceptualization of “Education for the 21st Century,” in a report entitled Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors, 1996).

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According to Tawil and Cougoureux (2013), UNESCO’s humanistic philosophical perspective in the debate about education’s purpose and integrative view of learning was especially important since most reform advocates and studies of education at the time, and even still today, focus on an instrumentalist and marketdriven agenda. In contrast, in this groundbreaking report, the Delors commission argued that formal education tends to emphasize functional and economic aims to the harm of other essential and sustaining human development endeavors. Here, Delors and his international counterparts argued (and Salim, 2020, 2021 affirms) the choices we make about the purpose and functions of education will undeniably determine the kinds of societies we ultimately “prescribe” and by extension build to live. As a more recent UNESCO report titled, Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? (2015) tells us: It [the Delors report] was not in itself a blueprint for educational reform, but rather a basis for reflection and debate about what choices should be made in formulating policies. The report argued that choices about education were determined by choices about what kind of society we wished to live in. Beyond education’s immediate functionality, it considered the formation of the whole person to be an essential part of education’s purpose.3 The Delors Report was aligned closely with the moral and intellectual principles that underpin UNESCO, and therefore its analysis and recommendations were more humanistic and less instrumental and market-driven than other education reform studies of the time. (p. 15).

In fact, it could be said that the Delors report was ahead of its time since it identified a number of interconnected tensions generated by technological, economic, and social change that we are witnessing in many of today’s broader debates. For example, connections and tensions “between the global and the local; the universal and the particular; tradition and modernity; the spiritual and the material; long term and short-term considerations; the need for competition and the ideal of equality of opportunity; and the expansion of knowledge and our capacity to assimilate it.” (UNESCO, 2015, p. 20). As the report tells us, while these seven identified tensions (and connections) remain a useful perspective from which to make sense and confront today’s dynamics of social transformation, some of these tensions (and connections) are taking on new meaning, while a host news tensions are emerging. These fresh tensions and connections include: patterns of economic growth characterized by rising vulnerability; growing inequality; increased ecological stress; rising intolerance and violence; and implementation and accountability of human rights [not to mention the threat to artificial intelligence and the world becoming less democratic and more authoritarian]. While it was introduced over 35 year ago, the report and its vision continue to respond to these tensions/connections and related societal challenges, including but not limited to environmental sustainability to technological innovation, to social cohesion, inclusion, exclusion, gender equality, and democratic participation. In particular, the Delors report proposes an integrative vision of education based on two key concepts: learning throughout life and the four pillars of learning. It recommends that the notion of formal education and lifelong learning must consider

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the formation of the whole person (addressing the mind, body, intelligence, aesthetic appreciation, and spiritual dimensions) in which learning encompasses four important and interconnected or what Salim (2020) has adapted and called holarchical pillars: Learning to be: to develop one’s personality and to be able to act with growing autonomy, judgment and personal responsibility [i.e. learning and nurturing critical self-reflection, selfauthorization and values vocation (also referred to as social-emotional, transversal and/or soft-skills enrichment]; Learning to know: a broad general knowledge [within and across disciplines and systems] with the opportunity to work in depth on a small number of subjects [i.e. yet, consider subjects interconnected within a topic-based learning context]; Learning to do: to acquire not only occupational skills but also the competence to deal with many situations and to work in teams [i.e. receiving real-world opportunities via collaborative learning, community engagement and experiential/work-based/service learning]; Learning to live and work together: by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence [i.e. nurturing the value of an ethical, expansive and pluralistic ontological, epistemological and axiological vocation] (adapted from UNESCO, 2015, p. 39).

In light of the emerging tensions mentioned above, accompanied the importance of systems thinking noted earlier in the chapter, Salim (2020) makes the case the four pillars must also include a fifth pillar. This is, namely, a pillar in which learning also involves impacting on people, society, and our planet. As a growing body of research over the last several decades reveal, both personal and social transformation are inextricably linked and deeply infused in the learning and teaching process (Merriam & Grace, 2011; Holst & Brookfield, 2013; Cranton & English, 2009; Lovat & Smith, 2003; Kawsworm et al., 2010; Cranton, 2006; Jarvis & Watts, 2012; Mezirow & Taylor, 2009; Merriam & Bierema, 2014; Merriam et al., 2012; Illeris, 2015). In other words, whether we intend it or not, PSE institutions and educators, as ideology-forming agents, can either become conduits of change (of people, societies, and our natural environments) or, alternatively, keepers of the status quo (Cranton, 1994; Holst & Brookfield, 2013; Lovat & Smith, 2003). As noted above, maintaining the status quo is no longer a prudent or realistic option (Fig. 2).

An Integrative/Holarchical Ontological and Epistemological Foundation to Support the Five Pillars of Learning Subsequently, Salim (2020, 2022) argues that such an integrative vision and practice of education cannot be supported by today’s scientistic (or instrumentalist) reductive and closed PSE paradigm with its related pedagogical practice. Instead, he recommends that the five “holarchical” pillars of learning can be ontologically established

Fig. 2 Alignment between 4P aims of an integrative education, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and Delors’ 4 þ 1 pillars of learning

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and pedagogically supported through Charles Taylor’s open secular and inclusive humanistic thesis (Taylor, 2007), accompanied by Jurgen Habermas’s (Habermas, 1972; Habermas, 1974, 1984) application of knowledge via his ways of knowing theory. Taylor’s “supernova” post-secular ontology, combined with Habermas’s integrative theory of knowledge, offers at least one way in which we can realize the five pillars of learning and strive towards an inclusive, humanistic, and integrative world view and associated pedagogical practice. Justification for such a schema is in the following sections.

The Possibility of Taylor’s Open and Integrative Secular “SuperNova” Reality Given the urgent need to nurture systems thinking, pluralism, and peace within and beyond our increasingly diverse and interconnected societies, Salim (2020) argues that we might be wise to find consonance between the secular and sacred realities through Taylor’s (2007) open secular humanistic ontology (or super-nova of modern, plural beliefs, including the secular and sacred). As Taylor tells us, many of today’s philosophical debates continue to be understood as developments out of, or reactions to, the apparently incompatible notions of the highest good – “life” (natural/immanent order) or something “beyond” (supernatural/transcendent order). Here, as Taylor (2007) tells us, the philosophical debate, is now “shaped by two extremes, transcendent religion, on the one hand, and its frontal denial, on the other” (p. 20). More specifically, he provides a nuanced framework in which the battlefield or struggle for ontological and epistemological belief and unbelief can be divided up into three, possibly four, corners [or window frames of reality]. The first corner #1, he calls the Neo-Nietzscheans, the “Anti-Humanists,” and the “antitheists.” The second corner #2 includes the “secular humanists” or what he calls the “exclusive humanist.” (This is the corner that Salim (2020) suggests currently comprises the ontological foundations of today’s Western education systems.) The third corner #3, he terms, “acknowledgers of the transcendence” or “those who acknowledge some good beyond life.” Finally, the fourth corner #4 involves an explosion or “nova” of new forms of belief and unbelief arising out of the postrevolutionary, individualization, and self-expressiveness of personal experience of the transcendent in our era (Fig. 3). As Taylor (2007) points out, the ontological modern debate is about more than belief or unbelief in the transcendence; it is also about the nature and value of ordinary human flourishing. Thus, he writes: There are secular humanists, there are neo-Nietzscheans, and there are those who acknowledge some good beyond life. Any pair can gang up against the third on some important issue. Neo-Nietzscheans and secular humanists together condemn religion and reject any good beyond life. But neo-Nietzscheans and acknowledgers of transcendence are together in their absence of surprise at the continued disappointments of secular humanism, together also in the sense that its vision of life lacks a dimension. In a third line-up, secular humanists and

Fig. 3 Taylor’s (2007) four corners or window frames of ontology aligns with 3P purpose of PSE & 5 pillars of learning. (Adapted from Salim, 2020, p. 670)

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believers come together in defending an idea of the human good, against the anti-humanism of Nietzsche’s heirs (p. 637).

As noted above, Taylor also identifies the possibility of a fourth corner to the debate. In fact, it is this fourth option that Taylor argues includes the possibility of overcoming the confining categories and challenges of the other corners in the debate. He writes: A fourth party can be introduced to this field if we take account of the fact that the acknowledgers of transcendence are divided. Some think that the whole move to secular humanism was just a mistake, which needs to be undone. We need to return to an earlier view of things. Others, in which I place myself, think that the practical primacy of life has been a great gain for human kind, and that there is some truth in the self-narrative of the Enlightenment: this gain was in fact unlikely to come about without some breach with established religion. . .but we nevertheless think that the metaphysical primacy of life espoused by exclusive humanism is wrong, and stifling, and that its continued dominance puts in danger the practical primacy (p. 637).

Thus, despite Taylor’s critical analysis of contemporary society with its notions of the “immanent order” or “closed secularism,” he maintains that we are not sliding towards pure materialism. Instead, he argues, neither spirituality nor the notion of the transcendence is dying. As Taylor (2007) puts it, “the yearning for eternity is not the trivial and childish thing it is painted as since most people are incapable of being indifferent to the transcendent possibility” (p.722). According to Taylor, we are moving towards what he calls a “nova-effect” (a cosmologic term referring to a pluralism of exploding stars, and the Latin word meaning “new”) in which people in search of fullness are able to draw from the harvest of intellectual, cultural, and spiritual gains mounted over the past several centuries (Campbell, 2017). In this time of increasing culture fragmentation, people not only in the elite circles but also general population are encouraged to discover their own fulfillment. Subsequently, he asserts “we are now living in a spiritual super-nova, a type of galloping pluralism on the spiritual plane” (p. 300). Consequently, while Taylor claims this “nova” or “super-nova” effect can certainly produce fragmentations and shallow options, the secular age beats the conformity and dogmatism of the premodern age of fundamentalism. Thus, he argues, in our transition from a secular to post-secular age, the challenge will be to combine within a secular inclusive humanism (as opposed to exclusive humanism) the strengths of particular values found both in the secular (e.g., reason) and sacred (e.g., ethics) outlooks. According to Spohn (2015), in Taylor’s post-secular thesis, “The hierarchical distinction between secular and religious moral reasoning is dropped altogether because it is viewed as being based on unwarranted beliefs about the neutrality and independence of secular reasons” (p. 129). Thus, Spohn (2015) tells us: Taylor’s model of post-secularism can be understood in terms of reiterative universalism. It appeals to a set of shared values on a very general level and at the same time leaves a lot of space for both secular and religious iterations of these values in the course of deliberation processes in concrete societal contexts” (p. 132).

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Subsequently, Spohn proposes that Taylor’s post-secular thesis about “universal values” opens up the possibility that people from very different cultural contexts can come to agree on a couple of basic norms on the basis of shared experiences of suffering: The main point here is that we will never be able to specify the “core meaning” of any given set of universal values in the abstract because values are always realized anew, that is, reiterated in particular historical situations. This implies that the concrete meaning of universal values can vary across time and cultural contexts and is constantly undergoing change: “Every iteration transforms meaning, adds to it, enriches it in ever-so-subtle ways. In fact, there really is no ‘originary’ source of meaning, or an ‘original’ to which all subsequent forms must conform.”57 This is what is meant by reiterative universalism’s “particularist focus and pluralizing tendency.”58. . .I take this to be the most promising trajectory to meet the challenge of growing religious and cultural diversity, more promising at least than both acultural rationalism and culturalist triumphalism. Thus I believe that Taylor is basically on the right track with his model of post-secularism. (p. 131)

The Possibility of Habermas’s Integrative/Holarchical Kinds of Knowledge If Taylor’s secular inclusive humanistic ontology (or super-nova of modern, plural beliefs including the secular and sacred) offers the most promising trajectory to meet today’s planetary challenges, then Habermas’s (1972, 1974, 1984) “holarchical” ways of knowing: (1) empirical/instrumental/technical; (2) interpretative/communicative/practical; and (3) critical/imaginative/emancipatory could serve as Taylor’s complementary and practical epistemological support. According to Habermas, rather than an apparent division of being and knowing and separation between different subjects, fields, and disciplines, there is essentially a unified knowledge reality, and that these apparent differences arise not from anything inherent about knowledge but from human intention, values, and construction (or perception) of that knowledge (Habermas, 1972; Lovat & Smith, 2003; Cranton, 2006). Thus, he argues this perception arises from what he calls three “cognitive interests” that are part and parcel of how the human mind or consciousness works (Fig. 4). The first interest of knowing involves prediction and technical control which impels an “empirical analytic or objective” type of knowing (think, for example, the kind of knowing of “facts and figure” such as water ordinarily freezes at zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit). As Habermas acknowledges, these are the things we “know” by observation and by experimentation (or empirical verification) and “allow us to manipulate and control the environment, predict observable physical and social events, and take appropriate actions. . . In this paradigm, knowledge is established by reference to external reality, using the senses.” (Cranton, 2006. p. 27). However, as Cranton points out: Habermas criticizes technical rationality when it becomes such a pervasive ideology that we either believe all knowledge is instrumental or try to fit all knowledge into that category. In the Age of Enlightenment, the application of reason was seen as the way to solve the world’s

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Fig. 4 Habermas’ holarchy of knowledge. (Adapted from Salim 2020, p. 439) problems. As a result, empirical scientific methods were viewed as superior to subjective, qualitative, or spiritual ways of knowing. Only recently has modernism (the reign of logic) been criticized in the social sciences and education as not allowing a deeper, more open understanding of human interactions. (p. 27)

According to Habermas, the second cognitive interest encompasses interpretation and understanding meanings that gives way to a “historical hermeneutic or practical” form of knowing (think, for example, knowing of language and written words and their related intentions, ideas, and negotiation of meanings). Here Lovat and Smith (2003), drawing on Habermas’s work, suggest that this second way of knowing serves as “a great deal of what is taught and learn[ed] in school that is based in the negation of meaning and understanding through language” (p. 101). Moreover, Cranton (2006) describes this second way of knowing in the following manner: For people to survive together in groups and societies, they must communicate with and understand each other. There are no scientific laws governing these communications—when we communicate with others, we interpret what they say in our own way. This does not mean that communicative knowledge is entirely individual. All societies share and transmit social knowledge, that is, a code of commonly accepted beliefs and behavior. As a society, we come to agree on how things should be and are in reference to standards and values, moral and political issues, educational and social systems, and government actions. Communicative knowledge is derived from shared interpretation and consensus and then often becomes “truth”. (p. 27)

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Yet, as Cranton also points out: Habermas criticized communicative knowledge as being too dependent on subjective understanding. He argued that people may misinterpret the world around them based on distorted assumptions about themselves or society. We want social knowledge to be objective and concrete and therefore stop questioning the systems around us, unaware of the distortions that may exist in our assumptions. (p. 27)

Subsequently, Habermas’s final knowing interest involves being free or emancipated via “critical self-reflective or inner” ways of knowing. As Lovat and Smith (2003) suggest, this kind of knowing might be described as knowing that happens inside of us or the knowing that comes from a traumatic experience or religious conversion experience. As they suggest, generally, there are things that we know, things that we want others to know which are impossible to describe (i.e., a person’s love for their spouse and children). Here, it may be impossible to prove to others this kind of knowing of one’s love to family, until, for example, a person has a spouses and children and then experiences such a powerful kind of knowing with respect to love. As Lovat and Smith (2003) point out, knowing “from the inside,” “imagination,” and “self-reflective” knowing can occur, to a degree, without the influence of others. Thus, they write: The completeness of “critical knowing”, however, is more than simply an increased individual awareness. While 'critical knowing' develops greater understanding of the individual and her/his actions, it is mainly concerned with how these actions have been shaped by the various social, cultural and historical contexts in which individuals act. (p. 101)

As such, Cranton (2006) suggests the philosophical foundation of Habermas’s “emancipatory knowledge” is grounded in critical theory and can be “gained through a process of critically questioning ourselves and the social systems within which we live.” (p. 27). As such, she writes: In this paradigm, instrumental and communicative knowledge are not rejected but are seen as limiting. If we do not question current scientific and social theories and accepted truths, we may never realize how we are constrained by their inevitable distortions and errors. Without the possibility of critical questioning of ourselves and our beliefs, such constraining and selfdefeating knowledge can be accepted by entire cultures. (p. 27)

As Lovat and Smith (2003) tell us, without this emancipatory way of knowing and subsequent praxis (action for ethical change), information that comes from any source, subject, or system can become a means of bondage, rather than emancipation or freedom, “a way of oppressing people or keeping them in straitjackets” (p. 90). In fact, Lovat (2004) writes, “For Habermas, praxis (action) is the ultimate goal of the quest to know and the final measure that knowing has occurred” (p. 148). Subsequently, drawing on Habermas’s seminal work, Lovat (2019) suggests that this kind of knowing might also be described as an imaginative way of knowing. As Lovat contends, it was Einstein’s thinking via critical/imaginative knowledge (not

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empirical knowledge gained through the physical senses and material scientific tools) that helped him discover his trailblazing and transformative theorems in physics. For example, physicist De Grasse Tyson (2017), writes, Einstein, “. . .hardly ever set foot in the laboratory; he did not test phenomena or use elaborate equipment. He was a theorist who perfected the “thought experiment,” in which you engage nature through your imagination” (p. 62). Here, as Lovat (2019) referencing De Grasse’s work demonstrates, scientists during Einstein’s time were blinded by a solely empiricist or instrumentalist way of knowing: As examples of the limitations of their simple empiricism, some of Einstein’s critics described as “fantasy” the notion of the so-called “cosmic constant,” the central tenet in his theory of relativity. In fact, the “cosmic constant” was finally ratified with a measure of empirical evidence in 1998, something further demonstrated by the famous 2016 gravitational wave detected by the Hadron Collider and to an extent ratified even further by the famous and ground-breaking picture of the black hole in 2019. Einstein’s knowing was finally endorsed by highly sophisticated forms of empiricism but the basis and impulsion of his knowing came not from empirical method but from what I refer to as imaginative method. On the other hand, the reliance on a simple empiricism on the part of the 100 adversarial scientists blinded them, while Einstein’s on imagination released him to speculate on realities that were quite beyond empirical verification of the kind most scientists of the day were relying on. (pp. 3-4)

As Lovat shows, Einstein drew on his imagination (or critical/inner knowing) to discover and propose his theories, and then only years later were his discoveries/ theories tested and confirmed/proved through empirical tools. Hence, as Lovat and Smith (2003) make the case, and Salim (2020) affirms, what makes Habermas’s theory of knowledge unique and seminal (compared to many other prominent knowledge theories) is that he avoids describing knowledge in a binary or hierarchical debate (between objective vs. constructive; or technical vs. critical selfreflective; or concrete vs. abstract). In contrast to these polar and competing extremes, a Habermasian view of knowledge would be viewed through a balanced and “holarchical” or integrative lens in which all three knowledge interests empirical (or “objective”), communicative (or interpretive/constructive), and emancipatory (or imaginative/transformative) are inextricably linked and so offer a more integrative, practical, and morally imaginative paradigm of knowledge and, by extension, educational practice. An example of this holarchical (or integrative) view of knowledge in which all three ways of knowing synergistically intersect in an educational setting, irrespective of kinds of learning or subject matter, is aptly captured by Lovat and Smith (2003): It is important that each subject, or area of knowledge, in the curriculum deals with knowledge that comes from all three ways of knowing. Unfortunately, too many people assume that it is Science and Mathematics that represent the best type of technical knowing and the Humanities and Social Sciences and Creative Arts that contain knowing through negotiations of meaning. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every subject offers examples of ‘technical knowing’ ‘knowing through negotiation of meaning’ and ‘knowing inside’.

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Thus, while Art is concerned with the appreciation of aesthetic quality, which is dependent upon negotiation of meaning, it is also concerned with technical and conventional knowing. For example, if you were asked to paint in primary colours, you would be wrong if you used secondary or tertiary colours. Likewise, if you were asked to paint using a Cubist style, you would be wrong if you used a Post-Impressionist or Realist style. Similarly, although Mathematics is based on a great deal of technical knowing, these conventions are only true if you employ a number system based on 10. This is a negotiated meaning, in a sense. Furthermore, if we are wanting students to develop a computer program or solve a problem or consider the impact of computers on society, they will require a great deal more than technical knowledge. In fact, if they only have technical knowledge, they will be very limited in their creative problem-solving abilities. Thus, every subject that we teach has examples of all three ways of knowing (p. 103).

Habermas’s theory of knowledge and communicative capacity/action not only substantiates that knowing and being are an inseparable and constructive/prescriptive phenomenon, but his theory also allows for a unity, or holarchy, between the objective and constructive world of epistemology. In a sense, Habermas’s theory of knowing works like a critical self-reflective knowledge-reality-truth filter that can help students become self-authorizing if not self-transforming human beings. Hence, Taylor and Habermas’s contributions constitute a combined ontological and epistemological prescriptive template that, on the one hand, impels consonance, peace, and progress among desperate and conflicting theories of reality and knowing while, at the other end, has inspired and affirmed a number of educational theories and practices that foster a holistic, contemporary, and comprehensive pedagogy engaging: the cognitive, the affective, the social, the somatic, the intuitive, the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual (Lovat, 2022; Palmer & Zajonc, 2010; Merriam & Bierema, 2014; Kawsworm et al., 2010; Jarvis & Watts, 2012; Merriam & Grace, 2011; MacKeracher, 2004). Thus, in establishing the five pillars of learning on Taylor’s secular inclusive humanism ontology accompanied by Habermas’s theory of knowledge, we may get one of the most profound ways in which we can rebuild the ontological/epistemological pedagogical foundation of PSE so as to inspire students (and by extension society) to create a more balanced, egalitarian, and peaceful/sustainable world.

A Practical Starting Point: Designing and Building Integrative Education via Integrative Values Teaching and Learning Philosophy The concepts of knowledge, learning, and teaching are central to the field of education, but most assume its meaning and related practice are agreed upon. Yet, as Salim (2020) argues, such agreement is far from the truth. Put otherwise, the way in which a teacher perceives knowledge, learning, or teaching is deeply connected to their philosophical (ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions) in which the subconscious constellation of values, emotions, identities, context, ideologies,

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beliefs, and habits, among others, all combine and manifest into what seems “rational” or “objective” choices and pedagogical practice in the classroom. Thus, most people are unaware of the powerful internal and external philosophical assumptions (and nonrational choices) that are driving (by default) their view of reality and by extension how they behave in their day-to-day personal, professional, and public lives (Salim, 2020). Here, as a growing body of teacher professional learning research affirms, any significant and productive change in the classroom begins with what a teacher thinks and understands philosophically about the nature of reality/truth and by extension knowledge, learning, and teaching (Salim, 2020). As pointed out above, the arrangement of our ontology, epistemology, and axiology determines not only who we become but also how we learn to know, to do, to be, and to live and work with others, not to mention how we learn how to impact people, society, and the environment. In the pedagogical context, this perspective is fittingly captured by Hamachek (1999) who writes, “Consciously, we teach what we know; unconsciously we teach who we are” (p. 209). While, Pratt and Associates (2005) tell us, consciously or unconsciously, our epistemic assumptions and ideas about learning “will significantly shape, define, and limit a given perspective on teaching” (p. 72). Yet, despite an immense body of research pointing to the importance of philosophy leading to practical pedagogical outcomes, there is both a lack of consensus and confusion as to which learning and teaching philosophies is best suited to serve students and by extension society. To complicate matters more, Merriam and Bierema (2014) tell us, there is “little consensus as to which [teaching/learning] orientations are considered ‘theories’ or how many theories there are. Further, different writers divide and label the knowledge base using different criteria” (p. 25). Thus, even if some theories and orientations share similar meaning and values, they continue to use different terms and make it difficult if not confusing between the educational researchers and the teaching community to close the gap between new research and practice. As Kirshner (2016) points out, in this diverse menu of learning and teaching approaches, educators in a given era often vary in their choice of preferred philosophy or epistemology. As a result, “theorists are speaking many different languages as they attempt to articulate foundations for pedagogy, and they are robbed of the opportunity to build professional discourse of teaching together” (pg. 2). Thus, as Kirshner puts it, we have in today’s educational systems a “Babel Effect,” in which these varying philosophies of learning not only manifest into extreme confusion but can also lead to conflict between alternative versions of learning and subsequent modes of teaching practice. Here, Kirshner (2016) captures this sense of the noise and confusion often experienced by teachers, when he argues: Whether we are behaviourist or constructivist or situativists or critical theorist (to name a few prominent schools) we have coherent and convergent conversations about learning and teaching, and perhaps a sense that we are making progress. But in aggregate, this Balkanization of educational thought is dysfunctional. Unless teachers locate themselves squarely within a single tradition of pedagogical theory – and most don’t – they are faced with a discordant array of pedagogical advice. (p. 2)

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In light of this important philosophical starting point for change, related confusion, and demand for a more holistic education, Salim’s (Salim, 2020) research responded to the call for integrative education, by (1) theoretically designing; (2) pedagogically delivering (to college educators and administrators); and (3) qualitatively and quantitatively evaluating a heuristic integrative teacher professional learning model (termed the 4P aims of personal, professional, public, and planetary knowing). As suggested earlier, in alignment with Canada’s long-standing (while not perfect) egalitarian and democratic principles (and in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals), Salim proposes that such an integrative vision of education may be advanced through UNESCO’s four pillars of learning for the twenty-first century: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, learning to live and work with others (Delors, 1996) – accompanied by a fifth pillar he added: learning to impact/influence people, society, and the planet/environment (Salim, 2020). Likewise, such an integrative vision and practice of education – in which, for example, learning can be better personalized and contextualized and offer informative and transformative ways of knowing/being and social transformation – was established and taught drawing on Taylor’s open-secular supernova ontology and Habermas’s integrative ways of knowing. Subsequently, Salim’s teacher professional learning course (called Learning Beyond the Grades) was designed and delivered drawing on an integrative pedagogical model he termed the U-shape (rather than instrumental or i-shape) approach to learning and teaching (Salim, 2020). In brief, a U-shape approach to learning and teaching means faculty are equipped conceptually and pedagogically (and supported culturally and politically by their institutions) to first understand the multi-philosophical landscape of ontology, epistemology, and axiology (and related connection to the wider and diverse theories of learning and teaching). Moreover, teachers are encouraged to work closely in teams in order to facilitate a multi-perspective theme-based as opposed to a siloed and singularperspective topic-based learning environment. Such a more expansive, real-life, and holistic notion of education recognizes the link and consequences between both the learner’s knowing (epistemology), the learner’s being (ontology), and the learner’s notion of truth (axiology). As King and Baxter Magolda’s (King & Baxter Magolda, 1996) research confirms, “What individuals learn and claim to know is grounded in how they construct their knowledge” (p. 165), and “How individuals construct knowledge and use their knowledge is closely tied to their sense of self” (p. 166). This notion of knowing transcends today’s dominant behaviorist and/or strictly cognitive constructivist paradigm (i-shape approach) – in which knowledge is either downloaded from teacher to student, reduced to a solely cognitive function, or deemed only personally or socially constructed. A narrow kind of knowing that is empty of personal and social context and discrete/detached from our physical, emotional, moral, social, philosophical, and spiritual intelligence and development (Salim, 2020). In such a U-shape approach to pedagogy, education is less a single person vocation and more a team exercise in which polymathic minded faculty work closely with a team of teachers and non-teachers (e.g., community and industry partners), including students, online technology and curriculum experts, librarians, and many others, to offer an experiential, immersive, and collaborative educational experience (Salim, 2020, 2021). In this integrative paradigm of higher learning, the notion of leadership

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(student, teacher, or administrator) means trustworthy behavior supported by an egalitarian culture – a culture that nurtures values vocation, sound communication and constructive feedback, critical and innovative thinking, and the erosion of status/ power differences between administration, faculty, and nonfaculty. As Mintzberg (2015) suggests and Palmer (2007) affirms, in this “community of learning” and interdependent view of leadership, the notion of instruction moves from the individual as the all-powerful knower and leader to the entire class/organization/community capable of leading and solving problems. As Mintzberg argues, semantically we might be better off substituting the term “leadership” with “communityship.” In this context, the teacher’s power and role are understood as fluidly shifting from expert, facilitator, enabler, coach, follower, partner, and learner. There is a great emphasis placed on both real-world challenges and opportunities accompanied by the learners’ insights and experiences. In other words, the learners’ ontology, epistemology, and axiology are equally important in the consideration of the curriculum and learning equation, as the faculty knowledge and institutional learning outcomes (not to mention to the student’s needs, aspirations, multidimensional capacities/intelligences, personal/social context, and knowledge contribution). Moreover, in such a U-shape approach, teachers strive to transcend the world of noncommunicative disciplines/ systems by offering a transdisciplinary curriculum that nurtures a “system thinking” and “design” focused approach to learning and problem-solving. It could be said that such full-circle approach to education moves from a “learner focused” teaching paradigm to a “learner in a society/planet” focused teaching paradigm. This last point is especially important (and discussed at length below) since it shifts from an instrumental values and paradigm of education, in which learning and teaching are concentrated in either the individual or society, to a more holistic focus in which pedagogical values seek to support the individual and their inextricable connection and responsibility to the common good and the planet (Salim, 2020). Thus, in contrast to the instrumentalist i-shape approach, Salim (2020) proposes an alternative integrative model he calls the U-shape approach to integrative constructivist learning and teaching. The U-shaped approach to instruction and learning consists of three distinguished yet interconnected heuristic principles (context, conscious, and content) that are grounded in contemporary research, ranging from educational psychology and philosophy to neuroscience, among others. In this alternative model, rather than starting with transmission of content from individual teacher to students, this approach, as illustrated in Fig. 5, proposes a customized and contextualized approach in which teachers work very closely together as teams to co-deliver curriculum in the following manner: 1. Instructors begin with the students’ personal, professional, and societal needs, meaning making and context (included but not limited to: values, beliefs, feelings, and assumptions related to the learning topic and the students’ environment). 2. Instructors facilitate a journey (via critical-reflection) into the students’ conscious/subconscious world of being (including learning how to learn and the nature of knowing, reality, and truth) and involving the students’ choices, values

Fig. 5 Integrative or U-Shape Approach to Learning and Instruction. (Adapted from Salim, 2020, p. 735)

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vocation, and full array of intelligence (mental (IQ), physical (PQ), emotional (EQ), and spiritual (SQ). 3. Instructors cocreate curriculum in transdisciplinary ways and facilitate ways in which the student can both learn and also challenge the desired/expected learning content (so to possibly create new knowledge) in real-world and experiential theme-based contexts. More specifically, this U-shape approach encourages teachers to begin by developing a welcoming, meaningful, and trustworthy context in which they identify where their students stand upon their respective knowing/being bridge regarding the intended learning topic or subject (but also with respect to the students’ notions of reality, knowledge, and truth, and their knowledge and learning). This is done by delving into the “conscious” or integrative constructivist dimension of their student’s knowing and being referred to as “small theory (t).” Here, this “small t” represents the learner’s values, emotions, beliefs, and assumptions about themselves, their contexts, and their intended learning/subject/topic. Here, it could be said, both the learner and instructors are learning who the learner is and what kinds of meaning making experience does the learner bring with them on their side of the knowing/ being bridge. However, there is also an integrative constructive (or meta-cognitive) process in which instructors challenge and support the learner’s knowledge/reality/ truth and values vocation. As such, the goal of learning is to foster a pedagogical environment in which teachers explicitly (via the movement between “context,” “conscious,” and “content”) facilitate a back and forth journey between where the learner stands on their side of the bridge (“small t”) and where the teacher hopes the student will eventually locate themselves at the other end (referred to as “Big Theory” or knowing/being as prescribed by the empirical/conventional canon or research/content/literature). One of the important distinctions in the U-shape approach is that students “small t” may potentially challenge, innovate, and replace the conventional “Big Theory” of the learning outcome, thus producing and contributing new knowledge to a discipline and system. Thus, while teachers are encouraged to begin with “context,” as illustrated above, it is also important to recognize that such an integrative teaching and learning approach will involve an ongoing feedback loop between “context,” “conscious,” and “content.” In other words, these three can only be properly understood as one integrative or “holarchical” process, intimately and intricately interwoven. Hence, these three Cs are forever tumbling on each other as an integrative constructivist or meaning making process – as the knowledge, learning, and teaching journey unfold. Thus, the aim of an integrative, deep, and long-lasting learning experience is best achieved through a fluid back and forth combination of deductive/inductive and didactic/dialectical and also abductive reasoning processes. In other words, and by drawing on the five pillars of learning noted earlier, there are instances and experiences in which our learning “to be” will impact our “knowing” and “doing.” While on other occasions, learning experiences involving “working with others” or projects that “impact society and the environment” will in essence change what we learn “to know, to do and to be.” As such, the role of the faculty in this U-shape approach moves back and forth from expert instructor to enabler, coach, partner, and learner.

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In this U-shape context (and especially conscious phase), there is also an ongoing focus and facilitation of knowing that moves from intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal learning and enrichment. Hence, the learner is encouraged to understand that she or he are not their absolute values, emotions, philosophies, or core beliefs but rather they have such subconscious and powerful intuitions that can be used or misused and hence filter/prescribe their realities and ultimately govern their daily lives. Thus, to draw on Kegan’s (2009) vernacular, in this “self-authorizing” and “self-transforming” habit of mind, a learner’s moral circle of concern strives to widen for all people and sentient life on the planet and to appreciate the notions of paradox and different ways, paths, and states of mind to the notions of reality, knowledge, and truth. Subsequently, in context of teacher professional learning, an integrative notion of constructivist teaching (U-shape) recognizes (via back and forth movement (teacher and learner codesigned bridges) between context, conscious, and content) the entire learner’s ways of knowing and nurtures a comprehensive philosophy of learning, teaching, and assessment. In other words, rather than promoting one or two dominant kinds of knowledge and learning theories and related philosophies as the most ideal, this integrative approach recognizes and appreciates that each kind of learning and teaching philosophy simply focuses on a continuum of phenomenology and related core values2 centered on the following three areas: 1. Content/instruction/subject centeredness – categorized, for example, by Prat and Associates (2005) in their Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) as the transmission and/or apprenticeship teaching philosophy, or labeled by Zinn (Zinn, 1990) in his Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI) as the liberal and/or behaviorist teaching philosophy. 2. Conscious/learner/individual growth centeredness – categorized, for example, by Prat and Associates in their TPI as the developmental and/or nurturing teaching philosophy or labeled by Zinn in his PAEI as the progressive and/or humanist teaching philosophy.

2 As such, Salim (2020) draws upon and adapts Day and Amstutz (2003) core values model to teaching philosophy. As Day and Amstutz tell us, “The philosophies typically identified in adult education [such as Prat and Associates (2005) Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) or Zinn’s (1983) Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI)] are often placed in systems that preclude multiple ways of thinking” (p. 92). Subsequently, Day and Amstutz assert, “holding one set of beliefs does not eliminate the possibility of holding additional belief-sets” (93). Thus, they propose the alternative core values orientation in which the “values recognize varying interactions between individuals, the societies in which they reside and the natural environment that may nourish physical, moral, and spiritual growth” (p. 94). As such, they synthesize and propose a core values-oriented classification of philosophies in adult education that include: cultural custodianship, useful knowledge, spiritual connectedness, individual/group growth, personal existence, social reconstruction, and scientific scholarship. Subsequently, they suggest, “These values can morph into prominence, can decrease with new understanding or lay dormant until an issue arises that promotes reconsideration of one’s values” (p. 94).

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3. Context/society/planetary change centeredness – categorized, for example, by Prat and Associates in their TPI as the social reform teaching philosophy or labeled by Zinn in his PAEI as the radical teaching philosophy. Understanding Teaching Philosophy via Integrative Values Approach Thus, as Salim (2020, 2022) argues, based on the needs and aspirations of the students, of society and of the learning community/context, this integrative paradigm draws and optimizes (like a Swiss Army knife) on the values, methods, and methodologies of the varying learning theories, teaching philosophies, and related assessments (not to mention strengths and outcomes). As such, teachers learn how to appreciate and benefit their students, society, and the planet by finding consonance between diverse ontologies/epistemologies (i.e., secular and sacred) and practically drawing upon a wide field of traditions, philosophies, values, and perspectives, included but not limited to pedagogical research (e.g., intelligence theories), neuroscience research, developmental psychology, philosophy, new physics, and non-Western perspectives (e.g. Indigenous knowledge and world religions) (Fig. 6). Subsequently, Salim’s (2020) U-shape approach to pedagogy is affirmed and justified (in many ways) by today’s scientific and scholarly understanding of knowledge, learning, and teaching – as proposed, for example, by adult education research, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and new physics, among others. More specifically, Salim (2020) used a design-based research methodology to draw upon and find consonance between the confusing and often noncommunicating systems/ disciplines/fields in order to develop a pedagogical blueprint to support the U-shape approach in what he called the Integrative Knowledge, Learning and Teaching

Fig. 6 Understanding teaching philosophy via integrative values approach

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Rubric (I-KLT). In a paradoxical way, this rubric accommodates both the empirical and constructive world views while including and synthesizing a wide and diverse range of perspectives and theories on the topic of knowledge, learning, and teaching. Here, the aim of this U-shape model, I-KLT rubric, and subsequent teacher professional learning course was to offer a coherent “map” and “compass” (and accompanying tools) by which educators could reflect and locate their phenomenology and underlying philosophical values, biases, and related pedagogical practice; as well, it was designed to challenge, encourage, and guide educators in adopting an integrative pedagogical enterprise that diverges from their existing traditional or instrumentalist teaching practices. As such, one of the unique design features of the U-shape approach, the I-KLT rubric and accompanying course included an accessible and coherent body of content for philosophical reflection3; so to advance the idea that fragmentation and confusion in educational thought is unnecessary, since many of the competing world views, traditions, and subsequent pedagogical theories are embedded in intentions, values, notions of truth, and forms of knowledge that could potentially operate and exist (depending on why, how, and when they are needed) in an integrative (rather conflicting, isolated, or binary) fashion. Moreover, this integrative approach to pedagogy is built on the most comprehensive and contemporary/scientific understanding of human intelligence and development: the cognitive, the affective, the social, the intentional, the somatic, the intuitive, the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual (Salim, 2020). Accordingly, Salim (2020) makes the case that such an integrative construction of knowing and model of education (that transcends the solely empirical or purely cognitive constructive epistemic models) and teacher professional learning (focused on both the informative and transformative kinds learning) hold immense potential to not only nurture transversal or soft-skills enrichment (such as creative, collaborative, critical, and ethical capacities) but, more importantly, such a new paradigmatic foundation may inspire and equip the next generation of PSE graduates with the compassion, commitment, and capability of solving today’s existential dilemmas. Consequently, the mixed method results from Salim’s (2020) study suggested that the integrative teacher professional learning approach via U-shape approach and the I-KLT model, had indeed, accomplished a significant measure of change in helping teacher and administrative participants shift their view toward a more integrative view and practice of knowledge, learning, and teaching. However, the data also revealed that while a conceptual shift had clearly taken place among participants, a more widely adopted practical and sustainable implementation would require additional teacher professional learning commitment; deliberate practice by the participants; and a community of practice initiated by the participants. Also, change toward a more broadly accepted model of integrative pedagogy would require radical

3

As Korthagen (2004) points out, while there are some teacher professional learning opportunities in which teachers are engaged in philosophical development and critical reflection, “it is not always clear exactly what teachers are supposed to reflect on when wishing to become better teachers. What are important contents of reflection?” (2004, pg. 78).

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structural change in PSE education and beyond. A kind of change that necessitates institutional transformation demanded by the public and supported by college administration and government leadership and policy.

Conclusion Returning to Rumi’s story in the introduction about the “drunk searching for his keys,” I propose that only when societies teleologically, ontologically, epistemologically, and axiologically “sober up” and stop looking for the “keys” to a better life through the means of education, where the search seems convenient yet utterly pointless, can we muster the collective will to “break with” our instrumentalist assumptions and “breakthrough” by designing an integrative, democratic, and more meaningful higher education system. In other words, as a society and in particular educational developers, we must recognize that our current pedagogical paradigm in which knowledge is viewed as the acquisition of “objective” cognitive and behavioral ability that is distinct and separate from our moral, social, emotional, spiritual, and philosophical development not only ill prepares our teachers and students but more pompously, “such instrumentality actually undermines student achievement and, in turn, the true power of education to transform the life chances of the population it is meant to serve” (Lovat et al., 2011, p. v). As such, I have made the case that our contemporary education system and related pedagogical structures are overdue for reform if not revolution. I have proposed such dramatic transformation may materialize through the five pillars of learning and supporting ontological, epistemological, and axiological alternatives. Together these heuristic concepts constitute a groundbreaking template that fosters a holistic, progressive, and comprehensive pedagogy that engages with full dimensions of human nature and learning: the cognitive, the intentional, the affective, the social, the somatic, the intuitive, the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual. It is in this “prescriptive” ideal that we can perhaps “locate the keys” to unlock our education systems into radical spaces of possibilities and inspire learners toward the betterment of self, others, and the world.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Spirit of the Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dimensions of Human Experience and Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reuniting Two Halves of the Healthy Human Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mapping Personal Development Through Six Stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Everyday Ego and Spiritual Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wisdom from Ancient Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holistic Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Additional Wisdom Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consequences for School-Age Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Recent findings in neuroscience and developmental psychology have major consequences for general education, which will benefit in consequence from substantial reframing within a much-expanded worldview. In this chapter, the relevant findings are discussed, in combination with the wisdom of ancient philosophy, to provide the rationale and methodology for a vitally improved vision of teaching in schools. Consciousness is no longer thought to be generated solely by the human brain. Recent publications reliably suggest that the universe contains a “field of consciousness,” with brains acting as receivers, filters, processors, and transmitters of information, including emotional sensations and intuitive wisdom, as well as L. Culliford (*) Sussex, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_45

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factual knowledge. The implications for school-age children and for adults, including teachers, are profound in terms of personal, physical, psychological, social, moral, and spiritual well-being and development throughout life. Renewed emphasis on educating the neglected right hemisphere of the brain will be essential to having “well rounded, well balanced, caring members of society.” This involves introducing wisdom training exercises like reflection, meditation, and a range of other practices. Benefits accrue incrementally over time, devolving also onto teachers, parents, families, and communities. The recommended changes, already adopted by numerous schools, are attractive through being inexpensive, also by expanding existing methods and subject matter rather than discarding them. Keywords

Education · Health · Psychology · Science · Spirituality · Values · Wisdom

Introduction The aims of school-age education largely reflect the secular priorities of the prevailing culture. Current educational aims and ambitions are also influenced by financial and political motives. The assumption that student well-being depends primarily on academic achievement, leading directly or via higher education to economic success and stability, the prescribed pathway to family life, homebuilding, and lifelong commercial productivity, is evidently incomplete, offering a circumscribed view that fails those unable to flourish in a predominantly materialist environment. The findings of neuroscience and psychology research in recent decades offer compelling reasons to expand the framework of education by challenging a range of unproven assumptions. They also provide enlightened ways of introducing a wider, multidimensional worldview, methods that preserve the best of what has gone before, adding to rather than displacing it. Reframing education requires a broader understanding of human health and wellbeing in terms of biological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions, a wideangle, floodlight approach to gain a better perspective than that provided by the more limited, spotlight approach that stems from the highly focused technology-assisted microscopic and telescopic viewpoints associated with science. Such reframing will emphasize that schooling acts as a vital foundation for growth and development in identifiable stages, through childhood and on throughout adulthood to the end of life. The quality of education will therefore be a major factor in any person’s lifetrajectory, with consequences significant both for the individual and for society at large. The ideas presented in this chapter are fully consistent with “Values based Education,” “A principle of curriculum organisation, a way of shaping the entire schooling experience, including the planning, managing and organising of the total school curriculum as well as the teaching and learning opportunities within it,” and

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with its aims, “To produce well rounded, well balanced, caring members of society” (Toomey, 2019). With this in mind, because spirituality is inclusive and unifying, the spiritual dimension is given renewed prominence. Each person is part of and pervaded by the sacred, by the spiritual dimension, an observation which applies to everyone, including those who do not believe in God, a higher being, named or unnamed, a spiritual realm or dimension of existence. No-one is exempt; and because spirituality subsumes all other dimensions of human experience, it fortifies a person’s capacity for quality relationships, which are central to “Values based Education.” It enhances the symbiotic effects between the explicit teaching of a school’s values, the quality of student learning, and the effectiveness of teaching.

The Spirit of the Child According to one definition, spirituality is, “a distinctive, potentially creative, and universal dimension of human experience arising both within the inner subjective awareness of individuals and within communities, social groups and traditions. It is experienced as being of fundamental or ultimate importance and is thus concerned with matters of meaning and purpose in life, truth, and values” (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2013). Concerned with “soul” and “spirit,” it is related to but essentially distinct from and independent of religion. Spiritual experiences come into particular focus at times of emotional stress, often related to loss and the threat of loss, such as during periods of physical and mental ill health, of bereavement, and when approaching the end of life. Child psychology research was wrong-footed in the 1960s by an intellectual bias claiming cognitive inability in the young to process spiritual material. Later, researchers began listening to what the children said without imposing “we-knowbetter” interpretations on their narratives. Far from spiritual experiences being absent, they found it normal for children to have rich and varied spiritual lives, serving to underpin altruistic and ethical behavior, guiding children towards enduring meaning, purpose, and connectedness throughout life (Hyde, 2008, p 19). According to research psychologists David Hay and Rebecca Nye (2006), confirmed by others (Coles, 1992; Hart, 2003; Adams et al., 2008), children’s spirituality involves moments of reverence, awe, delight, and wonder, may concern the afterlife and life’s ultimate questions, tends to include religious experiences, and may also involve a darker aspect. In two cohorts of children, aged 6–7 years and 10–11 years, these authors were able to identify a common core category of holistic or spiritual awareness, to which they gave the name, “relational consciousness,” the two main aspects of which are: firstly, the children demonstrated an unusual level of perceptiveness applied, secondly, in terms of four types of special quality relationship, with: (a) things, (b) other people, (c) the child himself or herself, and (d) God or a higher being. Older children were found to reflect more intentionally on their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, such that it was often an objective insight into their subjective responses that gave them a new dimension of understanding, meaning, and experience.

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Many children were able to develop a positive identity and sense of purpose through awareness of being part of something greater than themselves. Nevertheless, a critical observation made by numerous researchers in industrialized societies was that a reduction in spiritual awareness and expression occurs almost universally among older children, those in the 10–12 age range (Hay & Nye, 2006). As they encounter both religious skepticism and the materialist assumptions of science, young people are under intense pressure to conform to the prevailing secular worldview. There is therefore a pressing need within education to defend children against the devaluing and downgrading of their essential spirituality. The most effective protection involves actively promoting its development.

Dimensions of Human Experience and Understanding Organizations like the Spirituality and Psychiatry “Special Interest Group” of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (Spirituality and Psychiatry SIG, 2021), founded in 1999, and the “International Network for the Study of Spirituality,” founded in 2010 (INSS, 2021), also publications like the journal “Spirituality Studies” (2021), Paloutzian and Park (2005), and Zsolnai and Flanagan (2019), provide evidence for the topic of spirituality being increasingly accepted and valued in academic and professional circles. Nevertheless, the concept still introduces ideas that are unfamiliar to many and alien to the prevailing secular culture. Expressing ideas about a spiritual dimension of existence or “reality” presents significant problems of interpretation, providing multiple grounds for disagreement. Less controversial, however, is the concept of “a spiritual dimension of human experience and understanding.” Those adults who claim no experiences of a spiritual nature, uncomfortable with the notion of a spiritual dimension, will nevertheless be obliged to admit that some credible experiences described by other people – characterized, for example, by a sense of wonder and cosmic wholeness – could usefully be categorized as “spiritual” or, at least, “holistic.” This makes agreeable sense when the spiritual dimension is considered as interconnected with four other dimensions, seamlessly linked and overlapping, which together encapsulate the entirety of human experience and understanding. These other dimensions are: physical (concerning energy and matter), biological (organs and organisms), psychological (mental activity), and social (relationships and communities). Any aspect of human existence, including the entire range of subjects addressed by science, may wisely be investigated and understood through twin lenses brought to bear on each of the five dimensions: firstly, that of personal subjective experience; secondly, that of shared understanding. According to this scheme, whether conceived as central, hierarchically superior, or in circular arrangement (Fig. 45.1), the spiritual dimension embodies an originating principle, creating, linking, and shaping the other four, making it an essential aspect of human health and well-being, and thus a vital component of learning to be nurtured (Table 45.1).

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Fig. 45.1 Dimensions of human experience and understanding (From Culliford, 2011, p 49)

Table 45.1 The five dimensions of experience and understanding (Culliford, 2017) Physical (energy and matter) – the miracle of existence Biological (organs and organisms) – the miracle of life Psychological (mental activity) – the miracle of consciousness Social (relationships) – the miracle of love Spiritual (souls and the sacred) – the miracle of unity

Quantum physics, for example, is evidently located in one principal domain, the physical dimension. Nevertheless, it retains for many a high degree of mystery, for instance, about the fundamental origins of energy and matter, the fact of their

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interchangeability according to Einstein’s celebrated equation: e ¼ mc2, and also about uncertainties related to the existence of “dark matter” and “dark energy” in the universe. The Heisenberg indeterminacy principle, which notes that observations at quantum level are inevitably affected by the investigator, confirms an inescapably intimate human interrelatedness with the cosmos. According to the celebrated physicist, David Bohm (1917–1992), “One can no longer maintain the division between the observer and the observed... Rather, both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable.” (1980, p 12). Quantum effects also moderate the interplay of biological molecules – such as nucleic acids – that are central to living organisms. As well as biology, the psychological and social dimensions will also be involved when a person stops to reflect on these mysteries, opening up, too, the possibility of spiritual experiences associated with emotions of awe, wonder, and delight at feeling somehow connected at a deeply personal level with something much greater than oneself, the entirety of the physical universe. Similarly, health is a concept etymologically linked to wholeness, such that “healing” essentially means “to make whole,” and can be regarded in terms of bodily (physical and biological), mental (psychological), communal (social), and holistic (spiritual) health, an idea reflected in the “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” formulations of mental disorder recommended in contemporary psychiatric practice (Scotton, 1996, p 4; Culliford & Eagger, 2009; p 32). Systems of education that ignore the spiritual dimension of young people’s lives are arguably, therefore, doing them a profound disservice. Fortunately, given willingness, it is an easy omission to correct. For those who prefer to sidestep the concept of spirituality, the discussion can yet proceed through the less contentious notion of wisdom.

Wisdom “Wisdom is the knowledge of how to be and behave for the best, for all concerned, in any given situation” (Culliford, 2020, p19). There is an important distinction to be made between knowing something and knowing about that thing; the difference involving both “experience” and “skill,” two attributes essential to the former but unnecessary regarding the latter. For example, people tend to know about clay, the nature of its substance, and what it is; but only an expert potter, from experience and skill acquired through both learning about and actually working it, can properly be said to “know” clay and so be able to use it like living matter, as an extension of the personality, to create a distinctive object, a simple bowl perhaps, both utilitarian and beautiful. It therefore helps to distinguish between two complementary kinds of knowledge under separate headings: “Science” and “Wisdom.” To put it simply, science is the knowledge of facts, knowledge about things, and how they work. Wisdom, qualitatively different, arrives out of deep knowing, skill, and experience

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and is the knowledge of how to live well, moment by moment, both for yourself and other people. Unlike the knowledge of well-established facts, wisdom varies; what works in one situation, at this particular time, and for one person, may fail in other circumstances, at a different time, or for another person. Also, rather than being deduced using the methods of science, that is by reasoned, binary thinking about a necessarily fragmented appreciation of circumstances obtained through the senses, often involving the use of technological measuring instruments like scanners, telescopes, and microscopes, wisdom can be described as holistic, instantaneous, and intuitive, a way of appreciating a situation unerringly in the full context and immensity of the whole. The two halves of the human brain support both capabilities: to observe narrowly, reason, and gather facts; and, to observe broadly, reflect meaningfully, and intuit wisdom. Relative to each other, the left is more worldly, and the right is more spiritual.

Reuniting Two Halves of the Healthy Human Brain In a recent book, “Is Consciousness Primary?” (Schwartz et al., 2020), 11 scientists call into question the limits of their professional education and systematically outline empirical evidence, extensively researched and documented, that challenges scientific materialism. Similarly, the Galileo Commission, comprising 90 scientists from 30 universities worldwide, with the remit, “ To open public discourse and find ways to expand science so that it can accommodate and explore important human experiences and questions that science, in its present form, is unable to integrate” (Galileo Commission, 2021), has published an influential report on human consciousness, stating, “The prevalent underlying assumptions, or world model, of the majority of modern scientists are narrowly naturalist in metaphysics, materialist in ontology and reductionist-empiricist in methodology. This results in the belief that consciousness is nothing but a consequence of complex arrangement of matter, or an emergent phenomenon of brain activity. This belief is neither proven, nor warranted.” (Galileo Commission report, 2021). In other words, consciousness is no longer thought to be generated by the brain; rather, it is the universe itself that is the seat of a matrix or field of consciousness. Wisdom, it seems, involves tapping into and communicating directly, moment by moment, with this cosmic phenomenon. Furthermore, neuroscientists have discovered a mechanism for doing so that involves the two sides of the brain working in harmony, with the left hemisphere going quiet while the right is paying full attention, as occurs during meditation. The importance of integrating left and right brain functioning into whole-brain harmony, in the interests of wisdom and healthy cultural development, has been extensively explored by psychiatrist, neuroscience expert, and accomplished author, Iain McGilchrist, in his groundbreaking book, “The Master and His Emissary” (2009). Explaining his title, McGilchrist tells of a spiritual master who ruled a small, prosperous domain. When its boundaries began to expand, he trained a number of emissaries to help manage the remoter parts and keep the population

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safe. Eventually, the most trusted of these, clever and ambitious, seeing his master’s benevolence as weakness, grew contemptuous. Usurping his position, he then began ruling as a tyrant, so the people became miserable and the domain collapsed in ruins. For McGilchrist, this is an allegory about how, in modern secular culture, the master (the right hemisphere) has been deposed by its trusted emissary (the left) resulting in destructive imbalance (2009, p 14). The two half-brains, left and right, are connected to each other by a band of about 500 million nerve fibers, the “corpus callosum,” yet only roughly 2% of neurons in the cerebral cortex on each side are linked by these fibers. Furthermore, many of the connections in this transverse bundle are inhibitory, designed specifically to stop the other hemisphere from interfering. Thus, to a considerable extent, the two sides are capable of operating separately, in parallel. They are structurally similar but have significant differences of emphasis and function; and here is a paradox: although they work independently, they continuously maintain some contact with each other. Simultaneously, in other words, they work both separately and together. In ideal circumstances, they function as one, a fully harmonized duality working as a unified whole. That the major speech centers of the brain are in only one hemisphere forms part of a design in which the left brain deals with fragmented, nameable parts, with pieces of information in isolation. In contrast, the right brain deals wordlessly with whatever is under consideration as a whole. The left is well-suited to binary (dualist) thinking, and the right to unitary (holistic) experience. In computer language, the left brain is a stepby-step “serial processor” of information, while the right brain is an all-at-once “parallel processor.” The silent right brain is attuned to whatever is new, while the speech-capable left depends rather upon what is familiar. In order to appreciate things whole and in their context, the right hemisphere consistently exhibits breadth and flexibility of attention, like a wide-angle floodlight, compared to the focused intensity of which the left is more capable, more like a narrow-beamed spotlight. Of the brain’s two halves, McGilchrist writes, “In one (the right) we experience the live, complex, embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. In the other (the left) we ‘experience’ our experience in a special way: a ‘re-presented’ version of it, containing now static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes, on which predictions can be based. This kind of attention isolates, fixes, and makes each thing explicit, by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. In doing so it renders things inert, mechanical, lifeless. But it also enables us for the first time to know, and consequently to learn and to make things” (2009, p31). This corresponds to the two kinds of “knowing”: knowing about things with the left brain and knowing in a more intimately personal way with the right. The left brain prefers whatever is mechanical, impersonal, and abstract. The right brain, in contrast, which sees nothing in the abstract, only things in context, takes primary interest in what is living and personal. Appreciating things as whole, it recognizes that faces are faces, and as such human, not simply juxtapositions of disconnected eyes, nose, mouth, etcetera, as the left brain would see them. It therefore recognizes people as individuals, a sign of which is the remarkable human capacity to appreciate even rapid changes of facial expression.

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The evidence is that all forms of emotional perception, and most forms of emotional expression, depend on and inform the right hemisphere, which is therefore central to satisfactory social interactions, and to those functions and abilities that enable human beings to form bonds, bonds of both attachment (of affection and love) and aversion (of dislike and hatred). The right brain, by extension, is also the seat of morality and a sense of justice. As well as empathy, arrived at through identifying with others, the right hemisphere is also concerned with self-awareness, imagination, creativity, and intuition. On it depend a number of intrinsically human capacities: the appreciation of poetry, for example, fascination with metaphor, and the enjoyment of stories, especially illustrative stories such as allegories, fables, and parables. Humor, including irony, satire, and sarcasm, is also mediated via the right brain, as it depends on understanding the context and emotional coloring of what is said and done. The right brain alone can recognize and take delight in ambiguity, paradox, and doublemeanings. Also, unlike the vastly less tolerant left side, the right brain lives contentedly with change and uncertainty. Without the moderating influence of the right, a dominant left hemisphere results in dehumanization, in people who may listen but cannot understand, who look but cannot really see. The left brain mediates only the more superficial social forms of emotional expression: the perfunctory smile of acknowledgement, for example, the slight shrug, or almost imperceptible raising of the eyebrows. Furthermore, the left brain is so averse to uncertainty and doubt that it often copes by arbitrarily picking just one interpretation as correct. Capable solely of binary thinking that insists on differentiating either/or choices, right from wrong, good from bad, us from them, it is impatient with all other possibilities, which it construes therefore as incorrect and unacceptable. Even when mistaken, in the face of evidence, the left brain commonly insists it is right. Of the commoner emotions, it notices only anger, so frequently employed to defend the indefensible. According to McGilchrist, the left hemisphere supports, “A blanket disregard for the feelings, wishes, needs and expectations of others” (2009, p 58). Naturally, this frequently causes serious problems, conflict and suffering. In everyday life, with the two hemispheres running on markedly different agendas, there is an apparently perpetual tension between them. The immature aspects of the left brain can, however, be tamed and led in the direction of wisdom. One reliable way of reducing the uncomfortable dissonance between the two halves and maintaining balance is through giving equal priority to educating the right hemisphere by adopting some form of regular wisdom practice routine (WPR). Simple WPRs can be devised for children of school age and incorporated into educational programs accordingly.

Mapping Personal Development Through Six Stages By avoiding what is new, unfamiliar, and strange, the brain’s left hemisphere supports individuals’ stagnation, trapping them in the earlier stages of personal development outlined by psychologists, described below, preventing growth towards the later stages of maturity.

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The health of any living organism implies a pattern of growth and evolution in the direction of becoming a functioning whole, both intrinsically and in relation to its surroundings, in relation in particular to other living creatures with which it is in contact and communication through a shared habitat or environment. Seventy years ago, Erik Erikson (1902–1994) described how developmental psychology is essentially about the healthy growth of individual people towards a consistent sense of identity and resilient personal integrity, characterized by notions of maturity and wisdom, enabling fruitful and harmonious interactions with others and positive, fulfilling and meaningful engagement at the levels of both local community and global society (Erikson, 1950, 1980). Building on Erikson’ work, also that of Piaget on cognitive development (Ginsberg & Opper, 1969), and Kohlberg on moral development (Kohlberg, 1981), psychologist James Fowler conducted research culminating in a now established scheme of six overlapping stages of faith development (1981). Fowler’s system of personal development throughout life towards maturity and wisdom has been further elaborated, including renaming the six stages as follows (Culliford, 2014): 1. Egocentric (immature, narcissistic, and self-referenced existence) 2. Conditioning (learning by absorption from strong family and social traditions) 3. Conformist (seeking to belong, mainly by choosing to follow social trends and conventions) 4. Individual (starting to think, speak, and act independently) 5. Integration (shifting values and behavior towards altruism, through recognizing one’s deep kinship with fellow human beings, with the unity of nature and everything) 6. Universal (achieving a high degree of maturity and wisdom, becoming a natural teacher and compassionate healer) Different tasks, attitudes, and priorities occur at each stage. Stage 1 typically occupies the earliest months and years, and concerns safety, survival, and comfort, seeking to fulfill natural likes and dislikes. Awareness is not yet differentiated into “everyday,” on the one hand, and holistic or “spiritual,” on the other. Stage 2 comes to the fore during the early school years and involves learning by cultural absorption about the world in general, and especially about traditions, rules, conventions, attitudes, and priorities. At Stage 3, children and adolescents show greater discernment and make more deliberate choices, accepting and rejecting facts and opinions according to personal intuition and preferences. Strong attachments and aversions – to people, places, things, activities, ideas, etcetera (see Table 45.2) – are often made and consolidated during this period, usually reflecting a natural desire to further both personal gratification and social integration. This is achieved through acquisition of prized allegiances, and the denial or rejection of whatever seems uncomfortable, alien, and contradictory. It is a stage of continuing dependency on authority figures (including

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Table 45.2 Common objects of attachment and aversion People (loved ones; enemies) Places (e.g., home; foreign places) Things (possessions, precious objects; unpleasant matter, noxious substances) Allegiances (groups, teams, clubs, societies, institutions, countries; opposition, rival groups, etc.) Money (attraction to wealth; aversion to the rich) Status (celebrity, fame; envy, dislike of prominent people) Activities (like hobbies, travelling; dull work, drudgery) Food and drink (familiar; unfamiliar) Ideas (including religious beliefs, political ideologies: for or against) expectations, hopes, and dreams (realistic or otherwise) Other objects of the imagination (including anxieties, fears, and sorrows, whether grounded in actual situations or otherwise) Table 45.3 Some spiritual values

Honesty Humility Patience Courage Wisdom

Simplicity Kindness Perseverance Joy Beauty

Frugality Generosity Gratitude Hope And

Restraint Tolerance Forgiveness Compassion Love

teachers, politicians, media pundits, and religious leaders), which persists in many into adulthood. Safety and security are prioritized over adventure. Stage 4 priorities, on the other hand, involve growing separation from earlier authority figures through discovering and developing oneself as an independent and responsible participant-observer in one’s own life. It is a period, also often prolonged into adulthood, of revising and relinquishing former attachments and aversions, while adjusting to the resulting uncertainty and relative isolation that independent thought, words, and actions may bring. During Stage 5, a person’s emphasis shifts towards reevaluation of their values and behavior from a universal perspective, bringing their life increasingly into line with the highest altruistic ideals. Childhood spirituality may be reignited, with more mature, conscious, considered and directed patterns of thought, speech, and behavior. Stage 6 represents the pinnacle of personal development during which life’s intrinsic meaning is fully revealed, grasped, and accepted. Strong attachments and aversions fall away, and “being” rather than “doing” or achieving is given priority, resulting in living in the moment without undue fear of further threats and losses, or even of death. It is a goal but hardly an endpoint. Those who enter this stage remain compassionately concerned and devoted to the well-being of others. Holistic or spiritual values associated with the later developmental stages, and with the spiritual dimension of human experience, in contrast to relatively immature, secular, materialist worldly values, include: honesty, simplicity, frugality, restraint, humility, kindness, generosity, tolerance, patience, perseverance, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, courage, hope, compassion, wisdom, beauty, and love. This is a list worthy of careful further reflection (Table 45.3).

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Those involved in planning and delivering education to school-age children would surely benefit from greater coverage of the subject than is possible in the present chapter. There is space, however, to highlight a few important aspects, in addition to the idea that children’s engagement with the spiritual dimension needs protecting and promoting. Everybody, to some degree, faces an ongoing dilemma in relation to society’s institutions and conventions: to conform or be independent. Parents and teachers will note that some children emerge from the conditioning stage earlier than others, questioning rather than accepting automatically what they are given to learn while still predominantly acquiescent, choosing to conform most of the time, not only to authority figures but also to peer pressure via social media as well as directly. Sooner or later, too, children and adolescents show signs of emerging from Stage 3 into the individual stage of independent-mindedness. A balance naturally seems ideal, and many people hover or cycle between these two stages well into adult life. It should be noted, however, that a good degree of individuation is necessary in order to proceed on the pathway towards genuine maturity and wisdom, towards full psychological, social, and spiritual health and well-being. Taking responsibility is important, and meaningful fulfillment throughout life involves becoming an autonomous person who is prepared to take responsibility not only for what one thinks, says, and does but also for what one remains silent about and avoids doing. Good quality formal education will make a vital contribution towards a person being so prepared.

Everyday Ego and Spiritual Self In this section, Fig. 45.2 is presented to help introduce another set of challenging, culturally alien ideas about the pathway to health and well-being. These invoke a split or dissonance between the “everyday ego” and the “spiritual self,” which develops and then heals as life proceeds, the terms equating to “false” and “true,” “worldly” and “spiritual,” “lower” and “higher” selves, and also to biblical notions of “flesh” and “soul.” According to the child psychiatrist and researcher, Donald Winnicot, there resides in newborn infants, “a component of self which possesses a purity, wholeness, untarnished innocence and spontaneity” (Winnicott, 2003, p 67), referred to as the “pristine ego.” Unaffected by attachments and aversions, it is relatively short-lived. In the face of urgent and immediate needs, for food, warmth, comfort, safety, affection, etcetera, the early infant ego is soon faced with multiple conflicts and anxieties. Identifying completely with its own mind-body universe, it soon feels pain, discomfort, frustration, abandonment, and emptiness. This is the early origin of the ego-self split. The apparently binary formula, though, hides that the two remain permanently connected, forming an indivisible unity. Just as a length of elastic, or a guitar string, set in motion, appears to occupy

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Fig. 45.2 “Six Stages of Spiritual Development” (Adapted from Culliford 2011, p 160)

more than one place at a time, due to its rapid fluctuations back and forth, so it is with the apparent dissonance between these two aspects of a person’s selfhood. As Fig. 45.2 shows, while the arc of life proceeds towards maturity, the apparent split initially grows wider, through the early stages of development. Later, during “Individual” Stage 4, it starts to slow, beginning its homecoming reversal during “Integration” Stage 5, and completing the reunification process in the final “Universal” Stage 6. People who are inherently more mature experience less tension than do others. The “high,” “medium,” and “low” trajectories in Diagram Fig. 45.2 indicate that, as life proceeds, some people experience less in the way of inner conflict and make developmental progress through the stages more smoothly than others. A person’s innate temperament, together with aspects of individual conditioning, as determined by the spiritual environment at home, at school, and in the wider society, will be among the key factors determining the general trend for each individual. The diagram also indicates that life events and experiences play a role whenever “something happens” of a deeply significant and personal nature to shift a person from a lower towards a higher trajectory or vice versa. Consider, for example, how a child, raised with a simple belief in a religious figure capable of healing, may have that faith weakened by learning in class principles of science asserting that such miracles cannot happen. Further imagine that the child’s adored parent dies of a painful and debilitating disease, with no healing miracle occurring despite intense prayer. The challenge to that child’s belief system will be severe, as innocence is tarnished by experience. Spiritual awareness becomes dulled and more easily suppressed as the child’s everyday ego shifts to a higher trajectory, towards more worldly concerns.

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Nevertheless, as the bottom line in Fig. 45.2 shows, the spiritual self is never fully extinguished, remaining an influence, allowing for the important possibility of subsequent reintegration. Imagine now, for example, that the same child experiences, much later, a comforting vision or dream in which the image of the dead parent communicates lovingly that they are well, at peace and free of pain (for example: Merton, 1948, p 123; Obama, 2007). No miracle has occurred, but this could still effect a nudge towards a more mature understanding and acceptance regarding the inevitability of both suffering and death.

Wisdom from Ancient Philosophy Children cannot be shielded from physical or emotional pain, or from encounters with death, among their relatives, pets, and their friends, for example. Rather than attempting to shield children, wise parents and teachers will take this proactively into account when considering educational initiatives. Those who have been so shielded, to the extent of being overprotected as children, are usually among those adults who find it hardest to accept that the contemplation of death is healthy rather than morbid. Ancient philosophers encouraged their students to engage with the practice wholeheartedly, associating it with developing heightened awareness of the value of the present instant in a way that brings about a refreshing consciousness of inner freedom. “Let your every deed and word and thought be those of one who might depart from this life this very moment.” These were the words of Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD), who also wrote, “Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the people who are present here and now” (italics original) (Marcus Aurelius, 1995, pp 131-2). Given humankind’s present inauspicious predicament, a worthwhile allied exercise might be to contemplate calmly not only one’s own death but also the mass extinction of people and further devastation of the natural world. In his book “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” philosophy professor Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) wrote, “A philo-sopher is in love with wisdom... He knows that the normal natural state of (people) should be wisdom, for wisdom is nothing more than the vision of things as they are... and wisdom is also nothing more than the mode of being and living that should correspond to this vision” (1995, pp 57–9). All ancient Hellenic schools taught and encouraged wisdom practices, spiritual exercises designed to ensure progress toward the ideal state of wisdom. As Hadot explains, “The word ‘spiritual’ reveals the true dimensions of these exercises. By means of them, the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to say, he re-places himself within the perspective of the Whole... These exercises are the result, not merely of thought, but of the individual’s entire psychism.” (1995; p 82). The word “psychism” here refers to a person’s total psycho-spiritual experience, a revelatory concept, especially as wisdom practices take effect by involving both hemispheres of the brain.

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According to Hadot, “The practice of spiritual exercises implied a complete reversal of received ideas: one was to renounce the false values of wealth, honors, and pleasures, and turn towards the true values of virtue, contemplation, a simple life-style, and the simple happiness of existing.” (1995; p 104). He wrote that, “All spiritual exercises are, fundamentally, a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions and desires.” (1995; p 103). All the exercises, says Hadot, “Consist, above all, of self-control and meditation” (1995; p 59). By “meditation,” he is referring to, “The exercise of reason... a rational, imaginative, or intuitive exercise that can take extremely varied forms,” a definition which surpasses intellectualization, approaching more closely a form of reflective practice, of contemplation. The same word, “meditation,” as used in this chapter, refers to a related activity that involves calming the mind while remaining attentive, comparable to mindfulness practice, silent prayer, and “stilling.” Hadot explains, for example, that the exercise of attention (prosoche in Greek), means, “Attentive concentration on the present moment,” a skill strongly associated with freedom from the passions, thus from both attachments and aversions that provoke intense emotional reactions. Such attentiveness, he says, “Allows (people) to accede to cosmic consciousness, by making us attentive to the infinite value of each instant, and causing us to accept each moment of existence from the viewpoint of the universal law of the cosmos” (1995; p 85). This universal law includes both the laws of nature that are the focus of scientific enquiry, and the law that underpins wisdom, the law of universal wholeness that links every person indivisibly at every moment to everyone else, to nature, the planet, and the cosmos. Hadot expresses the view that, “In order to recognize wisdom, we must, so to speak, go into training for wisdom” (1995; p 261), and there may be no better time in a person’s life to take up and develop wisdom practices than during childhood and adolescence, and no one better to educate them in this than their schoolteachers. Meditation, involving no technology more sophisticated than a timer and a bell, it is also comparatively inexpensive. Similarly, requiring only simple instructions, it is relatively easy to teach.

Meditation There is good evidence that, from a young age, children introduced in school to regular meditation practice, even for short periods (up to 5 min), benefit through improvement in conduct, enhanced learning ability, creativity, and imagination, and have better relations with their peers and teachers (Campion & Rocco, 2009; Keating, 2017; MindSpace, 2021; Mindfulness in schools project, 2021). Many schools have already therefore introduced meditation programs, often confirming researchers’ findings that the children are calmer, happier, and more mature, learning about the value of cooperation as well as that of competition, learning to respect their rivals, and becoming increasingly appreciative of the opportunities that their opponents present them with for self-development.

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Meditation involves remaining still and silent, usually kneeling or seated, for set periods of time (typically for older children and adults, about 20 min, once or twice daily), while bringing conscious awareness to focus throughout on a still-point, which could be a word or spiritually meaningful phrase (a short prayer or “mantra”) repeated silently in the mind, or a regularly repeating phenomenon such as the passage of breath inwards and outwards through the nostrils. Meditation can also be undertaken effectively while moving, such as while walking around in a circle. These processes allow the contents of mental activity – principally thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and impulses – to flow naturally and be observed but not pursued or acted upon, allowing the mind to settle and achieve a concentrated state of tranquility. Meditation involves more than simply putting a technique into practice. Its efficacy involves a kind of space opening up while the mind becomes purely engaged with itself, within which it is more likely that “something happens” to promote spiritual growth than during everyday waking consciousness. To explain this in biological terms, psychologists using electroencephalographic recordings have shown an increase in alpha-wave activity during meditation. This is associated with a state of relaxed wakefulness and greater synchronization of activity between the two hemispheres. Advanced meditators additionally demonstrate greater lowerfrequency theta-wave activity, associated with the creative subconscious mind. Imaging studies using scanners also show consistent changes during meditation, with typically an increase in activity recorded in the frontal lobe’s attention association area, and a corresponding decrease in activity in the parietal lobe’s orientation association and visual association areas. With sustained attention, communication between the hemispheres is found to be increasingly coordinated, with both left and right orientation and verbal-conceptual association areas being switched off. A quiescent right orientation association area gives rise to a sense of unity and wholeness, while diminished activity in the left orientation association area results in the dissolving of the self/nonself boundary (Nataraja, 2008). These observations are consistent with those reported by meditators themselves. A recent study showed that 2 months of meditation training increased brain functional connectivity, which endured even when participants were not meditating (Zhang et al., 2021), adding weight to previous findings that even short periods of regular meditation can reshape the brain’s neural pathways, increasing those areas associated with kindness, compassion, and rationality, while decreasing those involved with anxiety, worry, and impulsivity. The authors conclude that meditation enhances the brain’s abilities to fast switch between mind wandering and focused attention, and to maintaining attention once in an attentive state, abilities clearly advantageous not only to those studying classwork but also to those engaged in developing artistic and sporting skills like learning a musical instrument and hitting a moving ball. Meditation works well as an aid to reflective practice. Other benefits have been established over many centuries too according to several traditions, including Buddhism (Nhat Hanh, 1991), Hinduism (Swami Vivekananda, 1986), and Christianity (Main, 1982). Those anxious about the risk of any form of religious indoctrination

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may be assured that none of these, because of the mind-emptying nature of meditation, affix any specific religious or other content to the practice. Secular forms of meditation, essentially the same in nature according to which a person sits in silence, quietening the mind, have also more recently been developed and are widely practiced as an aid to general well-being. Secular “mindfulness” has also been successfully introduced as a therapeutic component of medical and psychiatric care, effective particularly in the treatment of chronic pain, psychosomatic disorders, and depression (Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Segal et al., 2018).

Holistic Science The findings of science support the law of wisdom that, mediated through a universal field of consciousness, all living people, including those who have died and those still to come, despite apparent differences of gender, age, race, belief system, etcetera, are intimately and irrevocably connected to one another and equally to everything else. Physics and chemistry, for example, teach that all matter and energy was once confined to an infinitesimal totality, a “singularity,” which began expanding billions of years ago; that the first stars, formed of hydrogen and helium atoms, eventually collapsed and then blew apart with such tremendous force as to create and disperse all the elements of the periodic table, leading in turn to the creation of a multitude of galaxies, including the milky way, the earth’s solar system and planets, all parts and particles universally connected still by a mysterious force known as “quantum entanglement.” In turn, biology shows that the same stardust atoms contributed to carbon-based life-forms that share a genetic heritage and evolutionary pathway towards the astonishing diversity and sophistication of plant and animal life on earth today. Vital oxygen is produced in green plants by photosynthesis, a process entrapping light energy from the sun. The same oxygen, combined with carbon, is reabsorbed by plants and reused in a continuous cycle; those same plants forming essential components of the food chain on which human life depends. Such observations demonstrate that the life of every person on earth is inextricably tied to nature. Psychology reveals, in addition, that human beings share universal faculties, including the five senses, being able to learn, think, calculate and reason, the ability to speak and act, and a spectrum of painful and pleasurable emotions. Sociology and anthropology in addition reveal significant commonalities of social groupings and behavior throughout different cultures. Scientific knowledge like this across the dimensions, when reflected upon with due attention and reverence, will encourage a person’s transition through the higher stages of development, notably into Individual Stage 4 and through to Integration Stage 5. However, something more is necessary. Knowing about wholeness and cosmic unity from an intellectual standpoint is insufficient for full wisdom development. It does not yet involve deep knowing of this unity, making it real, allowing it to become a deeply held personal truth, that to harm or help

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another, likewise to damage or protect the natural world, in some profound way, inevitably and reciprocally entails harming or benefitting oneself. This insight makes life choices easier. The necessary conditions for such a permanent awakening or epiphany tend to accrue gradually within the mind and being of a person. Ideally, school environments will form satisfactory launchpads, where subjects are framed and taught as material for reflection in the context of the cosmic whole. From the first, children may be encouraged to identify themselves as “wisdom seekers,” educated – led outwards from within – to pursue wisdom actively, through the expansion of meaningful personal experience, and by developing spiritual skills (Culliford, 2011, pp 199-219). In addition to meditation, a regular routine involving other wisdom practices will be helpful.

Additional Wisdom Practices Being skilled at both meditation and reflective practice will significantly enhance fruitful engagement with numerous additional wisdom practices. The skills acquired grow to extend well beyond the actual daily sessions. Even quite young people can be introduced to a simple daily wisdom practice routine comprising one or more of the following: (a) Regular quiet time involving silence and either stillness or some form of calming rhythmical action. (b) Age-appropriate study of wisdom material, such as from science, world scripture, literature, philosophy, poetry, and other sources. (c) Seeking and maintaining supportive, nondiscriminatory friendships with peers and others. (d) Undertaking regular acts of service, actions prompted by generosity, kindness, and compassion. (e) Spending time meaningfully engaged with nature. These activities tend to be mutually beneficial. A group walk along a school’s nature trail, for example, could involve a fruitful combination of quiet time spent both in the contemplation of nature and in bonding with peers and teachers. The benefits are cumulative as people persist with and develop their practice routines over a period of years. Numerous other practices, referred to as “spiritual exercises” by the Greek philosophers, are available, such as listening to, singing, playing, and dancing to music, both sacred and secular; undertaking retreats and going on pilgrimage-like journeys to sites of great personal significance and places of outstanding natural beauty; undertaking regular physical activity, developing sporting skills, and keeping physically healthy; and indulging in an appreciation of the arts and engaging in creative activities. These are already among the components of well-planned educational systems.

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Consequences for School-Age Education Many schoolteachers make an effort to retain, express, and share regularly their own sense of wonder concerning the subjects they teach, rather than reducing them to text book summaries and delivering facts for later repetition by pupils in essays and examinations. This enlightened attitude is paramount when aiming to promote, nurse, and nourish the inherent spiritual tendency of children to greet nature and respond to it with energetic curiosity, awe, wonder and delight, while retaining a reverential sense of mystery. Wisdom depends ultimately on a vision of wholeness, and it seems especially necessary for science teachers to ensure that science and spirituality are presented as being in true harmony with one another. In addition to those schools already including meditation (sometimes called “mindfulness” or “stilling”) as part of their pupils” routine, in Scotland, the nonprofit “Association for Character Education” (2021), a community for schools, organizations, and individuals, runs the “Inspiring Purpose: Global Citizens In The Making” program, a well-established character discovery activity for young people aged 10–16, which has been designed to, “Help them to define their purpose and their goals,” and has been, “Proven to enhance their self-knowledge and self-awareness, as well as encouraging them to search for inspiration and define their aspirations for the future” (Inspiring purpose, 2021). Also, in some schools, the entire curriculum is centered on a program of “character education” based on the positive psychology research of Martin Seligman and colleagues (Seligman, 2011). According to one English state-maintained school, for example, “Student results – although important – are not the only area in which we want students to be their best. We believe the development of character strengths is equally important if our students are to flourish both at school and in their ongoing lives.” The model used, “Focuses on the eight character strengths that most strongly underpin progression towards happy, engaged, meaningful and successful lives” (Steyning Grammar School, 2021). A sense of urgency associated, for example, with widespread global conflict, rapidly advancing climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic, makes delay in implementing a new, holistic, or spiritual framework for education seem unwise. Nevertheless, personal development and changes in social attitudes take time. A patient evolutionary approach is therefore likely to prove more successful than attempting an abrupt revolutionary one. Accordingly, no drastic changes to existing curricula are recommended, with two exceptions: firstly, subject matter about schemes of personal development throughout life could be included to help adolescent students understand why there should also, secondly, be a gradual introduction of wisdom practice routines to their lives. There is no need for concern about how to assess and examine students within this newly expanded framework, as this may proceed largely as before based on the existing syllabus, with essays, question papers, and questionnaires covering the same topics. Some additional questions about personal development may be added, but with caution, bearing in mind Fowler’s original comment that the six stages of personal development were not to be understood as an achievement scale.

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They were not to be used either to evaluate the worth of people or as educational goals toward which to hurry or pressurize people (Fowler, 1981). In other words, whereas it is acceptable to gauge an individual student’s progress towards wisdom and maturity in general terms, no element of competition is appropriate. Benign selfexamination will enable students to recognize personal gains made over time. Adventurous teachers, especially with older students who have become reasonably adept at meditation and reflective practice, may consider encouraging further skills development regarding, in particular, “objectivization of subjective experience” and “empathy,” which involve getting to know oneself better and developing natural fellow-feeling with others. Sensitive methods of encouragement, akin to those enshrined in traditional pastoral care practice, may be employed to enable this. Ideally, teachers will find themselves learning satisfying new material and developing rewarding new skills alongside those they are teaching, learning from them all the while. Short periods of reverential silence could be introduced at the beginning and end of classes. Covid-safe field trips might be arranged to inspiring places; for example, places of natural interest and beauty, places of worship, memorials associated with persecution and heroism, with sickness and death; each outing to be followed by a group session of reflective practice focused on personal experience occasioned by the visit. These are simple examples, but there is no limit to the creative possibilities of well-designed educational programs as long as they become relevant at a significant, that is deeply personal, level to the students involved, thereby helping them grow. Finally, it will be clear that the training and continuing professional development of teachers will need gradually to introduce the changes associated with the kind of reframing under discussion, not least by providing teaching meditation and reflective practice, and by promoting relevant new findings from neuroscience and developmental psychology.

Summary and Conclusions Fully consistent with the aims and principles of “Values based Education,” this chapter proposes the reframing of education in the light of a holistic or religiously unaffiliated, spiritual dimension of human experience and understanding, thereby promoting growth towards wisdom and maturity. Donald Winnicott (2003), Robert Coles (1992), Iain McGilchrist (2009), and the present author (Culliford, 2011, 2020) are among numerous psychiatrists developing a broad view promoting personal, social, and spiritual health, as well as more narrowly identifying, preventing, and treating mental illness. By their interpretations, neuroscience and developmental psychology have revealed important new (if, admittedly, culturally challenging) insights with major consequences for school-age education. Consequently, greater emphasis is required throughout education, including in the training and continuing professional development of teachers, on developing faculties associated with right-brain functioning that promote spiritual

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awareness and an expansive, fully integrated worldview. To bring this about, a regular routine of wisdom practices is recommended for all. Especially valuable and effective is a combination of meditation and reflection. More simply, any activity or method that breeds comfortable familiarity with silence and stillness; benign familiarity that is with one’s private, inner self; any method that allows each child in whatever personal way to immerse herself or himself in the mysteries of existence, will, with calm patience and perseverance, foster natural progress and fulfill the revised educational requirements. At the same time, it remains important to teach and pursue diligently the everevolving findings of science throughout the worldly, material dimensions – physical, biological, psychological, and social – while simultaneously nourishing – in themselves and those they teach – holistic experience of the universe and spiritual awareness of creation as an indivisibly unified whole, and to foster in self and others, too, a profound and deepening sense of awe, mystery, and wonder about the world and compassion for all its people. There are already many worldwide examples of exemplary teaching practice along these lines, people focused on teaching by example as well as by precept, striving to foster holistic, spiritual values over those that are predominantly worldly and materialist. There is harm in continuing to prepare young people for worldly ambitions and successes only if this takes precedence over the pursuit of wisdom and maturity or if it detracts in any way from promoting the natural development of the spirit of the child through adolescence into adulthood. This chapter presents a way of reframing education for the future, broadening its scope, with the aim of preparing children not only for exams and careers but also for meaningfully rich, rewarding lives as “well rounded, well balanced, caring members” (Toomey, 2019) richly contributing to an increasingly healthy society.

References Adams, K., Hyde, B., & Woolley, R. (2008). The spiritual dimension of childhood. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge. Campion, J., & Rocco, S. (2009). Minding the mind: The effects and potential of a school-based meditation programme for mental health promotion. Advances in School Mental Health Promotion, 2(1), 47–55. Coles, R. (1992). The spiritual life of children. HarperCollins. Culliford, L. (2011). The psychology of spirituality: An introduction. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Culliford, L. (2014). The meaning of life diagram: A framework for a developmental path from birth to spiritual maturity. J Study of Spirituality, 4(1), 31–44. Culliford, L. (2017). Seeking wisdom. University of Buckingham Press. Culliford, L. (2020). The big book of wisdom: What is it? Why do we need it? And how to get it. Hero Press. Culliford, L., & Eagger, S. (2009). Assessing spiritual needs. In C. Cook, A. Powell, & A. Simms (Eds.), Spirituality and psychiatry. RC Psych Publications. Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. WW Norton & Co.. Erikson, E. (1980). Identity and the life cycle. WW Norton & Co..

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Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. Harper SanFrancisco. Galileo Commission.: https://galileocommission.org/ Accessed 07 Sept 2021. Galileo Commission Report.: https://galileocommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TheLaymans-Guide-to-the-Galileo-Commission-Report-Final-3.12.20.pdf Accessed 07 Sept 2021. Ginsberg, H., & Opper, S. (1969). Piaget's theory of intellectual development. Prentice Hall. Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a way of life. (Davidson, A. Ed.), (Chase, M., Trans) Blackwell Publishing. Hart, T. (2003). The secret spiritual world of children. Inner Ocean Press. Hay, D., & Nye, R. (2006) The spirit of the child (revised edition). Jessica Kingsley Publishers Hyde, B. (2008). Children and spirituality: Searching for meaning and connectedness. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Inspiring Purpose.: https://inspiringpurpose.org.uk Accessed 07 Sept 2021. INSS (International Network for the Study of Spirituality, formerly BASS): https:// spiritualitystudiesnetwork.org Accessed 09 Sept 2021 Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness. Delta Books. Keating, N. (2017). Meditation with children: A resource for teachers and parents. Veritas Publications. Kohlberg, L. (1981) Essays on moral development; Volume one: The philosophy of moral development. Harper Collins. Main, J. (1982) Christian meditation. The Benedictine Priory of Montreal. Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a way of life. McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. Yale University Press. Merton, T. (1948). The seven storey mountain. Harcourt, Brace & company. Mindfulness in Schools Project.: https://mindfulnessinschools.org/mindfulness-in-education Accessed 07 Sept 2021. MindSpace: Meditation in schools: https://www.meditationinschools.org Accessed 07 Sept 2021. Nataraja, S. (2008). The blissful brain: Neuroscience and proof of the power of meditation. Gaia Thinking. Nhat Hanh, T. (1991). The miracle of mindfulness: A manual on meditation. Rider Books. Obama, B. (2007). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. Canongate Books. Paloutzian, R., & Park, C. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality. The Guilford Press. Royal College of Psychiatrists (2013) Recommendations for psychiatrists on spirituality and religion: Position statement: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/ spirituality-spsig/recommendations-spirituality-and-religion.pdf?sfvrsn¼edc6001e_2 Accessed 06 Sept 2021. Schwartz, S. A., Woollacott, M., & Schwartz, G. (Eds.). (2020). Is consciousness primary? AAPS Press. Scotton, B. W. (1996). Introduction and definition of transpersonal psychiatry. In B. W. Scotton, A. B. Chinen, & J. R. Battista (Eds.), Textbook of transpersonal psychiatry and psychology. Basic Books. Segal, Z., Williams, M., & Teasdale, J. (2018). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression: A new approach to preventing relapse. Guilford Press. Seligman, M. (2011). Flourish: a new understanding of happiness and well-being - and how to achieve them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Spirituality and Psychiatry SIG.; https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/spirit Accessed 09 Sept 2021. Steyning Grammar School.: https://www.sgs.uk.net/about/character-education-2/character-educa tion Accessed 07 Sept 2021. Vivekananda, S. (1986). Vedanta: voice of freedom. Vedanta Society of St Louis.

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Toomey, R. (2019). Values based education and authentic global citizenship. In Presentation at Sathya Sai Global Education Conference on values based education for a better world. Winnicott, D., & quoted in Schermer, V. (2003). Spirit & psyche: A new paradigm for psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Zhang, Z., Luh, W.-M., Duan, W., Zhou, G., Weinschenk, G., Anderson, A., & Dai, W. (2021). Longitudinal effects of meditation on brain resting-state functional connectivity. Nature Scientific Reports, 11, 11361. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90729-y. Accessed 30 Aug 2021. Zsolnai, L., & Flanagan, B. (Eds.). (2019). The Routledge international handbook of spirituality in society and the professions. Routledge.

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Changing Schools Through Listening to the Land Ron Tooth and Merryl Simpson

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moments of Enlightenment Along the Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Visit by Yuggera Elders – Embodied Attentiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lost Stories –The Uncovering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Shocking Realization – Repressing and Forgetting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Mountain – Remembering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Bunya Pines – Contact Zones and Land Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Farm – Process Drama and the Blanket Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Mother Earth Program – Toward a Place-Responsive Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time with Mary Graham – Custodial Ethic, Relational Ontology, and Silence as Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Profound Attentiveness and Mary Clark – Science and Attentiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dadirri: Time on Country with Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Connected Teacher Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Connected Leader Workshops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relational Ontology and PEEC Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion – Radical Hope and Living with Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Endnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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This chapter documents how the place-responsive pedagogy of Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre (PEEC) emerged across 40 years inspired by the practices and ontologies of Australia’s First Nations Peoples and how this culminated in the design of workshops for teachers and over 300 leaders R. Tooth (*) The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. Simpson Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre, Pullenvale, QLD, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_46

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representing 100 schools. In working with these teachers and school leaders, we have documented many instances where individuals seem to have been “reworked in some way,” something that Karrow and Fazzio (Cultural studies and environmentalism: The confluence of ecojustice, place-based (science) education, and indigenous knowledge systems. Springer, 2010) describe as the co-emergent relationship that exists between nature and culture when we are responsive to place. The chapter focuses on how the practice of Dadirri shared by Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann supported this process. The chapter also draws on the poetry of Big Bill Neidjie and suggests how responding to the relational ontology of First Nations peoples can transform schools. Keywords

Place responsiveness · Place-responsive pedagogy · First Nations · Nature and culture

Introduction When we are asked about the pedagogy at Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre (PEEC), we often recount how in the very early days (1980s) we had no specific plan for an excursion other than to follow whatever nature and place offered as pedagogical gifts. On one day, it might be a group of secretive birds that came close to us, or a goanna that walked across our path or historical artifacts discovered near a forest clearing, like the day we uncovered the remnants of what turned out to be an early loggers’ camp. We can remember saying that it was as if we had entered a river of stories – all we had to do was to stop and look for them and they would appear. It was a creative and exciting way to teach in nature. The pedagogy that finally emerged from these experiences was based on storying place, being attentive to and embodying place, and valuing the entwined connections between self, others, and place. This approach has been described as a pedagogy of enchantment (Renshaw, 2021). We hope to connect children to the diverse stories embedded in place, to engage their bodies and emotions, and to enchant them so they might advocate and act for nature. Most recently, we have designed professional learning opportunities for teachers and leaders called the Connected Teacher Course and the Connected Leader Workshop that arose out of our work with children and the realization that we could apply the same elements that underpin our place-responsive pedagogy to working with adults. Story, enchantment, nature connection, embodiment, silence, slowing down, and attentiveness all seemed to be exactly what teachers and leaders needed right now. In parallel to the numerous environmental and place scholars who shaped our early thinking, the power of First Nations wisdom became increasingly important in the life of PEEC. Three Elders in particular had a major influence on the development of our place-responsive pedagogy starting with the ideas of Big Bill Neidjie and Dr. Mary Graham in the 1980s and 1990s and later the thinking of Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann and her sharing of Dadirri. We thank them for their generosity

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and love for the land that has been shared so freely and for the inspiration that we have received from them. Big Bill Neidjie was a senior Elder of the Bunitj clan of the Gagudju people of Kakadu, who published his poetry in the book Kakadu Man in 1986. His evocative words shaped our early connections with place. Another watershed moment for me in these years was the time spent with Dr. Mary Graham, a Kombumerri and Wakka Wakka Elder, and the ideas she presented in her workshop, “An Aboriginal World,” through the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Brisbane in 1992. At the time, Mary Graham described this as an “intense course in Aboriginal philosophy, culture, politics and history” (Graham, 1992). A third transformative First Nations influence came much later in the early 2000s when we were introduced to the writings of Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, a Senior Ngengiwumirri Elder of the Daly River in the Northern Territory, and the teachings of her people about Dadirri, a gift that she has offered to all Australians. PEEC pedagogy educates children and adults to “inhabit place” through experiential knowing and enchantment with the beauty and value of the more than human. We have seen that this kind of engagement can lead to expressions of love and care for places and a desire to act (Lynch, 2007; Tooth & Renshaw, 2018a, b; Renshaw & Tooth, 2016). The love of Country that we have felt in the words of First Nations Elders has profoundly influenced how we have approached our place-responsive pedagogy at PEEC and how we design programs for students. It has helped us understand our ethic of care for self, others, and place that guides our practice. In designing the Connected Teacher Course for teachers and the Connected Leader Workshops for school leaders, we chose to apply the same place-responsive approach that we used with students. We wanted story and embodying nature to be central to these experiences guided by the relational ontology of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples. We chose the poetry of Big Bill Neidjie and the practice of Dadirri as guiding ideas. Our goal was to engage teachers and leaders emotionally and sensorially with place in the same way that we worked with children. Renshaw and Tooth (2016) found that “It is the teachers themselves (and leaders) and the way they make their own emotional connections to place that allows them to create opportunities for place responsiveness to happen.” This idea shaped our design process and became a litmus test for success. As Somerville (2010, p. 329) notes, “place is an enigma and challenge” that exists materially and imaginatively. We can imagine how others might see and value the place, and we can tell stories of human and “more than human” agency that continually transforms the place across time, but it is only through inhabiting place materially ourselves that we come to know the stories written into the landscape personally as we create new relationships. Over the past decade, we have worked with a large number of teachers and leaders to “inhabit place” together.

Moments of Enlightenment Along the Way To understand what brought PEEC to a point where we could work as change agents in schools through the Connected Teacher Course and Connected Leader Workshops, it is important to describe some key moments of enlightenment along

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the way that shaped PEECs place-responsive pedagogy. PEEC pedagogy emerged slowly over many years through a process of deep engagement with place. As part of this reflective journey, we have always been acutely aware that we work on Turrbal and Yuggera lands. Reflecting on the influence of First Nations Elders and place-responsive thinkers over the last 40 years, I am aware of a number of transformational encounters that have been significant for me personally and for PEEC.

The Visit by Yuggera Elders – Embodied Attentiveness In 1982, a group of Yuggera Elders arrived unannounced at PEEC asking for me (Ron Tooth). I have never forgotten the emotion of that moment and that day. We laughed and joked together as we walked with my two young sons in a local forest. This engaging group of men, women, and girls shared stories about their families and talked about their connection to the land as we followed echidna tracks along a sandy creek bank, located bush food, and dug for yams. This meeting was a turning point in my understanding of place-responsive teaching. My mind was filled with questions. Why did these Elders come looking for me? Why did not I notice the echidna tracks in the sand lacing along the water’s edge? Close detailed observation seemed like second nature to this group. They moved slowly, deliberately, and often in silence, much like the ecologists I had worked with. Four decades on I realize that this unexpected visit and deep encounter with embodied attentiveness in nature were the beginning of my long journey at PEEC.

Lost Stories –The Uncovering In 1982, when I arrived as the first principal of PEEC, I visited a number of local farming families who had been in the Pullenvale area since the 1860s. The stories I heard were mainly historical and hinted at fractured relationships with the land but also developing place connections. Some narratives were fully formed, while others were wisps of memory. I worked with archival sources and fragments of oral history. On one occasion, I spent hours sifting through photographs taken in the 1890s and stored in a suitcase under a bed. This research revealed that important Aboriginal pathways to the west had passed through the area and were used into the 1870s. I learned that there had been ceremonial bora rings close by but only one had survived. There were slits in the sides of a slab hut where rifles had been slipped through at the time of the Black Wars. An elderly woman remembered Jinibara warriors with ceremonial scars on their chests coming from the mountains to talk with her grandfather in the 1880s. She was 5 years old. I interviewed an elderly man who recalled listening to singing drifting down from the hills at night. It was extraordinary to be speaking with elderly individuals for whom these historical memories were so strong and present.

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A Shocking Realization – Repressing and Forgetting I had hoped to find full stories about local First Nations people but in the end I could only find fragments. It was as if the people had vanished so when I heard these words “Oh, there were never any Aboriginal people in this area. I’ve never heard of any” I realized that the cultural amnesia was complete. This was a common part of the colonizing experience right across Australia where setter families chose to willingly erase any memory of First Nations peoples. I decided that I wanted to find a way to awaken this memory in this place and to share it with teachers and students. This is why finding the original Herron farm intact was so significant. There were signs of a First Nations presence everywhere alongside the cultural artifacts of an Irish immigrant family who had made this their home in the 1860s. With my colleague Tonia Pickering, I spent many hours walking on this farm feeling the stories that were swirling around us and allowing them to populate the landscape with imagined characters based on what we knew and sensed had happened here.

The Mountain – Remembering Mt. Elphinstone was irresistible. The first time we climbed we were completely ignorant of its significance to First Nations people but we were soon to learn. A member of the family now living on the farm guided us to the amphitheater and rock overhang just under the peak. A cave was situated nearby that was said to have once contained blue crystals and was now blocked. Shortly after this climb, I interviewed a descendant of the original settler family who told me that the cave was special to Aboriginal people and that the blue crystals had been stolen by a local jeweler after she and her sister had shown him the location as young girls. She remembered a wild storm from her childhood, which caused slabs of rock to split from the mountain and crash down sealing the cave. The first time I recounted this story to a group of year five students they were convinced that the storm was a consequence of the theft and who could blame them. I neither confirmed nor denied this compelling narrative that reinforced for them the power of the place. Many visiting children came to a similar conclusion.

The Bunya Pines – Contact Zones and Land Memory At the base of the mountain behind the shed and the farmhouse, there were two large Bunya Pines. We passed these each time we climbed the mountain, and we began to see them as a significant entry point for the journeys of exploration we were making. These trees could not have been planted by the Herron family because they were far too old, and this was soon confirmed by a botanist. The only possibility was that seeds had been planted or dropped by First Nations families traveling to or from the Bunya feasts in the west many years before the Herron family had arrived. These

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gatherings involved thousands of invited people from the north, south, and east to feast on the Bunya nuts where they participated in weeks of ceremony and shared cultural interchange. I knew from the firsthand account of Tom Petrie who was invited to travel to these festivals as a young immigrant boy in the 1840s and whose stories were later recorded by his daughter Constance. His wonder at what he witnessed and his love and respect for the people are ever present in her writings. No other European was ever invited to participate in this way, and this marked him out as very different to the majority of new arrivals (Petrie, 1904). I discovered that there had been two ceremonial bora rings close to the Bunya trees, which suggested that this was a very significant place. Tragically, these were plowed under in the 1950s.

The Farm – Process Drama and the Blanket Role The first time I crossed over the cattle grid and entered the farm it was like I had traveled through a time portal. In front of me was the original Herron family selection from the 1860s still basically intact. Slumping farm sheds and a simple farmhouse with the peak of Mt. Elphinstone rising up behind them. When I approached the largest shed, I soon noticed the state of disrepair and the aging wagons, sulkies, horse harness, and rusting machinery all crammed together into the space but still remarkably preserved. I walked among these artifacts with their scent of age and the many stories they evoked. It was in this shed that our early experiments with place pedagogy began. We improvised an escape from imagined flood waters where students scrambled into the wagons or sulkies. They were invited to take on a shared role (blanket role) of “settler kids.” With a clap of our hands, we froze them in mid-scramble. The language that came was astounding. The teachers said they had never seen their students so engaged. This early use of process drama techniques like the blanket role (Heathcote, 1984) was to become central to PEECs pedagogy in the future.

The Mother Earth Program – Toward a Place-Responsive Pedagogy I was reading David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life (1978) at the time and one quote caught my attention because it described exactly what I was feeling. “The spirits . . . are not outside us, nor even entirely within, but flow back and forth between us and the objects we have made, the landscape we have shaped and move in . . .. and that it is our self we are making out there.” I scribbled these words on a piece of paper that stayed in my teaching folder for many years. The words became a kind of mantra for the kind of place pedagogy I wanted to create. The fragments of story and knowledge that we had been collecting slowly came together into a new program that we called Mother Earth, which we offered from 1984 and 1986 until we lost access to the mountain. Our design premise was that the

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Earth had codes and if we looked closely and listened intently to the place that we might be able to decipher some of its hidden stories. We invited a few local teachers with their year 4 students to explore the farm and the mountain with us. Later on, we incorporated the blanket role of “Mother Earth Code Breaker” with moments of “Teacher in Role” where I (Ron Tooth) became Tom Petrie in the 1840s (Petrie, 1904). This use of story and drama techniques (Heathcote, 1984) seemed to heighten the nature experience and became more important. I had also been reading Big Bill Neidjie’s poetry and his book Kakadu Man and we decided use some of his words to prepare the students for their experience on the mountain. We were amazed by how the children responded and how the words seemed to elicit respect. I feel it with my body, with my blood. Feeling all these trees, All this country When this wind blow you can feel it. Same for country . . . You feel it. You can look, but feeling . . . that make you. Tree . . . e watching you. You look at tree, e listen to you. e got no finger. e can’t speak. But that leaf . . .. e pumping, growing growing in the night. They grow with your body, With your feeling. (Neidjie, 1985, p. 51 & 52).

As we spent time in this place with students, a new pedagogical form started to emerge. Story, silence, ritual, respect, embodiment, sensorial connection, listening, and attentiveness all began to coalesce together and suggest a new way of thinking about learning in place. The following quote from my journal in 1992 reveals the dynamic nature of the design process. It had rained the night before, and the scent of the soil was so strong I wanted to hold it in my hands. This was a moment of enlightenment for me about how place pedagogy might work. We had not named it yet, but we felt its power. Today was the third time we climbed Mt Elphinstone as part of our new Mother Earth program. We created the circle of rocks again in the paddock and it worked just as well. Walking the students through the circle in silence seemed to settle them and they became more receptive and respectful of the place. Amazing. I also tried something new on the track in along the side of the mountain. I called it a silent walk. As we moved slowly I knelt down

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and picked up a handful of black soil and held it. I gestured that the children should do the same. That’s when I asked for complete silence and respect reminding them that others walked on this track before them for thousands of years. I invited them to squint their eyes and look up to the rocky ridge. “Imagine that you are being watched right now by Turrbul children who are exactly your age looking through time from a thousand years ago. Imagine what they are thinking, feeling and wondering about you.” The emotional impact of this moment was strong. There was more reverence and respect as we entered into the amphitheatre. (Ron journal 1992)

On this particular day, I remember wanting to create a feeling of First Nations presence stretching back through time. I wanted to let the students know that we were actively working with First Nations people in the present and continuing to learn from them about their connections to Country. These parallel narratives became very important as PEEC pedagogy evolved and is still strongly present today. My time with Mary Graham allowed me to begin theorizing the First Nations ontology that was informing and shaping this emerging pedagogy of story and place.

Time with Mary Graham – Custodial Ethic, Relational Ontology, and Silence as Learning Mary Graham is a Kombumerri and Waka-Waka Elder, and in 1992, I attended a 3-day intensive course run by Mary Graham & Associates at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in West End Brisbane. The course was titled An Aboriginal World and as stated in the flyer at the time “In this course you will learn something of the cultural world of the Murri’s. You will also learn how the Western cultural world appears, when seen though Murri eyes . . .. Each session will explore one or more aspects of Aboriginal cultural life in an Aboriginal way, from an Aboriginal point of view. Each session has been developed by, and will be conducted by Aboriginal people. This course will be unlike anything currently available in Queensland tertiary institutions” (Graham, 1992). This course was profound, and two ideas have stayed with me over the years that have impacted deeply on me. The first was the notion of the “custodial ethic.” Mary Graham argued that this was a foundational principle that underpinned all First Nations thinking across the country. Simply stated, it says that what matters above all else is the cohesion of the whole beyond the needs of the individual. Within this ontology, community is not limited to the human but is expanded to include everything as kin. The custodial ethic is the highest ethic because it defines individual and community meaning and purpose in terms of the unity between the human and the other than human through ceremony and networks of reciprocity and care. What Mary Graham provided was an early insight into a flattened relational ontology of being in the world as an entwined reality. The second idea that stayed with me and that transformed PEEC pedagogy was the use of silence as a way of learning. This was to become even clearer when I discovered profound attentiveness (Clark, 2004) and later when the wisdom of Dadirri began to impact on PEEC (Ungunmerr, 1988).

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Profound Attentiveness and Mary Clark – Science and Attentiveness We were driving to Sydney from Brisbane in 2004 when an interview with Mary Clark the internationally renowned biologist was broadcast on Radio National. The interview was titled Falling in Love Again (Clark, 2004) which caught my attention because it was not what I expected from a scientist. Clark’s use of the term profound attentiveness was compelling. She argued that emotional connection with the living world through attentiveness is what is missing from mainstream education. I immediately knew this to be our practice but I also recognized that we practiced it instinctively without ever explicitly naming it. Sometimes we just called it close observation but what Mary Clark was talking about was much deeper than this. I remember coming back to PEEC and saying to the staff “I have a name for what we’ve been doing. It’s profound attentiveness. This is why we are seeing such rich responses from students.” I then shared this idea with a few colleagues in local schools, and we successfully applied for funding as part of a National Values Project to explore what profound attentiveness could offer to values education. We argued that the way to create values communities was by teaching attentiveness or paying attention with your whole body; ears, eyes, skin, and heart.

Dadirri: Time on Country with Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann My (Merryl Simpson) teaching life at PEEC began in 2005 at the beginning of this National Values Project. In those “pre”-Dadirri days, as a non-Indigenous person of this land, I struggled to authentically give voice to what I understood; that the pedagogy of attentiveness is at the very heart of the living culture of this land. When a colleague first introduced us to the writings of Miriam Rose in 2009 and the “word, concept, and spiritual practice that is Dadirri (da-did-ee) from the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languages of the Aboriginal peoples of the Daly River region (Northern Territory, Australia),” (Ungunmerr, 1988) it was like removing a rock in a creek bed that suddenly allows the water to flow again. Dadirri is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. . . the gift that Australia is thirsting for. (Ungunmerr, 1988)

As we acknowledged this new vibrancy in our pedagogy with our consulting team of Elders at PEEC, we stayed open to learning a language word that might be more locally appropriate than Dadirri. When no word came, the Elders happily encouraged us to explore Dadirri. I continued to grow in my understanding as I uncovered connections to First Nations people in my own ancestry. My Scottish Great Great Grandmother and her four children kept alive with river fish by Traditional Custodians during a great flood on the land in the late 1800s. I regularly sat for hours (and even days!) around fires with First Nations Elders listening to wisdom that had been shared over thousands of generations of oral history.

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“Listening deeply to nature strengthens you to listen to others. . . the gift of listening. . . nurturing the spirit of others” (M. Simpson, personal communication with Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, April 20, 2019). I learnt that the less I talked in these circles, the more I understood of the natural world, of others, of myself. I felt alive with the possibility of Dadirri as the central focus of our pedagogy at PEEC and in our Connected Teacher Course, which was becoming increasingly centered around our understanding of Dadirri. The most pivotal moment for me in my Dadirri journey came in 2019 at a time of great crisis in my life when a rare opportunity came to join one of the Miriam Rose Foundation’s Cultural Connection Tours, spending time with Miriam Rose herself and the practice of Dadirri. Take the layers and layers off of you to find your spirit. (Miriam Rose in conversation, Journal entry, April 2019)

Sitting on Malak Malak Country with a background soundscape of whistling kites and children playing, with Miriam Rose and other members of the Nauiyu community, approximately 250 km southwest of Darwin in the Northern Territory, was a profound experience. The appearance of Ayiwisi (dragonflies) signaled the transition from wet season to dry season and the beginning of Barramundi fishing in the local Daly River. The seasonal changes in the landscape around me reflected my own desire to embrace a new season in my life. I was ready for a deep immersion into Dadirri, to feel the land that gave birth to this word, concept, and spiritual practice. Ungunmerr-Bauman (1988) explains that Ngangikurungkurr, the name of her tribe, means “Deep Water Sounds”. I invite you to say the word Dadirri (da-did-ee) aloud now as you imagine this word coming from the deep waters of an ancient river. As you still your body, and say Dadirri softly, slowly, and with great reverence, one begins to touch what Dadirri truly is. Dadirri is a two-way form of listening: listening on the inside and listening on the outside. Like a form of concentration, Dadirri invites an awareness of everything that is happening around you and inside you at the same time. Slowing ourselves down and giving ourselves time are essential to the practice of Dadirri; a way of being that connects us deeply to ourselves, to each other, and to the natural world around us. Loosening my concept of time was perhaps my biggest challenge on the trip. An organic schedule of undefined plans unfolded sometime between sunrise and sunset, which posed a challenge for a group of people familiar with operating to linear time structures and deadlines. Fortunately, this gave us lots of time to practice another key aspect of Dadirri; waiting. Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course – like the seasons. . . we learnt to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good and useful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn – not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. (Ungunmerr, 1988)

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For me personally, learning by waiting (and without asking questions!) wasn’t instinctive. More human ‘doing’ than ‘being’, I tended to move through life at quite a fast pace. Walking and sitting with Miriam Rose on Country reminded me how unsustainable this was. The busyness of leaning too far forward into the future created anxiety and, leaning too far back into the past resulted in unhealthy rumination; both had become my habit. My time on Country enforced the beauty of the space in-between, the resting place of the present moment; slowing down my pace to be in rhythm with the land. As we walked with the children gathering bush tucker, we observed signs in the environment that told us everything we needed to know. Reading the landscape like a text, we were moving in response to the natural world, receiving messages, and remembering nature as our teacher. Sitting together with Miriam Rose in a yarning circle at Flat Rock, one of the most profound teachings of the whole trip occurred. Our group of fifteen were perched high up on the banks of the Daly River, busying ourselves finding shade and looking out for crocodiles, but this was not the time for rushing; we were being inviting into a deep listening space. “Who are you? Why are you here? How do you belong?” asked Miriam Rose. We responded in turn around the circle; her questions inviting a slowed-down contemplation. As we respectfully listened to each other, I became acutely aware of the discipline that was required to keep resting in the present moment and to be patient with a process that existed beyond my normalized concepts of time. Another participant, similarly wrestling with impatience, abruptly interjected the circle: “Miriam, when are we going to do some Dadirri?”. The circle fell silent. Miriam Rose’s eyes widened, and she threw her hands up in the air and, with a glimmer of a smile, responded “Isn’t this enough!?”. In that moment, our group received the truth of what Dadirri really is. Dadirri is not something that can be taught, nor something you suddenly “do.” Dadirri is a way of being that you must find and feel for yourself. Time on Country with Miriam Rose afforded me the precious gift of embodying Dadirri. As I continued to practice slowing down, listening deeply and connecting to what was true in the present moment, I was storying myself back into authentic and respectful relationships; with myself, with those most important to me, and with nature as my teacher. The gift of inner deep listening and quiet still awareness felt like medicine for my soul, and as I left Country and returned home, I was aware of the thousands of students and hundreds of teachers I connected with every year who needed this way of being too.

The Connected Teacher Course My time on Country in 2019 enriched my capacity as a facilitator of our Connected Teacher Course and inspired an overhaul of the program in its current format. Since 2014, we had been delivering a Place-Responsive Pedagogy Course annually to up to 40 participants at a time. The course focus has always been on supporting

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classroom teachers (from prep to year 6) to move teaching and learning beyond the classroom to the more than human world of their school grounds. Place responsive as opposed to place-based, the course encourages teachers to see the authentic teaching and learning experiences offered by the green spaces beyond their classroom walls, heightening student curiosity and engagement, improving literacy, promoting wellbeing, and providing a meaningful context for teaching curriculum content. At this time, the course was called Teaching and Learning Beyond the Classroom or TLBC for short. Participants would joke that TLBC was an acronym for “Tender Loving Beautiful Care,” such was their positive experience of being part of the course. This was our first insight into understanding that the course was offering wellbeing benefits too. By the end of 2018, our data were confirming this. Participant responses highlighted that it was their personal embodiment of wellbeing, in connection with place, that was transforming their pedagogy and their students. (This course) made me conscious to slow down. . . I’m thinking about how I’m feeling when I’m in a place now and feeling more about a place. . . Introducing the heart side of things, the feeling. . . getting kids to appreciate things more. . . us slowing down, slowing the kids down. . .it’s all working better. (TLBC Participant, personal communication, 2018)

This necessity for slowness as communicated by participating teachers, both personally and professionally as they navigated busy lives, a crowded curriculum, and increased anxiety levels among students, was becoming the most important aspect of our course. Ironically, teachers who were seemingly doing the impossible and finding time in the busyness to schedule nature connection for themselves and their students were the teachers who were experiencing the greatest benefits. I stop and notice and appreciate what’s around me more. . . my kids are more able to do deep listening than I thought they’d be! (The course) taught me to understand my kids more and how they learn. . . by taking them outside, I could adjust my teaching inside. I knew what they were capable of. I was surprised by my lower students and their ability to write after being attentive in nature. We don’t get this writing when it’s so structured. . . I want to make connection a routine and do more deep listening. . . tuning in when they’re walking through the school, they’re yearning for it. . . this connection to place. (TLBC Participant, peronal communication, 2018)

Reflections like these generated a re-think of the course structure in 2019, and we decided to offer a series of four workshops (evenly spaced through the year), rather than three. If teachers were valuing the opportunity for slowing down and increasing their nature connection, we theorized that more time embodying a pedagogy centered around “nature as teacher” would support them to transfer these practices to their students. Inspired by my experience on Country with Miriam Rose, the extra workshop in the course was a full-day immersion in Dadirri in a local forest. We encouraged teachers to receive this day for themselves, to notice how they were benefitting personally from slowing down and responding to the natural world around them. Pedagogical strategies were sequenced in a way that supported teachers to continue exploring their own belonging in nature, including listening to

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messages from the place itself, just as I had experienced on Country. By listening on the outside and inside, we found space for deep listening, to ourselves, to each other as a community of reflective practitioners, and to nature. The addition of this workshop was supportive in exactly the ways we had hoped: When you experience something for yourself, you’re more able to advocate for that experience with your students. . . we’re doing a lot more in our outdoor classroom now and I’m sharing the importance of this with my leadership team. (TLBC Participant, personal communication, 2019)

Sharing authentic stories of my time on Country in this workshop and throughout the Connected Teacher Course, coupled with a greater clarity within myself about what was within protocol for me to share as a non-Indigenous person of this land, significantly contributed to enriching participant experience. Teachers felt supported to embed First Nations perspectives into their teaching, and I noticed a deepening of respect among teachers for the contested nature of the places we all taught on. As one participant commented at the end of 2019, “Personally, I’m more attentive now to past, present and future. . . more of an interconnectedness around the first peoples and how they viewed the land. I want to take that forward to our future generations.”

The Connected Leader Workshops From whatever lands our ancestors have traveled, they are Indigenous to somewhere, and at some point, in order to survive they were deeply connected to the environment around them. If this innate connection to the more than human world is already within us, an inherent love of nature or “biophilia,” as described by biologist E.O. Wilson, then perhaps we only need to reawaken it to remember just how much we value it? Indeed, this is the perspective that I was offered by Miriam Rose in those first few moments on Country, by the flowing waters of the Daly River. As Miriam Rose splashed water on our navels, she said that it was time to “wake up our spirit and remember who we are” (personal journal of Merryl, April 19, 2019). It was this reawakening and remembering of my own true nature as a living being leading an emplaced life, inspired by my time on Country, which underpinned the design of the Connected Leader workshop as I worked closely with Ron Tooth. We designed a 1-day workshop that would offer leadership teams in local primary schools the opportunity to gather for a slowed-down day of reconnection: to self, to others, and to place. First offered in late 2019, the Connected Leader workshop has already been delivered to over 300 leaders representing over 100 schools. Limited to twenty participants at a time to ensure intimacy and comfort, the group is often comprised of the entire leadership team from a handful of different schools. Colleagues get to experience the day together while also interacting with leaders from other schools. We encourage participants to disconnect from technology in order to reconnect, promising a uniquely curated experience that will afford them time to “breathe well into their being,” to engage in meaningful reflective practice with their

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colleagues in nature, and the possibility of inspiring a whole school pedagogy of place responsiveness. A big brief for a 6-h workshop! Participants often arrive curious and perhaps a little dubious. Their initial body language suggesting they are too busy to slow down, that time spent in nature is a luxury reserved for the holidays, and that the more than human world in their school grounds is a landscape designed to house classrooms rather than an enchanting co-teacher. However, as participants allow the layers of their responsibilities to fall away and begin to lean into relationship with us, they are scaffolded into a sloweddown reality, where they seem to gain a deeper awareness of themselves, eliciting similar questions to those that Miriam Rose asked me when I visited her on Country. One leader reflected “I feel more connected to myself. . . taking some time out for me to be my best” (audio recording, 2021). Another commented “This is the first leadership program I’ve done where the focus is actually on me as a person. . . sometimes life doesn’t offer us that space to connect due to busyness. . . I’m surprised how easy it is to slow down.” As participants remember the behaviors and actions they value in order to feel sustained, a renewed reconnection to their sense of self takes place. A key point in the Connected Leader Workshop day is when we support conversations to focus more intentionally on the more than human world. The way that connecting to nature supports a growing awareness of the self becomes very apparent, “extended time in nature helped me shift my self-talk over the day” (Participant, personal communication, 2021). As we deliberately employ some playfulness in our day, we encourage a child-like wonder with the natural world, the value of which was not lost on this participant: “I didn’t expect to have a newfound love of leaves! We really looked and saw the beauty. I loved that we took the time to do that. It was so much fun and I got so much out of it” (Participant, personal communication, 2021). A reignited love of nature and a deepening connection to place adds to the wellbeing equation for participants:“ I know I need to bring more stillness into my life and that I can always find a sense of place if I give myself that time.” There was a growing awareness in many leaders of the necessity to transfer learnings back to their school context: I know what you’re all doing now! You’re helping us slow our world down and in doing that, you can actually do less and be more productive and have greater impact, and that’s what we need in our school. (Participant, personal communication, 2021)

The embodied pedagogy offered throughout the day validates for many participants that to “experience the wonders of connectedness” (participant, 2021) is an authentic pathway to including First Nations perspectives in teaching and learning. As expressed here, “the quality of feeling grounded,” a “reverence of place,” and “making time for Dadirri” inspired a new way forward as Connected Leaders. Reflective processes supporting participants to consider their relationship to the more than human world of their school revealed that “my thinking about my school place changed throughout” (participant, 2021) and “I now look forward to building

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enchantment in others.” The feedback we receive in the weeks following the workshop highlights the transferability of the pedagogy to schools. Thanks for an amazing day. I decided to not overthink and just jump in and we did our first activity outside. . . the reaction of the kids was astounding! Thanks for reminding me of the importance of nature connection for them and me. (Participant, personal communication, 2021)

A principal, with the support of his teaching staff, many of whom had either attended the Connected Leader Workshop or Connected Teacher Course or both, elected to place the concept of Dadirri at the center of the school’s strategic plan, an intriguing first for the Education Department officials who came to review the school a few months later. When this same principal was asked by his assistant regional director how he was going to “bump up” school data that showed that 92% of students in the school were getting an A to a C in English, his response highlighted the way in which Dadirri had permeated the whole fabric of the school. He quoted the words of Miriam Rose herself, “Isn’t this enough!?”

Relational Ontology and PEEC Pedagogy In working with teachers and school leaders, we (Ron Tooth and Merryl Simpson) have documented many instances where individuals seem to have been “reworked in some way”, something that Karrow and Fazzio (2010) describe as the co-emergent relationship that exists between nature and culture when we are responsive to place. As teachers and leaders have incorporated the practice of Dadirri into their schools, significant changes have followed. We suggest that through Dadirri these teachers and leaders have begun to adopt a different ontology, one that is relational and non-hierarchical rather than individualistic and based on human exceptionalism. As I reflect on 40 years at PEEC, I now see that this relational ontology has been present from the beginning. When I first read the poetry of Big Bill Neidjie in 1986, his words gave me the confidence to work with students and teachers in a new placeresponsive way based on feeling (Neidjie et al, 1985). Spending time with Mary Graham was a major moment of transition in learning to listen to the land in silence that prepared me for the wisdom of Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann. Most recently, we have been immersed in Tyson Yunkaporta’s wonderful book Sand Talk (2019) and its extraordinary insights into First Nations thinking and philosophy. To further enrich these understandings, we return to the poetry of Big Bill Neidjiie and in particular his use the non-gendered pronoun “e” to give equal subjecthood to people, animals, plants, and natural features on the earth and in the sky. It was only recently that I realized that “e” was not a grammatical mistake. I had always read “e” as “he” and had missed the profound meaning and beauty carried in his poetry. When read with “e” in mind the flattened relational ontology of the Gagudju people enlivens and infuses our thought with an expansive way of seeing the world.

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Big Bill Neidjiie’s poetry represents a vision of oneness, hope, and love that is drawn from the land itself. As Merryl Simpson recently commented when she shared some of her own writing with me “e” has been with us from the beginning. That tree e listen to you, what you! e got no finger, e can’t speak but that leaf e pumping his. Way we grow in the night while you sleeping That tree and grass same thing . . . E grow with your body, your feeling. (Neidjie, 1989, p. 23)

Jane Bennett (2010) suggests that materiality like this works to horizontalize our lives and relationships with place and with the “other than human” where we are part of a “vital materiality” of the world and separation between humans and the “environment” begin to dissolve. We have seen this happening in the professional lives of the teachers and leaders who we have been working with. Vital materiality reminds us of “our own flesh” and “our own bodies” and that we are not exclusively human because we are inhabited by other organisms, even our breath is shared with other living organisms and our DNA in our shed skin is taken up by trees and other natural systems as it breaks down. Living consciously with this knowledge sends our attention “sideways” and leads us into a horizontal and flattened ontology where the human and the other than human cannot be easily separated. First Nations knowledges are rooted in this kind of relationality where humans are viewed within complex webs of relationships entwined with the earth, water, and other living and non-living beings. Martin (2007: 20) describes how Australian First Nations worldviews are centered on “relatedness with not just people, but ancestral country, animals, plants, skies, waterways.” What flows from this is a responsibility to live ethically and relationally toward the human and the more than human where hierarchical order disintegrates (Martin, 2007). A custodial ethic then arises (Graham, 1992) where what matters most is the survival of the interrelated and complex communities of life that all beings inhabit. In our work with teachers, leaders, and students, we have experienced how this kind of relational ontology and ethic can emerge and come from the place itself to transform schools. Hird (2012, 262) proposes a radically different kind of ethics, which she calls “an ethics of vulnerability” which seems to grow out of a re-discovery of our materiality. This is not the kind of ethics we are used to. Here, human agency is reversed and we recognize that we are in fact totally dependent on the earth and the multiple forms of micro life forms that we rarely, if ever, see and that these “loving” elements are what sustains our lives and the lives of all species. As Hird (2012) suggests, we are the vulnerable species and that adopting an ethic of vulnerability might be the only way that we can save ourselves and many other creatures. This kind of vulnerability is what we have witnessed in the teachers and leaders we have been working with. This kind of ethical thinking aligns well with Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2015) notions of “common world pedagogies” where we recognize other agents beyond the human. This view challenges the human-centric assumptions about the significant relationships of children including the idea that it is only humans who

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exercise agency. Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw propose that we follow Latour’s (2004, 2009) notions of collective agency where learning is relational and students are not the only actors in interspecies learning encounters. In this way, the creatures around us and nature become our teachers and move us past the limitations of childcentered pedagogies into a more expansive vision of education.

Conclusion – Radical Hope and Living with Vulnerability The teachers, leaders, and school communities described in this chapter are finding their way into relational ontologies of place that are transforming how they think about education. There is a sense of excitement, joy, and hope that something good is happening. In her book “Good Life,” Hannah Moloney (2021) adopts the term “radical hope” taken from Jonathan Lear, which she defines as “the ordinary person’s . . . grabbing hold of the human spirit and the many positive opportunities presenting themselves to transform our collective story.” (Moloney, 2021, p. 22). This describes what we are seeing as leaders and teachers work together with students and parents to create change and explore new possibilities for pedagogy and learning. The term radical hope can be traced back to Jonathan Lear (2006) in his book Radical Hope, Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, where he tells the story of the great Crow chief Plenty Coups helped his people to keep their land and retain hope when faced with an unthinkable societal catastrophe. This story of radical hope is mirrored in First Nations peoples everywhere. In this chapter, we have documented the influence over years of First Nations ontologies and practices that have inspired and shaped our distinctive story and place-responsive approach to teaching and learning in place and we see in these ontologies a new ethic and way of thinking that can help transform schools. We are at a critical turning point for the planet and our schools need new pedagogies to take us forward so our students can face the massive social and ecological challenges ahead. Reproducing more of the same in schools is no longer an option as we face the climate emergency. Stockdale and Milonais (2021) suggest that in the face of such global challenges we must embrace our fear and “cultivate patient hope” and even “radical hope” (Lear, 2006) that can prepare students emotionally for what is coming. We suggest that the place-responsive pedagogies described in this chapter are part of a new kind of teaching that awakens the emotional and spiritual resilience that our students, teachers, and leaders will need to face the future.

Endnote In writing this chapter, we acknowledge all the teachers who have been part of the PEEC teaching team and those who still are for their deep insights and exceptional skills that have allowed the rich and nuanced place-responsive pedagogy of PEEC to

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develop and grow to become what it is today. We also acknowledge with deep respect all the First Nations Elders, thinkers, and educators who have played such a critical role in shaping PEEC’s pedagogy and growing us up as environmental educators. In particular, we wish to thank Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann for her generosity of spirit and for the precious gift of Dadirri. We encourage you to learn more about Dadirri and to support the dedicated work of the foundation here at https://www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au.

References Bennett, J. (2010). The enchantment of modern life. Princeton University Press. Clark, M. (2004, May 1). Falling in love again. Produced by Jackie May for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Interviewed by Alexandra de Blas on Earthbeat. Graham, M. (1992). An Aboriginal World. The Centre for Aboriginal Studies, South Brisbane. 29.2.92 to 01.3.92. Notes handed to participants at the workshop. Heathcote, D. (1984). Drama as a process for change. In L. Johnson & C. O’Neill (Eds.), Dorothy Heathcote collected writings. Hutchinson. Hird, M. J. (2012). Animal, all too animal: Toward an ethic of vulnerability. In A. Gross & A. Vallely (Eds.), Animal others and the human imagination (pp. 331–348). Columbia University Press. Karrow, D., & Fazio, X. (2010). Educating-within-place: Care, citizen science, and ecojustice. In D. Tippins, M. Mueller, M. van Eijck, & J. Adams (Eds.), Cultural studies and environmentalism: The confluence of ecojustice, place-based (science) education, and indigenous knowledge systems. Springer. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2009). On the modern cult of the factish gods. Duke University Press. Lear, J. (2006). Radical Hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation. Harvard University Press. Lynch, K. (2007). Love labour as a distinct and non-commodifiable form of care labour. The Sociological Review, 54(3), 550–570. Malouf, D. (1978). An imaginary life. Vintage. Martin, K. (2007). Here we go “round the broomie tree”: Aboriginal early childhood realities and experiences in early childhood services. In J. Ailwood (Ed.), Early childhood in Australia: Historical and comparative contexts (pp. 18–34). Frenchs Forest. Moloney, H. (2021). The good life: How to grow a better world. Affirm Press. Milona, M., & Stockdale, K. (2021). Controlling hope. Ratio (Oxford), 34(4), 345–354. https://doi. org/10.1111/rati.12310 Neidjie, B., Davis, S., & Fox, A. (1985). Kakadu Man. Mybrood P/L Inc. in NSW. Neidjie, B. (1989). Story About Feeling. Ed. Keith Taylor. Broome: Magabala. Petrie, T. (1904). Tom Petrie’s reminiscences of early Queensland published and written by his daughter, Constance Campbell Petrie. The book is regarded as one of the best authorities on Brisbane’s early days. Renshaw, P. D. (2021). Feeling for the Anthropocene: Placestories of living justice. The Australian Educational Researcher, 48, 1–21. Renshaw, P. D., & Tooth, R. (2016). Perezhivanie mediated through narrative place-responsive pedagogy. In A. Surian (Ed.), Open spaces for interaction and learning diversities (pp. 13–23). Sense Publishers. Somerville, M. (2010). A place pedagogy for “global contemporaneity”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(3), 326–344.

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Stockdale, K., & Milonais, M. (2021). https://psyche.co/ideas/even-when-optimism-has-been-losthope-has-a-role-to-play Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2015). Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene: Towards a common world pedagogy of multispecies vulnerability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 507–529. Tooth, R., & Renshaw, P. (2018a). Place-responsive design for school settings. In P. Renshaw & R. Tooth (Eds.), Diverse pedagogies of place: Educating students in and for local and global environments (pp. 172–189). Routledge. Tooth, R., & Renshaw, P. (2018b). Pedagogy as advocacy in and for place. In P. Renshaw & R. Tooth (Eds.), Diverse pedagogies of place: Educating students in and for local and global environments (pp. 22–44). Routledge. Ungunmerr, M. R. (1988). Dadirri. Miriam Rose Foundation. https://www.miriamrosefoundation. org.au/dadirri/ Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand talk: How indigenous thinking can save the world. Text Publishing.

Student Teachers’ Experience of Values Education and Its Implications for Teacher Education

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teachers and Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Training in Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Investigation Contextualized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Defined, Values in Practice, and the “How-To” of Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Teachers’ Understanding of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Which Are Considered Most Important for Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why and How of Values Education in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Training Teachers in Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Despite numerous revisions to the curriculum, teachers worldwide lament the general lack of values and a moral degeneration among learners. Parents and teachers have also become despondent about social media’s overwhelming adverse influence in imparting values to these young people. Those values are crucial in helping them contribute meaningfully to society. Therefore, we are compelled to reexamine and reimagine how education in the twenty-first century acknowledges the role values can play in addressing worldwide challenges youth face. Furthermore, the pivotal role of the teacher in altering this alarming trend through infusing values education into their classroom practice becomes paramount. This chapter aims to report how a selection of student teachers perceive the role of values education, how they infuse values in their daily lessons during their school experience, and their views on teacher training in values education. N. Dasoo (*) Department of Education and Curriculum Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_47

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Through interviews and surveys with 35 student teachers, data indicates the complexities and controversies surrounding their understanding of values education. Interesting patterns emerge regarding their strategies to infuse values in their daily lessons. Finally, the findings of this inquiry suggest important implications for teacher training in values education so that there is an acquisition of core values and fundamental human rights in safe and conducive learning environments. Keywords

Values education · Teacher education · Student teachers · Human rights · Conducive learning

Introduction The twenty-first century with its accelerated technological advances and changing political, social, and economic circumstances is influencing values formation in young people in ways that are dramatically different from their elders. Unfortunately, it also contributes to teachers’ and parents’ overwhelming despondency towards the influence of social media in imparting values to young people. Malinda et al. (2017) and Spacey (2017) suggest that forming character and instilling values are essential educational goals and argue for an urgent need for the explicit development and teaching of appropriate and explicit values. There is a different interpretation of values, and the concept itself is fluid. They could be a cognitive construct (Spacey, 2017), a moral belief, or even an abstract principle. However, Halstead and Taylor (2000, p.169) offer a helpful definition of values as: “a physical entity to which human beings attach worth and thus act as a general guide to behaviour and as standards by which particular actions are judged to be good or desirable.” Schools are fertile places for the education of values, and the decisions about which values will remain a burning issue. Lickona (1993), in a book entitled “Education for Character,” provides reasons for the need for values education in schools because of an increase in violence in schools and the need to make a connection between the growth of a society and the support of full human development in the setting of a nation’s schools. He also highlights the fact that values are always present in the school’s context, “everything a school does teach values, including the way teachers and others, treat learners, the way principals treat teachers, the way the school treats parent” (Lickona, 1993, p. 21). This idea is interpreted as schooling, not just being preparation for society. However, a school is seen as a vibrant component of society in which values need to be practiced so that they can be aligned with what society expects from all its citizens. If there is an undeniable consideration that schools are sites of values education, then the role of education and the teacher remains vital in deepening the values of young people. Undoubtedly, education affects the values and ways of thinking of

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learners and can play an essential role in the values formation of young people. Schools have a brief from society to engender values that promote community (economically and in terms of a democratic vibrancy). Ultimately, a good education is what the young need to become productive and caring citizens. In previous research conducted (Dasoo & Henning, 2012), it was found that the values expressed in schools are not fully explored or articulated. At least partly because these values are deeply embedded in school and teachers’ taken-for-granted worldview and because teachers have to make many day-to-day decisions in the classroom without much reflection. It has also shown that teachers’ conceptions of values and values education are embedded in the espoused moral imperative of broader society, specifically as directed by a policy that promotes values. Neither the school nor its teachers appear to be the site of struggle for values education specifically. In this chapter, I argue that teacher education programs deliberately need to train student teachers to infuse values into their lessons. The investigation aimed to understand how a selection of student teachers’ understanding or, in Vygotskian parlance (Vygotsky, 1986), internalization of values and values education transfers into action in their teaching environment and how it activates particular values they hold dear.

Teachers and Values Education The idea of values transmission from one generation to the next is age-old. Celebrated author and African traditional healer, Mutwa (1998) explains that many of the oldest creation myths focus on the transmission of values between mortals and immortals on the one hand and across generations on the other. However, is our present concern over values simply reflecting the generation gap? As children grow up and assert control over their lives, the control apportioned to adults decreases. They are leaving adults labeling their children as “unruly” and disrespectful. As the world changes ever more quickly, elders do not appreciate young people’s values, perhaps because they reflect a world older generations do not fully understand. The role of government through school education remains vital in deepening the values of young people. Education reflects the kind of society and the values of such a society. Therefore, a set of universal or shared values must be decided upon and those then underpin the school curriculum. Undoubtedly, education affects the values and ways of thinking of learners and can play an essential role in the values formation of young people. Education affects the values and ways of thinking of learners and can play an essential role in the values formation of young people. There is a renewed attention by many worldwide educational administrations on the school’s role in developing young people’s spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development. For Darling-Hammond (2000), since a teacher’s effectiveness is the primary factor in a learner’s achievement, teacher-training institutions are obliged to provide schools with teachers of high quality. Furthermore, the pivotal role of the teacher in nurturing the values, attitudes, and personal qualities in young people

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necessitates that initial teacher training programs prepare prospective teachers for such a role. In this chapter, the central argument proposed is that values will mean very little if we do not educate our young and initiate them into a culture of learning and responding to teaching. It can be argued further that it would be a great social injustice to neglect nurturing the value of learning and the concomitant value of teaching as core principles of schooling. Various authors (Carey, 2004; Smith & Gillespie, 2007) confirm that teachers are the single most crucial factor in raising learner achievement, but their professional development has no direct implication. Therefore, in order for teacher development to impact learners, Guskey (2000) suggests that it must first have an impact on the teachers who are engaged in the professional development experience during and after development interventions. He further posits that many professional development efforts fail because they lack focus planning, are unrelated to the daily lives of the teacher, and, thereby, do not affect instructional practice, do not take into account what motivates teachers, nor do they attempt to delineate the process of teacher change. Kennedy (1998), in her review of effective teacher professional development programs, found that the relevance and emphasis of the content for professional development was significant and was a major contributing factor to high quality and effective teacher professional development programs. Well-designed, thoughtfully planned, and adequately supported professional development program is a necessary ingredient in all educational improvement efforts. Undoubtedly, teachers exert a powerful influence over learners’ success and wellbeing due to their pivotal role. They are vital in enabling quality education and are provided with every opportunity to facilitate how values are developed (MompointGaillard, 2011). Therefore, if a teacher holds the promise of influencing how learners learn and the values they acquire in a classroom setting, preservice teacher training programs have a significant and worthwhile role in ensuring the development of a teacher that will fulfill such a task. As Palmer posits (Palmer, 1999:1), “What transforms education is a transformed being in the world.” I would suggest that such an assertion lends credence to the importance of values and values education. This chapter defines values education as an explicit and overt effort to teach values explicitly. This type of teaching promotes the development of learners’ existing values and those considered necessary by the school. When conducted properly, values education can help learners develop dispositions to act in specific ways toward the common good of the immediate social environment. This school community could also be a broader representation of the society they live. Roux and Dasoo (2020) suggest that values education is an educational activity employed to develop character and fundamental human values such as respect, responsibility, honesty, and peace. They suggest that values education fosters and raises a generation for a livable world. Values are expressed in the way teachers organize and manage classroom activities. In the way they present, value, and choose educational content. In what teachers choose to permit or encourage in the classroom, in their teaching style,

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disciplinary procedures, attitudes, treatment of and relations to the learners, and how they relate to school rules (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002). Teachers undoubtedly hold a unique and powerful position in the classroom. In Brooks and Khan’s opinion (Brooks & Kahn, 1992, p. 24): Teachers have values, but they also smuggle them into the classroom every day. The way teachers make sense of values is far removed from those defined in policy or other bureaucratic text. Teachers teach values in every action, decision, and interaction with learners. Values, therefore, become part of the learned and the implicit curriculum.

In thinking about values education in school contexts, the role of the teacher is vital. Young children also learn how to behave by the example of their teachers, who are, in a way, a foster family whose acting (of values) is internalized. Teaching values, when to teach values, and how to do so is difficult if one sees it in isolation and as a discreet curricular act. According to Nucci (1987), teacher education authors have downplayed the teacher’s role as transmitter or mediator of social and personal values and emphasized other areas such as teaching techniques, strategies, models, and skills in the heyday of competency-based teacher education. Buzzelli (1996) argues, and I would add rightly so, that too few studies have examined the moral complexities of the teaching and learning activity in a classroom. Instead, he suggests (ibid, p.14-15) that: “Our conversation is dominated by mechanistic language, strategies, skills, and time-ontask. However, teaching techniques imply a view about what a human being is - what a person is, and that is at the very least evaluative and moral. A substantial body of literature has focussed on the influence a teacher’s beliefs and values have on their practice.”

Schools provide one of the most significant structures in society for general values socialization. However, relatively little attention has thus far been given to how the values orientations of teachers may be embedded in their classroom planning, thinking, and discourses. Instead, discussion about values exploration becomes confused with values transmission or values clarification, and disputes about values in education become complex when societal values are in rapid flux.

Teacher Training in Values Education For Halstead and Taylor (2000), the role of the school is to build on and supplement the existing values children have to offer. Also, to ensure further exposure to current societal values to reflect upon so that learners can make sense of these and integrate them within their already developing values, in and out of school. Young children must see “values in action,” with adults leading this activity in a school context.

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Hooper (2003, p.171) too observes: “Throughout the literature, various questions have been raised, discussed, and contested about the proper role of the school in pursuing this task. These questions include: Is there such a thing as a set of core values that schools can promote? Should schools provide programs that specifically aim to teach values? On whose authority does the school teach which values? How should a school decide which values to teach? What approaches are used? What are the types of activities and teaching methods? What is the role of the teacher? How are teachers adequately prepared to teach values? Which values “drive” teachers? How can values improve educational practice and outcomes?”

A concern regarding the possibly inadequate preparation of teachers for values education and values teaching is an issue frequently raised in the literature (Halstead & Taylor, 2000; Johnson, 2002). In the early 1990s, Goodlad (1990) appealed to researchers to focus more on the moral dimensions of teacher education programs. In the same vein, Wakefield (1997, p. 5) strongly recommended that teacher education should pay explicit attention to character education, stating that “if tomorrow’s teachers are to be responsible and effective conduits of moral education, teacher education programs must take up the challenge of moral education instruction.” A review study by Veugelers and Vedder (2003) led to a similar conclusion that there is a striking lack of research on how student teachers can be prepared for the moral aspects of teaching. In his review, Hansen (2001) referred to many studies on the subject, which showed the complicated nature of teaching as a moral activity. These studies raised various questions, including (1) to what extent and how should teachers communicate with learners about values? (2) How should teachers promote the development of values in their pupils? (3) How should they foster the ability of pupils to put these values into practice? However, in his literature review, Hansen (2001) did not mention a single research project that focused on the consequences for teacher education or the findings from research on teaching as a moral activity. Marshall (2006) and Revell and Arthur (2007) have recognized that teachers cannot effectively teach values education. They propose that all teachers, irrespective of their grade level, discipline, or years of experience, need information and guidance on demonstrating and implementing positive character traits in the classroom. Willemse et al. (2008, p. 446) suggest, “although there is an agreement of the importance of research focused on the moral dimensions of teacher education programs and the importance of preparing teachers concerning the moral aspects of education, there are two major problems: the absence of a clear theoretical framework and the lack of empirical research upon which to build.” While Cochran-Smith (2004, p. 298) argues that the preparation of teachers “to foster democratic values and skills must be acknowledged as a major part of the problem of teacher education.” For this reason, effective professional development is considered a cornerstone for educational reform. She further suggests that investment in teacher professional development can contribute to the capacity

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building of teachers who form the foundation of good schools. Perhaps one of the essential investments governments can make in education. Researchers (Darling-Hammond et al. 2005; Ferraro, 2000; Joyce & Showers, 2002; and Sparks & Hirsh, 1997) argue that professional development is most effective when it is practice-embedded, based on the goals of the school district, and conducted during the school day. Garett et al. (2001) also agree that intensive, sustained, and job/practice-embedded professional development is more likely to improve teacher knowledge, classroom instruction, and student achievement. Furthermore, they suggest active learning, coherence, and collective participation as components of promising best practices in professional development. According to Darling-Hammond (1998), the goal of professional development is to provide opportunities for teachers to learn and grow within the profession, thereby impacting student learning while they are learning to improve their practice. Approaches shift from conventional models of “teacher training” or “in-servicing” to a model in which teachers “confront research and theory directly, are greatly engaged in evaluating their practice, and use their colleagues for mutual assistance” (Darling-Hammond, 1998, p. 6). The purpose of this investigation was twofold. Firstly, to understand what student teachers’ perception of values was and how they infused values into their lessons. Secondly, to contribute to the existing body of research into values education from a pedagogical lens and not just from a range of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

The Investigation Contextualized The most appropriate design identified for the inquiry was phenomenology (Higgs & Smith, 2006) because of its strong focus on philosophical content. This design includes an analysis of the individuals’ experiences, perceptions, and meaning they attach to these and focuses on experience as a phenomenon. Using a qualitative approach, data was gathered about student teachers’ interpretation of values and values education and how they infused values into their lessons. After applying a careful purposive sampling technique, 35 final year Bachelor of Education students (females n¼20 and males n¼15) were invited to complete an online survey. A random selection of 10 (female n ¼ 5 and male n ¼ 5) student teachers participated in an interview. The multiple ways (McMillan, 2000) in which data was collected ensured triangulation and validity, reliability, and trustworthiness of the inquiry. The author took great care to protect the participants’ interests by following strict ethical procedures in obtaining informed consent, assuring anonymity and confidentiality, and the right to withdraw from the study. Permission to tape-record interviews was sought beforehand, and the interviewees were assured of confidentiality and the use of pseudonyms to ensure anonymity. Data was analyzed after segmenting the data into meaningful units of analysis. These data were thematically analyzed in order to determine emerging patterns and themes. The complex process of data analysis was conducted using both Miles and Huberman (1994) and Morse (1996) as frames of reference.

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Values Defined, Values in Practice, and the “How-To” of Values Education Student Teachers’ Understanding of Values Student teachers’ responses to what they understood values to be ranged from principles that one lives by to values being fundamental beliefs that guide one’s life. Some student teachers also defined values as a “driving force,” an ideology that an individual follows to determine their thoughts and actions. However, most of the student teachers defined values as the guiding principles in which lives are lived and how people in society interact with each other. A type of moral code that society must display or live by. When values are defined, it is usually as abstract, but at times also as a physical entity to which human beings attach worth. They are common in individuals or groups regarding physical exposure and genetic makeup. Often, values are considered essential and enduring beliefs or ideals shared by members of a culture regarding what is good or desirable and what is not. However, as Solomons and Fattar (2011) suggest, values are a fluid concept and are often interpreted differently.

Values Which Are Considered Most Important for Education In this investigation, as others (Willemse et al. (2008); Dasoo, 2010; Thornberg & Oğuz, 2013; Roux & Dasoo, 2020), the value of respect ranked the highest value that student teachers considered most important for education. In response to the question asked in the survey as well as the interviews in respect of which values student teachers considered most important for education, they believed that respect should dominate all aspects of the teaching and learning milieu. In the word cloud depicted in Fig. 47.1, the value of respect was the value most often cited by student teachers as crucial for education, hence its prominent depiction. If we consider that this value emerges from research conducted as the one cited most important, then it reflects on the teacher as the bearer and holder of respect. A value that runs the risk of being lost if it is not “lived” in their schools and communities. As Veugelers (2000, p. 39) suggests, “attention should be placed on the values teachers themselves find essential for the children and youth, or else they will not adopt values that are not practiced as an everyday routine.” If a teacher, for example, teaches the value of “respect,” it will have little currency if the classroom does not exemplify respect for all. From the survey and interviews conducted, it was evident that the student teachers described values as relational (Katilmiş, 2017). They cited values such as helping others, teamwork, and values about treating others, such as empathy and compassion. The values of teaching learners’ self-worth were also highly ranked, and these were values such as responsibility, diligence, patience, accountability, commitment, and responsibility. It appears, therefore, that values teachers practice will be evident in classroom discourse and behavior, most of which will be related to pedagogic content knowledge.

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Fig. 47.1 Word cloud depicting the values most cited

Why and How of Values Education in the Classroom In response to why teach values, student teachers in this investigation were unanimous in their responses. Some were “Values help learners relate to each other and the teacher,” and “values encourage trusting, safe and caring environments. This, in turn, enables quality teaching and learning because learners will not feel fearful of being judged on the content they do not know or are unsure of” and “values education contributes to creating active global citizens who can engage with other people regardless of who they are.” Student teachers were aware that values infusion in lessons could occur implicitly or explicitly through creative teaching and learning processes. Modeling behavior can be seen as an essential mediation tool for teaching values. The adage that teachers need to be themselves and what they desire in their learners resonates as accurate (Al–Ghazali, M., 1951). Learners acquire values when they see adults they admire and respect exemplify those values. Some of the student teachers interviewed believed that values education could only be addressed implicitly through modeling and the day-to-day policies, processes, and practices within and beyond the classroom. Comments made in the survey were, “I think values are taught by leading by example,” “by modelling these values to learners,” “I would practice these values myself. Learners do what you do, not what you say,” “they have to feel respected to respect others, feel like they are heard in order to hear others. So I show them the how-to of the value.” Others approached values education through a values clarification process and through cognitive development methods where learners critically assess and evaluate value positions and then come to their value

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positions. Such is indicated in their comment, “values would be implemented into tasks that are real-life situations. These tasks, when created, will evoke a need of these values to come up with an answer for the task.” Still, other student teachers saw a need for the explicit teaching and learning of specific, prescribed values in the curriculum.

Training Teachers in Values Education Preservice teacher-training programs are meant to train student teachers to become quality teachers with sound pedagogic content knowledge and practice. This includes training student teachers in values education. Ferreira and Schulze (2014) argue that teacher training should help teachers reflect on their values and identities and how this influences their teaching. By training teachers in this way, they could, in turn, assist their learners in respecting their values and those of others through analysis, deconstruction, and reconstruction. When the student teachers in this investigation were asked how they thought they could best be trained in values education, most of them responded that a stand-alone module in which both the theory and practice of values education should be a core component in a Bachelor of Education program. Some of the participants even suggested that lecturers themselves model the values that are deemed important in the program and for education. What student teachers impressed upon was the mentoring by teachers at school while these students were on their work integrated learning experience. For example, students commented, “It would be easier if values education could be included within the qualifications requirements, as well as if the teachers who are already in the field would practice teaching values in their lessons, the student teachers would understand and follow the same routine when they are at the school.” “During our work-integrated learning experience it can be a requirement that we incorporate teaching values in our lessons. Mentor teachers can also assess how we integrate values into our lessons. Values education can also be incorporated into our modules such as Teaching Studies at university level.” According to Lovat and Clement (2008, p. 10), “teachers cannot come to the task of values education without adequate preparation.” Studies conducted in Australia (Lovat & Toomey, 2007) showed how the professional development of teachers and personal growth were interlinked in teachers’ experiences while planning and implementing values education. Teachers came to see the value of consulting with learners and fellow teachers to implement effective pedagogies. Students and teachers alike became reflective and respectful of each other’s roles. Similarly, in a study conducted by Gardner (2000), it was found that values education transformed the professional practice of teachers by encouraging a peer support program, enhancing pedagogical awareness, and encouraging positive relationships between various school stakeholders. Teacher professional development in values education can play an essential role in providing teachers with learning opportunities to come to a deeper understanding

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of the pedagogy of values education. Teachers need to know how seemingly disparate approaches can be integrated into lessons and how they can be incorporated into evolving models of constructivist learning and teaching. Yero (2002) quotes Hargreaves and Fullan as aptly stating that: Teacher development involves more than changing teachers’ behavior. It also involves changing the person the teacher is. What teachers think, what they believe, and what they do at the classroom level ultimately shape young people’s learning.

In an intervention research project conducted by Sockett and Le Page (2002), they reported how teachers lacked a moral language to describe their work at the beginning of the intervention. In other words, they lacked what Bernstein (1996) refers to as a “language of description.” They further argued that without a moral vocabulary, it is difficult to see how teachers can first address the complexity of moral judgments they must make with either confidence or competence, secondly, develop an adequate professional foundation of moral understanding, and thirdly, teach children to think about and reflect on moral issues. Sockett and Le Page (2002) report how teachers did develop a moral language during the implementation of an educational program with an explicit moral base. Such a program introduced teachers to ethics of principles, virtues, ethics of care, and pragmatic views of negotiating moral understanding as a social engagement. The need for democratic citizenship education is emphasized. Thornberg (2008, p. 196), in response to such a finding, comments: Without professional language containing a scientific knowledge base about the content and practice of professional values education (including knowledge of ethical theories and concepts), teachers’ efforts and outcomes in this pedagogic matter seem to be somewhat arbitrary and haphazardly.

Ling (1998, p. 210) draws a similar conclusion from her colleagues and her research project on values education by commenting that: “Teachers lack a discourse to express their ideas about values and conceptualize the area of values in education. This stems mainly from teachers’ lack of theoretical knowledge and experience in this area. While there is much in the literature of education, especially in philosophy and moral education, it is not an integral and explicit part of the training that most teachers undergo.”

What is needed from the evidence presented is sustained and relevant teacher training in values education that follows constructivist learning principles. Student teachers need to be trained in constructing appropriately contextualized learning environments where different values are respected and recognized. If teacher-training programs fail in developing these traits, student teachers will take on a mechanistic view of the curriculum and its implementation.

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Conclusion This investigation has indicated that the moral dimension of education and teacher education is a complex and challenging issue. However, we cannot close our eyes to it because it is fundamental to teacher education (Campbell, 2003). Suppose teachers are insufficiently aware of the values that underlie their teaching or how they put these values into practice. In that case, they may ignore the significant potential for supporting the learning process of learners concerning moral education. Since teaching inevitably instils values in learners, one would expect an emphasis on teaching values explicitly in the curriculum. To enhance the quality of teaching, preservice teacher training programs should be impelled to focus on values and values education explicitly. Research has indicated an inherent link between values and quality teaching (Lovat & Clement, 2008; Lovat & Toomey, 2007). As Lovat et al. (2010, p. 21) suggest, “Values education is taught most effectively in a high-quality teaching and learning environment characterized by best practice pedagogy.” Also described as “values education and high-quality teaching coalesce for effective learning.” Existing evidence reveals an essential link between values education and academic excellence (Lovat, 2017). Like previous investigations (Dasoo & Henning, 2012), this study too endorses that the school itself is the scenario where values are practiced. Therefore, for schools to offer values education successfully, it requires that a teacher possess the requisite pedagogical knowledge to teach it. Preservice teacher training programs can facilitate the success of values education by offering training to student teachers in the content and processes of values education. Such programs can offer a theoretical background and train student teachers in various implementation strategies and teaching techniques related to values education.

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Marshall, J. (2006). Character Education in pre-service education: one institution’s response. Journal of College and Character. Featured Journal Articles. www.collegevalues.org/articles. cfm?id¼571&a. McMillan, J. H. (2000). Educational research: Fundamentals for the consumer (3rd ed.). Addison Wesley Longman. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). Sage. Mompoint-Gaillard, P. (2011). Teacher education for change: The theory behind the council of Europe Pestalozzi Programme. Council of Europe Publishing. Retrieved from https://rm.coe. int/pestalozzi1-teachereducationforchange-en/16808ce209 Morse, J. M. (Ed.). (1996). Critical issues in qualitative research methods. Sage. Mutwa, C. (1998). Indaba, my children african tribal history, legends, customs and religious beliefs. Payback Press. Nucci, L. P. (1987). Synthesis of research on moral development. Educational Leadership, 44, 86–92. Palmer, P. J. (1999). Evoking the spirit in public education. Educational Leadership, 56, 6–11. Available at http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/evoking-the-spirit Revell, L., & Arthur, J. (2007). Character education in schools and the education of teachers. Journal of Moral Education, 36(1), 79–92. Roux, C. J., & Dasoo, N. (2020). Pre-service teachers’ perception of values education in the South African physical education curriculum. South African Journal of Childhood Education, 10(1), a717. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v10i1.717 Smith, C., & Gillespie, M. (2007). Research on professional development and teacher change: Implications for adult basic education. Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, 7. http://www. ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/ann_rev/smith-gillespie-07.pdf Sockett, H., & Le Page, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(2), 159–171. Solomons, I., & Fataar, A. (2011). A conceptual exploring of values education in the context of schooling in South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 13(2), 1–8. https://doi.org/10. 15700/saje.v31n2a482 Spacey, G. (2017). Learning and teaching values through physical education. In G. Stidder & S. Hayes (Eds.), The really useful physical education book: Learning and teaching across the 11-16 age range (2nd ed.). Routledge. Sparks, D., & Hirsh, S. (1997). A new vision for professional development. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Thornberg, R. (2008). The lack of professional knowledge in values education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1791–1798. Thornberg, R., & Oğuz, E. (2013). Teachers’ views on values education: A qualitative study in Sweden and Turkey. International Journal of Educational Research, 59, 49–56. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.ijer.2013.03.005 Veugelers, W., & Vedder, P. (2003). Values in teaching. Teachers, and teaching: Theory and practice, 9(4), 377–389. Veugelers, W. (2000). Different ways of teaching values. Educational Review, 52(1), 37–46. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. MIT Press. Wakefield, D. (1997). Who’s teaching teachers about character education instruction? LaGrange. Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M., & Korthagen, F. (2008). The moral aspects of teacher educators’ practices. Journal of Moral Education, 37(4), 445–466. Yero, J. L. (2002). Values. Teacher’s mind resources: http://www.TeachersMind.com

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Critical Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study School: PI Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Qualitative Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quantitative Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quantitative Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Students’ Perceptions About PI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quantitative Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General Reasoning Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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R. Spooner-Lane (*) Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] E. Curtis University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_48

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Abstract

Historically, critical thinking extends from the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and is just as important now as ever. In order for adolescents to succeed in our rapidly changing world of digitization and automation, educators need to equip students with skills so that they become equipped at every day problemsolving and decision-making. This chapter will focus on evidence from a mixed method case study that was conducted to determine whether one 40 minute lesson in philosophical inquiry (PI) per week over a 2-year period positively influenced student learning and well-being in Year 7 high school students. Student reflections of learning PI were collected and analyzed at the end of each term. The study also explored students’ general reasoning ability at three points in time— prior to commencing PI (T1), after 1 year of studying PI (T2), and after 2 years of studying PI (T3). This chapter extends previous research by exploring philosophical inquiry and its impact on adolescents. Keywords

Philosophical inquiry · Critical thinking · Well-being · Values education

Introduction We know that education should be about the development of persons and assisting children and young people in becoming more fully functioning citizens in society (Curtis, 2012; Pring, 2001, 2010). Intense discussions around educational change and school effectiveness have been commonplace since the early 1980s and developed into more heated discussion surrounding “the rise of the measurement culture in education” (Biesta, 2009, p. 34)—a culture where performance and league tables appear to be hallmarks of educational effectiveness and where most importance is placed on linguistic and mathematical literacy (Cohen, 2006). What we need to see instead, as the hallmark of effectiveness, is how education enables “young people to ‘become somebody well’” (Wyn, 2007, p. 37) where they are provided with the social–emotional competencies and ethical dispositions that provide them the foundation with which they can become loving, active community members capable of reasoning and problem-solving (Cohen, 2006). In the chapter we wrote for the first edition of this handbook we argued that through the implementation of teaching philosophical inquiry—a values-based pedagogy—to pre-service teachers, assistance could be afforded to refocus the key agenda of education to assist “learners to lead thoughtful, reflective, productive and rewarding lives” (Spooner-Lane et al., 2010, p. 392). In this chapter, we continue to examine the teaching of philosophical inquiry—an excellent way of including an “explicit values and student wellbeing pedagogy” (Curtis, 2012, p. 75)—but this time with a focus on adolescent well-being. By selecting a pedagogical practice that is value-based, dialogic, and focuses on critical, creative, caring, and collaborative thinking, it may improve performance in league

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tables and standardized tests, but more importantly it prioritizes overall development and well-being and prepares students to live a meaningful life within society (Spooner-Lane et al., 2010). Adolescents’ experiences at school influence their every developmental aspect (Eccles & Roeser, 2011) yet how much research, especially now in the twenty-first century, an era plagued by high-stakes testing, league tables, and quantitative measurement of success, actually focuses on all aspects of young people’s development and not just their intellectual capital? The research presented in this chapter examined the impact of philosophical inquiry (PI) on adolescents’ personal development and learning in one independent secondary school in Queensland, Australia. The collaborative dialogic approach of PI provides a foundation for creativity, reasoning, and metacognition (Curtis et al., 2020) as well as encouraging a disposition of care (Curtis, 2010; Lipman, 2003). This chapter illustrates that PI is one way to engage students in intellectual thinking and learning while simultaneously being beneficial for personal development and overall well-being.

Student Well-Being Well-being continues to receive much attention, generally across society but certainly very much so in terms of educational contexts, whether it be early childhood, primary, secondary, or higher education. Everywhere one turns, there are policies, programs, remedies, and debates focusing on a range of well-being topics including self-regulation, resilience, increased workload, and wellness strategies. More and more schools are being required to take a leading role in addressing and improving children and young people’s social and emotional well-being (Anderson & Graham, 2016; Powell et al., 2018; Samnoy et al., 2020; Wyn, 2007). Spratt (2016) noted there are four key discursive themes of well-being in schools. First, there is the discourse of physical health promotion, which was seen internationally through Health Promoting Schools, as outlined in the 1986 Ottawa Charter (World Health Organisation, 1986). There was not though necessarily strong evidence for the efficacy of these interventions on student health or on the school ethos or environment (Mukoma & Flisher, 2004). The 2000s saw a move away from health programs toward the next two discourses: the discourse of social and emotional literacy which emerged from psychology and the emergent discourse of care from the field of social work (Spratt, 2016). Programs like Bounce Back and You can do it which were focused on improving social–emotional learning were implemented internationally after research demonstrated that social–emotional competencies and ethical dispositions provide an essential foundation for lifelong learning (Cohen, 2006). The next wave in schools, while continuing to draw on the fields of psychology, counseling, and social work, conceptualized well-being as a remedy to mental illness in children and adolescents with programs like MindMatters (Svane et al., 2019). Next, the focus moved to the fourth discourse of flourishing emerging from the field of positive psychology with an eudaimonic well-being vision. All of these sat beside other programs under the well-being banner which focused on topics such as sexual

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health (Denford et al., 2017), drugs and alcohol (Teesson et al., 2012), bullying prevention (Evans et al., 2014), mindfulness (Ager et al., 2015; Malboeuf-Hurtubise et al., 2021), and now in Queensland, even a 3-year pilot program placing General Practitioners in 50 state schools (secondary) across the state for 1 day a week (Queensland Government, 2021). There are many ways to define well-being, and the term is often used ambiguously and inconsistently (Blank et al., 2009; Pollard & Lee, 2003; Powell et al., 2018; Samnoy et al., 2020; White, 2010). In Pollard and Lee’s (2003) systematic literature review of children’s well-being, they determined that the most useful way of defining well-being is to look at it from the perspective of a variety of domains—physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic. These domains are still oft-cited and are often accompanied by White’s (2010) pyramid of well-being where she notes three explicit dimensions of well-being: the material; the relational, and the subjective. Wellbeing traces its roots to two Greek philosophers: (1) Aristippus of Cyrene, taking a hedonistic approach to well-being seen as a positive mood and life satisfaction and (2) Aristotle, who took an eudaimonic approach and saw well-being as living well which meant finding meaning in life through encompassing a moral and ethical approach (Svane et al., 2019). Whatever definition one uses, it must be noted that well-being is a multidimensional construct that incorporates multiple domains usually always consisting of the cognitive, psychological, physical, and social. Synthesizing these various dimensions into a framework of “academic buoyancy” (Martin & Marsh, 2008) is one way that some researchers are viewing well-being in schools, especially when discussed in relation to academic achievement (Miller et al., 2013). There has been much research on the role that positive emotions play in broadening people’s thought–action repertoires which leads to increased physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources (Frederickson, 2001). Martin and Marsh’s (2008) study examined the four key characteristics: self-efficacy, control, academic engagement, and teacher–student relationships and the role these played. Education needs to be “attentive to what it means to create meaningful lives” (Gereluk, 2018, p. 174) and well-being has been seen as becoming increasingly necessary for children and adolescents in order to provide them with greater capacity to manage uncertainty and complexity (Wyn, 2007) in what are certainly hallmarks of our current world context. Teachers and schools need to teach not just the intellectual but to focus equally and fully on the four types of thinking: critical, creative, collaborative, and caring. The very nature of the curriculum and the academic work that adolescents undertake will impact not only on their knowledge, but on how they come to see themselves and their world, as well as their capacities to be motivated and engaged and the morals and ethics they develop (Eccles & Roeser, 2011). Some research has suggested that as young people move from children at primary school to adolescents at secondary school they encounter higher rates of boredom and they engage in more passive work and the cognitive demands on them decrease (Eccles & Roeser, 2011), which in turn leads to a negative impact on their development. The way young people understand well-being is important to discuss within the context of their perspectives of well-being (Ben-Arieh, 2005) recognizing that in order to understand more about the concept of well-being in schools we need to

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recognize children and adolescents’ experiences and understandings of what it means to them (Fattore et al., 2007; Powell et al., 2018). It is also important in research on well-being with children from their perspective that it is a key that the focus is on them in the present rather than on their future lives (Fattore et al., 2007). Powell et al.’s (2018) Australian study of 18 schools over three states with over 600 primary and secondary school students looked at how young people envisaged what well-being meant to them. She noted that all generally found the term difficult to explain, but they tended to see it as a state of being that existed when their needs were met and they felt satisfied. Social and emotional aspects of well-being (such as love, being happy, trusting relationships and connectedness) emerged as the strongest, but physical well-being was also consistently identified by the young people. They tended to see physical well-being (generally focused on being healthy and active, but also safe) as needing to be in place in order for other well-being needs to be fulfilled. Well-being was also described as “having,” meaning they have rights like equality, being heard, having a say and being confident and respectful. The last category Powell reports on included “looking after yourself,” “loving yourself,” and making good decisions.

Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom The use of philosophy in education programs and practices under such names as Philosophy for Children, Philosophy with Children, Community of Philosophical Inquiry, Collaborative Philosophical Inquiry, and Philosophical Inquiry for the Classroom has become well established throughout the world (Biesta, 2019). In this chapter, we will use the term “Philosophical Inquiry,” (PI) the term adopted by the school in this study. Philosophy in schools in Australia has been developed from the Philosophy for Children program developed in the 1970s by Matthew Lipman and modified by creating resources and materials for an Australian context (SpoonerLane et al., 2010). Lipman’s (1991) work was greatly influenced by the work of John Dewey (1916) who believed that learning to think is central to the lives of all students, and schools need to aim to build students’ development of independent thinking through the process of collaborative inquiry or a community of inquiry. A community of inquiry may be described as a community where students listen to one another with respect, build on each other’s ideas, challenge each other to supply reasons, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and seek to identify assumptions (Lipman, 2003). The teacher is not the instigator and controller of these communities of inquiry, but rather is there as a facilitator to model the metalanguage of philosophical discourse and to provide the students with conceptual tools to help extend their thinking during the discussion of issues which the students determine (Spooner-Lane et al., 2010). In PI, children read a short story or are given a stimulus (e.g., poem, a picture) and a range of interesting or puzzling questions are raised. After examining the links between the questions, a philosophical question is then generated for further discussion (see Fig. 48.1). Exploring a philosophical question involves information

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Sharing of stimulus

Raising of questions

Connecting questions & identifying themes

Seeking understanding & meaning

Reviewing & reflecting

Fig. 48.1 Process of PI adopted in this study. (Curtis et al., 2020)

gathering, analysis, consideration of various points of view and evidence, revisiting positions, analyzing cogency of one’s argument and that of counter-arguments, and adaptation of one’s conceptual understanding (Cooke, 2015). In other words, PI, in a community of inquiry, is the ideal place to develop intellectual depth, capacity for reflection, and self-knowledge (Curtis, 2010). Philosophers argue that there are broad benefits to using a PI approach to learning in schools. It is claimed that philosophy enhances one’s ability to think, speak, write clearly and critically; communicate effectively; form original, creative solutions to problems; develop reasoned arguments for one’s views; appreciate views different from one’s own; analyze complex material; and investigate difficult questions in a systematic fashion (Golding, 2011; Millett & Flanagan, 2007; Millett & Tapper, 2012). Teaching philosophy has been shown to improve students’ intellectual quality; create and maintain supportive learning environments; help students to recognize and embrace difference and diversity; enhance connectedness; and allow for an explicit values focus (Curtis, 2012; Spooner-Lane et al., 2010). PI has been shown to have positive impacts on teachers’ pedagogical practice which has in turn resulted in an increased positive influence on student learning (Curtis et al., 2020; Scholl, 2014; Scholl et al., 2016; Spooner-Lane et al., 2010). Other studies have demonstrated the improvement of students’ cognitive skills as a result of engaging in PI (Fair et al., 2015; Millett & Tapper, 2012; Topping & Trickey, 2007), while others again have noted the positive impacts on self-esteem, social–emotional learning, and self-regulation (Cassidy et al., 2018; Malboeuf-Hurtubise et al., 2021; Siddiqui et al., 2017). PI has also been reported to increase student engagement and enhanced attention (Siddiqui et al., 2017; Tian & Liao, 2016).

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Critical Thinking Critical thinking refers to “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do”(Norris & Ennis, 1989) and “artful thinking,” which includes reasoning, questioning and investigating, observing and describing, comparing and connecting, finding complexity, and exploring viewpoints (Barahal, 2008). Another term that is often used in relation to critical thinking is higher-order thinking. In order to develop students’ capacities of critical thinking, it is necessary to focus on higher-order thinking strategies, which can be “conceptualised as a non-algorithmic, complex mode of thinking that often generates multiple solutions. . . involve[ing] uncertainty, application of multiple criteria, reflection, and self-regulation” (Miri et al., 2007, p. 355). In critical thinking, being able “to think” means students can apply wise judgment or produce a reasoned critique. The goal of teaching is then to equip students to be wise by guiding them toward how to make sound decisions and exercise reasoned judgment when exploring problems. The skills students need to be taught to do this include: the ability to judge the credibility of a source; identify assumptions, generalization, and bias; identify connotation in language use; understand the purpose of a written or spoken text; identify the audience; and make critical judgments about the relative effectiveness of various strategies used to meet the purpose of the text. While successful interventions in developing critical thinking skills have been reported (Adey & Shayer, 1994; Sternberg & Bhana, 1996; Thinking Skills Review Group, 2005), approaches have typically been intensive, long-lasting, and costly. Some involve high teacher/pupil ratios (e.g., Feuerstein et al., 1980), which have implications in terms of cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and replicability (Topping & Trickey, 2007). Furthermore, each program has its own definition (e.g., critical thinking, problem-solving, rational thought and reasoning) which can be confusing (Marzano et al., 1988). At a time when countries across the globe are seeking inexpensive, easy-to-implement pedagogies that fulfill the aim of enhancing cognitive growth and development, there is increasing demand for an evidence-based, thinking skills programs, such as PI, which promotes higher-level thinking and reasoning (Trickey & Topping, 2004).

Case Study School: PI Lessons The subject PI was introduced to four Year 7 classes (n ¼ 30 students per class) at the beginning of the high school year. PI involves students exploring, questioning, investigating values and concepts, and analyzing ethical dilemmas and meaningful problems. The teacher uses philosophical thinking tools such as exploring conceptual boundaries, discovering criteria, uncovering conceptual connections, defining terms, classifying objects, identifying logical relations, drawing deductive

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inferences, analyzing conditional statements, and constructing analogies (Cam, 1995) to assist students in developing and enriching the quality of their thinking. In essence, it is a program designed to help students to critically think for themselves with a focus not on what to think, but on how to think. A typical philosophy lesson involved a group reading of a source text, followed by students generating a range of philosophical questions that have been stimulated from the reading. These questions become the agenda for discussion. Valuerelated dilemmas are intrinsic to philosophy in the classroom pedagogy. Fisher (1998, p. 20) argues that philosophy is important as “it deals with the fundamental questions of life, such as ‘What makes me who I am? How can I know anything for certain? and How should I live?’” An important step in the development of critical thinking skills is to understand how to reason well and why making decisions based on reasoned arguments and judgments is important. Philosophy in the classroom can promote these thinking skills by encouraging students to reflect on the quality of the arguments offered and the meaning underlying the argument being made (Lipman, 2003). In this chapter, we explore whether PI lessons positively influence learning and well-being and critical thinking for students in their first 2 years of high school.

Method Research Design The research study used a mixed method design. Data were collected from Year 7 students, four teachers who guided the community of inquiry process during philosophical inquiry lessons, and an experienced trainer/educator in PI. Without any prior experience in PI, the teachers initially received two full days of training in PI followed by face-to-face coaching by an experienced PI trainer 2 days a week for 1 year. The trainer developed the PI lessons, modeled how to deliver the PI lessons in each teacher’s classroom, and provided ongoing feedback and support for the teachers. The data that are being reported in this chapter are from the students’ personal reflections and ACER’s general ability test (AGAT) scores.

Participants Participants attended a co-educational secondary school in an Australian capital city. The school introduced PI as a subject for Year 7 in 2015. The students were in their first year of secondary school. The medium-sized school of 722 students has an Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage (ICSEA) score of 1178 or a high level of socioeconomic advantage. There were a total of 120 students spread equally over four classes in Year 7.

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Procedure Students undertook PI once a week for 40 minutes from Term 1 to Term 4 in Years 7 and 8. Students wrote reflections about their perspectives of PI to determine how the lessons influenced their learning and well-being at the end of each school term in Year 7 (a total of four reflection points). Stem questions were provided by the teacher to assist students to reflect on PI including: • • • •

What is something that you did not expect about PI? What is something that you are good at in PI? What improvements have you seen in the PI skills of your class and community? What is one thing you would like us to know about how you feel about PI?

Qualitative Data Analysis To explore the themes in students’ reflections on PI, we drew on Braun and Clarke’s (2021) reflexive approach to thematic analysis. The first step of this analysis was familiarization with the data, which involved the authors reading and re-reading the students’ reflections for each term. The next stage of thematic analysis involved the development of themes by sorting, collating, and collapsing reflections into more significant, meaningful themes: Four major themes were identified across the four terms as follows: (1) PI is taught differently from other school subjects; (2) PI is a dialogic, interactive, meaningful subject; (3) PI promotes a sense of community and safety; and (4) PI strengthens students’ affective well-being. Next, the reflections of PI were considered by drawing upon conceptualizations of well-being (Pollard & Lee, 2003; Powell et al., 2018) and considering students’ reflective responses in relation to a variety of well-being domains including the cognitive, psychological, physical, and social. Trustworthiness of the data analysis was ensured through a process of engaging in dialogic reliability. Dialogic reliability involves researchers engaging in thematic checks which examine if the themes developed are a reasonable reflection of the students’ ideas and reaching agreement based on discussion (Akerlind, 2005). Discussion took place between the two researchers until agreement was reached on themes.

Quantitative Measure General reasoning ability test. The present study focused on one aspect of critical thinking—general reasoning ability. Students completed the ACER general ability test (AGAT; Australian Council for Educational Research, 2008), a series of tests designed to provide an estimate of students’ level of general reasoning ability in three areas: verbal, numerical, and abstract. Students are given a total of 40 min to complete the test. The verbal reasoning (16 items) involves the discrimination and

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abstract use of words and the ability to reason with words. Numerical reasoning (14 items) involves discriminating and accurate application of mathematical processes to solve problems. Abstract or visual reasoning (15 items) involves the identification of patterns and rules. The AGAT test is designed to allow teachers to administer the same AGAT test booklet to the whole class and retest students at a later stage to see whether there have been any changes in their general reasoning ability. Students in the current study completed Test Booklet 7 which is appropriate for Years 7, 8, and 9 pupils. Students completed the test three times—commencing Year 7, Term 1, at the end of Year 7, Term 4, and at the end of Year 8, Term 4. Students recorded their answers on an optical mark readable (OMR) answer sheet using a pencil. Students must select one of five options (A, B, C, D, and E). Answers are then scored by machine. ACER reported an acceptable reliability alpha coefficient of 0.89 for the overall scale. Comparison between students is possible because each student’s raw score can be transformed into a percentile or Stanine score using the norm tables provided by ACER for each year level of the Australian student population. At Time 1, 119 students participated in the study, 120 students at Time 2, and 116 students at Time 3. For ease of comparison, only students that completed the AGAT at three points in time were included in the analyses. A total of 116 (57 males, 59 females) students participated in the AGAT at all three points in time. These students were aged 12 (n ¼ 58) and 13 years (n ¼ 58).

Quantitative Data Analysis The IBM Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) version 23 was used to analyze the AGAT data. A one-way repeated measure ANOVA was conducted to determine differences in overall general reasoning at Times 1, 2, and 3.

Findings First the findings of the qualitative finding from students written reflections will be presented followed by the quantitative findings from ACER’s general reasoning ability test.

Students’ Perceptions About PI PI Is Taught Differently from Other School Subjects Following engagement in PI lessons, students reflected on how interactive, engaging, and enjoyable PI lessons were in comparison to other school subjects. Students were surprised at how different the lessons were from other subject areas. “Unlike Maths, you get to express what you are thinking about to your peers.” They also noted that they sat in a circle (“Something I didn’t expect was sitting in a circle as if we were all equal”) and they were encouraged to talk and share their opinions, rather than open a

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textbook and commence writing. “I didn’t expect it to be all discussions then reflections I expected it to be more book work.” In this statement, it can be seen that the physical layout of the class, where students had the opportunity to be seated in a circle, facilitated students’ enjoyment in engaging with the lesson content. The physical layout also appeared to reinforce a sense of equity among students.

PI Is a Dialogic, Interactive, Meaningful Subject One student noted: “I thought at first that it would be boring, but I find it very interesting to talk about all these different topics and big questions we talk about.” Students were cognitively engaged throughout the lesson. Students were surprised at how many students participated in the lesson. “I constantly found myself with my hand in the air and an idea in my head.” Another stated, “Something I didn’t expect about Philosophical Inquiry is how many people got involved in all the discussions.” This statement highlights the cognitive and social impact of PI where students are encouraged to discuss their ideas and understandings aloud with their peers. Students commented on how much thinking was involved in PI lessons—“It’s all about thinking and discovering different things by thinking and finding out who you are on the inside. Many other things surprised me, but this is what hit me.” This statement suggests that PI supports students’ cognitive and self-awareness awareness of their personal beliefs, values, and understandings. PI Dialogs Facilitate Critical Thinking and Personal Growth Students acknowledged that PI lessons expanded their understanding of their personal strengths. Examples related to their strengths in critical thinking and reasoning and the development of important communication skills, particularly listening. Students noted that I am now more “open to ideas,” “thinking about big questions and giving answers,” and “I take time to think about the questions harder.” One student observed that they had become better at “explaining and expanding my thoughts and reasons. I am usually able to explain my thinking well in words and build/expand on others’ ideas. I can also make counter reasons when I feel it is appropriate and necessary.” This reflection demonstrates that students value having time to think deeply and to articulate their reasoning about complex ideas and philosophical issues. Many students commented on their listening skills. For example, “I am good at listening to others and understanding their point of view,” and “I am good at listening to others and building on their ideas.” “I can understand my classmates much better because I can understand their personality, how they think and what’s important to them. This will help me understand what they might be feeling when they are upset or disappointed or even happy.” For this student, it is evident that PI supported them to interpret their peers’ thoughts and feelings and fulfilled social and emotional aspects of well-being such as relationships and connectedness. Deeply listening to their peers’ points of view facilitated changes to their own thinking. For example, “Something I am good at in Philosophical Inquiry is thinking about what every single person has said and what it could mean and how it has changed my thinking” or “Listening and including other people’s opinions is something I think I am good at in PI because there have been a fair few times

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when I have changed my opinion because of something someone else said.” PI gave students’ permission to think about their potential biases and to re-evaluate and reframe their original thoughts and beliefs. PI supports students’ development of self-identity through weighing up different ideas and evidence before making informed decisions. “Philosophical inquiry helps me to answer big questions and to engage in deep conversations.” “It helps me get to know how others think and then I know them a little better.” “It helps me look at the world in a different way and open my eyes a bit more and think and wonder about what’s happening around me” “It helps me discover who I really am and think about my identity.” “Philosophical inquiry has helped me by allowing me to think things through and make better decisions with my life.” Others noted that they could apply similar thinking and reasoning skills to other subject areas: “I am able to think deeper, get more understanding out of a question. For example, in a Global Studies exam . . . I am now able to think deeper about what it is actually asking.”

PI Promotes a Sense of Community and Safety Students saw benefits of PI in creating a fair, respectful, caring, safe classroom. “I can focus much better in class now and I am thinking more deeply about issues.” Some improvements that I have seen is how we do not put our hand up until the person has finished talking. “We are more mature and less easily distracted or travel off topic. Our class is more of a community now.” “I think we build on others’ ideas more. The change was brought on by becoming more interested in our peers’ answers and wanting to explore issues deeper.” Students’ confidence in sharing their perspectives in front of their peers also became stronger: “I’ve noticed people build more on other’s ideas and give their ideas in general. This is because we have grown more confident with one another and are less afraid to say our thoughts and feelings to the class.” These statements demonstrate the importance adolescents place on feeling safe and a valued member of the classroom. PI Strengthens Students’ Affective Well-Being After four terms of PI, some students still thought PI was beneficial and enjoyable. “It’s very engaging and makes us think about what we’re discussing.” “I think PI is fun when we get to work in groups and talk about what we think.” Although some students acknowledged that it was not their favorite subject, they agreed that it was a valuable subject. “I definitely think it is not my favourite subject, but for some it might help them express their feelings and thoughts, and I think it should be an elective in later years to come.” However, for other students, learning through PI had broader implications for their personal life: “I would like you to know that PI is very important to me. Not only do I get a lot of joy from participating, I also feel that it helps me get through the day and deal with all the things going on around me and the things going on in my life.” “I really like how we have PI at [name of school] because it helps us find greater meaning in things and helps us see different ways of life.” In summary, PI’s positive impact on adolescents’ general well-being was an indirect effect of being able to share feelings and thoughts openly with their peers. PI provided a safe, respectful, and social connected environment for adolescents to think deeply about a range of issues and dilemmas, to hear others’ perspectives, to

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Table 48.1 Total mean scores and standard deviations for general reasoning over time

Time period Time 1_Total general reasoning Time 2_ Total general reasoning Time 3_ Total general reasoning

881 N 116 116 116

Mean 29.51 35.24 34.53

SD 6.73 5.45 6.95

reframe their own thoughts and beliefs, and to increase their self-awareness and overall well-being.

Quantitative Findings Overall General Reasoning A one-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to compare overall general reasoning ability over time. There was a significant effect for Time, Wilks’ Lambda ¼ 0.40, F (2, 114) ¼ 84.92, p < 0.0005, multivariate partial eta squared ¼ 0.59 (large size effect). This indicates that there is a statistical change in overall general reasoning ability demonstrated by the students over the three time periods. (Table 48.1). Post hoc comparisons using Turkey’s test revealed that that students’ total mean score on general reasoning at Time 2 (M ¼ 35.24, SD ¼ 5.54) and Time 3 (M ¼ 34.53, SD ¼ 6.95) was statistically higher than that at Time 1 (M ¼ 29.51, SD ¼ 6.73). Students’ general reasoning at Time 2 (M ¼ 35.24, SD ¼ 5.54) was not statistically different from that at Time 3 (M ¼ 34.53, SD ¼ 6.95). The norm tables in the AGAT teacher manual (ACER, 2008) reveal that at Time 1, a mean score of 29.51 corresponds to the 61st percentile. At Time 2, a mean score of 35.24 corresponds to the 83rd percentile, and at Time 3, a mean score of 34.53 corresponds to the 80th percentile.

Discussion The present study investigated the influence of weekly PI lessons on adolescents’ learning and overall well-being through personal reflections and a general reasoning ability test repeated three times from Year 7 to Year 8.

Well-Being At the beginning of this chapter, we noted that what is needed in education is for young people to be provided with the competencies and dispositions that give them the foundation with which they can become loving active community members (Cohen, 2006). Previously, well-being for young people has taken a compartmentalized approach in schools with programs for physical health promotion, separate programs for social–emotional learning, programs for preventative mental illness and programs based on positive psychology with an eudaimonic well-being focus. Taking the notion that education is about “leading forth the hidden wholeness” (Palmer, 1999);

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understanding that wholeness requires interconnectedness between single parts (Curtis, 2010); and research that suggests the current compartmentalized well-being programs in schools are problematic in actually targeting well-being (Svane et al., 2019). Surely, it makes sense to see student well-being as a whole rather than a compartmentalized approach. The findings from this research study suggest that PI taken with young people is such a holistic approach that seems to permeate all aspects of student wellbeing that other research has previously identified. The students in this study felt a sense of equality where they were actually encouraged to engage in meaningful dialogic talk with their peers rather than working through a textbook. Not only did they find this experience enjoyable, but also they reported it as interactive, engaging, and interesting, cognitively challenging but at the same time allowing them to find out “who you are on the inside.” Instead of being frightened to give students a voice (Noddings, 2006; Roche, 2011), PI demands it. The PI community of inquiry requires different viewpoints, options, and solutions (Daniel & Auriac, 2011) to be produced. It therefore becomes a discourse of community where the social interactions and dialogical discourse are crucial (Dewey, 1916; Lipman, 2003) in extending critical, collaborative, creative, and caring thinking. Through their engagement in PI, the students showed evidence of reflecting on their personal strengths and greater understanding of self. Commenting on their growth in communication skills such as improved listening, being more “open to ideas” and increasing confidence and abilities in reasoning and expanding thoughts, it can be seen that PI seemed to be significant in allowing for increased reflection and greater articulation of reasoning (critical thinking) perhaps contributing to improved self-efficacy as an indicator of well-being (Martin & Marsh, 2008). Another indicator of well-being, positive relationships (Martin & Marsh, 2008), was also positively impacted by PI. At the same time as discussing improved communication, students noted they became more interested and more knowing about their peers and more confident in sharing and discussing their thoughts and feelings with others. Students in this study demonstrated that through their engagement in PI they became deeper thinkers (“I am able to think deeper” and “I am now able to think deeper about what it [the question] is actually asking”). With this deeper thinking, they were able to transfer learning to themselves, becoming more self-aware and increasing their metacognition in the process—“It helps me discover who I really am and think about my identity.” Interestingly, this goal of “knowing thyself” is one oft-cited in literature and philosophy as being central to being human and living a full life and links strongly back to Aristotle’s very notion of well-being as being eudaimonic. This student really seems to encompass this in writing: “Philosophical Inquiry has helped me by allowing me to think things through and make better decisions with my life.”

General Reasoning Ability Students completed the AGAT at three points in time—Time 1, upon entering Year 7 (prior to commencing PI lessons, at Time 2, at the end of Year 7 (after 4 terms of

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PI lessons), and at Time 3, at the end of Year 8 (after 8 terms of PI lessons). Using norm-referenced results for Year 7 students, it was evident that overall students reported an above-average general reasoning ability (61st percentile) upon commencing high school. At the end of Year 7, students’ overall general reasoning ability significantly improved to the 83rd percentile after four terms of philosophical inquiry and scores on general reasoning ability remained consistently high (80th percentile) at the end of Year 8. In contrast to previous studies (Seeskin et al., 2018), the study did not find a significant decline in students’ academic achievement at the end of the first year of high school. It is plausible that regular participation in a collaborative community of inquiry with peers during PI lessons along with experimenting and learning about various thinking and reasoning strategies resulted in gains of general reasoning ability than in a teacher-driven classroom. When two or more people collaborate to solve a problem, each brings his or her own perspective to the situation. Vygotskian sociocultural theory predicts that collaboration leads to cognitive growth when partners arrive at a shared or intersubjective understanding of the situation (Bearison et al., 1986; Gauvain & Rogoff, 1989; Tudge et al., 1996).

Conclusion The present study demonstrates that adolescents see self-development and overall well-being as an integral component of engaging in and enjoying education and learning. Through a collaborative inquiry approach, students were keen to reflect deeply on the philosophical issues and apply their knowledge to their understanding of self and others. Incorporating PI as a core subject during early adolescence would seem to be an effective pedagogical approach in assisting students to see learning as a valuable, highly interactive, and personally meaningful educational experience. Students seem to improve academically when their views are understood and appreciated by their peers. When the skills of PI are applied in a classroom, for example, respecting alternative ideas and reasons and listening without judgment, the culture of the classroom also positively changes. The findings lend support to other researchers’ findings that PI has a positive impact on junior secondary school students’ critical thinking (Topping & Trickey, 2007; Trickey & Topping, 2004) as evidenced by students’ scores on the ACER’s general reasoning ability test. Alternatively, students’ positive gains in general reasoning ability could be attributed to substantial cognitive growth and development that comes during the early years of high school. Adding a comparison group in future studies, (pupils from another school of similar socioeconomic status and academic achievement with no experience in PI), would further help validate the positive findings. Using other standardized assessments of general reasoning ability and critical thinking would also strengthen confidence in the accuracy of the findings. In conclusion, if a holistic education that fosters cognitive, physical, psychological, and social development is deemed an important educational goal, then the teaching of PI in high schools warrants further consideration.

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Mukoma, W., & Flisher, A. J. (2004). Evaluations of health promoting schools: A review of nine studies. Health Promotion International, 19(3), 357–368. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/ dah309 Noddings, N. (2006). Critical lessons: What our schools should teach. Cambridge University Press. Norris, S. P., & Ennis, R. H. (1989). Evaluating critical thinking. The practitioner’s guide to teaching thinking series. Midwest Publications. Palmer, P. (1999). The grace of great things: Reclaiming the sacred in knowing, teaching, and learning. In S. Glazer (Ed.), The heart of learning: Spirituality in education (pp. 15–32). Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam. Pollard, E. L., & Lee, P. D. (2003). Child well-being: A systematic review of the literature. Social Indicators Research, 61(1), 59–78. Powell, M. A., Graham, A., Fitzgerald, R., Thomas, N., & White, N. E. (2018). Wellbeing in schools: What do students tell us? The Australian Educational Researcher, 45(4), 515–531. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-018-0273-z Pring, R. (2001). Education as a moral practice. Journal of Moral Education, 30(2), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240120061360 Pring, R. (2010). Introduction. In T. Lovat, R. Toomey, & N. Clement (Eds.), International research handbook on values education and student wellbeing (pp. xiv–xxiv). Springer. Queensland Government. (2021). Student wellbeing package. Retrieved from https://education.qld. gov.au/students/student-health-safety-wellbeing/student-wellbeing-package Roche, M. (2011). Creating a dialogical and critical classroom: Reflection and action to improve practice. Educational Action Research, 19(3), 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792. 2011.600607 Samnoy, S., Thurston, M., Wold, B., Jenssen, E. S., & Eikeland Tjomsland, H. (2020). Schooling as a contribution or threat to wellbeing? A study of Norwegian teachers’ perceptions of their role in fostering student wellbeing. Pastoral Care in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944. 2020.1855673 Scholl, R. (2014). ‘Inside-out pedagogy’: Theorising pedagogical transformation through teaching philosophy. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(6), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.14221/ ajte.2014v39n6.5 Scholl, R., Nichols, K., & Burgh, G. (2016). Connecting learning to the world beyond the classroom through collaborative philosophical inquiry. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(5), 436–454. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2015.1095279 Seeskin, A., Nagaoka, J., & Mahaffie, S. (2018). Hidden risk: Changes in GPA across the transition to high school. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Siddiqui, N., Gorard, S., & See, B. H. (2017). Non-cognitive impacts of philosophy for children: Project report. Durham University. https://dro.dur.ac.uk/20880/1/20880.pdf 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). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4 Spratt, J. (2016). Childhood wellbeing: What role for education? British Educational Research Journal, 42(2), 223–239. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3211 Sternberg, R., & Bhana, K. (1996). Synthesis of research on the effectiveness of intellectual skills programmes: Snake oil remedies or miracle cures? Educational Leadership, 44(2), 60–67. Svane, D., Evans, N., & Carter, M.-A. (2019). Wicked wellbeing: Examining the disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of wellbeing interventions in schools. Australian Journal of Education, 63(2), 209–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004944119843144 Teesson, M., Newton, N. C., & Barrett, E. L. (2012). Australian school-based prevention programs for alcohol and other drugs: A systematic review. Drug and Alcohol Review, 31(6), 731–736. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3362.2012.00420.x Thinking Skills Review Group. (2005). A meta analysis of the impact of implementation of thinking skills approaches on pupils. Thinking Skills Review Group.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Enablers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living Values Workshops, Seminars, and TTTs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MSC #1: “The Maniac Teacher”: Mdm Noorjuliawani, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten Sekama, Sarawak, Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greetings of Peace and Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MSC #2: “Mama Cool”: Mdm Normala Ali, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MSC #3: Searching for the Meaning of Life: Sharom Hj. Mohd Yusof: Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten, Rembau, NS, Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MSC #4: This Life Is Beautiful: Mdm Sa’amah Sulaiman, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten, Johor, Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Next Three MSC Stories Are from a Teacher Who Implemented LVEP in Three Secondary Schools (Student Age 12+ to 18) in Different Environment Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #1: St. Michael Secondary School, Ipoh State of Perak, Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #2: Jelapang Jaya Secondary School, Ipoh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #3: Raja Tun Azlan Shah Secondary School, Taiping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The Most Significant Change technique helps monitor and evaluate the performance of projects and programs. It involves the collection and systematic participatory interpretation of stories of significant change emanating from the field level – stories about who did what, when, and why, and the reasons why the event was important. S. A. Samad (*) Educational Consultant, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_49

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Keywords

Values · Change · Interpretation · Stories · Projects · Programs

Introduction Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. –Albert Einstein

Rationale development (as so much of knowledge and learning) is about change – change that takes place in a variety of domains. To move toward what is desirable and away from what is not, stakeholders must clarify what they are really trying to achieve, develop a better understanding of what is (and what is not) being achieved, and explore and share their various values and preferences about what they hold to be significant change. Evaluation has a role to play. The Most Significant Change technique is a qualitative and participatory form of monitoring and evaluation based on the collection and systematic selection of stories of reported changes from development activities. The technique was developed by Rick Davies in the mid-1990s to meet the challenges associated with monitoring and evaluating a complex participatory rural development program in Bangladesh, which had diversity in both implementation and outcomes. The technique is becoming popular, and adaptations have already been made.

Benefits The Most Significant Change technique facilitates project and program improvement by focusing the direction of work away from less-valued directions toward more fully shared visions and explicitly valued directions, e.g., what do we really want to achieve and how. The Most Significant Change technique is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the project cycle and provides information to help people manage that. Michael Quinn Patton has argued that evaluation findings serve three primary purposes: • To render judgments • To facilitate improvements • To generate knowledge Most Significant Change technique contributes to evaluation because it provides data on outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of a project or program as a whole. What is more, the technique’s reliance on participatory monitoring and evaluation can only enhance the chances that lessons will be learned and that recommendations will be acted upon. The central process of the Most Significant Change technique is the collection and systematic selection of reported changes

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by means of purposive sampling with a bias in favor of success. This involves asking field staff to elicit anecdotes from stakeholders, focusing on what most significant change has occurred as the result of an initiative, and why they think that change occurred. These dozens, if not hundreds, of stories are passed up the chain and winnowed down to the most significant as determined by each management layer until only one story is selected – a story that describes a real experience, reviewed, defended, and selected by the people charged with the success of the project or program. Participants enjoy the process and usually bring to it a high level of enthusiasm – this owes mainly to the use of storytelling.

The Enablers Six broad enabling contextual factors drive successful implementation of the Most Significant Change technique. These are • • • • • •

Support from senior management The commitment to the process of a leader The development of trust between field staff and villagers An organizational culture that prioritizes reflection and learning Infrastructure that enables regular feedback of the results to stakeholders Time to run several cycles of the technique

The unusual methodology of the Most Significant Change technique and its outcomes are a foil for other monitoring and evaluation techniques, such as logic models (results frameworks), appreciative inquiry, and outcome mapping – especially where projects and programs have diverse, complex outcomes with multiple stakeholders groups and financing agencies – to enrich summative evaluation with unexpected outcomes and very best success stories. The Most Significant Change technique differs from common monitoring and evaluation techniques in at least four respects: • The focus is on the unexpected (rather than predetermined quantitative indicators that do not tell stakeholders what they do not know they need to know); information about change is documented in text, not numbers; major attention is given to explicit value judgments; and information is analyzed through a structured social process. • Some have suggested that the technique could be improved by adding a process to formally incorporate the lessons learned from the stories into short-term and longterm project or program planning. This might be accomplished by requesting those who report stories to make recommendations for action drawing from the stories they selected. • The advantage of stories is that people tell them naturally (indigenously). Stories can also deal with complexity and context and can carry hard messages (undiscussables) that people remember.

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(a) For instance, the domains might relate to changes in the quality of people’s lives, the nature of their participation in development activities, or the sustainability of organizations. (b) Qualitative monitoring and evaluation is about learning: It is dynamic and inductive and therefore focuses on questioning. The data is hard to aggregate. Goal displacement is not an issue. Quantitative monitoring and evaluation is about proving (accountability): It is static and deductive and therefore focuses on measurement. The data is easy to aggregate. Goal displacement can be a problem. (c) Ideally, the stories will be 1–2 pages long in pro forma statements. (d) It can also help uncover important, valued outcomes not initially specified. It delivers these benefits by creating space for stakeholders to reflect, and by facilitating dynamic dialogue. As a corollary, project and program committees often become better at conceptualizing impact (and hence become better at planning).

Living Values Workshops, Seminars, and TTTs “The Change” that was brought about was the Living Values Train the Educator (TTE) Program and Living Values Train the Trainer (TTT) Program (5 days). This training facilitated the skills necessary for the teachers to create “values based learning environments” and also more importantly for them to role model positive behaviors authentically and consistently. This proved to be an effective way for the child to experience values at a personal and social level. Catering to the specific age group of the children and also through the teachers’ role modeling positive values create a whole school environment that is values based. The impact these trainings made on the teachers and their students including the school’s atmosphere were captured using the Most Significant Change approach. Living Values Education Educator Workshops and Seminars are experiential. Participants are asked to reflect on their own values, offer their ideas on elements within a values-based atmosphere, and imagine an optimal classroom environment in order to reflect on emotions, attitudes, and behaviors behind quality teaching methods. What methods allow us to create a values-based atmosphere in which all students can feel respected, valued, understood, loved and safe? Living Values Education’s Developing Values Schematic is explored, demonstrating a clear model about how to help young people explore and develop values in today’s world. After they share their ideas, Living Values Education’s theoretical model and the rationale behind the variety of values activities are presented. The workshop then turns to skills for creating a values-based environment. In a regular workshop this includes: acknowledgment, encouragement, and positively building behaviors; active listening; conflict resolution; collaborative rule making; and values-based discipline. These sessions are intermingled with small group sessions in which participants take part in Living Values Activities for children and youth.

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MSC #1: “The Maniac Teacher”: Mdm Noorjuliawani, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten Sekama, Sarawak, Malaysia Greetings of Peace and Unity My heartfelt thanks to IQRA’ International Institute for inviting me to share my experience before, during, and after my attendance at the Living Values Training. I want to record my million thanks to you and your team at IQRA’ for sharing your knowledge, expertise, and experience with me. I attended the Living Values program in November 2009 in Kuching Sarawak. At first I didn’t even know the importance of the values within myself and how to apply this in my work and in the community. All along I wasn’t ever aware of my own values and if I was even practicing them to those around me until I received a phone call to attend the training by IQRA. Here I would like to share experience where I successfully instilled these values in my kindergarten. All these changes were observed by Malaysian School Inspectorate Mr. Haji, who observed my classes while I was being evaluated for the National Teaching Award. Then I realized that all along I was applying the values and skills I had learnt from the LVEP training which I attended in Kuching in 2009. For your knowledge, I used to be a very quiet and reserved person. It was after I attended this course that I was able to transform myself and the children who were under my care. In 2010, I was assigned to teach children who were from very deprived backgrounds. After attending the Living Values Training Train the Educator session, I was determined to make my kindergarten the one which will win the hearts of the people in the community. During my classes I will always instill the values of respecting each other, being tolerant, and the attitude of cooperation – I applied this not only with my students but also with my assistant, the parents, and the community. This change attracted the love from my students and every day the parents who tell me how eager their children were to attended school!! Although I faced a lot of challenges to improve the name of my kindergarten in Sekama, with the help and support of my husband, the officers at the department and the Head of National Unity Ministry in Sarawak, I managed to successfully instill the values in my school. In 2014 I felt I reached the pinnacle of success as a teacher, when I applied these values in my students and myself. As a result, my students went on to win the First Prize in the “National Colouring Contest” and “Reading Newspaper Contest.” I am so thankful that I was able to instill the value of being brave and confident, in all my students and at every competition that they took part in they lived these values. I felt so proud with their success. Only then did I realize how important the role of teachers is in instilling good values. Even though the children in my class were from very different and distinct communities and backgrounds such as Malay, Bidayuh, and Chinese, their ability to cooperate with each other, self-confidence, and love for one another became their strength and united them at public gatherings in which before LVEP they were divided. It was then that I realized the how big the impact of the Living Values training which I attended in 2009 really was!!

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In 2010 I was promoted to Key Trainer in Kuching Sarawak. I was so grateful to the department for sending me to the LVEP course. In 2014 my kindergarten was selected on to achieve National Award where I had the full support of the department, the community, and parents – and especially the support of the Head of the Chinese Association. Despite all the stress I faced I was able to control my emotions and had the support of my husband. From then on I was given the name “Maniac Teacher.” He was the person who saw the transformation in me – from a very shy and reserved person to a person who was confident and capable. My colleagues were also amazed that I was brave to give speeches at large gatherings! As creations of God, we all need LUVRS – to be Loved; to be Understood; to be Valued; to be Respected; and to be Safe. With this strength in me I became a jewel among the teaching staff. It is my belief that if we are full of love and good values, human beings will be attracted to us and success will always with those good character and high values.

MSC #2: “Mama Cool”: Mdm Normala Ali, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia I have attended two Living Values Trainings and I didn’t have the slightest clue what it was all about. The other teachers upon hearing of my nomination to attend this training poked fun by saying that I was chosen because I didn’t have any values!! Even I didn’t know how to respond to them. The first time I attended the first session, I was completely blank! This started the process of self-inquiry and questions started popping in my mind – what is this Living Values all about? who are these values meant for? The manner in which the trainer facilitated the process by questioning, each of my queries were answered. By discovering my own values, I realized that I am not even aware of my own values while others can see it. That was the beginning of the change. I realized I had the potential and I made a vow that before I try to this on others, I want to start with myself and my family. Upon returning home after the first training, I tried it out with my husband and children. They were so excited to hear the stories of the program I had attended. Only then I realized the children are good listeners and they have many ideas to share. I decided to change my attitude and behavior. Before the training I never had the patience and would lose my temper easily. I realized that this is because I had a low self-esteem. Slowly but surely I put into practice the skills I had learnt from my first training. In 2009 I was nominated to attend a second Living Values Training – the Train the Trainer session! My selfconfidence and belief increased by 70%. I also realized that I could control my temper and not get upset easily to the point that even my children started saying that “My mom is so cool now”!! My relationship with them improved dramatically and I became not only their mom, but their best friend. This motivated me so much that I wanted to try Living Values with my kindergarten children.

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With increasing responsibilities at work, I would get all tensed up when I got home. The skills I learnt at the course, such as conflict resolution, really came in handy to the point that it made us laugh and forget our anger. From these situations my children learnt the importance of values such as being tolerant, respectful, and loving to one another. These positive qualities became so evident in my character that my husband said that “Not only is mommy cute, but she is cool as well!!” At the kindergarten, I tried my best to treat all my pupils fairly. I was not only their teacher but a friend who understood them. I became so self-motivated and as a result I continued to apply the Living Values skills and techniques in all my classes and in all lessons that I conducted. My students were motivated to come to school because they felt loved as if they were at home. Beside my role as teacher, I was often tasked with the responsibility of organizing events. From a person who was extremely shy and who would stammer at such occasions, I realized that I could face an audience and my colleagues would rely on me to make the speeches to the audience present. My colleagues would say, “Thank God Mala is here!” Before LVEP I was not confident and would stammer in front of an audience but now I was confident. I realize that not only children need to be loved, understood, valued, respected, and feel safe, but adults also do. Many positive changes have occurred in the way I am at work and at home. I now realize that the value of the “jewel” depends on person who wears it. That’s the meaning that I have instilled in myself and I will never forget it.

MSC #3: Searching for the Meaning of Life: Sharom Hj. Mohd Yusof: Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten, Rembau, NS, Malaysia Greetings of Peace. I feel so thankful to God for giving me this opportunity to share my experience regarding the Living Values Program which is full so colorful with LUVRS (love, understanding, values, respect, and safety). Before attending this training, I was a person who wanted success without any care with regard to my children’s feelings. I didn’t bother to find out if they enjoyed my classes or not. All I cared about was that my objective was accomplished. All the decisions were made solely by me. As far I was concerned, they had to follow my instructions. My students completed their assignments not because they liked me but because they were terrified of me. I found it difficult to control them. When visitors came to our school, the children would start misbehaving. My students would be terrified to be left alone with me if their transportation home was delayed. At school camps I would be disgusted with children who behaved inappropriately and I had a field day being their “step mother”! Despite all this, I always felt I that deep down was a loving person. Three days with IQRA’ International Institute opened a new chapter in my life. At first it felt like a course I had previously attended which incorporated song and

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music. In the beginning I didn’t see what they were trying to convey until I began to listen to Madam Shahida and her team and the way in which their behaviors demonstrated gentleness, good manners, and happy faces which made the training so meaningful to me. After the training I applied everything that learnt immediately with the help of my assistant teacher. Even though there was only a few weeks left in that year, I started with the doing the “Moment of Silence” at the beginning of my class. It was difficult at first. They couldn’t still and would be pinching and winking at each other. When asked to listen quietly to the music, they would sing their own song!! It was difficult. I told myself to be patient and to try the following year. In the new year of 2009 I made a resolution that I was going to be the most loving teacher and not the teacher children were afraid of. In the first week I started out with Moment of Silence (MOS) where children were asked to sit in silence and be calm. It failed. I continued MOS in the second week and started noticing positive changes and from then on whenever they heard the music played, the spontaneously sat still and observed the silence. I also noticed that my students were more responsible and cooperated and helped one another. Every day I would choose a new leader and he/she would read a prayer and sing the song “I LOVE YOU” and we ended it with hugs. The children felt they were loved and in a safe environment. Similar to what I experienced at the Living Values Training, I allowed my students to make their own classroom rules and every morning before classes began I would ask each of them to share their feelings so that they would feel valued. In June 2009 I was asked to attend the five-day Living Values Train the Trainer Program. At this training, I shared all my knowledge and hands on experience with the course mates – especially on how to value the children and how important it is for the children to feel that they are loved, understood, valued, respected, and safe (LUVRS). I even shared my knowledge with college students who were pursuing their degree in Early Childhood Education. They were intrigued and amazed by how I could easily create a positive learning environment. One of the most memorable moments for me was when I greeted the children in my class by saying “My sweethearts,” they would all respond lovingly to my greeting by saying “Yes my darling!!” They weren’t afraid anymore of being left alone with me if they ride back home late. They knew how to behave respectfully to visitors who came to our class. There was no cases of tantrums or behavioral problems. The parents also reported that their children would listen and obey them. Also they were responsible and willing to help their parents with chores at home. Every time they wanted to go out, they will ask their parent’s permission and make sure they returned home at the time they were told. Now I know my students well and I also realize the varied knowledge they possess. My life has also become more meaningful. I am also in the process of internalizing the every module that is in the Living Values Education books. I want to fill every space in my life with LUVRS (love, understand, value, respect, and safe). Through the Living Values Program I want to help my students have the

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spirit of love, sincerity, and openness. The Living Values Educational Program needs to be internalized in the heart and soul of every teacher and whoever is responsible for bringing them up especially in the early years of the life. Living Values must spread its wings in every nook and corner of this world because there should never a situation where this should occur. The old Malay saying which goes like this, Guru kencing berdiri, anak murid kencing berlari (Literal translation) When the Teacher pees while he is standing; the children will pee while running

It actually means that if we as teachers display bad behavior to our children, our children behave more badly than their teachers. In another popular Malay proverb, it says this Melentur buluh biarlah dari rebung (Literal translation) To curve a bamboo must be from its shoot

This proverb is used mainly in relation to raising children. The message here is that we need to teach our children good values/manner while they are young because when they are older, it becomes more difficult for them to heed advise from their elders. Two similar proverbs in the English language are “As the twig is bent, so as the tree in inclined” or another proverb that has the similar message is “Strike while the iron is hot”. Both these proverbs’ message is that we need to address a situation early in the process or in its life cycle if we want the good/desired outcome. Basically the message means that we should teach our children good values and behavior while they are in the early years of their life.

MSC #4: This Life Is Beautiful: Mdm Sa’amah Sulaiman, Kindergarten Teacher at National Unity Kindergarten, Johor, Malaysia I thank the Almighty for giving me the opportunity to attend the Living Values Educator Program (LVEP) which was conducted by IQRA’ INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE with the cooperation of the Ministry of National Unity and Integration on 23 October, 2008, at the Golden Straits Villa in Port Dickson. In the following year, I was selected to attend the LVEP Train the Trainer workshop at Pangkor Island on 15–20 June 2009. I gained a lot of knowledge throughout both the above workshop which I participated in. Before this program, I considered myself just a normal human being that didn’t have any uniqueness. I always faulted myself for anything that happened even at times when I didn’t have anything to do with it. I had a very low

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self-esteem and didn’t have any self-confidence. I had no goals or aspirations which I wanted to achieve in my life. I have two “special children” which also made me feel stressed and disappointed about my life. I would always question my fate and ask my mother why I deserved this to happen to me. Her reply was that God only tests His servants for a reason. She would tell me God is testing me because he believes that I have a high threshold of patience which not many others are blessed with. That was my mother’s advice and reassurance – but however much she tried to cajole and comfort me, I continued to blame and hate myself for giving birth to not one but to two “special children”! This negative attitude was also prevalent in my job as a kindergarten teacher. I always felt that I was not appreciated and valued in my career because I failed in my studies. Most of my friends and colleagues were successful in their careers and held high posts while I was just a “kindergarten teacher.” This feeling coupled with all the other issues that were going through, made me feel down and dejected. I also became very sensitive and at times I would get very angry to the point that I would want to take revenge on anyone who would upset me. My children and my husband became the victims as they were the only people I could release all my anger, sadness, and frustration at! But all this changed. Thanks to the Almighty! I felt so thankful for being selected to attend the “Living Values Education Program” which was conducted by IQRA International Institute. It was at this program that I got to know who I, Saamah, really was. The skillful trainers helped me through the unique techniques and I began to realized how beautiful my life actually is! At this training I was introduced to the 12 universal values which were peace, cooperation, responsibility, simplicity, freedom, tolerance, honesty, happiness, love, unity, respect, and humility. I learnt to apply different types of value activities and approaches such as reflection, imagining, and also ways to be calm and to unite people. It was at this training program that I found peace in my life which I had been searching for! After completing the training, I was pleasantly surprised when the department officer called me and asked me to conduct a values workshop for all the kindergarten teachers in the State of Johor!!! Thanks to God I managed to successfully conduct the training and I was so happy to read the positive feedback from the participants. It really touched my heart. All the participants commented that this Living Values program needs to conducted for all teachers especially in our current environment where values are being eroded in our society. Upon my return home from the values training, my children, husband, and the rest of my family members would say, “Mummy is now unlike our the mummy before.” The children at the kindergarten would say, “I love you teacher!” Everyday I would hug them and some of my students would say, “Can you please tell my mother to hug me and love me like you do?” I was so touched to hear them say this. Today I feel that this life is truly beautiful. I now realize and understand what my responsibilities are as a soul, as a child, as a wife, as a mother, as a teacher, and also as a citizen of Malaysia. My infinite thanks to the trainers Madam Shahida, Mr. James, and to IQRA International Institute! I now realize that this life is beautiful!

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The Next Three MSC Stories Are from a Teacher Who Implemented LVEP in Three Secondary Schools (Student Age 12+ to 18) in Different Environment Settings Mdm Rahimah Binti Mohd Sura

Introduction Living Values education in moral education had been introduced in my school, St. Michael Secondary School, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia, since 1999 when I was involved in the values-based approach in Living Values Train the Trainer organized by IQRA’ International Institute where Mdm Shahida Abd Samad was the facilitator. I as the senior assistant to the school introduced Model of Living Values Education in moral education lessons. The application of the model has significant effect on student’s character disposition. The model which includes personal and social values – i.e., peace, love, respect, tolerance, responsibility, happiness, cooperation, honesty, humility, simplicity, freedom, and unity. These values of life were taught to learners incorporating the values to the existing moral education curriculum with various activities, such as: active listening, collaborative rulemaking, self-development activities, social skills, and developing skills for social unity. In school the educators need to help the young people how to face life with the increasing violence, social problems, and lack of respect for each other and the world around them. Living Values Education Program helped to decrease violence and bullying and instead create safe, caring school climate which is conducive to quality learning. As educators we also need to improve student behavior and the school climate. The cognitive thinking skills and social and emotional skills that students are exposed to and asked to explore and develop will help them grow toward their potential, protect them from violence, and help them engage in the community with respect, confidence, and purpose. What they learn at school will later woven into the fabric of society. In this article, I will present the impact of Living Values Education Program (LVEP) at the three different school. 1. Town boys school (disciplinary problems) 2. Semi-rural (poor scholastic achievements) 3. Boarding school (multiracial and multireligious)

#1: St. Michael Secondary School, Ipoh State of Perak, Malaysia I implemented Living Values in all forms at St. Michael’s Boys Secondary School, i.e., 13–17 years of age. As a moral education teacher I was responsible and wanted to ensure that values are not only instilled but also internalized and practiced in their day-to-day lives. The universal values I felt appropriate for this age group were honesty, peace, humility, freedom, cooperation, love, unity, respect, patience,

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bravery, friendship, quality, and caring. Most of these values are emphasized in the moral education syallabus from Form 1–Form 5; however, it was not internalized or practiced by the students. As the person in charge of all moral education teachers, I decided to train all the moral education teachers at St. Michael’s on how to use the various tools and techniques which I acquired during the Living Values Training Program I attended which was facilitated by Shahida Abdul Samad and Diane Tillman of IQRA’ International Institute. The techniques I used varied from storytelling, group discussions, role-play, forums as well as public speaking which encourage the students as well as the teachers to think, discuss, and share their points of view. The Living Values approach managed to gain the interest and attention of the students and it resulted in good participation during the moral education classes. Not only did they understand the meaning of the value but more importantly they were able to apply it in the lives. It is common for students in this age group to face a lot of challenges such as ability to grasp and understand the subjects being taught, difficulties in interacting with their school mates, falling in love with schoolmates, unable to control their emotions, losing their tempers, and not being responsible. Although the students at St. Michael came from different backgrounds and different racial categories such as Chinese, Indians, and Malays, the values program made them realize that they had a lot in common. The effectiveness of implementing Living Values program was evident when it was found that it brought about a significant decrease in the number of conflict cases which normally occurred between children from differing races. The teachers attributed the success to the fact that the they allowed and encouraged their students to discuss and share their own thoughts and feelings about each value and how they practiced it in their day-to-day lives. This made the children feel valued. They also felt safe. Teachers reported that their students were more responsible and focused on their studies without having to be told or coerced. In effect what the teachers created was a conducive learning environment where the students felt loved, understood, valued, respected, and safe (LUVRS). Upon seeing the impact of this positive change in this school, State Department of Education officer who was in charge of moral education teacher, Mr. Hamdan, convinced the Head of Education in the State of Perak to allocate funding resulting in a state-wide Living Values training session being conducted for all moral education teachers. The event was officiated by the Deputy DG of the Ministry of Education.

#2: Jelapang Jaya Secondary School, Ipoh After my successful implementation of Living Values in St. Michael’s school, I was promoted to the position of a principal of a semi-rural school on the outskirts of the town on Ipoh, Perak. Being the head teacher, I was able to implement Living Values school wide. I made sure that the Living Values program was incorporated in all the lessons taught at the school. Being a school which is on the outskirts of the city, the population was multiracial – it consisted of Malays, Chinese, and Indians.

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As the new headmistress I wanted to bring about positive change and implemented the “school without classrooms” concept. This meant that for each subject there was a separate classroom. The students had to move from classroom to classroom depending on which subject was being taught. I did this to teach the students that they have to responsible for the cleanliness of the class before they move to the next. This resulted in values such as responsibility, cooperation, respecting each other, and being tolerant, being modeled, and practiced by the students so that conflict and anger doesn’t arise especially when a problem arises due to changes of classrooms. This change also brought about another impact where the teachers voluntarily wanting to go that “extra mile” for their students. The teachers took their personal time to stay back and help students who were lagging behind. They were committed to improve the school’s image and performance. Parents seeing this positive change decided to pitch in and be proactive if there was any wrong doing due to their children’s bad behavior and worked closely with the teachers to counsel and modify their behaviors. I also implemented the concept “school without caning” at a time when caning was allowed in Malaysian schools. I made a ruling that teachers were not allowed to use the cane to discipline or to modify their behaviors but instead they were told to use values and values-based techniques to resolve conflicts among students. As a result of this “new rule,” a positive values-based atmosphere evolved in the school and the students started to perform better both academically as well as in their co-curriculum activities to the level of being selected to represent their school in the Southeast Asian Games!! The conducive environment kept improving with the students practicing the values of cooperation, mutual respect, responsibility, and tolerance. They also took part in artistic expression and performed in school theater every year.

#3: Raja Tun Azlan Shah Secondary School, Taiping As a result of my success stories with the schools I worked in, I was awarded the title of Super Principal of the highest order. I was posted to a boarding school based in Taiping, Perak. A 90% of the population of this boarding school consisted mainly of 90% Malays from the city as well as rural areas and the remaining 10% consisted of Chinese, Indian, Siamese, and the Orang Asli (indigenous community). As a fullfledged boarding school, 100% of the students live and study in the school premise. It cannot be denied that there were a lot of disciplinary issues which mainly were going out without permission: bullying, breaking, and entering into the girls dorms, sexual assault, stealing, and other common teenage incidents. As the principal I kept stressing to the teachers the importance of putting values into practice while they are teaching. So values became part and parcel of the learning and teaching process. The teachers were also advised to practice being more patient, loving, and attentive to their individual needs. Soon after it became apparent that students on their own accord did not violate the rules of the school as well as the boarding regulations. . As the principal I decided to roll out the “RIMUP” program (The Student Integration for Unity Plan”) which I believed would help to bring together the

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students and to make them experience the importance of unity among the students. We joined forces with students from a neighboring Chinese secondary school, i.e., Hua Lian Chinese Secondary School and the Methodist Girls Secondary School and organized many activities. Through this initiative it made the students apply and put into practice the values of unity, tolerance, responsibility, caring, and love for the nation. I took every opportunity I had with the regular meeting with the teachers, to emphasize that they must mot only apply the principles of Living Values during their classes but also conduct the values activities during the course of the lessons they are teaching. This conscious and concerted effort by the teaching and administrative staff to be “values focused” resulted in students initiating a program to help neighboring schools whose students were not doing well academically. They named the initiative “Peer Teaching School Partner.” Further to this the students also identified with three underperforming neighboring primary schools and coached them to prepare for the UPSR (Primary School Assessment Test). As a result, the performance of the students improved overall. Under another initiative termed NCER (Northern Corridor Economic Region), the students volunteered to teach children from that northern region to study in nearby primary schools so that they could perform well in the national Primary School Assessment Test so that they could get admission to good boarding schools in Malaysia. The NCER was very successful with majority of the students achieving high distinctions and achieving as in all five subjects!! The students in this school demonstrated excellence in their co-curriculum activities among other national schools and full boarding schools. The practical application of values such as responsibility, cooperation, perseverance, and helping one another is what made them and their school achieve success. This elevated their own self-worth as well as their self-confidence. The program enhanced the students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development. As a conclusion, it seems crucial for schools to implement values and social skills programs in order to enhance students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development. Although the results in this study were significant in showing changes in students’ self-esteem and attitudes as measured by Harters scale.

Conclusion Implementation of Living Values Education Program in moral education classes and school wide is a testament to the success of the program at all school that I administered. The program is able to improve the character of student in dealing with their peers. They showed empathy, respect, sharing, and help characteristic. In teaching and learning activities of this program students became more self-confident. They became more appreciative of others and displayed positive skills, as well as cooperative social and personal skills. In addition, LVEP also helped the students build their leadership skills. When educators live their values, it plays a very important role in coaching the school student’s leaders to run the program among their peers in a values-based manner.

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Theorizing Social Well-Being Subjective Mental States, Preference Satisfaction, or Mitsein?

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Postmaterialist Culture Shift and Subjective Mental States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodological Problems Associated with Subjective Well-Being Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individualism, New Age Psychology, and Cultural Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mitsein, Intersubjectivity, and Dwelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

How do we locate values education in a wider social, cultural, and political milieu? What designated or latent mechanisms, ideologies, and aspirations feed into the values education perspective? In this chapter an argument is made for positioning the concept of well-being as a central construct that shapes many of the assumptions that underpin values education. Indeed, more strongly, it is suggested that for values education to have any conceptual integrity or operational veracity it necessarily requires a formal engagement with the strictures of well-being as a multidimensional configuration. Keywords

Values education · Social well-being · Mental states · Preference satisfaction · Mitsein

S. A. Webb (*) Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_50

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Introduction Human happiness never remains long in the same place. (Herodotus, 1998, Book I, v)

In Happiness and Education, Nel Noddings (2003) goes some way to forging the connection between happiness and education in arguing that they should coexist and be taken seriously by values educationists. The standard definition of well-being refers to the condition or state of being well, contented, and satisfied with life. As an interdisciplinary concept, it is theoretically complex but nonetheless has much to offer as a potential indicator of the strength and values of modern societies. Well-being offers a comparative base from which to contrast different geopolitical, economic contexts, and social trends. Empirical studies on well-being as happiness, changing values, and life satisfaction are also helpful in countering some of the common myths and assumptions we hold about our contemporary state of affairs. A warmly persuasive concept, it is likely that wellbeing will become more and more embedded in both public policy and everyday talk.1 On both left and right political spectrums, it is recognized as a term that resonates with what people care about, aspire to, and reflect upon. Unlike other concepts that are wholly negative or set within limit type expectations, well-being has the capacity to inspire transformational agendas. Nevertheless, as an adaptive and mimetic concept, it is in need of close theoretical and methodological scrutiny in order to ascertain its leverage for public policy and understanding its potential for values education. At a theoretical level because it is a multidimensional concept rather than just talking about well-being in every case, for instance, we need to specify its objects, as they relate to time, space, and structure. Marilyn Strathern (1991) has described the “integratory capacity” (p. 15) of summary concepts such as well-being in having a tendency to evoke an image of integration which nonetheless fails to encompass the diversity of possible experiences. Well-being is no more speculative than any other multidimensional concept but neither is it something that is empirically given. Thus, at a methodological level, we need to examine the reliability and validity of the different approaches in explaining its determining and determinate features. A focus on the notion of “subjective well-being” used in social indicator research can be particularly instructive in this endeavor. The chapter addresses three interrelated elements in theorizing well-being. The first is diagnostic; how far have different formulations of well-being taken us in providing an adequate theorization that is supported by reliable methods and empirical data? In developing this ground clearing, it is argued that the two central perspectives that attempt to explain subjective well-being as either (i) a construct of mental states or (ii) a case of preference satisfaction are one-sided and should be treated with caution. Against both the psychometric approach of social indicator research and the measurement-theoretic of economic science, a more grounded

The Australia Institute recently produced “a manifesto for well-being” that takes as its starting point “the belief that governments in Australia should be devoted to improving our individual and social wellbeing.” http://www.wellbeingmanifesto.net/index.htm

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sociological approach is advanced that draws on phenomenology. It is for this reason that well-being is prefaced with the adjective “social” in the title of this chapter. The second is analytical; what does the cultural turn in well-being research and policy tell us about the changing nature of social values in advanced modern societies? In sketching out this analytical terrain, two very different variants of postmodernism are set against each other, those of Ronald Inglehart and Jean Baudrillard. If we take the significance of the cultural dimension as a given for such societies, this permits the juxtaposition of two potentially tense perspectives of well-being, the postmaterialist cultural values of Inglehart against the postmodern cultural semiotic approach of Baudrillard. In setting up this tension, important insights can be gleaned about mutually reinforcing elements of academic research and popular culture. The third and final element is reconstructive; in identifying theoretic and methodological weakness, especially those associated with the subjective well-being paradigm, an alternative mode of thinking is offered. This reconstructive exercise produces on the argument for a “social turn” in well-being studies against the prevailing cultural preoccupations. Concomitant to this is a principled foregrounding of “we-relationships” or Mitsein for any adequate articulation of social well-being. From this vantage point, it is claimed that ontologically, social well-being is simultaneously both singular and plural.

Postmaterialist Culture Shift and Subjective Mental States Worldwide interest in social indicators of life quality, including citizens’ perceptions of their own well-being, has inspired a number of major sample surveys over the past 20 years. There is an immense amount of data generated about the effects of demographic variables of age, sex, education, occupation, and the rest which are normally included as the causes and correlates of well-being in social surveys. Over 10,000 articles have now been published on the concept of happiness and/or subjective well-being (Johns & Ormerod, 2008). To measure levels of subjective well-being, happiness and the level of satisfaction with life are used as a whole scale to create a “subjective well-being index” (Inglehart, 1997). This comparatively new kind of standard psychometric indicator – regular measures of a population’s subjective well-being – is often referred to as “life satisfaction” or “happiness” rating scales. Subjective well-being is a measure of internal mental states and is only indirectly social. As a modality of self-affirmation or otherwise, subjective measures of well-being have subsequently been incorporated into international academic research programs and have generated a large and distinguished literature, linking the work of sociologists, cognitive psychologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, and economists. One of the most significant social indicator research tools is the World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/). A growing body of evidence indicates that sustainable and deep-rooted changes in worldviews are taking place. These changes seem to be reshaping economic, political, and social life in societies around the world. The most important body of evidence comes from the World Values Surveys (WVS), which have measured the values and beliefs of the publics on all six

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inhabited continents in 1981, 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007. WVS was designed under the umbrella of “intergenerational value change” theory (Inglehart, 1997) to explore changes in mass belief systems in a multination context. The WVS includes questions on happiness and satisfaction with life as a whole (Rojas, 2007). In 1981 the WVS was made possible by more than 60,000 participants in 43 societies, mirroring 70% of the world’s population. On the surface the well-being evidence generated by these indicator surveys is robust and significant. Inglehart et al. (2008) note the following: During the past 26 years, the World Values Surveys have asked more than 350,000 people how happy they are. Across scores of countries, 97% of the people have answered the question. This is an exceptionally high response rate, which suggests that people understand the question and can readily answer it. (p. 264)

Following on the development of WVS, a corresponding European Social Survey (the ESS) was launched in 2003 (www.europeansocialsurvey.org). This is an academically driven social survey designed to chart and explain the interaction between Europe’s changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior patterns of its diverse populations. What is the theoretical basis for the huge upsurge of research and policy interest in subjective well-being? To a large extent, much of this rests on what is called the postmaterialist turn which emphasizes an ongoing transformation of individual values in society which gradually frees them from the stress of basic acquisitive or materialistic needs. Postmaterialism adopts an explicit value orientation that emphasizes self-expression and quality of life over economic and material security.2 Ronald Inglehart’s (1997) classic studies are important precursors to this theorization of well-being as cultural value. In a series of highly influential writings, Inglehart argued that postmaterialism would replace the political cleavages of class, ethnicity, and religion. In coining the term postmaterialist human development, he focused on two stages of development: (i) the modernization and (ii) the postmodernization period. A central claim of his developmental thesis is that all societies will reach a point of diminishing returns, which initiates a culture shift. Rising educational levels, occupational specialization, urbanization, and bureaucratization marked the industrialization phase. “These are core elements of a trajectory that is generally called Modernization” (p. 7). In addition, certain advancements and sociopolitical and technical changes in industrialized societies, coupled with the safety net of the modern welfare state, are contained in his theory of modernization. The modernization process in a society is reckoned to increase the economic and political

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Amartya Sen’s capability approach was influential in bringing discussions of well-being back into economics. “Instead of looking just at whether people get pleasure from their consumption choices, it directs us to look at whether societies, and societal consumption patterns, would permit people to live healthy lives, in harmony with each other and nature” (Neva et al., 2007). In Development as Freedom (1999), Sen included freedom as an essential ingredient of well-being but in later work also conceived of well-being as freedom: freedom to lead a life that one has reason to value, actualized as achievement.

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capabilities of nations. In the materially affluent industrial societies of the 1970s, the marginal utility of further material accumulation was declining, and postmaterial interest preferences were gaining in relative significance. Inglehart tracks the development of this postmodernization phase over the past 25 years. This new phase signals a focus away from maximizing economic gain to new personal values, such as maximizing individual well-being, and is made possible because the need of security and economic stability is generally fulfilled in advanced modern societies. With this culture shift, the main orientation and focus in the postmodernization stage are the “shift away from both religion and state to the individual, with increasing focus on individual concern such as friends and leisure” (p. 74), quality of life, and the importance of individual self-expression. Inglehart writes as follows: In the Postmodernization phase of development, emphasis shifts from maximizing economic gains to maximizing subjective well-being. This gives rise to another major dimension of cross-cultural variation, on which a wide range of orientations are structured. Postmaterialist values are a central element in this broader Postmodern syndrome. (As cited in Norris, 1999, p. 238)

In this account, both modernization and postmodernization are linked with economic development. A large body of survey evidence showed that economic and technological change tends to bring about coherent patterns of social and political change, but also crucially a cultural change that had previously been ignored in social indicator research. A key finding in the subjective well-being index is that increases in income in developed countries have not lead to increases in measured happiness, and thus governments should concentrate on redistribution and improving the quality of life, rather than on allowing people to benefit from economic growth (Inglehart, 1997; Easterlin, 2002). Nations do not get happier over time as they get richer. This does not mean that income growth has become irrelevant to subjective well-being. Rather people in advanced capitalist economies have become so used to growing incomes that such growth is now a necessary condition for their well-being even to remain constant, rather than to fall. Hence cultural values, as reflexive mental states, have increasingly come to the fore given that material wealth is no longer the key indicator of the health of a person. Inglehart argued that cultural patterns had been neglected and found coherent differences between the belief and value systems of rich and poor countries. He also identified a significant shift in orientations toward authority and the legitimacy accorded to different types of authority structure. If modernization brings a shift from traditionalreligious authority toward rational-bureaucratic authority and the modern state, then postmodernization represents a shift away from both traditional and state authority. The postmaterialist worldview emphasizes self-expression, rather than deference to authority (Norris, 1999). Inglehart says this is “linked with declining acceptance of rigid religious norms concerning sex and reproduction, and a diminishing need for absolute rules. It also reflects a growing rejection of bureaucratic authority” (as cited in Norris, 1999, p. 239). Attenuation to aspects of subjective well-being, according to Inglehart, is part and parcel of broad democratization processes and particularly the ability to exercise free choice, at work in modern societies (Inglehart et al., 2008, p. 276). Increasingly well-being is considered a more important subjective variable in

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measuring quality of life than economic factors. Easterlin (2005) argues that research on happiness should not just focus on economic growth but also on noneconomic aspects of well-being. By noneconomic he means subjective mental states that relate to a sense of well-being and personal worth. Economic growth does make a positive contribution to subjective well-being, but it is the weakest of the four main factors. While economic factors almost certainly have a strong impact on well-being in low-income countries at higher levels of development, cultural factors come into play. Here people increasingly emphasize (i) freedom of choice, (ii) opportunities for self-expression, (iii) individual autonomy, and (iv) the extent to which they live in a tolerant society (Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Furthermore, “societies in which people report high levels of happiness and life satisfaction have less corrupt governments and higher levels of gender equality” (Inglehart et al., 279).3 Given the huge volume of research outputs that examine the nature and impact of the postmaterialist culture shift thesis, it would be impossible to do justice to the range and scope of this material. The above discussion draws attention to the centrality of subjective well-being and the relation between culture and values, initiated by Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory, and highlights the major approaches to the universal value orientation frameworks. It gives a flavor to the massive crossnational evidence generated, the central tenets of postmaterialism, and the changing value trends by way of setting the scene for critical engagement in the sections that follow. The next section begins this in identifying various methodological weaknesses associated with subjective well-being measures.

Methodological Problems Associated with Subjective Well-Being Measures The two main approaches to measuring well-being are (1) the subjective well-being index, which utilizes psychometric techniques, as discussed above and (2) the measurement-theoretic perspective in economic science that measures preference satisfaction. Both make very different conceptual and methodological claims about the nature of well-being. Erik Angner (2005a, b) shows that the most common argument against subjective measures of well-being comes from the measurementtheoretic perspective, with its emphasis on observable orderings and representation theorems. It claims the degree to which people are happy or satisfied cannot be measured, whereas preference satisfaction can. The adoption of a preference satisfaction account of well-being was part of the economists’ project of showing that references to mental states were unnecessary. The main argument against subjective measures “rests on an empirical premise, viz. that people’s choices in fact satisfy the Butovsky (2002) argues that postmaterialism is historically contingent. “Post-materialism did not become a major force in European and North American politics in terms of the structuring of citizens’ beliefs or in driving the issues agenda. Butovsky uses the case of contemporary Canada to show that post-materialism had little lasting impact in at least one major Western democracy. Since Canada ranks high in the correlates of post-materialism – it has an educated and affluent population – the salience of post-materialism in Canada should also be high” (2002, p. 15).

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axioms of rational choice theory” (2005b, p. 3). Angner shows that both approaches have significant flaws in their ability to measure well-being. For the purpose of this chapter, we shall stay with the methodological issues relating to subjective wellbeing given it is the dominant perspective. Angner (2005b) says that if the measurement-theoretic “argument is sound and mental states do not permit the development of adequate measures, the whole ‘science of happiness’ would suffer a devastating blow. That is, it would seem that subjective measures could not legitimately be used to identify the determinants and distribution of well-being” (p. 4). Angner (2005b) outlines the measurement-theoretic argument against subjective well-being measures as follows: 1. Measurement requires the existence of an observable ordering. 2. The (observable) choices of economic agents constitute such an ordering. 3. The (observable) choices of economic agents reflect their preferences, in the sense that A is chosen over B just in case A is preferred over B. 4. There is no corresponding ordering in the case of the measurement of happiness, satisfaction, and so on (pp. 25–26). Claims (1) and (4) together imply that degrees of happiness cannot be measured. Meanwhile, claims (1) through (3) imply that degrees of preference satisfaction can, given that measurement requires the existence of observable ordering. Researchers on subjective well-being themselves acknowledge there are serious shortcomings in providing measures that can be adequately validated. Schwarz and Strack (1999) write: “Reports of subjective well-being (SWB) do not reflect a stable inner state of well-being. Rather, they are judgments that individuals form on the spot, based on information that is chronically or temporarily accessible at that point in time, resulting in pronounced context effects” (p. 61). Angner suggests that choice preferences are a much more reliable indicator of well-being than subjective mental states reports. Johns and Ormerod’s (2008) polemic against happiness studies pushes the methodological critique further. They note that: ...there is no correlation in time series data between reported happiness levels and a whole series of factors which might reasonably be thought to affect well-being: income, public spending, longevity, gender equality, and income inequality – even the incidence of depression in a population. (p. 141)

Time series happiness data is in general indistinguishable from a purely random series. This leads Johns and Ormerod to conclude that “The autocorrelation function is flat and has no statistically significant individual values. In turn, this implies that it not possible to carry out systematically accurate forecasts of this variable” (p. 142). With regard to the properties of the surveys as they are constructed (e.g., 1 not happy, 2 fairly happy), they suggest that: . . .people have to undergo large discrete change in their happiness in order for this to be registered by the indicator; and once they have reached the top category they officially can’t

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experience any further increase in their happiness. As a consequence, noticeable changes in average happiness can only come about through substantial numbers of people moving category. (p. 141)

Johns and Ormerod (2008) reach the bleak conclusion that from the lack of correlation over time between aggregate happiness and almost any other socioeconomic variable of interest we are left with one or two outcomes: (1) either that attempting to improve the human lot through economic or social policy is futile or (2) that happiness data over time is an extremely insensitive measure of well-being (p. 145). Tranter and Western (2004) take a different methodological tack in focusing on Inglehart’s subjective well-being measure as an indicator of postmaterial value change. As part of a growing body of critical analyses on the value shift thesis, they take issue with Inglehart on methodological grounds, arguing that a question ordering problem of how much culture shift has occurred is extant in Inglehart’s longer (12-item) values index. They found that in Australia “the proportion of postmaterialists relative to materialists tends to be overstated using the longer values index. Our findings suggest that Inglehart’s strategy of comparing values estimates based upon the short and long indexes is an unreliable method of measuring the shift in value orientations, and leads to incorrect claims about the rate of value change over time” (p. 2). In revealing problems of question ordering effects in the survey design, Tranter and Western’s single case study suggests that the WVS data misrepresents the magnitude of any values shift that may be occurring. The authors recommend that subjective well-being measures should not be based on aggregate happiness data over time, but on longitudinal data, which tracks specific individuals over time.4 In the light of these methodological concerns relating to subjective well-being, the section that follows broadens the discussion to identify an even looser set of rhetorical devices that are at play in the construction of well-being. By taking the methodological considerations in tandem with overlapping intellectual and popular registers, we can situate the overarching parameters of well-being in the contemporary mix.

Individualism, New Age Psychology, and Cultural Semiotics Much of popular talk about well-being is self-indulgent. With this claim I wish to draw out two separate but related lines of critique as a means of locating both theoretic and popular articulations of well-being within what is referred to as the “philosophy of desire” (Butler, 1999). First, as a defining feature of a solipsistic self, well-being is a search for attainment that satisfies the production of desire. In this sense well-being is not just a static measure that refers to the condition or state of being well as satisfied with life but is also anticipatory. This reflexive, desiring subject tries incessantly to track down 4 From a similar angle based on a case study on Germany from 1973 to 1992, Klein (1995) criticizes the one-dimensional way of measuring value change. He concluded that there is only a relative change in value orientation and no general linear trend in absolute value changes toward postmaterialism.

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through various sources of the self missing object(s) that will fill one’s lack and turn one into a whole human being. The impossibility of fulfilling this desire leads to everincreasing demands for new sources of satisfaction and a spiraling escalation of reflective wants. Much of this is carried on in terms of rights claims with the celebration of diversity and difference as its key postmodern leitmotif (Webb, 2009). However, with well-being, by definition, you never have all of it. Inevitably, something will be lacking and there is always something more to be had. In “Happiness after 9/11,” Žižek (2002) points out that happiness is predicated on a lack of something – if happiness is the cessation (or “betrayal” as he puts it) of desire, then the desire for something constantly undermines the possibility of happiness. Here desire can be understood as the discrepancy between need and demand. In this vogue Jacques Lacan insists upon the psychoanalytic inevitability of dissatisfaction. Research bears this out showing that our expectations always rise as fast as our situations improve, with satisfaction afterward quickly leveling out. After a period of adjustment, individuals return to their baseline levels of well-being, leaving humanity on a “hedonic treadmill” (Brickman & Campbell, 1981; Diener et al., 1999; Kahneman et al., 2004). Inglehart (1990) confirms the philosophy of lack in defining subjective well-being “what is valued is related to what is scarce – and one is motivated to seek it by a sense of dissatisfaction” (p. 212). In economic terms a person’s idea of the minimum satisfactory level keeps on growing (in a growing economy?) so that one is forever chasing a receding target. Thus, desire comes to signify the impossibility of a coherent subject, where the subject is understood as insatiably self-determining. Partly in response to this psychoanalytic nihilism, much of the well-being literature increasingly reflects a positive accentuation with happiness, fulfilment, or satisfaction by connecting it to democratic freedoms and choices. “Make me happy” becomes the consumptive mantra. In this sense the benchmark of well-being is not only counterfactual but also necessarily has a “fictitious character,” rooted in hopes, dreams, and aspirations until such time as well-being is actually realized. The desiring self fastens on to aspirations of well-being as part of an accumulative process that never quite happens. Increasingly, with these philosophies of desire (from Hegel to Freud, Lacan and Levinas), the foregrounding of the self has come to assume a general ontological status, whereby not only the “unity” or “internal integrity” of the consuming subject is conditioned but the unity and integrity of any human being. In such cases the unified subject has come to be a theoretical requirement, not only for the well-being of an individual but for the more ambitious attempts to secure a preestablished metaphysical location for the wellbeing of the human subject. That “the self of being is well” establishes the universal marker to be attained. Increasingly, every product of self has its own imagined wellbeing involved as part of a personal journey. The second line connects the relationship between well-being and the negative trends in societal individualism. Modern individualism is what Charles Taylor (1991) refers to as one of the significant components in the malaise of modernity, with the primacy of instrumental reason and the danger of “soft despotism” as the second and third. Taylor writes that “the individual lost something important along with the larger social and cosmic horizons of action” – as mere individuals no longer part of anything greater, we “no longer have a sense of purpose, of something worth

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dying for” (p. 3). Individualism causes “a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, making them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society” (p. 4). With individualism relationships are instrumentally approached more in terms of profit and loss – what they might yield to the individual – rather than as part of living. Typically, individualistic societies are ones in which people live in nuclear or one-parent families, children are supposed to take care of themselves as soon as possible, privacy is normal, there are weak family ties, children learn to think in terms of “I,” marriages are supposed to be love based, there are more divorces, media is the main source of information, and the selfconcept is idiocentric. The well-being literature, particularly psychometric versions, is indicative of the individualism which Taylor refers to as “soft relativism.” This is based on the principle that perceptions are based on a real substratum and that there is a correspondence between inner mental states and external needs. It rests on the notion that since we are all self-determining individuals, “one ought not to challenge another’s values. That is their concern, their life choice, and it ought to be respected” (pp. 13–14). The slogan “I have a right to my well-being” is symptomatic, whereby individuals are called upon to be “true to their selves” and to progressively seek their own self-fulfilment. “What matters most in my life is my life” and my subjective well-being through the fulfilment of personal aspirations. At this juncture it is appropriate to initiate the discussion of the postmodern cultural semiotics of the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard as both a critical explication of the cult of well-being and a counterpoint to the postmodern ethics of Inglehart and postmaterialism. Before outlining his thesis on the relationship between happiness and the logic of exchange value in consumer societies, it is worth taking a quick glimpse at some of the pop psychology material that proliferates. As we shall see, the fact that well-being trades so successfully on deeply philosophical concepts such as being (Dasein) and being-with (Mitsein) is an ironic indicator of the way that high culture is overturned by what Adorno called the culture industry in advanced modern societies.5 There has been an explosion of New Age psychology “self-help” manuals to feed the culture of narcissism (Lasch, 1979). Anything from “happiness tips,” “personal growth plans,” “overcoming personal debt,” “emotional well-being,” “dealing with depression,” “ecosystems,” “diet for true well-being,” “spirituality and spa tourism,” “colonic well-being and neuroscience,” and “manicured inspired well-being” give a flavor of what can be found at your local book store. Women, in particular, appear to be a prime target audience for the health and diet well-being DIY self-help manuals.6 In The Goddess Guide to Chakra Vitality, Anita Ryan-Revel (2006) says:

5

Adorno in The Culture Industry (2001) analyzed the commodification of popular cultural forms under capitalist production. High culture, like any other form, loses its critical capacity, because it is treated like simply any other object, devoid of any oppositional tendencies to capitalism. Adorno is unswervingly critical of the banality, docility, and superficiality of mass culture. 6 The gender differences in WVS-type surveys do not unravel the minutiae of constitutive social practices of well-being. If you ask working class males between the ages of 15–35 living in Newcastle in the north of England what is the single defining variable that contributes most to their sense of wellbeing, they will probably tell you that it is the success of their local football team.

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A woman who is connected with her inner goddess is one who truly loves every aspect of herself in all senses – physically, mentally and emotionally. She never concedes her values, and chooses only to honour that which is right for her well-being and for the greatest good of all. (p. 4. Italics added)

For Ryan-Revel “goddess energy empowers” every major aspect of well-being for women. Close to where I live there is a company called “Bien Etre Beauty Salon” which advertises that “‘Bien Etre’, which is French for wellbeing, is committed to providing services and treatments of the highest standard in a professional and nurturing way. ‘Bien-Etre’ offers Hawaiian Kahuna Bodywork, AVEDA Beauty Treatments and Cosmetic Well-Being Products.” You can buy pamphlets like “The Body is the Barometer of the Soul: So be your own Doctor” at these places. Government agencies are not immune from this sort of well-being hype. The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) developed the 12-week “Total Wellbeing Diet” (Noakes & Clifton, 2005) marketed as “How many diets have you tried that haven’t worked for you? The Total Wellbeing Diet is not just another diet, but a long-term eating plan that can make you feel good.” The Cartesian logic at work here is that if you look good outside you will feel good inside. Well-being as a semiotic category of the good life is increasingly mass-produced and mass-marketed like any other industrial product. In some instances it is the actual products of well-being that become a sign of one’s happiness, success, or affluence. By digging deep into the postmodern “economy of signs” in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981); America (1988); Cool Memories (1990); and The Vital Illusion (2000), Baudrillard explodes the hyperreality behind the cult of well-being. Baudrillard (1998) caustically notes in The Consumer Society that the whole discourse on happiness is based on “naïve anthropology of the natural propensity towards happiness which in present day parlance is the absolute reference for consumption” (p. 49). His central premise is that the logic of exchange value in consumption has rendered all activities equal. Distinction through goods is impossible because they all essentially signify the same thing – simply as “objects to be consumed.”7 You are never consuming the object itself but always manipulating objects as a means of semiotically distinguishing yourself in a status group, affiliation, or ideal reference point. Self-construction, self-expression, and self-fulfilment have, to an unprecedented extent, become a matter of product choices and acts of consumption. It is very easy to discern the bubble economics of global recession and credit crunch as figuring centrally in all of this. Baudrillard goes on to claim that the ideology of well-being is a vehicle for the myth of formal equality thus “the complementary myth of wellbeing and needs have a powerful ideological function of reducing, of eliminating the objective, social and historical determinations of inequality” (p. 51). By emphasizing choice and denying interpersonal comparisons, discussion of wealth and poverty fades away. In discussing the “Revolution of Well-Being,” Baudrillard is

This reminds of incident that took place on the first meeting between Jacques Lacan and Martin Heidegger in 1950, where upon being invited to dinner at Heidegger’s house in Freiburg, they were just finishing up on dessert when Heidegger turned to Lacan and ironically said “Eat up your Dasein.” Clearly this was an injunction for Lacan to consume his “being-there.”

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particularly scathing about happiness research studies, underpinned, ironically, by a type of calculating reason. Happiness has to be measurable. “It has to be well-being measurable in terms of objects and signs; it has to be a comfort as Tocqueville put it” (p. 49). The state of inner happiness actually experienced by people is not susceptible to external measurement. “Real happiness” as inner joy is the sort of happiness which is “independent of the signs which could manifest it to others . . . which has no need of evidence is excluded from the outset from the consumer ideal in which happiness is first and foremost, the demand for equality (or distinction, of course), and must always signify with ‘regard’ to visible criteria” (p. 49). This hyperreal happiness built out of consumption is “based on individualistic principles, fortified by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen which explicitly recognize the right to Happiness of everyone (of each individual)” (p. 49). As Marx (1844) pointed out, none of the rights of man go beyond the egoistic man, “a man separated from the community, withdrawn into himself and wholly preoccupied with his private interest and caprice” (p. 12). For Baudrillard, well-being as consumption is a class institution. “Not only is there inequality before object in the economic sense . . . but more deeply, there is radical discrimination in the sense that only some people achieve mastery of an autonomous, rational logic of the elements of the environment” (p. 59). He agrees it is not about a shortage of goods to consume but knowing how to consume that is a chief marker of class distinction. Thus there are reflexive winners and losers in the personal growth, autonomy, and fulfilment game of subjective well-being. The self-help manuals universally ignore social class and inequality, but their interpolation of well-being as a horizontally flat marker of distinction is reflexive of the extent to which it mimetically operates on everyday aspirations in entirely individualistic ways. Baudrillard’s political economy of well-being refutes the postmaterialist argument that a culture shift in values occurs because we are gradually freed from stresses of basic acquisitive and materialistic needs. Class distinctions remain with novel forms of anomic distinction arising – increased working hours, short-term contracts, social isolation, homelessness, and shortages of space and time, fresh air, greenery, and silence – replacing shortages of food and shelter. Postmaterialists fail to examine how consumption impacts on well-being but also the extent to which modern individuals are “subject-effects” produced by the simulacra of consumer society (Dant, 2003). Indeed, we can turn the positions of both Lacan and Inglehart on their head by suggesting that theorizing well-being – as a counterfactual to individual dissatisfaction – may in itself be a significant indicator of the malaise of modernity. Here we can detect the mutually reinforcing elements of academic research and popular culture on individualistic accounts of well-being. Under Baudrillard’s critical lens, subjective well-being, as a desperate attempt to reinstall notions of “authenticity,” fails because it is a chronically unstable productivity, brought situationally to the exchange value of a semiotic simulation. Moreover, as shown in the section that follows social indicator, research on subjective well-being rests on a Cartesian model of the subject and thereby ignores the ontology of intersubjectivity as coexistence or “being-with.” It also neglects higher-order constructions of well-being, such as friendship, joy, and peace, which throw into sharp relief the overinflated status of happiness studies.

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Mitsein, Intersubjectivity, and Dwelling In enlarging and deepening the conception of well-being, as “social well-being,” this final section draws on the seminal writings of important phenomenologists such as Karl Löwith, Jean Luc Nancy, and Gaston Bachelard. In emphasizing the significance of “Mitsein” (as being-with or coexistence), as an intersubjective condition, we should be emboldened to install a strong conception of “social well-being” in well-being measures. Such a move also enables us to consider higher-order constructions of well-being, such as friendship, joy, and peace, as well as environmental variables such as place, dwelling, and homefulness, all of which are currently absent in current social indicators of well-being. Moreover, the more expansive notion of social well-being, as shared social practices, permits a concentrated focus on related aspects of societal well-being and institutions for social well-being (Costabile, 2008). We must also acknowledge the temporal and sometimes violent counterfactual nature of well-being: well-being that is secure only to be lost (Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Prison) or more optimistically lost to be found. Mitsein can be the pathway to both the inauguration and dissolution of community as the simultaneous folding of both into each other8 (Caygill, 1997). Such a realignment as “social well-being” can afford a devastating critique of the dominant individualistic approaches that are found in both academic research and popular culture. As we have seen, it reveals the secret solidarity between these two genres. A social conception reinstalls “being” as a deeply meaningful philosophical concept against the banality and caprice of popular cultural treatments. Here is the central claim. The well-being of the person is fundamentally determined in its mode of being through the relationships in which it stands to other people. If this is correct, then language and communication rather than mental perception are the locus of well-being. The good life is necessarily dependent on socially proximal relations and dialogue with other people. Genuine well-being will only become possible in a community which responds to the intrinsic nature of what Heidegger (1962) called “being-in-the-world.” Before examining the explanatory force of Mitsein, as a binding principle of community, I want to draw attention to a significant methodological problem associated with the subjective well-being indicators that is exposed by phenomenological inquiry. These indicators rest on a flawed ontological conception of explicitness. This stipulates that human activity (preferences and satisfactions) is conducted on the basis of implicit principles (well-being) that can be made explicit on reflection. While reflection on subjective mental states is necessary, it is always secondary and derivative to the primary mode of being-in-the-world which is an

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In torture states of exception such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, an inseparable experience can simultaneously be the dividing from (US Army personnel) and the joining with others (fellow inmates), whereby violence does not inflict the community from without but is ever implicated within (Caygill, 1997, p. 21).

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immersed engagement.9 On this reading, well-being is primarily non-deliberative, or “unthought” rather than explicit (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1991). Well-being is not conceived in terms of relation between a self-contained individual with mental content and an independent object of preference satisfaction. It is much more likely to be a substrate of a precognitive immersion in everyday lifeworlds. Well-being takes places on a background understanding that presupposes it. Karl Löwith (1989)10 takes aim at Cartesian notions of the self-contained individual arguing that the identity and formation of the self are the product of intersubjective relatedness. Thus the emphasis on Mitsein signals a move away from thinking of well-being as substance to one that thinks of well-being as act. The act is motivated by the in-betweenness of self and other, generating a movement or dynamic moment of sharing (Sorial, 2005). Sociologically, the meaning of well-being is defined by a network of social relationships: lovers, friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and community members11 (Wolin, 2001, p. 81). That we are deeply social beings goes without saying. The intimacy, belonging, and support provided by close relationships are enormously important to our well-being. Given the primacy of such relatedness, the concept of subjective well-being, as expressed by Inglehart, ceases to be sociologically intelligible or philosophically meaningful. As a phenomenological construct, subjective well-being is always mediated by preexisting historical and social structures of intersubjectivity. For Löwith the human world is a “Mitwelt,” a shared world in which we coexist in our fundamental relatedness. As Wolin (2001) notes “Identity formation occurs nonsolipsistically, via a complex process of ‘reflection’: by the individual seeing herself in the other, and by the other seeing himself in her” (p. 81). In The Experience of Freedom, Jean Luc Nancy (1993) also takes up this argument for an ontology of being-with-one-another, one that precedes any analysis of individual ego or subject. Most radical of all, Nancy reinscribes within the concept of Mitsein a strong notion of relational sharing by opening up its “being-in-common.” For Nancy (2000) my uniqueness and singularity as a subject are only expressed and revealed in my being-with many. Singularity refers to the uniqueness of the subject that arises through the “we-ness,” or being-with, but is never entirely subsumed in the “we.” It is this openness that lies at the heart of our singularity that propels us into relations with others. “This is why, despite the radical differences expressed by singularity, there is something common and universal in its dispersal” (Sorial, 2005, p. 89).

Attachment theory in psychoanalysis points to “being-with” as fundamental characteristic of the human condition, especially in formative relations between mother and child. 10 Löwith was a student of Heidegger. In 1928 he presented his habilitation study which was a polemical response to Heidegger’s Being and Time and particularly his interpretation of “beingwith” in this seminal text (Wolin, 2001, p. 80). 11 Hans Georg Gadamer (1999) elevates friendship as the highest form of Mitsein. For Gadamer “Friendship reaches far beyond the pleasure experienced when an individual who gives himself to the other in eros and philia rises above the narrow sphere of self-concern; it points to that ultimate dimension of things that we share, on which social life as a whole depends and without which no institutional system of communal life is able to fulfill its function” (Vessey, 2005). 9

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It is for this reason that we are fundamentally both singular (as distinct from individuality) and plural.12 Against the “philosophers of desire,” Nancy (1993) installs the principle of shared being as an essential element of the relational quality of existence: If being is sharing, our sharing, then “to be” (to exist) is to share. This is relation: not a tendential relation, need, or drive of portions of being that are oriented toward their own re-union (this would not be relation, but a self-presence mediated by our desire or will), but existence delivered to the incommensurability of being-in-common. (pp. 72–73)

Being-as-shared is the commonality of all existence in its incommensurability. This being-in-common is not a question of owning or possessing a common substance but just the opposite; it is that existence always exists in the plural; it is the being-incommon with the many (Schwarzmantel, 2007). We have seen that Mitsein or being-with is essential for any understanding of well-being and that it obtains a foundational ontological standing that is constitutive. As Nancy (2000) says “the question of what we still see as ‘a question of social being’ should in fact constitute the ontological question” (p. 78). It is with this ontology question in mind that Gaston Bachelard makes the tantalizing claim that in its germinal form all of life is well-being. Life begins well; Bachelard (1969) says that: From the phenomenologist’s view-point, the conscious metaphysics that starts from the moment when being is “cast into the world” is a secondary metaphysics. It passes over preliminaries, when being is being-well, when the human is deposited in a being-well, in the well-being originally associated with being Within the being, in the being of within, an enveloping warmth welcomes being. Being reigns in a sort of earthly paradise of matter, dissolved in the comforts of an adequate matter. (p. 7)

The precognitive housed-ness of being well has implications for theorizing wellbeing, well beyond the stricture of subjective well-being. This is because dwelling is not primarily situated in either the internal or external world, but the external world situates itself in relation to my earthly dwelling. It is not just a matter of “where we dwell,” although this is terribly important, but also about “how we dwell.” How we dwell in a reciprocal fashion, “stay with things” and care for and cherish them, is fundamental to our sense of well-being. The richness of Bachelard’s formulation is that it stretches Mitsein beyond the being-in-common with people to extend to places, homes, and dwellings. Being-with places become a marker of value. It is this sort of undertaking that Bachelard pursues in The Poetics of Space (1969). Here space is the abode of lived consciousness, and the problem for the phenomenologist

Nancy (1991) uses the example of “being-toward-death” to demonstrate that we are all alike insofar as each of us is exposed to death, but it is not the same for each of us. He uses the concept to show that singularity exposes the logical impossibility of solipsism, given that the singular can only exist in relation to the plural and the way in which singularity can only be expressed in community (Sorial, ibid. 94).

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is to study how it accommodates being-with or the half-dreaming consciousness Bachelard calls reverie. Alternating between poetic description and spatial analogy to consider the attic, the cellar, drawers, and the like, he points to the pregnant possibilities for the shared aura of being-with that suffuses the poetics of dwelling (Casey, 1993). D(welling) points to the fullness of well-being in the round and toward its most intimate and joyful sensibilities.

Conclusion The contribution of Mitsein to considerations of well-being is one that not only provides for a more expansive and richer social dimension but most importantly is a foundation for meaning and ethics. We have seen that as an expression of meaning well-being can only emerge in the context of being-with-others or community. This meaning/signification that being-with expresses by virtue of its singularity and plurality is what creates a circuit of connections in shared places; it is the thread that connects person to person, person to community, and community to person. Bringing the concept of sharing forward to articulate a dynamic community of wellbeing is a strong indictment against the closed state of exception torture spaces of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In paraphrasing Nancy, Howard Caygill (1997) notes “The share forms the locus for freedom and relation and, with the claim that ‘freedom withdraws being and gives relation’, it becomes clear that freedom is the dissolution of being as substance, the substitution of relation for identity” (p. 23).

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Schwarz, N., & Strack, F. (1999). Reports of subjective well-being: Judgmental processes and their methodological implications. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Wellbeing: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 61–84). Russell Sage. Schwarzmantel, J. (2007). Community as communication: Jean-Luc Nancy and ‘Being-in-Common’. Political Studies, 55, 459–476. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford University Press. Sorial, S. (2005). Heidegger and the problem of individuation: Mitsein (being-with), ethics and responsibility. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, Australia. Strathern, M. (1991). Partial connections (ASAO Special Publication). Rowman and Littlefield. Taylor, C. (1991). Malaise of modernity. House of Anansi Press. Tranter, B., & Western, M. (2004). Question ordering effects in Inglehart’s postmaterial index. Paper presented at the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference. University of Adelaide, 29 September–1 October. Available at http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/ Others/Tranter%20&%20Western_apsa%20paper.pdf Vessey, D. (2005). Gadamer’s account of friendship as an alternative to an account of intersubjectivity. Philosophy Today, 49, 61–67. Webb, S. A. (2009). Against difference and diversity in social work: The case of human right. International Journal of Social Welfare, 18, 307–316. Wolin, R. (2001). Heidegger’s children. Princeton University Press. Žižek, S. (2002). Happiness after 9/11. In S. Žižek (Ed.), Welcome to the desert of the real! (pp. 58–82). Verso.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Trait Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Clarification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cognitive Developmental Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role-Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Four major contemporary approaches to values education in Australian schools can be identified, though these approaches may not be implemented in the same way elsewhere and may not be regarded as strategies in their own right. Evolving practice in values education can be largely attributed to changing perceptions of learning and teaching. The traditional approach in Australian schools was consistent with a transmission model of teaching by which the teacher “passed on” knowledge to students and has been substantially replaced by the values-relative approaches of values clarification and role-play that are arguably more consistent with progressive and collaborative models of learning and teaching. Keywords

Values education · Classroom-based practice · Moral education · Character education

L. Brady (*) University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_51

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Introduction Many approaches have been used over the years to promote values education and well-being in school programs of “moral education,” “character education,” “citizenship education,” and “personal development and social studies.” These include the drilling of moral laws, the rote learning of scriptural texts, the punishment of the wrong so that the right will be achieved by a process of trial and error (or even meting out punishment as admonitory and salutary), the reading of and deductions from moral biography, the discussion of conflict or dilemma stories, the imposition of external adversity as character building, the presentation of values-clarifying strategies, and the practice of role-play. Four major contemporary approaches to values education in Australian schools can be identified, though these approaches may not be implemented in the same way elsewhere and may not be regarded as strategies in their own right. For example, roleplay is not mentioned in the relatively recent and American-based Handbook of Moral and Character Education (Nucci & Narvaev, 2008). The major identified approaches are the trait approach that is based on moral absolutism and finds expression in explicit teaching or through moral biography; values clarification that is based on moral relativity; the cognitive developmental approach that is based on facilitating transition through invariant stages and is practiced through discussion of moral dilemmas; and role-play involving the fostering of multiple perspectives. This chapter examines the theory, strengths, limitations, and classroom practice of each of these four approaches. Evolving practice in values education can be largely attributed to changing perceptions of learning and teaching. Brady (2006) traces an evolution in broad approaches to learning and teaching from traditional to progressive to collaborative and defines a model of contemporary learning and teaching that draws from social constructivism and that is captured by Bruner’s (1996) claim that learning should be participative (students being engaged in their learning), proactive (students taking initiative for their learning), and collaborative (students working with each other and their teacher to promote their learning). Such a dynamic view of the learner, coupled with an equally dynamic role for the teacher, presents an exciting view of the contemporary classroom that both contextualizes the challenges for values education and accounts for changes in its expression. For instance, the prescriptiveness of the traditional trait approach in Australian schools (exposing students to the lives of exemplary characters and “teaching” the values demonstrated by their behavior) was consistent with a transmission model of teaching by which the teacher “passed on” knowledge to students and has been substantially replaced by the values-relative approaches of values clarification and role-play that are arguably more consistent with progressive and collaborative models of learning and teaching.

The Trait Approach The trait approach is based on the notion that values education should comprise predetermined traits or qualities that can be taught. Kohlberg (1975, p. 673) referred to the approach pejoratively as “the bag of virtues approach.” While often cited

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desirable virtues include honesty, loyalty, tolerance, trustworthiness, service, and compassion, the implicit question is “what values” and “determined by whom.” For example, Aristotle’s “bag” was temperance, pride, liberality, truthfulness, and justice and those of the Boy Scouts are honesty, loyalty, reverence, cleanliness, and bravery. So the approach is based on values absolutism: certain prescribed values are deemed more worthy than others. Advocates argue that it is the responsibility of educators and parents to transmit the moral-cultural heritage to students by teaching the desirable values, either explicitly or indirectly through having the values exemplified in the lives of traditionally well-known historical characters. In Australian schools, this fare included Grace Darling, Lord Shaftesbury, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, and Caroline Chisholm. Also implicit is the notion that teachers can evaluate achievement in terms of the behavioral outcomes: that students are more moral if the requisite values are demonstrated in their behavior. The indirect approach that utilizes moral biography is the typical expression of the trait approach. Biography is thought to provide the raw data for discussion, and the learning principle is that of transfer: if we are sufficiently impressed by the values by which eminent people lived their lives, we will adopt them as our own. Proponents claim that a biography need not simply comprise one or a number of desirable behaviors for potential adoption but that it can be potentially powerful in presenting the feelings and thoughts that guide action in specific contexts. Conventional practice involves the teacher reading the biography (usually abridged to a page or two) and focusing a discussion on the values demonstrated. Effective teaching involves more than simple deduction of qualities or values. It includes examination of the reasons for, and consequences of action, and the transposition of the demonstrated values into student-centered contexts (“Can you think of ways that you could practice these values in your own life at home or at school?”). Some negative perception of the approach may be explained by ineffective expressions of practice including the reading of the story without the character being subjected to scrutiny through discussion; the reading followed immediately by the teacher’s request to draw a picture of an incident; or in extreme cases, the teacher extracting the value from the story and preaching by exhortation or admonishment. Of course the prescription of values need not necessarily preempt explicit or indoctrinative teaching. The specified values may comprise a framework for openended discussion and values-relative approaches to values education. For instance, the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (DEST, 2005a) nominates nine values for Australian schooling (care and compassion, fair go, freedom, honesty and trustworthiness, integrity, respect, responsibility, understanding tolerance, and inclusion). While the document doesn’t address the pedagogy, the work of Rowan et al. (2007, p. v) prescribes strategies for each of the nine values through which students are encouraged “to form inclusive interpretations of the values, questioning our perceptions and exploring the overt and covert assumptions that shape our expectations of the value.” Rather than use full biographies, the authors use brief extracts, often defining moments from speeches or reports that exemplify the desirable values of the lauded character or speaker. These extracts may be followed by specific questions about the value (“What examples of care and

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compassion are shown?”) but are more typically followed by a great variety of values-clarifying strategies (developing a list of actions that demonstrate the value and using a Y chart to describe what each example sounds like, looks like, and feels like). In this way, prescription and relativity are blended. Possible limitations of the approach include the following: The formerly posed questions of “what values” and “determined by whom” pose a dilemma. The difficulty of selecting a desirable bag of virtues is confounded by the problems of achieving consensus and arriving at definitions. The fact the “pride” is one of Aristotle’s virtues, but also appears on the list of seven deadly sins, highlights the problem. The appeal to supposedly universal values like honesty and service only provides a partial defense, as definitions are relative, are defined by the conventional culture, and rely on the teacher’s authority for their justification. As constructivism is the prevailing theory of teaching and learning in Australian schools, the nine values for Australian schooling, however “universal,” need to be reconstructed and co-constructed by learners and teachers. If indoctrination is regarded as undesirable, students must be given freedom to determine their own beliefs and actions and be provided with reasons and alternatives. The trait approach is not ipso facto indoctrination. The provision of a framework like that of DEST (2005a) may provide a focus rather than be tightly prescriptive. “As long as we provide reason and explore alternatives alongside the teaching of our preferred core values,” Neilsen (2005, p. 4) claims, “we may have explicit values education without indoctrination.”

Other relatively minor criticisms relate to the traditional use of moral biographies: Moral biography typically presents the lives of great adults, and these models are thought to pose a possible problem of student identification. The subjects have traditionally been non-Australian and have often prompted the response from young students “have you got to be dead to be famous?” Such a limitation may be overcome by providing the biographies of young, contemporary, and “local” characters and by encouraging students to relate the demonstrated values to modern contexts and their own lives. The possible problem of not finding a certain character whose biography exemplifies a particular value is also diminished by adopting the approach of Rowan et al. (2007) in providing extracts that capture a person’s thoughts and feelings, rather than relying on actions as the sole indicators of a value. Imagine the difficulty, for instance, of using a biography that is no more than a simple chronology of “events” to exemplify and then accurately identify empathy as a behavior.

Values Clarification Values clarification is the most frequently advocated of the four approaches. At least 20 of the 22 strategies recommended for values education in the NSW Department of Education and Training’s (2004) Values in NSW Public Schools are values clarification strategies, as are the eight strategies suggested by DEST (2005b) in Values for Australian Schooling Professional Learning Resources. The popularity of the approach may be explained by a number of factors. First, while some strategies are sophisticated, many (involving listing, ranking, or responding to open questions) are easy for teachers to devise; second, student clarification and construction of their own values are consistent with the nature of contemporary teaching and learning;

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and third, the non-prescriptive and values-relative nature of the approach (enabling students to determine their own values) may be perceived as an answer to the bewildering array of values exposed to students and the consequent dissatisfaction with any one imposed set of values. The approach involves students identifying their values and beliefs “in an effort to enable them to be more self-directing in life’s confusions” (Lipe, n.d., p. 6). This reflection process to clarify the confusion, proponents claim, makes the student more purposeful and productive (thereby contributing to their general well-being), less gullible and vulnerable, a better critical thinker, and more socially aware. Values clarification is based on the notion of values relativity, that is, in contrast to the trait approach for which values are prescribed (values absolutism), students are encouraged to adopt their own values, provided they are personally meaningful. The approach does not focus on the content of values, or the imposition of a set of core values, but the process of acquiring them. This process, initially outlined by Raths et al. (1978), involves students in meeting seven criteria that are subsumed by three processes: choosing (freely, from alternatives and after reflection), prizing (cherishing and being willing to affirm the choice publicly), and acting (acting upon the choice and acting repeatedly if necessary). All seven of the criteria must be met to collectively constitute valuing. Teachers provide strategies to help students decide what they value and engage them in a form of Socratic dialogue by which they are guided through the three processes. The following are simple values-clarifying strategies taken from Rowan et al. (2007), DEST (2005b), DET (2004), and CAZR (2003): Y chart. Students develop a list of actions that demonstrate a value (say care and compassion) by listing, respectively, in the three segments formed by the Y, what the value looks like (people helping, people giving), sounds like (gentle talking, “come with us”), and feels like (warm, friendly). Values continuum. After an issue is presented by the teacher, two extreme positions are identified at the ends of a line, and students place themselves along the line according to how they agree or disagree with the issue or statement. They can alter their position on the line after consulting the students initially positioned each side of them. Inside-outside circles. Students are placed in two concentric circles so that each student faces another. After they discuss an issue nominated by the teacher, one of the circles is rotated a number of places so that each student is exposed to a fresh opinion. The teacher continues to rotate the circles until students have experienced a variety of exchanges. Ranking. Students are given numerous statements on an issue and asked to rank them in order of importance or commitment. PMI. Students are required to list the positive (plus), negative (minus), and interesting (interest) aspects of a nominated issue, thereby articulating their own values. Consequences chart. Students record the likely consequences of decisions and actions based on the values that individuals or groups hold. The chart assumes the appearance of a “branching” graphic organizer.

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Other strategies include the values shield (students showing what is meaningful to them by drawing symbols on a cardboard, family crest); SWOT analysis (students identifying the relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats relating to an issue or situation); Likert scales (students rating contentious statements on an issue from strongly agree to strongly disagree); unfinished sentences (students completing a sentence structured by the teacher to elicit a feeling, opinion, or value); discussion cards (students discussing issues written, often by themselves, on cards), and voting questions (students voting on contentious issues with raised hands for agreement, thumbs down for disagreement, and arms folded for undecided). Strategies are presented to students, typically in small groups, though sometimes individually or as a whole class. While the students are completing the tasks, the teacher attends each group, facilitating by asking questions related to the three processes. For example, for choosing from alternatives, the teacher might ask “did you consider another possible alternative?” and “are there some reasons behind your choice?”; and for affirming, the teacher might ask “would you tell the class how you feel?” and “are you willing to stand up and be counted for that?” Once the tasks are completed, student responses are typically shared in discussion with the whole class, though exceptions may be made for very sensitive issues or vulnerable students. Values clarification has been criticized for being superficial in that rather than focus on personal values, it often involves the trivial. Lipe (n.d., p. 11) argues that “by admitting that values clarification is also concerned to help persons clarify private matters, they (the authors of the approach) open the door for practically any and everything imaginable” (implicitly, superficial, and surface beliefs like declaring a preference between different foods or cosmetics). Of course such a criticism can be overcome by the teacher’s judicious selection of lesson content. Kohlberg (1975, p. 673) condemns the major tenet of the approach in his criticism of its superficiality: “in not attempting to go further than simply eliciting awareness of values, the approach assumes that becoming more self-aware about one’s values is an end in itself.” In criticizing the theoretical foundations of the approach, the seven criteria that must be met to realize a value are suspect as indicators. A few questions suffice in posing these concerns. If choosing freely is a requirement, might there not be cases where a person has a powerful value that has not been freely chosen (e.g., a person reared in a strong, cultural tradition)? If public affirmation is a requirement, is the person who chooses to remain silent, perhaps out of sensitivity to others, disqualified from owning the value? Do people miss out on “owning” a value if they satisfy the first six criteria yet fail to repeatedly act on that value? What comprises acting on a value (might not public affirmation constitute an action in its own right?)? Most current users of values clarification probably don’t adhere to the process of invoking the seven criteria at all but facilitate student clarification of values in a less defined and more general way. The major criticisms are those directed at the values-relative nature of the approach. It should be noted however that even Simon et al. (1972), proponents of values clarification, argue the absurdity of teaching children to decide for themselves with no initial moral foundation. Without a strict code of conduct, they claim,

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children will be unable to take a firm stand on any issue and risk being left in a moral and ethical vacuum with no clear notions of right and wrong. As Lipe (n.d., p. 17) indicates, the relativism of values clarification could be used to justify any and every moral position. In defending the approach, the criticisms of superficiality and relativism may be countered, respectively, by focusing on “substantive” values and working within a framework that blends prescription and relativity like that of the strategies Rowan et al. (2007) provide within the context of the nine values for Australian schooling that enables students to construct personally meaningful values within a defined framework.

The Cognitive Developmental Approach This approach is called “cognitive” because it bases values education, like intellectual education, on the active thinking of students about values. It is “developmental” because it views values education as the movement through stages. These stages, according to Kohlberg (1980, p. 31), are “structured wholes”: “total ways of thinking, not attitudes towards particular situations.” They define “what (a person) finds valuable how he defines the value, and why he finds it valuable, that is, the rea-sons he gives for valuing it” (Kohlberg, 1975, p. 672). This distinction between “structure” and content means that we are located at a particular stage according to the nature of our reasoning and not its content. For example, two people might justify two completely opposite stances, say for and against abortion, respectively (different content), and be reasoning at the same stage level (the same “structure”). The focus of the cognitive theorists is therefore to improve reasoning and facilitate movement through the stages, rather than to differentiate between right and wrong decisions. The stages exist at three levels (the pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional) with each level containing two stages. These stages are defined as follows: Stage 1. Egocentric deference to superior power or prestige, or a trouble-avoiding set. The child follows rules to avoid punishment. Stage 2. Right action is that which instrumentally satisfies one’s own needs. The child conforms in order to obtain rewards. Stage 3. Orientation to approval and to pleasing and helping others. The morality of maintaining good relations. The child conforms to avoid disapproval. Stage 4. Orientation to doing one’s duty and to showing respect for authority and maintaining the given social order for its own sake. The child conforms to avoid censure and resultant guilt. Stage 5. Duty is defined in terms of contracts, general avoidance of violating the will or rights of others, and majority will and welfare. Stage 6. Orientation to not only actually ordained social rules but also to principles of choice involving appeal to logical consistency. The person conforms to avoid self-condemnation.

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The following are characteristics of the stages and of stage transition: People reason with some consistency at a particular stage level, though Kohlberg (1975, p. 672) acknowledges the factors of motive and emotion in accounting for fluctuations between stages. The stages form an invariant sequence, and movement is always forward through the stages. Moral “deterioration” or “backsliding” cannot be explained by movement backward through the stages. The stages are “hierarchical integrations,” that is, reasoning at higher stages includes lower-stage thinking as well. People are therefore inclined to prefer reasoning at a higher stage than their own. People can fixate at any one stage, and it cannot be assumed that all adults reach the highest or autonomous stages. The stages are universal in that they relate to all cultures. Kohlberg (1980, p. 17) argued that he could “define a culturally and historically universal pattern of mature moral thought.” A person’s intellectual stage (Piaget’s stages) set a limit upon the moral stage that can be attained. For instance, a child who is only concrete operational is limited to moral stages 1 and 2, and the morally autonomous person has to be fully formal operational. Kohlberg (1975) claims that the means of promoting development (movement through the stages) is through the provision of conflict, so the classroom strategy involves the presentation of a moral dilemma story, sometimes called “unfinished,” “open-ended,” or “conflict” story. It is “unfinished” because it presents a studentcentered dilemma and asks how the protagonist should solve the conflict. It typically includes more than one values issue for discussion and generates disagreement among students. Galbraith and Jones (1975) argue that a class should initially vote on solutions to ensure sufficient conflict before proceeding and use the criterion of at least a 70–30% split. Moral dilemmas have been used outside the cognitive developmental approach. They are commonly recommended within a values clarification approach and/or to promote specific values. For example, Upright (2002) endorses the value of moral dilemmas for the improvement of empathy. They have great appeal as a strategy in values education because they are so student-centered and consequently their capacity to engage through discussion. As a result they are often used without a full understanding of the rationale behind them. There is no established classroom procedure apart from teacher direction of the discussion. Teachers facilitate by asking both questions that clarify substantive issues in the dilemma and questions that are more generic (“Might there be an alternative? Why do you think that? Can you give another example? What might the consequences of that be?”), ensuring that the conflict is not so great as to be daunting nor so slight as to be insufficiently challenging. Teachers avoid imposing their personal views and judging the responses of students. To do so would diminish the presence of conflict – the agent of moral growth. They may however ensure that

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the class is exposed to the opinions of those who are reasoning at the next highest stage, as evidence indicates that when students are exposed to reasoning at one stage above their own stage, they are more influenced by it and prefer it as advice. The author has used three additional strategies as forerunners to full class discussion. The first involves following the reading of the dilemma with buzz groups. These operate as opportunities for students to talk quietly in pairs for about 2 min to clarify their values and ensure that the ensuing discussion is the result of some reflection. The second involves forming the class into small groups, each of which comprises students who agree about a solution to a dilemma, and requiring each group to list reasons supporting the proposed solution. The third involves forming groups comprising students who do not agree. While teachers may summarize the discussion and delineate suggested solutions, no particular proposal is endorsed as “right.” The conclusion of the lesson does not necessarily signal the end of stage-enhancing conflict, as students may continue to reflect on the dilemma. Several aspects of Kohlberg’s theory have been identified as problematic. One contested issue is Kohlberg’s claim that the stage sequence is universal: that it is the same in all cultures. The claims that people in different cultures progress through the stages at different rates and reach different ends in the sequence, a finding confirmed by the research of Kohlberg and Gilligan (1971), would not seem to provide a sufficient argument to refute the claim of universality when applied to the existence of the stages. Another issue involves the claim that the theory is “androcentric” and that it reflects a male orientation (Kohlberg’s initial sample from which the stages are derived was exclusively male). Gilligan (1982), a leading commentator on this issue, argued that morality for women centered more on interpersonal relationships and the ethics of compassion and care than on rights and rules and that as a result women are commonly located at stage 3, whereas men are more typically located at stages 4 and 5. The approach has also been criticized for its emphasis on the analysis of moral development within a Piaget-inspired format that focuses on the processes involved in an individual’s moral development. Such an approach, it is sometimes argued, pays little heed to the sociocultural influences in values education, particularly the tools that mediate learning, notably interaction with others in discussion and the role of language. Such a criticism though would appear to be equally valid for the previous two outlined approaches. Lamenting the lack of a sociocultural perspective in framing moral education, Turner and Chambers (2006) attempt to “fill the void” by evaluating responses to moral dilemmas using a Vygotskian (sociocultural) perspective. A further criticism involves the relationship between reasoning and action. Kohlberg (1975, p. 672) claims that “if logical reasoning is a necessary but not sufficient condition for mature moral judgment, mature moral judgment is a necessary but not sufficient condition for mature moral action.” If, as Kohlberg (1975) claims, there is a definite relationship between moral reasoning and moral action, but only at the autonomous level, this may be discouraging for primary school teachers who may understandably look for demonstrably improved behavior to follow

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ostensibly improved reasoning. There is arguably no greater likelihood that students who advocate particular values through the trait approach or values clarification will automatically act upon them (unless teachers strictly apply Raths et al.’s, 1978, seven criteria). A problem often raised by teachers is the difficulty of accurately identifying the stages of students. Kohlberg’s research involved sophisticated diagnosis beyond the expertise and time of most teachers. Yet many teachers feel that if they are to validly assess individual growth and expose students to reasoning at a higher-stage level to promote development, they need a working knowledge of the nature of reasoning at the modal stage and the plus one stage. While not diminishing the value of possessing an understanding of the stages, teachers should be reassured that they probably possess an informed and intuitive, if nonclinical, appreciation of higherstage reasoning. Emphasizing process (experiencing conflict to promote stage movement) as opposed to content (endorsing particular values) makes the approach vulnerable to criticisms of values relativity. However, while it stresses open-ended discussion of dilemmas and regards the teacher’s opinion as no more authoritative than others, the approach does support the notion that some judgments or reasoning are more “adequate” than others.

Role-Play Shaftel (1967, p. 84) provides an early definition of role-play as “the opportunity to explore through spontaneous improvisation . . . typical group problem situations in which individuals are helped to become sensitive to the feelings of the people involved.” Typically, two people selected as the players react spontaneously to each other in dialogue to explore solutions to a presented problem. In assuming the role of another person, students step outside their accustomed role and adopt the role of another person. In this way, they are required to become less egocentric, and as a result, they develop insights into themselves and others. The greatest abuse of the strategy is the failure to make a distinction between roleplay and play acting. In the latter, the purpose is to reconstruct a dramatist’s vision to entertain an audience. In the former, role-players are not concerned with an audience. Their purpose is to feel and behave as the character they are designated would feel and behave. Consequently they achieve insight into their own values, and their understanding increases. The benefits of role-play include the following (see Brady, 1989; Van Ments, 1983): • • • • • •

Develops sensitivity to the feelings of others Helps students empathize with and understand others Enables students to express latent feelings Assists students to clarify their own values Helps students to release tensions and feelings (catharsis) Promotes an understanding of the causes and consequences of behavior

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Provides instant feedback for teachers and students Enables students to learn social behavior Facilitates an understanding of the dominant culture and its subcultures Assists teachers in diagnosing individual needs

The following six steps in conducting a role-play are an elaboration of the five steps suggested in Brady (1989) and are derived from the author’s observation and teaching of over 100 role-play lessons. 1. Solution confrontation. The teacher identifies the roles to be played for a nominated solution and, if necessary, clarifies the names of characters and sequence of events. This is particularly relevant if the solution is one of several identified from discussion of a dilemma. Alternatively the solution may be for a simple problem scenario that arises in teaching a topic (e.g., a dispute between a “logger” and an environmentalist). 2. Briefing. The teacher assists students to enter the role of the character they are to play. Typically, the teacher stands with the two players in a central position in view of the class and addresses remarks to both the players and the audience. The briefing may involve questioning the players and class about what each character in turn might be thinking or feeling (“What might Leif be feeling?” “Why might she think that?”), or it may comprise a statement by the teacher describing the gamut of thoughts and feelings each character might have, to sensitize the players and audience. For both the questioning and statement forms of briefing, the teacher remains as “neutral” as possible. The effectiveness of role-play is dependent on the quality of briefing. Without it, role-play, particularly with classes that have limited experience of it, may degenerate into acting to an audience that giggles its appreciation. An effective briefing of the players may take longer than the role-play itself, but if the time spent produces an insightful exchange, it is well justified, and an initial briefing need not be repeated for subsequent role-plays involving the same characters. 3. Role-play. Fully sensitized to the feelings of the characters involved, the players react spontaneously to each other in dialogue. The teacher usually indicates which player is to begin and then withdraws. The exchange is unrehearsed; each player reacts to the unpredictable responses of the other; and this “transactional” quality of role-play often produces solutions that are not those initially anticipated by the players or class. Players are encouraged to avoid extraneous chatter, particularly in beginning their exchange (“Hello. Come in. Would you like a drink?”), and to address the issues directly. Dressing up and the use of props are discouraged as it focuses on the theatrical. Role-plays usually have a natural conclusion in that a solution is reached. However, there may be occasions when teachers have to use their discretion as to when to terminate the exchange. The author strongly endorses role-plays of two characters, as the introduction of more players inevitably frustrates participation and limits the more dynamic and transactional interaction possible with two players. 4. Debriefing. This is an optional step that is only implemented if the teacher feels a player needs to be extracted from the role. It may take the form of a simple

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statement (“Remember Sue, you’re not Alan anymore his problems aren’t really yours”), or teachers may use the nametag technique: removing the nametag of the character’s name when the role-play is complete, screwing it up and throwing it in the bin (psychologically disowning the role). 5. Reflection on transaction. Once the role-play is over, the teacher asks the two players to comment on the transactional nature of the exchange by analyzing the thoughts and feelings that particular responses from the other player evoked and how these shaped their own reactions. The class may contribute its perceptions of the interaction and “test” them by asking the players questions. After the players have returned to their seats (without applause as this highlights the theatrical), discussion centers on how the class perceived the reality of the role-play. Common reactions involve the belief that certain characters were too harsh or too yielding in resolving the dilemma. Whether students agree or not, some insights will have been achieved and some values clarified. 6. Further enactment. The discussion prompts further enactments, sometimes involving the same two characters, but with different players, or involving an exchange between one of the original characters and a third. In the case of the former, a new player may be chosen on the basis that he/she thought an original player was not sufficiently real (too harsh or too lenient). Role-play has been criticized for its lack of prescription of values, as has values clarification and the cognitive developmental approach. If students are given freedom to explore their values in spontaneous verbal interactions, it may be difficult for the teacher to be in control of what is being learned. Van Ments (1983, p. 28) outlines the problem and provides a caution: “it is possible of course to put constraints on the role play so that participants cannot stray too far from the intended path. The greater the constraints however, the less effective the role play is likely to be. It is the power of the imagination which enhances the effects of role play strategies.” Much depends on the insight and skill of the teacher in keeping role-play within acceptable parameters. A second possible limitation involves the threat of self-disclosure or the consequences of that self-disclosure. While this risk is also present for values clarification, it is a greater concern for the emotion-stimulating transactional nature of the dialogue in role-play. A warm and supportive classroom culture is essential if students are to be comfortable and free from the risk of teasing or reprisal. Teachers also need to be aware of the dangers of catharsis when it involves highly sensitive personal issues. As previously indicated, there is a danger that role-play, because it is highly motivating for students, will be perceived as entertaining or frivolous (play acting) rather than a sophisticated social learning technique.

Conclusion It is readily apparent that the four outlined approaches have different theoretical underpinnings that make consensus on one approach for values education an impossible task. The trait approach focuses on developing preestablished values or

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qualities that can be demonstrated in behavior, either through explicit (direct) teaching or indirectly through moral biography; values clarification focuses on making students aware of their own values through undertaking an infinite variety of clarifying tasks facilitated by teacher questioning; the cognitive developmental approach focuses on improving moral reasoning that can be identified at different stage levels, through guided discussion to resolve conflicts presented in moral dilemmas; and role-play focuses on becoming aware of self and others through briefed, spontaneous verbal exchanges that explore solutions to given scenarios. The central concern is the divide between values absolutism by which policymakers prescribe what should be valued and values relativity by which students are given freedom to determine their own values. The former is open to criticisms of indoctrination and inconsistency with contemporary, constructivist notions of learning; and the latter is vulnerable to criticisms that everyone can value what they like and that all values are equally defensible. While the approaches may be different, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The work of Rowan et al. (2007) that uses values clarification within the framework of DEST’s (2005a) nine values for Australian schooling and Brady’s (1989) integration of all four strategies within human society and PD/H/PE themes are examples of how the approaches can be blended. The variety of approaches, albeit different, should be perceived as a real strength rather than as a stumbling block. After all, the scope of values education is not a confined curriculum offering. It is, as Lovat and Clement (2008, p. 7) claim, “a web of relationships extending from the classroom to the whole school and to the parents and general community.” While policy-makers should not shy away from statements of intent in values education, it would be a shame to constrain the pedagogy.

References Brady, L. (1989). Feel value act (2nd ed.). Collins Dove. Brady, L. (2006). Collaborative learning in action. Pearson Education Australia. Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Harvard University Press. CAZR. (2003). Tales of the Todd. Day 14 – Fact sheet 31: Values clarification. Centre for Arid Zone Research (CAZR), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Available at http://www.cazr.csiro.au/scienceweek2003/resources/F31_day14.pdf DEST. (2005a). National framework for values education in Australian schools. Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). Available at http://www. curriculum.edu.au/values/default.asp?id8757. DEST. (2005b). Values for Australian schooling professional learning resources. Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). DET. (2004). Values in NSW public schools. New South Wales Department of Education and Training (DET). Galbraith, R., & Jones, T. (1975). Teaching strategies for moral dilemmas. An application of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to the social studies classroom. Social Education, 39, 16–22. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.

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Kohlberg, L. (1975). The cognitive developmental approach to moral education. Phi Delta Kappan, 56, 670–677. Kohlberg, L. (1980). Kohlberg. In B. Munsey (Ed.), Moral development, moral education and Kohlberg. Basic issues in philosophy, psychology, religion and education. Religious Education Press. Kohlberg, L., & Gilligan, C. (1971). The adolescent as philosopher. Daedalus, 100, 1051–1086. Lipe, D. (n.d.). A critical analysis of values clarification. Apologetics Press, Inc. Available at http:// www.apologeticspress.org Lovat, T., & Clement, N. (2008). Quality teaching and values education: Coalescing for effective learning. Journal of Moral Education, 37, 1–16. Neilsen, T. W. (2005). Values education through thinking, feeling and doing. The Social Educator, 23, 1–11. Nucci, L., & Narvaev, D. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of moral and character education. Routledge. Raths, L. E., Harmin, M., & Simon, S. B. (1978). Values and teaching. Merrill. Rowan, L., Gauld, J., Cole-Adams, J., & Connolly, A. (2007). Teaching values. Primary English Teachers’ Association. Shaftel, F. R. (1967). Role playing for social values. Prentice Hall. Simon, S. B., Howe, L. W., & Kirschenbaum, H. (1972). A handbook of practical strategies for teachers and students. Hart Publishing Company. Turner, V. D., & Chambers, E. A. (2006). The social mediation of a moral dilemma: Appropriating the moral tools of others. Journal of Moral Education, 35, 353–368. Upright, R. L. (2002). To tell a tale: The use of moral dilemmas to increase empathy in the elementary school child. Early Childhood Education Journal, 30, 15–19. Van Ments, M. (1983). The effective use of role play: A handbook for teachers and trainers. Kogan Page/New York: Nichols Publishing Company.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moral Interdependence and the Pedagogy of the Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher Preparation and the New Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning from Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The New Values Education: The Value of Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion: The Ethics of Integration as Becoming-Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The focus of this chapter is on philosophy of education as it pertains to values education and the development of character. It uses both classical sources and contemporary poststructuralist theory to develop the argument for the creation of a new ethics of integration based on the awareness that significant events in human culture should become unorthodox subject matter to be critically examined and to learn from. Both historically and habitually, we understand learning as a conceptual activity confined to a generic classroom and taking place in the presence of a certain instruction. Keywords

Values education · Ethics · Integration · Character · Philosophy

I. Semetsky (*) The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_52

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Introduction In 1916, John Dewey, who still remains a source of inspiration for educational theorists, was the first to expand the boundaries of the concept of learning. Reconceptualizing learning means opening the doors of a generic classroom and letting in real-life human experiences from which we can, and should, learn. According to Dewey, learning from experience means making “a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy and suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction – discovery of the connection of things” (Dewey, 1916/1924, p. 164). The value of an experience, or its meaning, consists, for Dewey, in perceiving all the relationships, both possible and actual, to which a concrete event may lead up. Experiential events can embody significant meanings. A real-life event can be understood in terms of a cultural extralinguistic “text,” which is subject to interpretation and meaning-making. This approach should help us in reconceptualizing the aims of education to suit our present age. We can ask an age-old question: what is the aim of education? Or, rather, what are the aims of education? This longtime controversial question renders multiple solutions. Among philosophers, we can recall John Dewey who asserted that the aim of education is always more education, Maxine Green who focused on the education for freedom, Kieran Egan who questioned both the process and product of “open” education, or Alfred North Whitehead who explicitly stated the aim of education as the careful guardianship against useless and harmful, what he called “inert,” ideas. John Dewey defined education as a continual process of reconstruction of experience, that is, a real-life problem-solving activity based on the active, creative human mind interacting with an open world. In this sense, the goal of education coincides with the very educative process as a developing practice. Importantly, for Dewey, if the aim of education is to be democratic, then we should educate for democracy as much as we would democratize for education. The development and sustenance of the collective spirit of a democratic group is what education should aim for, with far-reaching implications for schools to become a mode of social life, the latter in turn to provide the necessary background for children’s attainments and social well-being. In a continuation and further development of a Deweyan creed in education, the present twenty-first century demands a new semiformal approach to educational process that I call educating in/by events, new model of pedagogy that I call pedagogy of hope, and new ethics to inform moral, or values, education that I call an ethics of integration. Nel Noddings’ (2006) recent work on the topic of critical lessons is instrumental for establishing a new paradigm for educating in/by events akin to learning from real-life experiences and will be complemented in this essay by the elements of an innovative philosophy of education. This philosophy is grounded in the framework of poststructuralist cultural theory exemplified in the figures of two French philosophers Gilles Deleuze (cf. Semetsky, 2006, 2008) and Julia Kristeva (cf. Semetsky, 2001, 2005, 2007; Stone, 2004). Significant events in human culture of such scope as September 11 can become an unorthodox means for developing the pedagogy of

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hope and the ethics of integration in a timely manner as paramount for sustaining the global society and the culture of education. A continuing debate regarding the methods of ethics appears unending: “since Socrates [philosophers] have sought . . . criteria for distinguishing between right and wrong and between good and evil” (Baron et al., 1997, p. 1). What is common to all approaches, however, is that they are framed by the reasoning of an independent moral agent that presents ethical categories in the form of “either-or” dualistic opposites. Under the assumption that classical ethical theories, either Kantian or consequentialist, or even virtue ethics with its emphasis on the individual character education, became quite inadequate for our new age of globalization, this essay lays down the first stone upon which to further build the philosophical foundations for the new ethics so that present and future generations of educators will become exposed to the fundamentals of this ethics and will be able to incorporate them in their pedagogical practices. More often than not – and as if Dewey’s heritage is pretty much nonexistent – education proceeds in its reductive mode focusing on the same technical measurable objectives, even if under several different guises depending on times and political contexts. Even as Dewey was adamant that “there is . . . no succession of studies in the . . . school curriculum. [and] [t]he progress is not in the succession of studies, but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience” (Dewey, 1887/2000, p. 97), the academic progress (and this is the only progress to be considered in formal educational settings) is still being measured by the successions in studies. As Noddings (2006) notices, the neglect of topics that would have called forth critical and reflective thinking pervades the present system of education. Teachers and students alike are not given an opportunity to reflect on their own thought processes and work habits. For Noddings, critical thinking refers not only to the assessment of formal logical arguments but also to the proper use of reason on matters of moral/social importance including personal decision-making, professional conduct, and the range of beliefs. And because decision-making is embedded in experience, real events become topics central to everyday life, including education, the latter in turn embodying matters of civic importance, that is, improving communities and social conditions by means of critical evaluation and (self)reflection. The reflective way of thinking and knowing was precisely the mode that in antiquity “defined” true pedagogy as opposed to sophistry. The evaluation and revaluation of experience enable putting into practice Socratic motto as the “know thyself” principle (of course, we might remind ourselves that it was precisely the quest for meaning and revaluation of experience, namely, an examined versus unexamined life, that in a long run cost Socrates his life). Noddings (2006) is adamant about the importance of self-knowledge as the very core of education: “when we claim to educate, we must take Socrates seriously. Unexamined lives may well be valuable and worth living, but an education that does not invite such examination may not be worthy of the label education” (p. 10). In an almost psychoanalytic manner, we need to ask not only what we believe but why we believe it; not only what do I feel, but also why? Not only, what am I doing (although we rarely ask even this question!) but why? And even, what am I saying? And, again, why? But the context in which those questions should be asked is more than the

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private world of the mind; it is social and cultural. Self-understanding involves a critical examination of how external and internal forces affect our lives and thus necessarily involves understanding others. In a social context, self-reflection means looking at the self in connection to other selves and as positioned in the social and cultural environment and for the purpose of exploring mutual affects and interactions. The structure and dynamics of critical lessons that Noddings proposes specifically for schools cannot be taken in isolations from life with its multiplicity of experiences and sociocultural relations; the real-life events become themselves those critical lessons from which we can and should learn. Importantly, Noddings does not differentiate between critical and reflective thinking: it is by using self-reflection in the context of personal beliefs and decisionmaking that every domain of human interactions becomes critically examined because no meaning can be given a priori: meanings are to be created!

Moral Interdependence and the Pedagogy of the Concept At this point I would like to introduce the idea of the pedagogy of the concept that belongs to French poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze whose conceptualizations strongly resonate with contemporary discourse in educational theory (Peters, 2002, 2004; Semetsky, 2006, 2008). Deleuze’s collaboration on a number of works with social psychologist and practicing therapist Felix Guattari connected philosophy with sociocultural practices. Deleuze and Guattari referred to their philosophical method in terms of geo-philosophy as beginning with the Greeks. In his move against the Cartesian method of the a priori, clear, and distinct ideas, Deleuze speaks of paideia stating that for the Greeks thought is not based on a premeditated decision to think: thought originates in the real experience “by virtue of the forces that are exercised on it in order to constrain it to think” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 108). For Deleuze, philosophy cannot be limited to contemplation, reflection, or communication as aiming solely to consensus. It is uniquely a creative practice of inventing new concepts allowing us to evaluate experience, and the pedagogy of the concept “would have to analyse the conditions of creation as factors of always singular moments” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 12) embedded in the experiential events. Deleuze’s pedagogy of the concept represents an important example of “expanding educational vocabularies” (Noddings, 1993, p. 5) in the concrete context of often conflicting experiences constituting contemporary culture. Deleuzian “critical and clinical” (Deleuze, 1997) philosophy presents values as future-oriented versus pre-given, that is, plural values that are as yet to (be)come when we revaluate experience in practice. Deleuze’s emphasis on the clinical aspect sharply contrasts an ethical dimension with that of moral values. If moral values are pre-given and ratified by common sense, the Deleuzian ethical dimension pushes in the opposite direction. The ethical, for Deleuze, asks the question of who we might be. And it does so on the basis of recognizing (as Spinoza did before Deleuze) that we have no real idea of who we might become or, as Deleuze and Spinoza put the matter, we do not yet know what a body can do. Philosophy therefore, rather than focusing on the classical theoretical question of being, is devoted to the practice of

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becoming and, specifically, becoming-other. Becoming-other is established via “diversity, multiplicity [and] the destruction of identity” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 44); it presupposes breaking out of our old outlived habits and attitudes so as to creatively “bring into being that which does not yet exist” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 147). Noddings remarks that the contradictory and paradoxical attitudes we often take toward others constitute one of the great mysteries of human life. Borrowing the term confirmation from Martin Buber, she suggests it as an integral part of the relational ethics in education based on care. The idea of confirmation appears to be close to the very meaning of Deleuzian becoming-other, as if establishing in practice the famous Buber’s I–Thou relationship. The idea of becoming-other, as well of confirmation, emerges from our awareness of moral interdependence, that is, self-becoming-other by means of entering into another person’s frame of reference and taking upon oneself the other perspective. Importantly, the idea of moral interdependence expands from the individual lives to the mutual interactions of various religious, ethnic, and national groups. In the context of education, to become capable, explicitly or implicitly, of becoming-other means to confirm the potential best in both oneself and another person. Thus, becoming-other has a deeply engrained ethical (or therapeutic, almost clinical) element, and confirmation should constitute an important component of moral, or values, education. In a range of works, Deleuze and Guattari have established a new critical and creative language for analyzing thinking as flows or movements across space. For Deleuze, all “becomings belong to geography, they are orientations, directions, entries and exits” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 2). The constructive process of production of new concepts, meanings, and values embodies affects immanent to this very process and (in)forming the flows of thoughts and effects. Deleuze’s philosophy is a sort of constructivism as a creation of concepts. The creative education will have paid attention to places and spaces, to retrospective as well as untimely memories, to actual and potential actions, and to dynamic forces that are capable of affecting and effecting changes, thus contesting the very identity of subjects participating in the process. Experience is always already public: it is, for Deleuze, a-subjective and pre-personal because it is the meaningfulness of experiences comprising significant real-life events that is the very precondition for the subject formation. It is the micropolitical dimension of the whole of culture as a contextual, experiential, and circumstantial site that precedes the production of subjectivity. Human “self” therefore does not presuppose identity but is produced within a dynamic process of individuation which is “populated” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 9) by sociocultural relations. As Deleuze (2000) says, we are made up of relations, and experience makes sense to us only if we understand in practice the relations between several conflicting schemes of the real experience. In fact, novel concepts are to be invented or created in order to make sense out of singular experiences and, ultimately, to affirm this sense. Similar to Dewey who was saying that an individual experience is never “some person’s; it [is] nature’s, localized in a body as that body happened to exist by nature” (Dewey, 1925/1958, p. 231), Deleuze too is firm on the question of the impersonality of event, that is, on its greater collective, sociocultural or natural notwithstanding, dimension. Event is a multiplicity and as such is profoundly social

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and collective therefore “irreducible to individual states of affairs, particular images, [or] personal beliefs” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 19). One – in whose body an event is temporarily and historically localized – is to be worthy of this event. For this purpose, one has to attain an ethical responsibility or, as Deleuze says, “this will that the event creates in us” functioning as a quasi-cause of “what is produced within us” (p. 148). It is an event that produces subjective will, the meaning of this Deleuzian statement leaning toward Dewey’s addressing the central factor in responsibility as being “the possibility of a modification of character and the selection of the course of action which would make this possibility a reality” (Dewey, 1932/1998, p. 351). A specific event “in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but a fundamental ‘encounter’ It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 139) leading to our learning from a singular experience embedded in this particular event when it starts making sense for us. The relevance for education is paramount: as Deleuze and Guattari (1994) were saying, “If the three ages of the concept are the encyclopedia, pedagogy, and commercial professional training, only the second can safeguard us from falling from the heights of the first into the disaster of the third” (p. 12). It is the pedagogy of the concept – in art, science, or philosophy alike – that must educate us, respectively, in becoming able to feel, to know, and to conceive, that is, to create concepts. For Deleuze, a concept is always full of critical, creative, and political power that brings forth values and meanings. Concepts and meanings are created in practice “as a function of problems which are thought to be badly understood or badly posed (pedagogy of the concept)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 16). Deleuze and Guattari are not interested in concepts in order to determine what something is, that is, its static essence, or being. Rather they are interested in the concept as a vehicle for expressing a dynamic event, or becoming: a novel concept embedded in an event functioning in a mode of Dewey’s problematic situation “secures . . . linkages with ever increasing connections” (p. 37) within practical life. The unpredictable connections presuppose not the transmission of the same but the creation of the different: the process that has important implications for education as an evolving and developing practice of the generation of new knowledge, new meanings. For Deleuze, education would begin not when the student arrives at a grasp of the material already known by the teacher but when the teacher and student together begin to experiment in practice with what they might make of themselves and the world. Transcoding is one of the Deleuzian neologisms employed to underline an element of creativity, of invention, and of crossing – traversing – borders between self and other. Pedagogy of the concept would defy the habitual transmission of given facts from a teacher to a student; instead education becomes “a transcoded passage from one milieu to another . . . whenever there is transcoding . . . there is . . . a constitution of a new plane, as of a surplus value. A melodic or rhythmic plane, surplus value of passage or bridging. [T]he components as melodies in counter-point, each of which serves as a motif for another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 313–314). Thus, education grounded in philosophy specified as the process of concept creation becomes possible only, provided a teacher and a student

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serve as a motif for each other and both are embedded within an experimental creative practice of becoming-other. In order to engage in experimentation, we would abandon the idea that common sense ought to be our guide. Deleuze uses the term common sense in a technical fashion, to refer to the identity that arises when the faculties (in the Kantian sense) agree with one another. We must disrupt our common sense with problems that do not yet yield answers as our univocal solutions but invite a free flow of thought in a critical and self-reflective manner within a mutual and reciprocal relation. New concepts, values, and meanings will have to be created as the multiple outcomes and products of an experiential living process. Pedagogy of the concept presents the multiplicity of concepts, meanings, and values as the a posteriori products of understanding and evaluating our experience. Experience is rendered meaningful not by grounding empirical particulars in abstract universals but by experimentation on our very being. Deleuze suggested treating each new concept “as object of an encounter, as a here-and-now . . . from which emerge inexhaustibly ever new, differently distributed ‘heres’ and ‘nows’. I make, remake and unmake my concepts along a moving horizon, from an always decentered center, from an always displaced periphery which repeats and differentiate them” (Deleuze, 1994, pp. xx–xxi). Making and remaking of concepts constitute a creative process, which is not reducible to a static recognition but demands a dynamic, experiential, and experimental encounter that would have forced us to think and learn, that is, to construct meaning for a particular experience, which is as yet presently unthought of and lacking sense. Still the creative, constructive element in Deleuze’s philosophy is always complemented by expressionism, by “a becoming of thought [that] cries out” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 148) in affects that both disrupt and enrich concepts compared by Deleuze with songs. Deleuze was fond of invoking musical tropes and metaphors to enable him to articulate the dynamics of the process consisting in what the body can do! The Deleuzian level of analysis is not solely “a question of intellectual understanding but of intensity, resonance, musical harmony” (p. 86). It is guided by the “logic of affects” (Guattari, 1995, p. 9) and as such is different from a merely rational consensus based on cognitive reasoning. Yet, in the present state of society in our information age, its principal technology of confinement may restrict what the body can do, both explicitly and implicitly. Deleuze contrasts Foucault’s disciplinary societies with new open spatial systems which are interconnected, flexible, and networked architectures that are supplanting the older enclosures. In practice, however, these new open institutional forms of punishment, education, and health are often being introduced without a reflective and critical understanding of what is taking place. Deleuze provides the following poignant vision anticipating the spread of the institutions of perpetual training and lifelong learning: “One can envisage education becoming less and less a closed site differentiated from the workplace as another closed site, but both disappearing and giving way to frightful continual training, to continual monitoring of workerschoolkids or bureaucrat-students. They try to present it as a reform of the school system, but it’s really its dismantling” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 175). In the same way that corporations have replaced factories, schools are being replaced by the abstract

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concept of continuing education. By turning exams into continuous assessment, education itself is “turning into a business” (p. 179). In this manner, a form of schooling becomes itself the means to provide a continuous stream of human capital for the knowledge economy. If and when human capital replaces humans, then, as Deleuze argues, individuals become dividuals, a market statistic, part of a sample, an item in a data bank. The movements along the transversal line of flight (another of Deleuze’s neologisms) can, however, disrupt the prevailing order of things by producing effects in terms of the Deleuzian present-becoming which is always already collective and social. The philosophical/educational function is both critical and clinical: the present-becoming, by definition, has a revaluative and untimely flavor. Such is the role of the educator as a philosopher who puts her ethics in practice as a clinician or the physician of culture; such educator can be described as “an inventor of new immanent modes of existence” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 113). The future form of thinking and reflection encompasses both a resistance to the present and a diagnosis of our actual becomings in terms of what Deleuze called becoming-woman or becoming-minor, but also in terms of potentially becoming-revolutionary, becoming-democratic, becomingpedagogical, and always already becoming-other. Reflecting on a narrow approach to education, Deleuze described it as students’ looking for the answers to the problems posited by teachers which means that pupils lack power and freedom for the construction and evaluation of problems themselves. Only a free thought is capable of realizing its creative potential. The newly created concepts, or concepts the meanings of which have been altered within experience, impose new sets of evaluation on the modes of existence and – sure enough – for Deleuze, no thinking, no speaking, and no acting, are value-free. New values are to be created because life is not a straightforward affair but presents problems whose multiple solutions constitute an open field of inquiry: it is how we might further problematize a particular situation by asking self-reflective questions rather than jumping upon a pre-reflective linear solution to “a” problem that would give a specific value to a singular experience. For Deleuze, “once one ventures outside what’s familiar and reassuring, once one has to invent new concepts for unknown lands, then methods and moral systems break down” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 103). A given moral standard simply does not enter Deleuze’s discourse because pedagogy of the concept presupposes “the event, not the essence” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 21). Event is always an element of becoming, and the becoming is unlimited.

Teacher Preparation and the New Ethics The problem of teacher preparation becomes crucial. How can school teachers be prepared to conduct lessons based on real-life events, that is, lessons functioning in both critical and clinical modes? Lessons on current events rarely appear in the standard curriculum, but assuming that they did, to what extent of being critical, clinical, and self-reflective such imaginary lesson would have been? Noddings is adamant that teaching should become a specific profession employing the

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Renaissance people who will have had a broad knowledge not only of disciplines and “subject matters” but also of perennial philosophical questions. Teacher preparation courses would have indeed emphasized connections not only to other disciplines but also, and more importantly, to the common problems of humanity so as to create meaning for those problems, to make sense out of them! However, even if classical ethical theories are included in the teacher preparation courses (and more often than not they are not included at all), the adequacy of those theories becomes doubtful in the contemporary context of multiculturalism and globalization. The new ethics of integration that I propose not only strongly relates to Deleuze’s conceptualization of becoming-other but is inspired by the work of Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann who has already been advocating the creation of new ethic in the troubled time of the aftermath of the Second World War (Neumann, 1969). Akin to Dewey or Deleuze, Neumann was adamant that the diversity and complexity of experiential situations would have made it impossible to lay down strict theoretical rules as standards for ethical behavior. The goal of traditional ethics often is, as Neumann reminds us, illusionary perfection and an adherence to the absolute Good that necessarily leads to the appearance of some evil antagonist, a real or symbolic scapegoat. By contrast, a new anti-dualist ethics should aim toward personal and collective wholeness and integrity, ultimately tending toward self-becoming-other in experience. The integration of the other side contrasts with some ideal betterment and perfection by means of repressing what represents the negative side especially when such an imperfection is projected onto the other in terms of an individual or collective shadow. The “shadowy” qualities may very well become attributed to others precisely because of the temptation to deny their fearful presence in oneself, either at the individual or collective levels. At the collective level, the symbolic shadow often encompasses those outside the moral norm of the established order and the prevailing social system. While the egoconsciousness focuses on indubitable and unequivocal moral principles, these very principles crumble under the “compensatory significance of the shadow in the light of ethical responsibility” (Jung, 1969, p. 12; italics in original). Noddings (1989), pointing out that the “integration is essential” (p. 75), refers to the shadow as a set of qualities observable in human experiences even as an individual, or “a group, institution, nation, or culture” (p. 75), remains unaware of its functioning. While the old ethics is “partial” (Neumann, 1969, p. 74) as belonging solely to the ego, the new ethics is holistic because it is devoted to recognizing our own dark and inferior side even under the conditions of the superficial superiority. The shadow rules one-sidedly unless integrated into the whole of personality. In the absence of integration, it may create a sealed aggressive world denying freedom and hope to its own other, suppressed, side until – in the process of becoming-other – the shadow will start acting out spontaneously, in the form of the dark precursor as Deleuze would have said, and will continue to propagate tending toward reaching the destructive climax. Baudrillard (2002), French social theorist and critic, writes in his analysis of the spirit of terrorism about the shift into the symbolic sphere where an initial event becomes subjected to unforeseeable consequences. Such a singular event – like the destruction of Twin Towers on September 11 – propagates

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unpredictably, causing the chain of effects “not just in the direct economic, political, financial slump in the whole of the system – and the resulting moral and psychological downturn – but the slump in the value-system” (Baudrillard, 2002, pp. 31–32) as well. Baudrillard points out that not only terrorism itself is blind but so were the real towers: “no longer opening to the outside world, but subject to artificial conditioning” (p. 43): air conditioning or mental conditioning alike. Yet, any problematic situation in real life that requires our learning as meaning-making is of the nature of experience that necessarily forms “an intrinsic genesis, not an extrinsic conditioning” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 154). The ruthless destruction of the towers, for Baudrillard, represents the fact that “the whole system has reached a critical mass which makes it vulnerable to any aggression” (Baudrillard, 2002, p. 33) and which propagates and amplifies itself in the sequence of subsequent events such as Iraq War. Importantly, in the context of education and as recently as 2006, at the very start of Nel Noddings’ book entitled Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach, she says that when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, many public school teachers were forbidden to discuss the war in their classrooms thus missing on an opportunity of exercising critical thinking in regard to this and related controversial events even as such a restriction on free discussion appears to be simply outrageous in a liberal democracy.

Learning from Events At this point, I would like to bring into the conversation another French philosopher, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva, who would have described the event of war as the experience of abjection. She presented and analyzed the concepts of abject and abjection in her book Power of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982). The dictionary definitions of abjection include the condition of being servile, wretched, or contemptible. As an adjective, abject represents something utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched, contemptible, shamelessly servile, slavish, and cast aside. Abjection is described by Kristeva (1982) as “one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable” (p. 1). According to Kristeva, the dynamic of abjection has been slowly spreading from paganism through the whole of Western culture marked by aggression and destruction. I contend that this dynamics has reached its climax at the very start of the twenty-first century with the events of a scope of abjection on September 11. Kristeva is famous for her method of semanalysis employing Hegelian dialectics with its laws of the unity of opposites and the logic of the negation of negation. The image of destruction is presented dialectically, that is, in the double function of overcoming the binary opposites and playing a constructive versus destructive role in the understanding and transformation of both ourselves and social reality. The event of the destruction of the towers conveys an image of the ejection from an abject structure that appears to be both “the logical mode of this permanent aggressively,

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and the possibility of its being positioned and thus renewed” (Kristeva, 1998, p. 144). Hence, “though destructive, a ‘death drive’, expulsion is also the mechanism of relaunching, of tension, of life” (p. 144). Even if many real events in human culture happen to be destructive, Kristeva’s semanalysis presents these events as also fulfilling their creative function of meaning-making. An event’s potential function is “a modality of significance” (Kristeva, 1997, p. 192) for affects, moods, and thoughts which “become the communicable imprints of affective reality, perceptible to the reader” (p. 193) who perceives, reads, and interprets a particular cultural text representing a real experiential lesson from which we can learn. Even if under the conditions of a social dissonance, “never is the ambivalence of drive more fearsome than in this beginning of otherness” (p. 188); this point marks a start of the lengthy dynamics of Deleuzian becoming-other. The integration of the shadow is thus embedded in semanalysis because of the collective subjectivity becoming able to recognize its own shifting identity as abject. The subject of experience, when functioning in the capacity of the abjective self, becomes animated by expulsion, by (so to speak) abjecting the abject in accord with the Hegelian dialectics. As Kristeva points out, “such an identification facilitates control, on the part of the subject, a certain knowledge of the process, a certain relative arrest of its movement, all of which are the conditions for its renewal and are factors which prevent it from deteriorating into a pure void” (Kristeva, 1998, p. 149). The interpretation of the cultural text, as a real-life event, in the form of creating a novel meaning for experience seems by itself to be a violent act, in the sense of its shattering one’s set of privileged beliefs. Still, such a violence of expulsion when the “revelation bursts forth” (1982, p. 9) in the moment of the creation of meaning “rejects the effects of delay” (1998, p. 153) and hence, rather than destroying the subject, contributes to making the subject anew, to remaking it in a sense of it becoming-other, realizing novel meanings and creating new values. Following catharsis embedded in the abject event, there exists a possibility “of rebirth with and against abjection” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 31). The significance of a meaningful experience is justified by the collective subjectivity functioning in a dynamic mode of what Kristeva called subject-in-process who “instead of sounding himself as to his ‘being’ does so concerning his place: ‘Where am I?’ instead of ‘Who am I?’ For the space that engrosses the deject, the excluded, is never one, nor homogeneous, nor totalizable, but essentially divisible, foldable and catastrophic” (p. 8). This ambiguous space is called “a strange place a chora, a receptacle” (p. 14). Borrowed from Plato, the original meaning of the term chora is a connective link between realms of the intelligible and the sensible, implying a quality of transition or passage as a symbolic bridge between the two. Chora is a site saturated by dynamic forces. Kristeva, acknowledging the dynamic and organizing character of chora, as a “totality formed by the drives and their states in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated” (Kristeva, 1984, p. 25), stresses its provisional and non-expressive quality which implicitly indicates the unity of opposites: a destructive event situated in a catastrophic space represents nonetheless a space of renewal! A space occupied by the subject-in-process is unstable and ambivalent: the archaic divided self, which – by virtue of its very (dis)placement in the chora – is

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represented by “a multiplicity of expulsions” (Kristeva, 1998, p. 134), the primary function of which is self-destruction or the death drive. Still, it is an amorphous space, the rhythm of which resonates with the pulsations of labor when giving birth: ultimately, therefore, chora fulfils its generative and creative purpose. It is the interpretation of the real-life experience that makes chora visible in terms of its “semiotic articulation” (p. 142) by means of our own actions. Structureless, chora can be designated solely by its function which is explicitly feminine and caring, not unlike Noddings’ (1984) theory of care and her emphasizing the importance of the conception of home (Noddings, 2002a). Chora’s specific function is to engender and to provide the caring conditions – or rather, in its relational economy, to be the condition, the symbolic home – for regeneration, rebirth, and the genesis of new forms, meanings, and values. For Noddings, it is an attitude of attentive love in the home that induces a corresponding responsiveness that can serve as a foundation for social policy. Respectively, any corrective practice that does more harm than the behavior it is aimed at correcting should be abandoned, at home or at the level of larger society, culture wars notwithstanding. Thus, abjection and violence abound in contemporary culture where beliefs and values are continuously competing and clashing appear to function as the Deleuzian dark precursors to what has been recently designated as new philosophies for change (Zournazi, 2002). Within a double process of negation and identification, the destructive moment becomes in fact embedded within a generative, creative, and constructive process, which represents at once symbolic and real construction of collective subjectivity. Therefore, the very same moment becomes a marker of not solely abjection but of hope, this metaphysical concept elucidated recently by a number of critical theorists, including Kristeva (2002), who called such a transformative change a joyful revolt (p. 64). Any revolt – due to its own dialectics – can potentially produce hope and wholeness as a positive resolution of a catastrophic, negative, event. In her recent interview with Australian journalist Mary Zournazi, Kristeva (2002) presents hope as a transformative, humanistic, and even religious idea. Pointing to the destruction of psychic space in the current ideological climate when abject experiences go beyond the “borders, positions [and] rules” (1982, p. 4), she says that our hope for a positive and joyful revolt, that is, a transformation in our critical thinking up to the point of inventing new ways of living, is embedded in the economy of care. Care, as a type of psychoanalytic cure, is “a concern for others, and a consideration for their ‘ill-being’” (2002, p. 66), thus bringing well-being in a productive dialogue with ill-being for the purpose of the integration of the other. Sure enough, the ethics of care is a must for educators, as Noddings prophetically told us back in 1984 in her book Caring devoted to an alternative, feminine, approach to ethics and to character education. It is the loss of hope that is feeding terror, and it was precisely on September 11, 2001, that Kristeva remarkably redefined her idea of revolt as an event enabling one to move into a space of hope. The very “logic of symbolic change” (Kristeva, 2002, p. 75) presupposes the “necessity of the symbolic deconstruction, the symbolic renewal, which comes from creation – psychic creation, aesthetic creation,

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rebirth of the individual” (p. 76). She calls it a process of reevaluation of the psyche that constitutes the renewal of the self, which embodies events represented by “symbolic mutations” (p. 76). Among the latter abject experiences are the fall of the Berlin Wall, the drama of the Russian Kursk, and the planes hitting the World Trade Center. Those real-life events may provide experiential conditions for change and transformation therefore functioning in the mode of Noddings’ (2006) critical lessons even if being outside the walls of a formal classroom but especially when brought in so as to constitute an educational subject matter. It is a singular real-life experience that creates its own text, the critical and ethical evaluation of which provides those “other means, symbolic or imaginary” (Kristeva, 1997, p. 391) that serve as an example of the unorthodox pedagogy of care and hope in the aftermath of destruction.

The New Values Education: The Value of Relations The coalescence of critical and clinical (or ethical) dimensions also appears in the current discourse in Australia on values education and quality teaching (cf. Lovat, 2006). In the context of the teaching profession, it is only under the conditions of critical and self-reflective ways of knowing that the transformation to new beliefs and behaviors becomes possible. The road to self-knowledge is paved with values; it requires us to establish “an environment of respect, trust and care” (p. 3), that is, being able to develop an ethical attitude and a positive teacher-student relationship and rapport. It is precisely self-reflectivity that enables one “to step out of the shadow of one’s upbringing and . . . to challenge one’s own deep seated comfort zone” (p. 4) where our old habits still reside! The transformative aspect as the creative dimension of experience should not, however, involve any imposition of our own new set of values onto others. Just the opposite, we achieve integrity and become our own authentic selves only by stepping into and sharing “the life-worlds of others” (p. 4): that is, when capable of – in a Deleuzian spirit – becoming-other. Conceived as such, values education and quality teaching do complement each other nature. Recent UNESCO report of the Commission internationale sur l’éducation pour le vingt et unième siècle, chaired by Jacques Delors, strongly emphasized four pillars of a new kind of education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together with, and learning to be. The call for such a comprehensive art of learning is crucial, and in the UNESCO report, we witness a specific approach founded on a dynamic learning process that moves away from static knowledge to the dynamic process of the learning to know and becoming capable of making multiple connections within experiences. This type of education invites the development of the relational attitude in practice. In this way not only the boundaries between disciplines become moot but so do the boundaries between facts and values. Values education based on those four pillars cannot be reduced to simply inculcating a set of given values such as those, for example, that are listed in the current Australian National Framework for values education with its focus on tolerance, among others. To live together with others does not mean simply tolerating the generic other’s differences but to learn to

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transcend these differences toward creating a common ground and a set of shared meanings, beliefs, and values. Learning to be is a reciprocal process functioning of the basis of teachers informing the students as much as students informing their teachers each serving, as we said earlier citing Deleuze, as a motif for each other. How often do we, adults, assume the position that John Dewey (1925/1958) ironically dubbed the supreme dignity of adulthood, therefore jeopardizing the possibility of our own developmental and growth process while at the same time trying to foster growth in our students? But for them to learn, should not we too? Nel Noddings (2002b) keeps reminding us that the aim of moral education (and following Dewey, we consider all education as moral) is to contribute to the continuous education of both students and teachers. Dewey asserted that what is needed in education is a genuine faith into existence of moral principles that importantly do not remain ghosts in a Cartesian machine but are capable of being effectively applied in practice establishing a relation between what appear to be irreconcilable opposites between universals and particulars, between knowledge and action, and between self and other. Dewey persistently struggled for the development of active value judgments based on the meaning of experience in practice versus passive acceptance of given facts and indicated that the practical development of value judgments is “in spite of, [and] not because of” (Dewey, 1909/1959, p. 55) traditional methods of instruction which emphasize simple learning, For Dewey, the task that we should accomplish in experience – what we have to learn, to extract from this very experience as its meaning – is the ability to sort out different and often inconsistent facts upon their “scale of worth” (Dewey, 1909/ 1959, p. 55) thus ourselves becoming able to grade them in our very experience assigning to them certain values. Knowledge thereby is integrated with an ethical dimension derived from real-life experiences and our actions in the world crossing over the divide between facts and values. Transcending the dualistic split gives the actual body to what would otherwise remained a disembodied ghost lurking somewhere (or rather nowhere) in the private Cartesian Cogito forever split from the public social world. Dewey summarized his major concern in the question: “Does the school, as a system, afford at present sufficient opportunity for this sort of experimentation?” (Dewey, 1909/1959, p. 56). Does this abound in the social world outside the confines of a traditional classroom? Real-life events, when critically evaluated, interpreted, and reflected upon, acquire extratextual productivity, which is extremely important as a means of/for unorthodox education and pedagogy of hope in terms of learning from experience and educating in/by events. The abject experiences, such as the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, Iraq War, and the like, should become an unorthodox subject matter to be critically examined and to learn from. Noddings (2010) uses her earlier care theory to construct an extended global approach to ethics and moral education. Noticing that the reference point for moral education is traditionally located within the norms of local or religious communities, Noddings acknowledges the rapidly changing world and the inadequacy of the traditional approach. In this age of globalization, care theory becomes a powerful resource that allows us to approach the world via relations and caring because in the

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framework of care theory it is a relation (and not an individual agent) that is ontologically and ethically basic. Positing an important and timely question of how an ethic of care can be applied globally, Noddings argues that even nations and other large institutions can work under a care-driven conception of justice where it is caring-about that serves the function of being the motivational foundation for justice. Noddings’ attention to the unifying global level, however, is never at the expense of local differences: her recommendation is to look at the entire web of care and see how various problems impinge on and affect the lives of individual people. The main aim of moral education in this context is to strive to bring up people who would be successfully engaging in caring relations both inside and outside formal educational settings. Noddings presents modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation as the pillars necessary for supporting this model of education in the context of personal, political, and cultural domains. Ethics is never given a priori in terms of some moral code of behavior or how well our own values might fit some higher moral ideal. Instead values and meanings are created in experience in accordance with Deleuze’s pedagogy of concepts. Learning presupposes an encounter with something as yet unknown, and one always “has to invent new concepts for unknown lands” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 103), for new experiences. For Deleuze, life itself is educative: it is a long experiential process requiring wisdom in a Spinozian sense, that is, wisdom as practical and ethical, and overcoming in this process the limitations of narrow subject-centered knowledge. Within global real-life experiences, reading and interpreting diverse cultural “texts” as a critical and self-reflective way to understand real-life events are equivalent to constructing and learning symbolic lessons embedded in a continuous process of our experiential, both intellectual and ethical, growth. Because experience is not confined to an individual Cogito of the Cartesian subject but is sociocultural and always involves the other, the integration of such a generic “other” is paramount for understanding and revaluation of such experience. That is what I call the ethics of integration.

Conclusion: The Ethics of Integration as Becoming-Other The ethics of integration overcomes the dualistic split inherent in simple “moral algebra” with its traditional binary division into “good” versus “evil” or “right” versus “wrong.” It enables us to move beyond good and evil and toward the integration of those habitual dualistic opposites that are still deeply ingrained in the individual and cultural consciousness. In this respect, an apparently evil event such as the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, when revaluated critically and reflectively for the purpose of learning from this abject experience, might serve a positive learning function in the educational and pedagogic terms. Learning that takes place in experience is founded on discovering, as both Dewey and Deleuze were saying, some previously unknown connections that, sure enough, can transform our old habits of the mind and “challenge deeply held beliefs or ways of life” (Noddings, 2006, p. 1). In the framework of the pedagogy of the concept, such abject event may provide a creative opportunity for our understanding of its

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significance and meaning, thus confirming the potential best in the other within the overall integrative dynamics of becoming-other. Indeed, becoming-other is by all means a condition of possibility despite (or perhaps due to) the fact that it often represents “the harshest exercise in depersonalization” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 6) embedded in Kristeva’s abject experiences. Contrasting “the” philosophical method with Creek paideia, Deleuze (1983) comments that culture usually experiences violence that serves as a force for the formation of our thinking and refers to Plato’s famous metaphor of the cave: a prisoner is forced to start thinking. Genuine philosophy – and, by implication, genuine education – must always act critically and ahead of time, transcending the present and capturing at once what was before and what would have been after. Yet, the present-becoming is extremely significant precisely because it makes philosophy untimely: for Deleuze, it is our present “experimentation on ourselves [that] is our only identity, our single chance for all the combinations which inhabit us” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 11). For experience to become genuinely educational, lessons should focus on topics connected to real life and should acknowledge abject experiences as important learning experiences. It was yet Spinoza who exposed sorrow and Nietzsche who exposed the paradoxical power of the negative defining the point of conversion of the negative as transmutation akin to Kristeva’s joyful revolt. Under the “subtle . . . reinterpretation” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 157) of the Hegelian contradiction and its resolution as the negation of the negation, it is sorrow that can produce joy within the creative dynamics of becoming-other. A transformative educational experience cannot be but devoted to discovering in practice novel concepts and meanings for experience; this transmutation of values is what makes the cultural pedagogy of hope and the ethics of integration both possible and necessary. Teachers should be exposed to the fundamentals of this model of pedagogy and ethics both at preservice level and in the form of professional development so as to incorporate it in their classrooms. It is clear that classical ethical theories based on rigid dual oppositions that, supposedly, can never be reconciled because of their unit of analysis reduced to an individual agency became quite inadequate in the twenty-first-century global culture. The ethics of integration, as a follow-up to the ethics of care, emphasizes moral interdependence and “rejects the notion of a truly autonomous moral agent . . . As teachers, we are as dependent on our students as they are on us” (Noddings, 1998, p. 196). The focus of such an integrative educational process consists not only in the knowledge of facts but in the self-reflective evaluation and revaluation of experience, thus blending the creation of meanings into conceptual understanding. Very much in a Deleuzian spirit, Noddings comments that well-educated teachers should help students in understanding that knowledge cannot be adequately described as a set of easily retrievable answers to unambiguously stated questions. Instead, much real knowledge consists of being able to develop capacities to figure things out, to be unafraid to inquire, to experiment in practice, and to connect with others confirming the best in our actual and potential relationships. Becoming-other would have involved self-becoming-autonomous as its own ideal limit in a continuous experiential and experimental process of our learning in/by events and developing in practice the ethics of integration.

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Learning from Policies and Practices in Australia Libby Tudball

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Educating the Next Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of the Policy Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shifting Definitions and Approaches to Education for Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ResourceSmart Schools Program in Victoria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning from School Experience: Translating Goals into Models of Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modeling Sustainable Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whole School Case Studies of Education for Sustainability: Learning from School Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Authentic Learning Approaches to Education for Sustainability and Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning from Experience: Recommendations for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Values education continues to be an important element of student learning, but in recent years, there has been increased attention in Australia to connecting the development of student wellbeing, education for sustainability (EfS), and personal and social learning, in order to prepare students for uncertain futures. EfS provides an opportunity for students to clarify their understanding of the diverse issues related to sustainability which impact their present and future wellbeing. It can address the critical question: how can schools engage students in the challenges of our time? This chapter traces the policy underpinnings of EfS and discusses important distinctions between environmental education, approaches to EfS, and the implications for student wellbeing in these times. Whole-school approaches to EfS can develop the critical awareness and practical skills students L. Tudball (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_53

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need to take actions focused on a sustainable future through authentic learning and collaboration with the broader community. Examples of programs in Australian schools are discussed which empower students to be engaged and able to take action on real-world issues including climate change, loss of biodiversity, and food security. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the experience of EfS through contemporary research, which makes recommendations to develop young people’s wellbeing and hope, through tangible actions focused on a more sustainable future. Keywords

Wellbeing · Sustainability · Policy · Practice

Introduction In the past two decades, there has been an increase in policies, research, and practices that recognize the links between values education, education for sustainability (EfS), and student wellbeing (Barratt-Hacking et al., 2010; Catholic Education Melbourne, 2016; Sustainability Victoria, 2020; UNESCO, 2021, 2022). EfS develops students’ knowledge, skills, values, and world views necessary for them to act in ways that contribute to more sustainable ways of living (Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance, 2014). It provides opportunities for students to clarify their understanding of diverse issues related to sustainability which impact their present and future wellbeing and empowers them to envision and take action for a more sustainable future. However, in global research published by UNESCO (2021) on how environmental issues are being integrated into education, the findings showed that more than 47% of countries had no national frameworks for EfS, in spite of international recognition of its importance. The studies found that countries in regions most vulnerable to climate change are more likely to include climate change content in their national curriculum frameworks, as opposed to those largely responsible for the emissions that contribute to the cause of climate change. This chapter discusses the evolution of EfS policies and practices and their connections to student wellbeing in Australian schools. It shows that while there is now an explicit focus on EfS in the curriculum, and in diverse programs that make connections to whole-school approaches to sustainability, student wellbeing, voice, and agency, these efforts require a continuing emphasis to build young peoples’ capacity to meet the challenges of these times.

Educating the Next Generation More than two decades ago in Australia, in the preface to Teaching for Uncertain Futures: The Open Book Scenarios Project, Headley Beare argued that in relation to EfS, “business as usual is not a survival option. More particularly, schools cannot

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afford to be complacent, as they are responsible for educating the next generation of the world’s citizens” (Freeman et al., 2008). In his wake-up call for educators, Beare said that in the future, “students will be globally oriented in a way we never conceived of in the 20th century, and what they must learn at school has changed dramatically. . . Their lifestyle patterns will need to be radically overhauled too” (p. viii). In more recent years, there has been increased attention on connecting the development of student wellbeing, EfS, and personal and social learning. Since 2015, for example, “Sustainability” has been a cross-curriculum priority for Australian schooling. It is future oriented, focusing on how students can learn about protecting environments and creating a more ecologically and socially just world. The curriculum recognizes the relevance and interdependence of environmental, social, cultural, and economic considerations. It also expects that students will be engaged in “appreciating and respecting the diversity of views and values that influence sustainable development, and participating critically and acting creatively in determining more sustainable ways of living” (ACARA, 2022). The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022), Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, demonstrates an even more urgent global need for EfS, so young people can understand and respond to issues related to sustainability. The report reiterates global scientific consensus that global warming is real, is caused by human activities, and presents serious challenges to the world. To keep the temperature of the planet under control – limiting its increase to 1.5 – the science dictates that by the second half of the century, we should be producing less carbon than we take out of the atmosphere. This is what reaching “net zero” means. Put simply, the resources that middle-class Europeans, Australians, and North Americans currently use in their lives and work are not sustainable. Schools must empower students to be involved in action for a more sustainable future through building their knowledge, skills, and capacity to understand issues including climate change, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, global poverty, and inequality. For students’ wellbeing, they are entitled to a curriculum that includes a focus on sustainability and empowers them to address related issues such as car dependence, water conservation, and overuse of natural resources, as core areas of their learning experiences. More importantly, research has found that where schools develop whole-school approaches to EfS, which include engagement with all stakeholders, including school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and community organizations, there are positive benefits for students’ overall wellbeing (Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance, 2014; Barry et al., 2017; Sustainability Victoria, 2020). International recognition of the need to dramatically increase the development of whole-school approaches to education for sustainability (EfS), and of the need to make connections with the goals and imperatives for values education and student wellbeing, is continuing to develop across the world (Barratt-Hacking et al., 2010; Fien & Tilbury, 2002; Henderson & Tilbury, 2004; Reid, 2021; Sustainability Victoria, 2020). At the very minimum, school curricula should provide opportunities for students to come to recognize and believe in the need for global changes in lifestyles and consumption to ensure their own wellbeing and a more positive and

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sustainable future. This generation of young people will unavoidably be critical decision makers in terms of stewardship of the earth. To be able to take an active part in sustainable development, students need to understand the concept of global interdependence and have the capacity to value empathy, equity, personal responsibility, social justice, and social action. Increasingly, climate change action movements are being led by young people, who express frustration at the lack of government action on climate change. Young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s wake-up call on climate inaction, “The world is on fire!” has resonated with thousands of young people around the world and led to the global School Strikes for Climate in in 2020, focused on calls for a swift transition away from fossil fuels to alternate forms of energy, in order to ensure future wellbeing. In schools and classrooms worldwide, there is also a growing development of “Green teams,” environmental clubs, campaigns for action including rubbish-free school lunch weeks, Lights Out, and recycling, and instances of programs aiming for greater levels of sustainable behaviors. There is also increasing evidence of schools reaching out to make connections with local community action. There is much to be learned from these school experiences and actions, particularly from sustainable development initiatives that have been developed and run by students, who can then see the authenticity and purpose of these programs for their own lives and wellbeing. The 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021 also reiterated the urgency for school communities and global education authorities to implement goals for sustainability and to model actions to encompass respect for the environment, an ethic of responsibility, care, social concern, and the development of attitudes, values, and actions to prepare young people for a lifetime of sustainable living (UNESCO, 2021). Jensen and Schnack (1997) argued that inspiring students to take action based on their knowledge and beliefs about improving the environment is critical for their future. It is only through shared values in relation to EfS that action can occur in local, national, and global contexts and at the highest levels of governments and decision-making processes. Issues of natural resource management, land-use planning, city planning, building management, and planning for ecological conservation from local to global levels need to be integral into school programs. Students deserve the opportunity to consider these issues through the lens of their own personal, household, and school levels through studies of issues such as consumption and unsustainable carbon footprints, as well as through global education programs. In Australia, the national policy document, the Alice Springs (Mpartnwe) Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2019), includes several emphases related to EfS in stating that students should be involved in learning to ensure they can develop as: Confident and creative individuals who. . . • ‘have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, cultural, spiritual and physical wellbeing • develop personal values and attributes such as honesty, empathy, loyalty, responsibility and respect for others • are resilient and develop the skills and strategies they need to tackle current and future challenges’

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Active and informed members of the community who. . . • act with moral and ethical integrity • have empathy for the circumstances of others and work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments’ (p. 5)

These goals demonstrate a fusion between goals for citizenship and values education, environmental concerns, and EfS. In this chapter, it is argued that to ensure the wellbeing of young people now and in their future lives, students deserve a range of opportunities to be involved in learning activities that empower them to clarify their own understanding and beliefs about sustainability. Well-documented research in values education and EfS demonstrate that school programs can make a powerful difference in students’ attitudes and behaviors (Henderson & Tudball, 2016; Reid, 2021; Sustainability Victoria, 2020). The imperatives to build the efficacy of school programs in this field are recognized. Many recommendations from the COP26 (Conference of the Parties) United Nations annual climate change conference in Glasgow (2021) called for renewed vigor in the growth of school programs focused on EfS. This chapter provides a brief overview of the journey policy makers and schools have already undertaken to ensure links between values education, wellbeing, and EfS in Australia and other nations and discusses what can be learned from different models and case studies of school experience to inform actions for the future. In addition, what the literature reveals about an explicit focus on EfS through various layers of policy, school programs, curriculum, and pedagogy is analyzed. Finally, recommendations are made to inform future programs and policy.

Overview of the Policy Context In 1992, world leaders met in Rio de Janeiro to sign Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit. This international plan was a call to action to promote sustainable development at international, national, and local levels. It was a critical milestone in the history of sustainable development, as it was the world’s largest environmental gathering. UNECD and UNESCO policy developed from this meeting explicitly stated that: “Education is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behavior consistent with sustainable development, and for effective public participation in decision-making” (UNCED, 1992: Chap. 36: 3). Formal and non-formal education programs were seen as being indispensable to sustainable development. After the 1992 Earth Summit, it became obvious that the resolution of the conflict between economics and the environment could not happen unless there was also a clear integration of the social and community agendas of equity, place, and engagement. The sustainability agenda became defined by the need to integrate the three main areas of political life: economic, environmental, and social (UNCED, 1992).

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Ten years later, in 2002, the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg was held. Heads of government from all over the world reconvened to assess the progress made on sustainable development since the Earth Summit. In 2005, as a response to the international attention Education for Sustainable Development was receiving, the United Nations General Assembly declared the period from 2005 to 2014 as the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). This resolution began to promote the need to reorientate the role of education within the sustainability agenda. This shift called into question the dominant approach of educating about the environment and instead reflected the need for educating for sustainability. The latter seeks to engage people in critical reflection of current lifestyles and actions and to be able to make informed decisions and changes toward a more sustainable world that empowers “people of all ages to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future” (UNESCO, 2002, p. 5). Since this time, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has continued to urge the governments of each nation to be the main agencies for facilitating and integrating a curriculum of sustainable development into schools (UNESCO, 2003; UNESCO, 2021). In 2015, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” recognized the immense challenges to sustainable development caused by social, economic, and environmental challenges, as well as enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth, and power. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, is a major concern. Global health threats, more frequent and intense natural disasters, spiraling conflict, violent extremism, terrorism and related humanitarian crises, and forced displacement of people threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. As a result, UNESCO maintains its focus on strengthening international cooperation toward the development and sharing of innovative education for sustainable development programs, practices, and policies (UNESCO, 2021).

Shifting Definitions and Approaches to Education for Sustainability Many approaches to environmental education (EE) focus on students having positive experiences within the environment and to learn values focused on appreciating and protecting the environment. However, while these strategies are important for young people, awareness raising and experiences in nature alone are not sufficient. Schools need to develop a range of approaches across their curriculum and through links to the community. Nearly two decades ago, increasing concerns related to global environmental degradation, irrefutable evidence of climate change, and ecological damage, alongside concerns connected to increasing consumerism, and widening social and economic divides in the world, led to educators broadening the concept of education for sustainability. The National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools (AGDEH, 2005) was the policy that led to renewed emphasis for students to learn with a focus: “about, in and for the environment” (p. 6). This is one way of organizing learning within an environmental education program. The Statement defines education about the environment as focusing on students’

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understanding of important facts, concepts, and theories. Clearly, students do require a strong knowledge base drawing, for example, on the disciplines of science, geography, and politics. Education in the environment involves students in direct contact with places such as a beach, forest, street, or park, to develop awareness and concern for the environment that is experience based. Education for the environment aims to promote a willingness and ability to adopt lifestyles that are compatible with the wise use of environmental resources. Henderson and Tilbury (2004) argued that the difference between EfS and the more traditional approaches to EE is that EfS: Focuses sharply on more complex social issues, such as the links between environmental quality, human equality, human rights and peace, and their underpinning politics. This requires citizens to have skills in critical enquiry and systemic thinking, to explore the complexity and implications of sustainability. (p. 8)

In Henderson and Tilbury’s (2004) important study of Whole-School Approaches to Sustainability: An International Review of Sustainable School Programs, they argued that EfS requires: A new pedagogy which sees learners develop skills and competencies for partnerships, participation and action. This shift has implications for how to conceptualise and approach issues such as: school governance, pedagogical approaches, curriculum, extra-curricula activities, resource management, school grounds and community partnerships. (p. 8)

Central to this view is the idea that every level of school planning and goals should be audited against and respond to the EfS imperatives, and teachers, school leaders, students, and parents should work together to define their core beliefs and to collaborate in the achievement of their shared goals. In the Educating for a Sustainable Future: National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools, published by the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (AGDEH, 2005), education for sustainability is defined as involving: Approaches to teaching and learning that integrate goals for conservation, social justice, understanding cultural diversity, appropriate development and democracy, into a vision and a mission of personal and social change. This involves developing the kinds of civic values and skills that empower all citizens to be leaders in the transition to a sustainable future. (p. 10)

The long-term goals of environmental education for sustainability, as stated in the National Environmental Education Statement (AGDEH, 2005), include developing the capacities of students to: • understand and value the interdependence of social, cultural, economic and ecological dimensions at local, national and global levels; • reflect critically upon how this interdependence affects communities, workplaces, families and individuals and be able to make appropriate decisions; • develop attitudes and skills which are conducive to the achievement of a sustainable future;

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• appreciate and respect the intrinsic value of the whole environment and a sense of the sacred; • develop an ethic of personal responsibility and stewardship towards all aspects of the environment; and • participate as active and involved citizens in building a sustainable future. (p. 8)

The ResourceSmart Schools Program in Victoria In 2020, Sustainability Victoria, the organization administering the Victorian State Government’s ResourceSmart Schools (RSS) program, published findings from research that studied the wellbeing impacts of the program. The study included 117 leaders and 2200 students across 123 schools. It provided evidence of clear links between whole-school and student engagement in the program and their development of positive views about sustainability. In RSS schools, leaders, teachers, students, parents, and community members including local government and local industry are involved in learning about and implementing strategies that empower them to adopt whole-school approaches to minimizing waste, saving energy and water, improving biodiversity, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. RSS take actions to: deliver measurable environmental, financial, educational and social outcomes through improvements in the management of resources and integrating education for sustainability into participating schools’ curriculum and daily operations. The overall objective of RSS is to “help schools benefit from embedding sustainability in everything they do. (Sustainability Victoria, 2020). Students participate in an action learning – or learning by doing – process. RSS members are also often involved in EfS activities such as WasteWise, Waterwatch, Waterwise, Landcare and the Reef Guardian Schools Programme. As part of RSS, teachers can receive access to professional development delivered through supporting agencies and environmental education centers, and parents are encouraged to be actively involved. The RSS program recognizes that school leaders and teachers must be able to see how they can develop EfS across different learning areas, so they offer a range of advice to develop both theme-based and specific discipline applications. In English and Humanities, for example, students can begin to understand the complexity of issues and the role of human values in how different people live and how institutions can operate for more sustainable futures. Through English studies, students can analyze contemporary issues to decide whether they are complex and wicked or simple; they can be encouraged to consider ethical stances and can explore the importance of community visions for change. There is also a critical role for EfS in the sciences in helping students to describe the physical world and how it works as well as being the basis for understanding technology. The sciences develop an understanding of the processes that enable us to manage the atmosphere, oceans, agriculture, forestry, and cities. Studies in this area also bring into the curricula opportunities to study technologies, including renewable energy in physics, agricultural issues like salinity in geography, biodiversity issues in biology, new battery technologies in chemistry, and peak oil issues and geothermal power in geology. It is

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also important that EfS is integrated into personal and social learning and health and human development studies. RSS-participating schools have reported reductions in waste collection of up to 80%, reductions in water consumption of up to 60%, and savings on energy consumption of 20% with commensurate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Schools are also achieving financial savings and broader social and educational benefits from increased school pride and students’ interest in learning. The Sustainability Victoria (2020) study found that being part of an RSS helped students feel: happy that their school cares about helping the environment, proud that their school cares about the future, safe and healthy, knowing that their school maintains a clean green environment, motivated to care for nature, and empowered by having a voice, taking action, and making a difference. (p. 4)

Of the 117 participating leaders, 86% agreed that the RSS program helped to develop a positive school community, 79% agreed that the program supported the social and emotional development of students, and 87% believed it was of moderate to major importance in promoting student wellbeing (p. 5). However, while there is evidence of schools explicitly embedding EfS into their school vision and goals, through involvement in RSS or other programs, there is still a great deal of work to be done in schools who are yet to recognize the importance of these initiatives. While some teachers are passionately committed to integrating EfS into existing curricula, others see occasional extra-curricular activities, clubs, and special programs as the way to develop an understanding of sustainable development concepts. In other schools, the focus is still more on teaching and learning about the environment, whereas others have moved beyond the delivery of information about environmental concerns to see sustainable development as a transformative tool. These schools are more likely to facilitate the involvement of students in teaching and learning pedagogies that actively involve students in making choices, so they can see tangible evidence of their actions and beliefs making a difference, through, for example, reducing their energy use through monitoring consumption or becoming involved in community-based programs such as improving the local environment. These approaches are more likely to lead to the achievement of the Victorian curriculum, with the emphasis that students should understand that, “all life forms, including human life, are connected through eco-systems on which they depend for their wellbeing and survival” (VCAA, 2017, p. 1.)

Learning from School Experience: Translating Goals into Models of Action Having explicit goals, policies, and expectations driving action for sustainability in schools is core to successful implementation of the goals. However, it is how policy is translated into practice at the level of school implementation that is vital. A number of education theorists have described action competence as a critical method in teaching students about sustainable development (Jensen & Schnack, 1997;

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Lundegard & Wickman, 2007). Action implies a set of intentional behaviors, and competence implies being ready, willing, and able to inspire change (Jensen & Schnack, 1997). Rauch (2002) agreed that: Action competence aims to promote pupils’ readiness and abilities to concern themselves with environmental issues in a democratic manner, by developing their own criteria for decision-making and behaviour, and to prevent pupils from adopting patterns of thinking without reflection. (p. 45)

Teachers’ role in action competence is facilitating and motivating students to take positive action in promoting sustainable development. Lundegard and Wickman (2007 as paraphrased in Jaspar, 2008) argue that: Action competence goes beyond simply educating students to place their juice boxes in the correct container. That is an act with no opportunity for critical thinking on the students’ part. For it to be deemed action competence, students need to have the ability to point out conflicts that underlie environmental problems before they can engage in critical action. (Jaspar, 2008, p. 12)

Barrett (2006) agrees that “taking action is often not part of the schooling process” (p. 503), yet it is a necessary goal for education for sustainable development. Jensen and Schnack (1997) believe students need opportunities to develop a more sophisticated framework of thinking and acting for their own wellbeing, “so they are capable of envisioning alternative ways of development, and able to participate in actions according to these objectives” (p. 472). Jensen and Schnack (1997) argue that action competence is directly linked to the empowerment of students. Students in the Dromana cluster of primary and secondary schools involved in the Students for the Biosphere project in Australia (DEEWR, 2008) worked with highly experienced environmental educators to firstly increase their knowledge about EfS and were then asked to choose what elements of sustainability are important for their lives now and in the future. They were able to take ownership of a range of action projects and with the support of their teachers achieved success in activities including a kitchen garden healthy eating program, a beach clean-up project, a link up with indigenous communities who share a common interest in the impact of rubbish in the seas, and a buddy program to increase student wellbeing.

Modeling Sustainable Practices Higgs and McMillan (2006) argue that schools must model sustainable practices because inconsistency “in the practice or culture of schools confuses students” (p. 40). They admit however, that this isn’t easy, because: Advice is available to schools on incorporating sustainability into their curricula and on greening their facilities, but there is limited concrete guidance on how to shape an entire school community that models sustainability through its systems and actions. (p. 40)

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Further action is necessary to provide advice on how teachers and schools can provide living models for sustainable development. Higgs and McMillan (2006) suggest practical strategies including, for example, “using other more energyefficient modes of transportation, eating locally grown produce, decreasing consumerism, participating in community service projects, composting and recycling, reducing waste, conserving energy, fostering democratic classroom environments, using restorative conflict-resolution, and encouraging opinion sharing” (pp. 41–43). According to Higgs and McMillan (2006), when students observe their teachers engaging in such actions, they are more likely to think about adopting such practices. In Australia, service learning has been one sustainable practice which schools have introduced to develop students’ responsibility and respect for others and the environment that can be sustained lifelong. Some schools have introduced schemes in which students have become responsible for taking care of plants, kitchen gardens, and healthy eating projects. Another school developed an extensive network of “tribes” who take care of distinct environmental aspects such as water and electricity conservation, litter reduction, and keeping the corridors, playground areas, and paths neat and uncluttered. Students are able to put the values into practice in functional and purposeful ways while making a meaningful contribution to the school environment (Lovat et al., 2009).

Whole School Case Studies of Education for Sustainability: Learning from School Experience The Lance Holt School in Western Australia has a long history and tradition of focusing on values, EfS, and student wellbeing, through connections with the local and wider communities. Teachers continue to develop multiple integrated learning approaches to using their local beach as a learning resource, as demonstrated in the following story: On the wall of the Year 2/3 classroom is a huge blue mural featuring Bathers Beach. The children have regular excursions to the beach and the school community has a very special relationship with it. Bathers Beach is a sustainability hotspot with many cultural, social, economic and ecological values. Only a 10 minute walk away, it is the ideal outdoors classroom. Spontaneous or planned projects involve litter collection and analysis, sand sculptures, playing on the sculptural playground, school art exhibitions and viewings at Kidogo Arthouse, botanical drawings, painting, dune revegetation, mapping exercises, snorkelling, intertidal biology, coiling baskets from seaweed, interviewing local shopkeepers, exploring the local fish markets and cafes, and visiting the adjacent Port. The children have been active stewards of Bathers Beach for many years, and were first officially welcomed there by Nyungar Elder Mrs Marie Taylor in 2002. The mural on the wall of the Year 2/3 classroom features a variety of coloured animals swimming in the sea or living adjacent to it, and people on the beach. The children have cut out these figures and stuck them on, together with little thought bubbles they have created about what the animals need from the people, and what the people would like to offer the animals, like care and protection. This type of project fosters children’s empathy with the broader ecosystem and

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helps enable children to think about a world in which other sentient beings are at the centre of the moral sphere. At the same school, the Year 6/7 teacher, Seth, approaches real-world learning from another direction: Displayed in Seth’s classroom are models of passive solar houses, designed and built by the children as part of Seth’s now on-going work in sustainability. Previously the children themselves ran a sustainability conference for the school community. The children wanted to take sustainability further into the community. In the process they engaged with their parents about rainwater tanks, organic gardening, worm farming, solar ovens and recycling. Some children encouraged their parents to take on sustainability activities at home; others went on to write to politicians about local developments they were unhappy with; or to join voluntary bushcare groups. (Lovat et al., 2009, pp. 72–23)

In more recent times, Lance Holt School continues to demonstrate that when teachers, parents, and students work together across the whole school with clearly defined goals related to education for sustainability, valuable, authentic, and purposeful learning can occur.

Authentic Learning Approaches to Education for Sustainability and Wellbeing Integrated and authentic approaches to EfS have been developed in response to global calls for reorienting the management and practice of formal education, in order to contribute to building students’ capacity to understand the challenges of these times and to ensure their wellbeing (Sustainability Victoria, 2020; UNESCO, 2002). In their review of approaches to EfS, Henderson and Tilbury (2004) found that students need opportunities to draw on a range of knowledge so they can understand complex issues. This requires cross-curriculum approaches to learning rather than compartmentalizing curriculum into traditional subject disciplines. Many of the most challenging problems facing the world including climate change, dwindling resources, declining eco-diversity, and global poverty can be explored and investigated by students through inquiry methodology and studies of critical questions. But in addition, students can be engaged in investigating authentic issues in their local communities, through, for example, active engagement with local youth programs, local pre-schools, and activities such as Clean up Australia Day. There are often opportunities for schools to work with local groups and organizations including the Scouts, Rotary, Lions Clubs, sporting, or environmental groups. Students’ social and life experiences can be broadened through examples of positive action in diverse local communities, for instance, by helping in homework programs for recently arrived refugees. Student-initiated projects for local community involvement in particular can develop individual responsibility and motivation. Many studies have also found that where schools provide learning opportunities for students to develop a relationship with nature, there are positive links to two indicators of child wellbeing: self-satisfaction and pro-social behavior (Whitten

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et al., 2018). This can provide students with a sense of purpose and can enhance their self-esteem, happiness, and school connectedness (Sustainability Victoria, 2020). Spending time outdoors and connecting with nature have also been connected to higher resilience to stress, positive mental health, and overall wellbeing (Capaldi et al., 2014). Interventions that transmit a vision of the school community as aware and empathetic toward global issues can lead to an enhancement of student tolerance and collective participation, for example, through fund-raising for victims of natural disasters or through involvement in overseas projects such as Round Square and International Baccalaureate schools’ commitment to service learning. In one urban Australian school, students finance the staff and buildings for a school in Bangladesh, and when the Delta regularly floods, they start all over again. Students are humbled when they realize how privileged their lives are in comparison with the children in the small village community school, and they realize how well off they are in terms of their life comforts and opportunities. In Western Australia, every school is expected to be engaged in some elements of sustainability/education for sustainability through, for example, utilities management, bushland and dune protection activities, reconciliation, and other social and wellbeing programs. Sustainable Schools WA supports schools to incorporate this existing work into a whole-school plan. The Ribbons of Blue Program, which enables students to measure water quality in local streams, combine the data into water sheds with other school data, analyze the problems along with experts, talk to communities about solutions, and deliver their report with suggested actions to local politicians (along with how they will contribute themselves). The same kind of approach can be taken to other “wicked problems,” with a local focus and a global context.

Learning from Experience: Recommendations for the Future The policies, programs, and practices discussed in this chapter encourage schools to develop a vision, goals, and pedagogies for EfS that are values-focused, studentcentered, and based on authentic and meaningful learning that can also enhance student wellbeing. In the Final Report of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 2 in Australia, we were reminded that: Effective values education uses pedagogies that mirror the values being taught. . . . the most effective learning experiences in values education are generally values-explicit, student-centred and open-ended, rather than values-implicit, teacher-centred and closed. 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)

The report found that these emphases lead to “observable changes for the student, the teacher and the learning environment. These include calmer classrooms and

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happier students, who are empowered, engaged, more responsible, confident and positive about their place in the school and wider community” (DEEWR, 2008, p. 10). The report also notes that: Values-focused pedagogies are required to support students to live as enabled and resilient individuals in the real world of the twenty-first century: a world beset with climate change, personal and societal insecurities, shifting certainties, rapidly changing forms of social interaction and intensifying intercultural and interglobal realignments . . . 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. (pp. 10–11)

A further way for schools to move ahead with EfS is to commit the school community to a “sustainability makeover” and, from this audit, create a range of projects that can involve all students. More than a decade ago, in Living Sustainably: The Australian Government’s National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability (AGDEWHA, 2009) seven principles were outlined as core elements of EfS that are still important for whole-school approaches: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

‘Transformation and change’ – not just skills. ‘Education for all and lifelong learning’ – learning spaces for sustainability. ‘Systems thinking’ – to understand the connections involved in the integration. ‘Envisioning a better future’ – this needs to be a shared vision. ‘Critical thinking and reflection’ – both are needed to challenge accepted views. ‘Participation’ – this is a shared task. ‘Partnerships for change’ – new kinds of partnerships are needed. (p. 9)

Conclusion This chapter has shown that EfS is high on the global agenda and there are substantial policies and programs focused on connecting student wellbeing and sustainability that should continue in these times. Over two decades ago, Cogan and Derricott (2000) reported on an international study that identified what knowledge, skills, and values young people will need for the future. There is still a synergy between the findings from their research and the kinds of capacities young people require to lead more sustainable lives in the future through whole-school, explicitly planned EfS teaching and learning. Karsten et al. (2000) recommended that young people will need broad knowledge, skills, and values to enable their: • ability to look at and approach problems as a member of a global society; • ability to work with others in a cooperative way and to take responsibility for one’s roles/ duties within society; • ability to understand, accept and tolerate cultural differences; • capacity to think in a critical and systemic way; • willingness to resolve conflict in a non-violent manner; • willingness to change one’s lifestyle and consumption habits to protect the environment;

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• ability to be sensitive towards and to defend human rights (for example rights of women and ethnic minorities); and • willingness and ability to participate in politics at local, national and international levels. (p. 97)

To achieve these goals, teachers require professional learning in the field of EfS, and school leaders need to support and initiate participatory approaches that engage all members of their communities in purposeful local action. Most importantly, young people should have opportunities to learn, get involved, take action, and be leaders in education for sustainability in their families, schools, and communities, since it is their future and their wellbeing that are at stake.

References ACARA. (2022). Sustainability. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/crosscurriculum-priorities/sustainability/ AGDEH. (2005). Educating for a sustainable future: A national environmental education statement for Australian schools. Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (AGDEH); Curriculum Corporation. www.environment.gov.au/education/publications/sustain able-future.html AGDEWHA. (2009). Living sustainably: The Australian Government’s National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability. Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (AGDEWHA). http://www.environment.gov.au/education/publications/pubs/national-actionplan.pdf Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance. (2014). Education for sustainability and the Australian curriculum project: Final report for research phases 1–3. Australian Education for Sustainability Alliance. Barratt-Hacking, E., Scott, B., & Lee, E. (2010). Evidence of impact of sustainable schools. University of Bath. Center for Research in Education and the Environment. Barrett, M. J. (2006). Education for the environment: Action competence, becoming, and story. Environmental Education Research, 12, 503–511. Barry, M. M., Clarke, A. M., & Dowling, K. (2017). Promoting social and emotional well-being in schools. Health Education, 117(5), 434–451. Capaldi, C. A., Dopko, R. L., & Zelenski, J. M. (2014). The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 976. Catholic Education Melbourne. (2016). Education for sustainability in the archdiocese of Melbourne. Cogan, J., & Derricott, R. (Eds.). (2000). Citizenship for the 21st century: An international perspective on education. Kogan Page. DEEWR. (2008). At the heart of what we do: Values education at the Centre of schooling – The final report of the values education good practice schools project – Stage 2. Australian Government, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR); Curriculum Corporation. http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/values/val_vegps2_final_report,26142.html Education Council. (2019). Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. http://www. teachingaustralia.edu.au/ta/webdav/site/tasite/shared/OBS/Teaching%20for%20Uncertain% 20Futuresfeb08.pdf, https://www.dese.gov.au/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration/ resources/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration Fien, J., & Tilbury, D. (2002). The global challenge of sustainability. In D. Tilbury, R. B. Stevenson, J. Fien, & D. Schreuder (Eds.), Education and sustainability: Responding to the global challenge (pp1–12). Commission on Education and Communication, IUCN.

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Freeman, O., Watson, R., Bawden, R., Champion, M., Dare, H., Lloyd, B., Williams, M., et al. (2008). Teaching for uncertain futures: The Open Book Scenarios Project. Teaching Australia – Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. http://www.teachingaustralia.edu.au/ ta/webdav/site/tasite/shared/OBS/Teaching%20for%20Uncertain%20Futuresfeb08.pdf Henderson, K., & Tilbury, D. (2004). Whole-school approaches to sustainability: An international review of sustainable school programs. [Report prepared by the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES) for The Department of the Environment and Heritage, Australian Government]. Macquarie University. http://www.aries.mq.edu.au/projects/whole_ school/files/international_review.pdf Henderson, D., & Tudball, E. (2016). Democratic and participatory citizenship: youth action for sustainability in Australia. Asian Education and Development Studies, 5(1), 519. https://doi.org/ 10.1108/AEDS-06-2015-0028 Higgs, L., & McMillan, V. M. (2006). Teaching through modelling: Four schools’ experiences in sustainability education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 38, 39–53. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Jaspar, J. C. (2008). Teaching for sustainable development: Teachers’ perceptions. Unpublished Master of Education Thesis, University of Sashkatchewan, Saskatoon, Sashkatchewan. http:// library2.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-02042009-212522/unrestricted/J_Jaspar_Thesis.pdf Jensen, B. B., & Schnack, K. (1997). The action competence approach in environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 12, 471–486. Karsten, S., Kubow, P., Matrai, Z., & Pityanuwat, S. (2000). Challenges facing the 21st century citizen: Views of policy makers. In J. Cogan & R. Derricott (Eds.), Citizenship for the 21st century: An international perspective on education (pp. 93–114). Kogan Page. 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. DEEWR. http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/values/val_articles,8884.html Lundegard, I., & Wickman, P. (2007). Conflicts of interest: An indispensable element of education for sustainable development. Environmental Education Research, 13, 1–15. Rauch, F. (2002). The potential of education for sustainable development for reform in schools. Environmental Education Research, 8, 43–51. Reid, A. (2021). Declaring a climate emergency. In K.-A. Allen, A. Reupert, & L. Oades (Eds.), Building better schools with evidence-based policy: Adaptable policy for teachers and school leaders (1st ed., pp. 247–254). Routledge. Sustainability Victoria. (2020). Resource smart schools and wellbeing main study. https://assets. sustainability.vic.gov.au/susvic/Report-ResourceSmart-Schools-and-Wellbeing-main-study.pdf UNCED. (1992). Agenda 21. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). UNESCO. (2002). Education for sustainability – From Rio to Johannesburg: Lessons learnt from a decade of commitment. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Education Sector. UNESCO. (2003). United Nations decade of education for sustainable development (2005–2014): Framework for the international implementation scheme. UNESCO. UNESCO. (2021). Getting every school climate-ready: how countries are integrating climate change issues in education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379591 UNESCO. (2022). Learn for our planet: a global review of how environmental issues are integrated in education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377362 VCAA. (2017). Learning about sustainability. Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Whitten, T., Stevens, R., Ructtinger, L., Tzoumakis, S., Green, M. J., Laurens, K. R., & Carr, V. J. (2018). Connection to the natural environment and wellbeing in middle childhood. Ecopsychology, 10(4), 270–279.

Teacher Practice and Students’ Sense of Belonging

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Addressing Students’ Personal and Academic Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Personal Support (Teacher as Person) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Academic Support (Teacher as Instructional Leader) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Establishing a Climate of Support (Teacher as Model and Facilitator) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Testing the Theory: Changing Classroom Conditions to Change Student Behavior . . . . . . . . . . Understanding Teacher Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Understanding Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emotions and Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Accountability Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

Substantial research indicates that students’ experience of belonging in school contributes favorably to their emotional well-being as well as to a range of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes that enhance learning (Osterman, Rev Educ Res 70:323–367, 2000). The need for relatedness is a basic psychological need. When students experience belonging in the school community, their needs for relatedness are met in ways that affect their attitudes and their behavior. They like school and are more engaged in learning. They have more positive attitudes toward themselves and others and are more likely to interact with others – peers and adults – in positive and supportive ways. They are more accepting of authority and more empathetic to others. Conversely, the sense of rejection is K. F. Osterman (*) Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_54

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associated with emotional distress as well as a full range of behavioral, social, and academic problems. Keywords

Teacher practice · Belonging · Learning · Attitudinal outcomes · Behavioral outcomes

Introduction For educators, an important part of this research is the understanding that children’s sense of belonging is linked to their actual experience in school. While familial background certainly affects students’ emotional well-being, the sense of relatedness is contextual; to be highly motivated in a particular classroom, the students’ psychological needs must be addressed in that specific classroom. Although peer relationships have a strong effect on children’s attitude toward school – and themselves – the research is quite consistent that teachers have the strongest and most direct effect on students’ psychological experience in the classroom. From my earlier review of research, I concluded that teachers directly influence students’ sense of belonging through interpersonal support, autonomy support, and methods of instruction that support positive interaction with peers. Additionally, I concluded that teachers affect students’ sense of belonging indirectly through their influence on the nature of peer relationships within the classroom. The purpose of this chapter is to draw on current research to develop a deeper understanding of aspects of teaching practice that enhance or detract from students’ sense of belonging in classrooms and factors that affect teachers’ responsiveness to students’ emotional needs.

Addressing Students’ Personal and Academic Needs Relatedness is one of three basic motivational needs that are essential to human growth and development. When students feel securely connected with others, when they experience themselves as being worthy of love and respect, this sense of belonging indicates that those relatedness needs have been met. In brief, they feel that others care about them. While this need to belong is important in and of itself, it is important to remember that the three basic motivational needs, competence, autonomy, and relatedness, are integral and interdependent. The quality of the relationship that teachers develop with their students has the most direct effect on students’ sense of belonging in the classroom and their subsequent engagement; but, additionally, addressing student needs for competence and autonomy also reinforces and enhances students’ sense of belonging. The reality is that students interpret good teaching as caring behavior. To the extent that teachers establish a positive relationship with students, utilize instructional strategies that enable students to learn, and

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empower them as learners within the classroom, students feel cared for – and they are more likely to be engaged in learning.

Personal Support (Teacher as Person) In an action research study, LoVerde (2007), the chair of Pupil Personnel Services in a suburban middle school, worked with two teachers in an inclusive science classroom. The purpose of the study was to identify teacher practices that support engagement of students with disabilities. Specifically, the researchers sought to identify behaviors that addressed students’ psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. The researchers identified specific behaviors that directly addressed students’ needs for relatedness. “The teachers genuinely expressed care for the students before, during, and after class” (p. 94) by interacting with the students frequently throughout each lesson, showing fairness and respect, demonstrating their enthusiasm for teaching and learning through words and body language, and disciplining proactively rather than punitively. By treating students with fairness and respect and by encouraging interaction with other students, the teachers conveyed messages of acceptance. In dealing with behavioral problems, the teachers had a deep personal and professional understanding of their students and were aware of special circumstances that affected their behavior. When behavioral problems emerged, then, they were tolerant. They provided corrective feedback, but in a nonthreatening and supportive manner. Two interview studies explored characteristics of teachers that contributed to high school students’ sense of belonging and engagement. Certo et al. (2003) interviewed 33 students from 7 comprehensive high schools to examine links between students’ levels of belonging and engagement. In 9 urban schools, Ozer et al. (2008) interviewed 32 seniors, “sufficiently engaged and successful to make it to their senior year” (p. 445). In both studies, students focused on this combination of personal and academic support combined with instruction that respected their autonomy and enabled them to meet challenging expectations. In the Certo et al. (2003) study, students described caring teachers as those who related to them and were encouraging and helpful. These teachers “knew about students’ lives outside of school.” They also cared about their grades and offered them guidance. In contrast, students talked about some teachers who gave the impression that they were motivated more by the threat of losing their jobs if students did not succeed on standardized tests rather than from a desire to have them learn. A characteristic that appeared as a negative indicator of caring was the lack of fairness. The high school students in the Ozer et al. (2008) study listed similar behaviors: having teachers know their names, being asked why they had been absent, being available to listen, following up on students over time, and caring actions and words: “remember to have a good day . . . you’re loved” (p. 453).

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Recognizing that the transition to middle school is a difficult time often associated with a drop in motivation, engagement, and achievement, FitzSimmons (2006) designed a qualitative study to “develop a deeper understanding of students’ experience during their transition to middle school and, specifically, to identify conditions that supported engagement” (p. 101). Throughout their first year in a suburban middle school, FitzSimmons followed 11 students who had just graduated from her fifth grade class, meeting with them for individual interviews and focus group discussions and examining their academic and attendance records. Although the transition was more problematic for some than for others, by the end of the year, all students demonstrated behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. They attended regularly and participated actively in academic and extracurricular activities. They had positive attitudes toward teachers, peers, and school and cared about their academic success. From her analysis, she, like LoVerde (2007), concluded that students’ sense of relatedness was the foundation for their engagement. “Students who felt relatedness, in turn, felt competent, academically and socially motivated, and wanted to be active members of their school community” (FitzSimmons, 2006, p. 118). From the students’ perspective, the teachers demonstrated care when they called on students, joked with them, used the students’ first names, said hello in the hallway, and encouraged discussions “where there was an exchange of personal thoughts, beliefs, or interests” (p. 104). “When students felt acknowledged as individuals, they felt as if someone cared about them” (p. 105). Cothran and Ennis (2000) interviewed and observed 4 teachers and 51 students from three urban high schools to investigate their perspectives on engagement. Students felt “they were more willing to engage when they felt the teacher cared if they learned the subject matter and cared about them as a person” (p. 112). Caring teachers were willing to work with students and demonstrated concern for their personal life and welfare.

Academic Support (Teacher as Instructional Leader) While teachers’ relationships with students are important, instructional strategies that address students’ needs for competence and autonomy also enhance students’ sense of belonging. Based on observations, interviews, and survey studies, several dimensions of teacher practice are linked to students’ sense of belonging. Teachers who emphasize high expectations, foster a mastery orientation in the classroom, utilize relevant and engaging methods of instruction, respect students’ autonomy, and carefully monitor student learning, providing encouragement, feedback, and opportunities to relearn, support students’ sense of belonging in the classroom. In essence, instructional strategies that enable students to develop as capable and independent learners also convey messages of care.

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In LoVerde’s study (2007), teachers observed that holding high expectations, developing relevant lessons that provided sufficient time for completion, and emphasizing mastery learning rather than performance outcomes seemed to address students’ emotional needs. Consistent with this mastery orientation, teachers never compared the inclusion students with other more capable children. They interacted with students frequently and used these exchanges to check for understanding; provided clear, specific, and timely feedback; and offered extra help as needed. They also protected students’ sense of autonomy by offering choices, by organizing the classroom to permit self-direction, and by using language that was encouraging and accepting – “You’re right; you can do it” – and avoiding coercive or controlling comments. These strategies enabled inclusion students to experience themselves as competent and autonomous; they also added to students’ sense of belonging. The high school students in Certo et al. (2003) focused on engaging instruction and autonomy support. Students disliked worksheets and note-taking and preferred challenging classes and a variety of instructional activities, but particularly “activities that were hands-on and contained opportunities for debate and discussion” (p. 710). Caring teachers tried to make class interesting. Students also valued autonomy, describing caring teachers as those who “listened to students’ ideas about classroom rules or . . . projects, letting them have some input” (p. 714). In FitzSimmons (2006), the middle school teachers that students perceived as caring and supportive were fair and instructed in ways that stimulated students’ interest in the curriculum. They provided thorough explanations, gave examples, checked for understanding, and were actively engaged in problem solving. All of these behaviors communicated to the students that the teachers cared about them, believed they could succeed, and wanted to help them do well. Similarly, when teachers gave students choices and “let them feel as if they had a say ... [this made] the students feel like the teachers supported and had confidence in them” (p. 106). In contrast, when teachers did not establish personal connections with the students or used instructional strategies that did not support their learning, “the students felt isolated and ignored” (p. 107). The high school students addressed similar themes. According to Cothran and Ennis (2000), teachers described as caring were challenging but enthusiastic about their subjects; and, offering students opportunity for active learning, they established climates where students could be successful. In Ozer et al. (2008), findings were similar. Good teachers were those who combined good teaching skills and demonstrated commitment to student learning. The students valued effectiveness and clarity of instructional styles and a curriculum that linked work to their lives. They appreciated teachers who helped students to learn, permitting them to revise papers, offering assistance, providing encouragement, and being available to help. Although this study did not address the connection between their respect for teachers and their own sense of being cared for, this becomes a logical conclusion.

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Throughout these qualitative studies, students present an interesting perspective on themselves as learners. Regardless of their overall success in school, the teachers that they value, the teachers that convey messages of caring, are teachers who challenge them to meet high expectations, believe in their ability to succeed, and then provide the academic support to enable them to succeed. In essence, these students are focusing on attitudes and behaviors associated with two important educational constructs: academic press and mastery orientation. Two quantitative studies (Anderman, 2003; Stevens et al., 2007) provide additional evidence linking these two pedagogical perspectives to students’ sense of belonging. Using survey data from 608 student over three time periods, Anderman (2003) examined change in middle school students’ sense of school belonging in relation to grade point average; motivational variables, including classroom task goal orientation, expectancy for academic success, and academic task values; and teachers’ promotion of mutual respect in classes. Although students’ sense of school belonging declined from sixth to seventh grade, the decline was less for students who had perceived their sixth grade teachers as promoting an atmosphere of mutual respect in classes. Of the motivational variables, teachers’ mastery orientation, or their emphasis on personal effort, mastery, and improvement, was the strongest predictor of school belonging across the three waves of data collection (π 0.41, p < 0.001). Also, contributing to sense of belonging was students’ assessment of the usefulness, importance, and interest of particular subject areas. This is an important study because it provides empirical data showing the connection between teachers’ instructional practice and students’ sense of belonging. Anderman concluded that “students’ perceptions of the instructional context of their schooling and motivational beliefs ... were significantly associated with their sense of school belonging” (p. 17). Perhaps contrary to common expectations, students’ sense of belonging was not directly or significantly affected by their expectations of success. Students with “higher grades and those who found academic work interesting, useful, and important reported higher levels of school belonging than did their peers,” but students’ expectations of success in particular subjects was not a significant predictor of school belonging. These findings suggest that maintaining high standards in classrooms will not alienate less successful students, as long as the quality of instruction remains high on both academic and personal dimensions. Developing this line of inquiry, Stevens et al. (2007) utilized data from 434 Hispanic students in fifth and sixth grade and 21 teachers (85% White) to determine the influence of teachers’ mastery goal orientation and academic press on students’ perceptions of school belonging. A statistical analysis of the model indicated that student perceptions of teachers’ mastery goal orientation directly contributed to students’ sense of school belonging. Additionally, teachers’ mastery goal orientation predicted students’ sense of academic press. Academic press, in turn, contributed to school belonging. All parameter estimates were significant at p < 0.01. In summary then, to the extent that students perceived that their teachers focused on “learning and understanding content rather than simply reaching a normative standard” (p. 57) and encouraged students to academic excellence, students’ sense of belonging was greater.

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Establishing a Climate of Support (Teacher as Model and Facilitator) We know from research that students who are rejected by teachers are also rejected by peers (Osterman, 2000). With some supporting evidence, it seems possible – and likely – that teachers communicate status differentials that affect students’ perceptions of each other. As teachers interact with students in the classroom, through their body language, tone of voice, or verbal patterns, their messages communicate their feelings and thoughts about the students. Do they like them, or do they view them as “difficult”? Do they perceive them as capable and committed students; or do they view them as children who do not care, do not try, and cannot succeed? These messages will affect students’ perceptions of themselves; they will also affect the way that their peers perceive them. To the extent that teachers like students and interact with them in caring, supportive, and respectful ways, peers are more likely to accept those students. If teachers themselves evidence their dislike, through body language, tone, or sarcasm, these expressions of rejection will be mirrored in peer interaction and affect the development of relationships within the classroom and school. Additional studies illustrate this relationship between the way that teachers interact with students and students’ acceptance by peers. Schwamb’s (2005) study focused on understanding the classroom experience of three middle school students who had been identified as bullies by teachers and staff and examined the relationship between classroom conditions and student behavior. The researcher, the principal in the school, conducted two series of observations in academic and nonacademic classes. During the 48 observations, she gathered data on the frequency, direction, and affective quality of verbal and nonverbal interactions of teachers and peers with the “bullies.” Four patterns of teacher-student interaction emerged. Two were generally negative and involved classroom situations where teachers largely ignored students or interacted with them minimally, providing neither academic nor personal support. In the first, teachers had little or no interaction with students and conveyed dislike through tone, facial expressions, and body language. In the second, teachers interacted with the students more frequently, but the interactions were predominantly negative and overtly critical. Two positive patterns included more frequent interaction and support. In one, teachers interacted with the students on an impersonal basis but provided academic support. In the more positive situation, teachers provided both academic and personal support, commending students, encouraging engagement, providing critical behavioral and academic feedback, and communicating through words and actions that they had high academic expectations and cared about them. Although she identified four patterns, the students’ classroom experience was predominantly negative. Each of them had at least one class (in remedial or noncore subject) where the teacher provided both academic and personal support, but, for the most part, the “bullies” were ignored or spurned by teachers who, in many instances, provided neither academic nor personal support. Throughout the observations, Schwamb noted the efforts of those students who had been identified as bullies to

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reach out to their peers (as well as to teachers). Whether the students were involved in academic activities, requesting aid or information, or making extraneous comments, however, peers reacted in the same way that teachers did – they ignored them, did not respond, and/or conveyed their dislike and disdain. Despite sometimes persistent efforts to gain attention, peers were equally persistent in isolating them. Infrequent interactions lacked positive affect and did not convey acceptance, let alone caring. Providing a more positive perspective is a qualitative study by Lewis and Kim (2008) that examined children’s views on good teaching in a study focused on prevalence of oppositional attitudes toward learning among African American children attending two low-income urban elementary schools. As part of the study, the researchers focused on one exemplary teacher and highlighted the way that she created a sense of community within the classroom. As they explained, “the general classroom relationships and interpersonal dynamics . . . supported children identifying with one another and feeling comfortable in the classroom” (p. 8). In addition to creating a learning community, the teacher “also engendered a sense of solidarity” (p. 8). This solidarity was defined by the researchers as “a form of social cohesion that carries with it a sense of mutuality, reciprocity, commitment, connection, and responsibility” that “simultaneously supports students’ developing a feeling of we-ness,” while also promoting well-being of individual members and cultivating students’ sense of belonging. Through observation, they identified three characteristics of the classroom that supported the development of this supportive environment: “minimal social hierarchy and shared condition, democratization of support and opportunity, and teaching with integrity” (p. 8). In their explanation, the authors identified teacher practices related to each of these characteristics. The teacher rarely isolated particular children for praise or for problems and “treated most situations as if all children could learn from whatever someone else was doing” (p. 8). By encouraging them to help each other and by demonstrating this trust in the children’s capability, she encouraged solidarity and shared responsibility for each other. The teacher also communicated to the class that she, too, was a member of this learning community by encouraging them to identify any mistakes that she might make. Through these behaviors, the “teacher demonstrated respect for children and provided them the opportunity to show respect toward and support for one another.” By “consistently connecting children to one another” and to herself, “the teacher promoted the development of a positive group identity and a sense of we-ness” (p. 8). Lewis and Kim (2008) also linked autonomy support in the classroom with this development of belonging and community. In this case, the teacher “provided opportunities for children to show that they can be trusted to be responsible for, and responsive to, one another,” and she intervened minimally in order to support the development of “autonomous, self-regulated behavior” (p. 8). By distributing responsibility and then supporting students to fulfill their responsibilities, she again encouraged the students to respect and trust each other. Defining integrity as a combination of intellect, emotion, and spirit or the heart of the teacher, the researchers asserted that the teacher’s integrity and support of the

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children’s integrity “. . . played a key role in their ability to develop productive and caring relationships” (p. 9). This approach “allowed them to connect with children who represented diverse needs, personalities, and abilities” and “created a reciprocal classroom climate in which the integrity of each child could be encouraged, welcomed, and respected” (p. 9). Specifically, this teacher accepted negative feelings from students (e.g., not liking school) and protected them from public humiliation through her acceptance. Her tolerance and her ability to create a safe space for them encouraged mutual respect among the students. The authors concluded that, through interactions in which they explicitly communicate messages of care, trust, and respect, teachers “tap into, ignite, and support the desire to learn that is already present in African American children through the relationships they establish with those children, and the relationships that they encourage the children to establish with each other” (Lewis & Kim, 2008, p. 10). Like Lewis and Kim (2008), LoVerde (2007) also perceived a link between teachers’ interactions with students and their relationships with peers. The special education students in this inclusion class experienced a high level of acceptance and support from peers. By treating students with fairness and respect and by encouraging interaction with other students, the teachers conveyed messages of acceptance. In dealing with behavioral problems, the teachers had a deep personal and professional understanding of their students and were aware of special circumstances that affected their behavior. When behavioral problems emerged, then, they were tolerant. They provided corrective feedback, but in a nonthreatening and supportive manner. Because the students knew that the teachers cared about them, they responded appropriately. Because the teachers did not label these students as problematic, neither did their peers. These findings are consistent with an earlier quantitative study. Utilizing questionnaire responses from a sample of 2002 pupils and 99 teachers in 22 schools and 118 classes in grades 4–6, Roland and Galloway (2002) examined two sets of classroom variables that were predicted to influence the incidence of bullying. Management consisted of four dimensions of teacher behavior: caring, competence in teaching, monitoring, and intervention. Essentially these variables looked at the nature of teacher relationships with students as well as their pedagogical strategies. Social structure reflected teacher responses about informal relationships between pupils, students’ concentration (or engagement) in learning activities, and norms in the class about interpersonal relationships and work. The final results of the path analysis indicated that both management and structure had a direct negative effect on bullying others and accounted for 22% of the variance (multiple R 0.47). Management also had an indirect effect on bullying through structure. Using the operational definitions, the study shows that teachers who utilize a variety of teaching methods are able to explain subject matter clearly, closely monitor student work, intervene to address student learning problems, and convey a sense of personal caring for their students had a positive effect on the social structure in the classroom. Specifically, 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.

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Testing the Theory: Changing Classroom Conditions to Change Student Behavior In my previous review of the literature, I concluded that “being accepted, included, or welcomes leads to positive emotions . . . while being rejected, excluded, or ignored leads to often intense negative feelings of anxiety, depression, grief, jealousy, and loneliness” and “is also associated with incidence of mental and physical illness and a broad range of behavioral problems ranging from traffic accidents to criminality and suicide” (Osterman, 2000, p. 327). I also noted that the sense of belonging is associated with psychological and behavioral outcomes that are particularly important in school settings. Specifically, students who experience belonging have higher levels of intrinsic motivation and have more positive attitudes toward themselves, school, adults, and peers. They like school, they’re more engaged, and they are more likely to interact with others in positive and prosocial ways. Conversely, the experience of rejection and isolation is consistently associated with behavioral problems in the classroom, lower interest in school, lower achievement, dropout, and “various forms of emotional distress including loneliness, violence, and suicide” (Osterman, 2000, p. 343). These findings offer a different lens for analyzing, understanding, and responding to behavioral problems. Essentially, they suggest that different forms of problematic behavior, whether lack of engagement or disciplinary problems, may be directly related to the child’s experience in the school or classroom, rather than a manifestation of low motivation or obstructive intent. There are two important implications of this research. Differences in the classroom, and specifically teacher practice, should be associated with differences in behavior. Within the school, we would expect to find that the same student might behave differently in different classrooms. Additionally, it should be possible to affect behavior by changing classroom conditions. Specifically, changes designed to enhance the emotional experience of students should lead to positive changes in behavior. In this section, then, we review some evidence to this effect. In studies by Herr and Anderson (2003) and Schwamb (2005), we see how the behavior of individual students differs from classroom to classroom. In Siris (2001) and Griffin (2008), we see evidence of changes in student behavior in response to intentional interventions: children originally perceived as “problematic” began to act differently as the adults changed their own behavior toward the students. The Siris study also shows how changes in teacher behavior affected peer interaction with students who had been previously victimized. In an ethnographic study of an all-male middle school, Herr and Anderson (2003) described differences in classrooms that seemed to affect students’ emotional wellbeing and behavior. In one classroom, a young white teacher had the male black students in her class copy materials for over 50 minutes. As the students began to grumble, she disregarded their complaints, urging them to comply. When students began murmuring and looking out the window, she punished them by withdrawing bathroom privileges. In contrast, students described a very different episode in a classroom that was not tightly regulated. In this class the teacher respected students;

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addressed personal, social, and cultural issues; checked for understanding; and provided recognition and support. The boys described how their experience with this teacher affected them: “You should have seen us on the playground last year . . . we were always in trouble, fighting and stuff” (p. 428). What made the difference for them was a teacher who enabled them to share their feelings and experiences, gave them meaningful work, and helped them to understand the work. While the study does not directly illustrate how frustration in the classroom contributed to fighting, the students attributed changes in their own behavior to teacher support. Illustrating the significant role that the sense of belonging plays, perhaps the most important finding of the Schwamb (2005) study was that the students’ patterns of behavior differed depending on the quality of their relationship with the teacher. When the teachers interacted with the boys in a positive and supportive way by responding to comments, questions, and concerns in a respectful manner and offering encouragement, recognition, and feedback, there were observable differences in their behavior. The boys initiated more positive interactions with teachers and were more responsive to teacher directives, more accepting of critical feedback, and more engaged in classroom activities. Conversely, where teachers ignored them or provided predominantly negative feedback, there were growing signs of disengagement and more aggressive behavior directed at teacher and peers. With Lori, who was already extremely withdrawn and disengaged, lack of attention and negative responses by teachers seemed to reinforce her inattentiveness and contribute to total withdrawal. While there were no obvious outbursts in class, there were nonverbal indicators of anger and frustration – loud sighs, scratching holes in her work sheets, and bolting out the door. Only in her remedial classes did Lori experience any positive support. Here teachers recognized her disengagement and actively sought to involve her. They recognized her sense of failure and took steps to insure that she would experience some success. When she did experience success, they recognized her efforts. While both of these teachers supported her academically, the remedial reading teacher went beyond to respond to her personally, recognizing her emotional concerns, greeting her by name, and offering her a smile. In response, Lori participated and, in one rare instance, she even smiled. Siris (2001) and Griffin (2008) both conducted action research studies designed to address student problems by enhancing their emotional well-being, and particularly their sense of belonging. As principal, Siris worked with nine elementary teachers to alleviate problems of bullying and victimization (Siris, 2001; Siris & Osterman, 2004). Coding behaviors of bullies and victims as lack of engagement, Siris introduced self-determination theory to the teachers; and the action research plan was designed to alleviate behavioral problems by addressing students’ basic needs for competency, autonomy, and relatedness. To enhance students’ sense of competence, the teachers decided to provide recognition for accomplishment, develop opportunities for students to show off their strengths, and highlight positives while downplaying negatives. To support autonomy, they increased center activities and allowed more freedom in choice of assignment, work locations, and partners, while setting rules to preclude rejection. To show students that they cared about them personally and to support positive peer

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interaction, the teachers focused on active listening and descriptive feedback (in contrast with prescriptive and judgmental feedback). They also planned to spend more personal time with the student, encourage new relationships, monitor choice time to insure that students were not excluded, and promote empathy by praising supportive interaction and initiating classroom conversations about caring and feelings. During and at the end of the experimentation phase, the teachers reported on changes in their own beliefs and practices as well as the effects on the classroom environment and the experience of the once victimized students. During this 6-week period, the teachers began to pay attention to their students. By listening to their feelings and taking interest, they began to know the students better; they were better able to empathize with the children and respond to their personal and academic needs. The teachers also discovered that they were models for other students’ interactions with the victimized students. More attuned to the effects of rejection, they became more committed to addressing the problem by setting rules about appropriate behavior, articulating that every child is acceptable as a partner, and by complimenting groups when they were inclusive and supportive. What is impressive is the extent of the changes that occurred in a relatively short period of time. Initially, the teachers noted that the victimized students were reluctant to engage in conversations with them or to participate in class. After implementing their plans, the teachers reported that the students had become more comfortable socially, more outgoing, more confident, and more engaged academically. Several of the teachers also commented on how their own changes influenced peer behavior. As one reported, “Because of all the tattling and bickering, I would get annoyed with her. I didn’t have a lot of patience. Now that I’ve stopped, Dina is feeling better about herself, and I see the children are less annoyed with her” (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004 p. 134). Another teacher confirmed that, while girls in the class had mimicked her behavior in the past, now, responding to change in her own behavior, they were “much more sensitive and tolerant and accepting” (p. 134). Validating the teachers’ observations were comments from the previously victimized students and their parents. “This is making me feel really good about myself,” one student said. “I really love school now” (p. 136). Several teachers received notes from parents thanking them for special interest, care, and patience. As one father explained, his son “felt happier coming to school this year, happier than ever before” (p. 136). Griffin’s (2008) study was intended to foster a greater sense of belonging among male high school students who were at risk academically or socially. As his review of the literature indicated, adolescent boys in schools are disproportionately beset by academic, psychological, and social problems. Although the problem is complex, he speculated that at least part of the problem may be related to the quality of the boys’ psychological experience and specifically their sense of belonging in the school community. Supporting this conceptualization was additional research showing that girls are more likely than boys to experience a sense of belonging in school, while boys are more likely to experience isolation and/or rejection. Aggravating the problem is the fact that boys, because of gender stereotyping, are less likely to develop personal relationships with peers or adults and less likely to be able to express their emotional needs.

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As director of guidance and counseling in an affluent and homogeneous suburban community, Griffin and the action research team (two counselors and a school social worker) identified ten sophomore boys deemed at risk because of poor attendance, social isolation, and/or serious academic or discipline problems. In the initial stages of the study, the team used the Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (PSSMS) (Goodenow, 1993), interviews, and classroom observations to develop a better understanding of the boys’ experience in the school. Participants also completed the PSSMS at the end of the semester. After an analysis of this data, the team planned a series of interventions, including individual counseling sessions, a group counseling program that included workshops and activities designed to promote supportive interaction among boys and counselors, and a mentoring program linking each boy with a teacher. The researchers gathered information as they implemented the plan; and, at the end, they used a focus group, survey, and additional interviews to assess the efficacy of the interventions. The boys who participated differed on a number of characteristics. While none was classified, their academic averages ranged from C to A, with the majority having B averages. Only one student had disciplinary referrals, some for bullying. Two were Hispanic; the others were Caucasian. Economically, the boys were from middleclass or wealthy families. They all shared an interest in computers, science, and technology. In terms of appearance, their body language and clothing set them apart from the mainstream. Responses on the PSSMS confirmed original impressions. In comparison with 75 ninth grade classmates, the participants’ responses (N 7) were significantly different on one item (I feel like I belong in the school. p > 0.007⁎⁎). The qualitative data from observations, interviews, and discussions also demonstrated that the boys experienced isolation and rejection in school, both from peers and from certain teachers whom they perceived to be disengaging and uncaring. In interviews, the boys distinguished between teachers who promoted interaction, valued interpersonal relationships, and used pedagogical practices that fostered engagement and learning from those who dominated instruction and ignored and/or neglected their needs as individuals and learners. In addition, they experienced school as overly competitive and stressful, socially and academically. At the end of the project, the boys reported that they felt cared for and acknowledged. They felt special because they had been selected for the study; they felt important and cared for because adults asked about their feelings. These changes were evident in their comments as well as in their smiles and expressions of gratitude and warmth. The boys also developed strong connections with each other as the sessions progressed, and they became more comfortable in sharing their thoughts and talking about difficult issues: the “kinds of things we would never get to talk about outside of the group.” Talking with each other about school “stuff” helped them relieve the stress they experienced, they reported. Although statistical analysis was not possible, an examination of item means on PSSMS showed improvement in response to three prompts: I feel like I belong, students at this school like me, and my teachers know me well. There were also behavioral indicators of an increased sense of belonging. There was an increase in

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cooperation, openness, and communication as demonstrated in their continued attendance, interaction, and mutual friendship. The boys also described improved relationships with adults, particularly evident in their efforts to reach out to the counselors for support in a way they had never done before. Their nonverbal communication also became more positive (smiles, laughter). Some students improved academically. One student, who had been absent 40 times as a freshman and 18 times in the first semester of his sophomore year, had perfect attendance in the second semester. The only student with disciplinary problems in the ninth and tenth grade had none for the balance of the year. Another student who had a severe lifethreatening eating problem returned the following year with weight gains.

Understanding Teacher Practice Studies that examine students’ experience in school clearly indicate that there are children in school whose emotional – and academic – needs are seldom met. Although theory and research emphasize the importance of addressing human needs, each of these studies demonstrated that the construct of belongingness is not easily or universally embraced in schools. Some teachers challenge the idea that they should be responsible for addressing students’ emotional needs; others challenge the validity of the theory, adopting a deficit model that attributes children’s problems to the children themselves. Even teachers who understand that this attention to students’ psychological well-being is an important part of their role may lack a critical perspective on their own work, being unable to identify strengths or weaknesses. In the Siris study (2001), the elementary teachers who prided themselves on concern for the emotional needs of their class were surprised to observe the extent to which they failed to respond to student’s individual needs. In the Griffin (2008) study, the counselors who, by virtue of traditional role divisions, share the most direct responsibility for these nonacademic aspects of student life initially had difficulty shifting from a perspective that essentially blames the victim to one that understands the extent to which aspects of the social environment affect student behavior. What these counselors came to learn is that even very simple actions – saying “Hi!” in the hall – can mitigate the social, academic, and emotional problems of at-risk boys. If we accept the importance of this sense of belonging, it is important to understand this contrast between a widely espoused educational philosophy of caring and a practice that falls short of this goal, often for the neediest students. While some part of the problem might be attributed to individual teacher characteristics or instructional competence, there are other reasons to suggest that teachers’ failure to address student needs reflects a more systemic problem, grounded in teachers’ understanding of individual motivation, their comfort in dealing with emotional issues, and accountability pressures that intensify the emphasis on knowledge transmission and decrease the personalization of learning.

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Understanding Motivation Teachers’ attitudes toward students are affected by their understanding of motivation and their interpretations of students’ behavior. Cothran and Ennis (2000) interviewed and observed 4 teachers and 51 students from 3 urban high schools to investigate their perspectives on engagement. While the students “reported that their engagement level was variable and the key factor in engagement was the teacher” (p. 111), the teachers, in contrast, “did not believe they should, nor did they feel prepared to, fill the role of primary motivator and engager of students” (p. 110). The students’ responses in this study were consistent with all of the preceding studies. They reported that their attitudes toward the teacher (and their subsequent engagement) were affected by teachers’ willingness to engage in personal dialogue and their ability to listen, respect their ideas, and accept student suggestions about the class. Students also felt “they were more willing to engage when they felt the teacher cared if they learned the subject matter and cared about them as a person” (p. 112), being willing to work with them and demonstrating concern for their personal life and welfare. Teachers described as caring were challenging but enthusiastic about their subjects, and offering students opportunity for active learning, they established climates where students could be successful. The teachers in this study (Cothran & Ennis, 2000) believed that the students’ attitudes were the greatest impediment to student engagement. “These kids don’t want to do anything. They don’t listen. They aren’t responsible” (p. 110). Rather than seeing a connection between the students’ experience in the classroom and the students’ lack of engagement, the teachers attributed the problem to the students: “they don’t care at all . . . They’re just here because they have to have a class. They think they’re too cool to participate.” As the researchers explained, the teachers “did not believe their role was to serve as the primary catalyst for student engagement” (p. 110). This response suggests that some teachers have a limited – and flawed – understanding of motivation or, at best, that their perspectives on motivation fail to understand the connections between social conditions, motivation, and behavior. This is important because the students least likely to experience belonging in the classroom are those who are less engaged. Connell et al. (1995) determined that teachers’ interactions with students corresponded with the teachers’ perception of the students’ engagement; but, more broadly, we can argue that teachers’ interactions with students correspond with students’ desirability. When teachers have positive feelings about students, that sense of care and acceptance is conveyed directly to the students. As the Schwamb (2005) study illustrates, the feelings of teachers are reflected not only in the frequency and quality of their interaction but also in the nature of their academic support for individual students. Specifically, teachers who do not care for students are likely to adopt pedagogical strategies that do not meet students’ instructional needs. Typically students not favored by teachers are those characterized as problematic. These students have difficulty learning, are not engaged in the classroom, and/or

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have behavioral problems. Osterman and Kottkamp (2004) described several studies that focused on teacher interactions with students they characterized as “problematic.” One, an analysis of 38 written cases prepared by students in an administrative preparation program, confirmed that teachers respond to these students in very predictable ways (Kottkamp & Silverberg, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c), as did a later study by Silverberg (2002, 2003). In these cases, the problematic students were predominantly male (81%), 20% were ethnic minorities, and 29% had limited English proficiency or special education classifications: The students were disengaged. They were the daydreamers who spent their time gazing out the window. They were the students who did not stay on task. Unprepared for learning, they failed to do their homework, complete assignments, or bring necessary materials. They were the clowns, the students who laughed out loud and interrupted the class with wise guy comments. They resisted authority by defying or ignoring rules. They lacked social skills and bothered others by invading their space, physically or verbally. They were verbally abusive or whiny, belligerent or apathetic. Regardless of their style, they were all annoying. They distracted other students and interfered with teachers’ ability to teach. (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004, p. 112)

The majority of the experienced teachers preparing these case reports, like the teacher respondents in Cothran and Ennis (2000) attributed these behaviors to emotional, social, or physiological deficits in the students or their families. The teachers thought that the students did not care about learning and felt that their behaviors were intentional. In response, the majority of the teachers withdrew emotionally from the children and reported that they distanced the child, physically and psychologically. They avoided them. As one teacher explained, “Rather than let them bother me, I’ll dismiss them as having some personality flaw and try to totally ignore them” (p. 113). Even teachers who understand the importance of addressing students’ emotional needs may not have a conscious awareness of their practice and its influence on children. The teachers who participated in the Siris (2001) study had all volunteered because of their concern for students. At the same time, the study uncovered mental models that affected their interaction with students. At the beginning of the study, the teachers’ perceptions of the victims were quite negative. Even though the teachers were sensitive to the students’ loneliness and isolation, their response was tinged by certain assumptions. They felt that the students were responsible for their plight; they also doubted that there was anything more that they could or should do. Four boys were medicated for attention deficit hyperactivity; and, while the students were diverse academically, all eight were perceived as troublemakers. Because they were either withdrawn or aggressive, they had trouble forming relationships. They were perceived as too needy and irritating in their efforts to get attention. Like the high school boys in the Griffin (2008) study, these students were also physically unattractive, unkempt, and poorly dressed. When the study began, all of the teachers were confident that they were doing a good job. Some felt that they provided opportunities for students to experience competence, autonomy, and relatedness in the classroom. Others challenged the

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idea that students needed their attention. Their job, they thought, was to make students less dependent on them. They also sensed that it was inequitable for them to single out a particular child for attention. The teacher researchers in LoVerde’s (2007) study were selected because something was going right in their inclusion classrooms. Intuitively, they were doing something that worked; but, until they participated in the research process, they were not consciously aware of how the different dimensions of their practice affected the children. By observing teacher and student behavior in the classroom, the researchers came to what may seem to be an obvious conclusion: good teaching practices addressed students’ psychological needs and enhanced engagement. Although the teachers concluded that the most difficult challenge for students with disabilities was to experience competence and autonomy, they also felt that their efforts to address the students’ needs for relatedness were foundational. The children less likely to experience belonging in the classroom are children who present teachers with a combination of academic and behavioral challenges. In discussing reflective practice, Osterman and Kottkamp (2004) emphasized the need for a data-based and critical assessment of practice relative to various standards, including effectiveness. If the goal is engagement, what strategies is the teacher adopting and do they work? The problem is that the use of withdrawal and isolation does not work; and, in fact, it compounds the problem. If teachers incorrectly attribute academic and behavioral problems to personal deficits on the part of the child, children with the greatest need to experience personal and academic support are less likely to have those needs satisfied in their classrooms. If teachers are unaware of their behavior or the way that their behavior influences students, they are unlikely to change.

Emotions and Organizations Although the teaching profession recognizes the importance of caring and meets the needs of a majority of students,1 there are organizational constraints that affect the expression of caring. Secondary school teachers, for example, are more likely to emphasize subject matter and underplay the importance of personal relationships. Rejecting their responsibilities for motivation, the high school teachers in Cothran and Ennis (2000) defined their role as one of supplying valuable information to receptive students. Even in early childhood centers (Talay-Ongan et al., 2002) and in elementary schools (Siris, 2001), some teachers are ambivalent about dealing with emotions. With so much attention – rightful attention – to child abuse, teachers may be reluctant to express any affection to students, but more generally, organizations have unwritten rules that stress rationality and suppress emotionality. 1

A report on the 2006 high school survey of student engagement, published by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, indicated that 78% of 81,499 respondents from the United States agreed or strongly agreed that there was at least one adult in the school “who cares about me and knows me well.” In contrast, however, the balance, more than one out of five students, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement (Yazzie-Mintz, 2007, p. 7).

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Based on extensive organizational research, Argyris and Schon (1974, 1978) identified what they viewed as a meta-theory in use, or an internal set of rules that govern organizational behavior. One of the key values reflected in this model I paradigm is rationality. While more recent research problematizes the absence of attention to emotion in the workplace and challenges the validity of an approach that idealizes rationality to the suppression of emotion (Beatty & Brew, 2004; Goleman, 1995; Hargreaves, 2001; Leithwood & Beatty, 2008), it is apparent that this model I paradigm is still evident in modern day schools. Talay-Ongan et al. (2002) describe the way that cultural views and professional preparedness constrain early childhood teachers with respect to emotions. “As a part of professional practice,” one commented, “you were not supposed to involve yourself emotionally” (Talay-Ongan et al., 2002, para. 20). Although the teachers felt that relatedness was the essence of their work, explained their understanding, and described ways in which they addressed children’s needs, they also expressed ambivalence about the discussion. The teachers in the center read all of the transcripts to verify, clarify, and modify them. As one explained, “on reading the first draft . . ., alarm bells rang. We found ourselves cleansing and sanitizing the transcript, eliminating or squirming over words such as kiss, cuddle, hug, stroke or tenderness.” She attributed their concern to discourse about child protection, the professionalism of teachers, and their concern that they had “somehow transgressed the ‘rules.’” She continued, that “it is the nature of these ‘rules’ to silence the emotional lives of teachers and children, and to drive them underground. This silencing,” she offered, “allows for little discussion of what actually the nature of the teacher child relatedness is and how it is practiced” (para. 16). Referring to this silencing about emotion, another teacher explained that the “reduction in the palate of words gives us a cleansed, anesthetic, sanitized professional way of thinking about emotions” (para. 20). The teachers in the Siris (2001) study were also surprised to find how infrequently their specific students experienced a sense of belonging in the classroom. To enable the teachers to examine their own practice, the teachers observed and recorded instances when the students appeared to feel a sense of competence, autonomy, or belonging. During this 3-week period, each of the teachers had found examples of student success; and, from the children’s positive body language, it was easy for the teachers to see how important these experiences were to the children. Although the teachers started the project with a clear understanding of autonomy and thought that they provided students with ample opportunities for choice and free expression of opinion, during the 3 weeks, collectively they found only three instances where the children experienced autonomy. Even more surprising to the teachers was their difficulty in finding examples of relatedness. As one of the teachers explained, “We are struggling to find examples of how we are taking a personal interest in our selected students” (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004, p. 126). Summarizing their experience, another teacher commented: “It seems that we think we do more than we really do in our daily practice to meet our students’ psychological needs” (p. 127). This action research project enabled the teachers to develop a critical perspective on

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their own practice, but their experience at the beginning suggested that this concept of relatedness remains elusive in teacher practice.

Accountability Demands Accountability demands in a high stakes test environment and the resultant focus on preparation for the test may also affect students’ needs for belonging by diverting teachers’ attention away from their relational needs and by indirectly influencing them to rely on instructional strategies that are less engaging and more controlling. Valli and Buese (2007) conducted a mixed-methods longitudinal study of fourth and fifth grade teachers of reading and mathematics in order to determine the impact of federal, state, and local policies on instructional roles. Based on interviews and observations with 150 teachers and principals in 25 elementary schools conducted over a 4-year period, the researchers identified ways that their roles had changed. One of their findings was that, as roles expanded in other areas, the amount of time directed to affective relationships decreased. “Most of the study’s teachers,” they explained, “complained of the effect all of the movement had on their students and their relationship with them” (p. 547). Ryan and Brown (2005) evaluated the motivational perspective reflected in the high-stakes testing policies and, based on previous research, considered the likely impact on the motivation and achievement of students and teachers. Through the lens of self-determination theory, the researchers paid particular attention to the importance of autonomy support. One of the important findings is that teachers explicitly pressured to produce high student achievement reduce autonomy support for their students and rely more on lecture, criticism, praise, and teacher direction, controlling instructional approaches that depress students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement. Because autonomy support plays such an important part in students’ psychological health, meeting students’ direct needs to experience autonomy and also reinforcing students’ sense of belonging, this is an important finding. Whether because of external pressures, flawed conceptions of motivation, or a systemic reluctance to focus on emotional needs in organizational settings – even at the early childhood level – it is not always easy for teachers to address the psychological needs of their students and particularly those children who may have the greatest need.

Discussion In my earlier analysis (Osterman, 2000), I identified three aspects of teacher practice that seemed to contribute to students’ sense of belonging: instruction, teacher support, and authority relationships or autonomy. Teacher support I defined primarily as interpersonal support. From this current review, it seems that this definition was far too narrow and failed to detect the critical importance of academic support. Although the personal dimensions of teachers’ relationships with children are

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obviously important, perhaps foundational as several researchers suggested, what the teacher does to support student learning is also important in its effects on students’ sense of belonging. In terms of instruction, recognizing that relationships begin with interaction, I focused on specific instructional strategies, like cooperative learning and dialogue, which facilitate interaction. While valid points, the current research offers a much broader perspective on the ways that teachers develop students’ sense of belonging. The third factor, autonomy support, emerges again as a critical component, important in itself, but also important through its effects on students’ sense of belonging. Based on the current research, then, I propose, more simply, that teachers enhance students’ sense of belonging in the classroom by providing both personal and academic support. How teachers relate to individual students is important – and integral to their effectiveness as teachers. What students tell us, quite convincingly, is that they want teachers to know them as persons and, more importantly, to be able to empathize with them, to understand their feelings and their needs. As Hargreaves (2001) explains, emotional understanding, or being able to enter into the experience of another, is the key to successful teaching, while misunderstanding “strikes at the foundations of teaching and learning” (p. 1060). The research also indicates that academic support directly affects students’ sense of belonging and identifies specific dimensions of teacher practice that address this important relational need. The strategies that are linked to students’ sense of belonging are essentially characteristics of effective teaching; they are strategies that enable students to be successful and independent learners. Many of the students whose voices appear in these studies have not been successful in school, yet, their expectations correspond quite directly with what we know about good teaching. Students want teachers to help them to learn. When teachers enable students to experience themselves as competent and autonomous learners, they feel cared for. When teachers have high expectations and express confidence in students’ ability to meet those expectations; when they are enthusiastic about their teaching and create lessons that are meaningful, interesting, and engaging; when they monitor carefully, using information to support learning; and when they rely on classroom management strategies that respect and nurture student autonomy and are fair and proactive, emphasizing recognition and affirmation rather than failure and censure, students perceive this as care. When students perceive the classroom environment to be supportive, they are more likely to be engaged in learning and more likely to interact with others – teachers and peers – in supportive, prosocial ways. Teachers’ work with individual students is obviously important, but students are also grouped for learning, and how that group functions affects students emotionally and academically. We know quite clearly that students who are rejected by peers are also rejected by teachers. We know that many of these students who experience isolation in the classroom are also students with academic and/or behavioral problems. Although adults often attribute problematic behavior to students’ lack of motivation or inept social skills, research also shows us that classroom climates vary and students’ behavior (and learning) differ depending on classroom

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conditions. The research suggests that teachers affect peer relationships. First, teachers establish standards of behavior. If teachers demonstrate caring and support for individual students, it is likely that peers will act in similar ways. Teachers can also take a proactive stand, encouraging the development of mutual respect and acceptance within the classroom and establishing norms that preclude intolerance and rejection. When students experience isolation or rejection in the classroom, they are less likely to be engaged and more likely to engage in antisocial behavior. Addressing students’ emotional needs helps to minimize disruptive behavior. Teachers enhance students’ sense of belonging, then, not only by their own personal interaction but also by insuring that each student experiences respect and care from peers.

Conclusion Insuring students’ sense of belonging in the classroom is a challenge. The problem is that children with the greatest unmet need for belonging are also less likely to receive the academic and personal support that is so critical for them. At the most immediate level, they are the children who are most challenging to teachers. Academically, they are disengaged and/or have difficulty learning. Socially, they are different from their peers and have difficulty in establishing relationships. While these behaviors often indicate that the students’ needs for relatedness are not being met, unfortunately, these same behaviors tend to elicit more withdrawal and/or rejection. As a result, these problematic children often get neither the personal or academic support that they most need, and problems intensify. Teachers do not bear sole responsibility for the emotional well-being of children; but, as we have seen so clearly both in the words of students and in empirical data, the quality of care that students receive in the classroom has an important influence on their learning and behavior. While there is renewed attention to students’ emotional well-being in research and practice, it is also important to recognize that there are obstacles, including a lack of accurate information on motivation in a social context, organizational norms that devalue attention to emotions, and external accountability demands, that minimize relational efforts and intensify teachers’ efforts to control student learning. Having a clearer understanding of the problem, however, foreshadows better solutions.

References Anderman, L. H. (2003). Academic and social perceptions as predictors of change in middle school students’ sense of school belonging. The Journal of Experimental Education, 72(1), 5–22. Argyris, C., & Schon, D. A. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. Jossey-Bass. Argyris, C., & Schon, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning. Addison-Wesley. Beatty, B. R., & Brew, C. R. (2004). Trusting relationships and emotional epistemologies: A foundational leadership issue. School Leadership and Management, 24, 329–356.

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Certo, J. L., Cauley, K. M., & Chafin, C. (2003). Students’ perspectives on their high school experience. Adolescence, 38, 705–724. Connell, J. P., Halpern-Felsher, B. L., Clifford, E., Crichlow, W., & Usinger, P. (1995). Hanging in there: Behavioral, psychological, and contextual factors affecting whether African American adolescents stay in high school. Journal of Adolescent Research, 10, 41–63. Cothran, D. J., & Ennis, C. D. (2000). Building bridges to student engagement: Communicating respect and care for students in urban high schools. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 33, 106–117. FitzSimmons, V. C. (2006). Relatedness: The foundation for the engagement of middle school students during the transitional year of sixth grade. Unpublished Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books. Goodenow, C. (1993). The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents: Scale development and educational correlates. Psychology in the Schools, 30(January), 79–90. Griffin, C. (2008). The usual suspects: Cultivating a sense of belonging in at-risk boys. Unpublished Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead. Hargreaves, A. (2001). Emotional geographies of teaching. Teachers College Record, 103, 1056–1080. Herr, K., & Anderson, G. L. (2003). Violent youth or violent schools? A critical incident analysis of symbolic violence. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 6, 415–433. Kottkamp, R. B., & Silverberg, R. P. (1999a, April). Exploring the mental models of administrative aspirants: Assumptions about students, teaching and learning. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal. Kottkamp, R. B., & Silverberg, R. P. (1999b). Learning formal theory through constructivism and reflective practice: Professor and student perspectives. Educational Administration and Leadership: Teaching and Program Development, 11, 47–59. Kottkamp, R. B., & Silverberg, R. P. (1999c, March). Reconceptualizing students at risk: Teacher assumptions about “the problematic student.” Paper presented at the Research Network: Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education, European Education Research Association, Valletta. Leithwood, K., & Beatty, B. (2008). Leading with teacher emotions in mind. Corwin Press. Lewis, J. L., & Kim, E. (2008). A desire to learn: African American children’s positive attitudes toward learning within school cultures of low expectations. Teachers College Record, 110, 1304–1329. LoVerde, D. (2007). Rules of engagement: Teacher practices that meet psychological needs of students with disabilities in an inclusion science classroom. Unpublished Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead. Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70, 323–367. Osterman, K. F., & Kottkamp, R. B. (2004). Reflective practice for educators. Corwin Press. Ozer, E. J., Wolf, J. P., & Kong, C. (2008). Sources of perceived school connection among ethnically-diverse urban adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 23, 438–470. Roland, E., & Galloway, D. (2002). Classroom influences on bullying. Educational Research, 44, 299–312. Ryan, R. M., & Brown, K.W. (2005). Legislating competence: High-stakes testing policies and their relations with psychological theories and research. In E. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 354–372, Part IV). The Guilford Press. Schwamb, J. (2005). Exploring the school experience of students who bully: A look inside the classroom. Unpublished Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead. Silverberg, R. P. (2002). From marginalization to relational space: A descriptive phenomenological study of teachers who changed their assumptions and beliefs about problematic students. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead.

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Silverberg, R. P. (2003). Leading in the relational space. Journal of School Leadership, 13, 688–706. Siris, K. (2001). Using action research to alleviate bullying and victimization in the classroom. Unpublished Dissertation, Hofstra University, Hempstead. Siris, K., & Osterman, K. F. (2004). Interrupting the cycle of bullying and victimization in the elementary classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 85, 288–291. Stevens, T., Hamman, D., & Olivarez, A., Jr. (2007). Hispanic students’ perception of white teachers’ mastery goal orientation influences sense of school belonging. Journal of Latinos and Education, 6, 55–70. Talay-Ongan, A., McNaught, M., & Robertson, J. (2002). Teacher-child relatedness in the forefront: Mia Mia. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference Brisbane, Australia. Valli, L., & Buese, D. (2007). The changing roles of teachers in an era of high-stakes accountability. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 519–558. Yazzie-Mintz, E. (2007). Voices of students on engagement: A report on the 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement. Retrieved May 12, 2009, from http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse/ pdf/HSSSE_2006_Report.pdf

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Asia-Pacific Resilient Children and Communities Project Jing Sun and Donald E. Stewart

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stating the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Development of the Asia-Pacific Resilience Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Development of Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Resilience and Student Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Development of Resilience Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integration of Mental Health and Educational Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Resilience Enhancing Environment and Student Mental Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The purpose of the chapter is to explore the association between resilience and well-being, based on evidence from the “Asia-Pacific Resilience Project.” The main research findings derived from the study were (1) low resilience scores predispose individuals to mental health risks and (2) an intervention program using a holistic school approach to promote resilience factors such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and school connectedness significantly promotes student well-being and prevents mental health problems. Keywords

Resilience · Well-being · Holistic education · Asia-Pacific Resilience Project J. Sun (*) School of Medicine and Dentistry, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: j.sun@griffith.edu.au D. E. Stewart Public Health, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_55

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Introduction Resilience is related to many areas of a child’s life, such as family relationships, academic performance, peer relationships, behavior, and social skills. An understanding of the significance of resilience processes is of great value in determining approaches to preventing negative development outcomes, thereby enhancing wellbeing and learning. Individual characteristics, such as high self-esteem and selfconcept, have been repeatedly identified as protective factors that help to promote student learning and minimize the negative effects of risks. Connection to school is also an important protective factor. This can be defined as the experience of caring about school and a positive relationship to the school environment and school staff. Strong connectedness to school exerts a powerful influence in the lives of students. Relationships between students and teachers have been positively associated with students’ motivation, achievement, and feelings of belonging and affect in school. Students with higher levels of school connectedness report significantly lower levels of psychological problems, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, violent behavior, substance use, and undesirable sexual behaviors. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the association between resilience and well-being, based on evidence from the “Asia-Pacific Resilience Project.” The main research findings derived from the study were (1) low resilience scores predispose individuals to mental health risks and (2) an intervention program using a holistic school approach to promote resilience factors such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and school connectedness significantly promotes student well-being and prevents mental health problems.

Stating the Problem There is concern at the increasing global prevalence of mental ill-health in children, estimated at 20–30% (Stephens et al., 1999). In the Asia-Pacific region, China is no exception to this trend with an estimated 15–20% of children having mental health problems (Sun, 2003). Many children have multiple mental and emotional problems (Chen et al., 2000; Tseng et al., 1988), which are inadequately treated and may be undetected (Chen et al., 2000; China Internet Information Center, 2003; Falbo et al., 1993). Numerous programs have been developed to reduce or alleviate problem behavior or disorders and/or assist positive youth development (Browne et al., 2004), with the majority of these intervention programs focused on behavior or treating child mental health disorders and symptoms such as attention-deficit hyperactivity. However, over recent decades, a holistic approach has received increasing emphasis, underpinned by Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1989) ecological theory and supported by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2003). Despite a growing body of evidence indicating that both individual characteristics and school environment play a critical role in children’s development, relatively few programs have accepted the significance of a comprehensive, universal context-focused approach (Browne et al., 2004),

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although a growing body of research has confirmed associations between individual resilience factors and children’s social-contextual experiences in schools and mental health. Research demonstrates the impressive potential of programs that identify and strengthen resilience skills in at-risk youth, before they have developed to the point at which intensive treatment and rehabilitation are required (Grotberg, 1995; 1996; Smith et al., 1997; Wang et al., 1997). For this reason, practitioners and scholars are beginning to focus on health promotion approaches to help create the conditions conducive to the development of resilience in youth. In particular, there is growing recognition that we need programs located directly in the natural ecological and developmental context where children grow up and that bridge the different worlds that children inhabit. The Asia-Pacific Resilience Project (APRP) is a health promotion project that is both theory- and research-based, addressing academic success, emotional wellbeing, and mental health in students in primary schools. APRP is built on a “resilience approach” to mental and emotional health and for the past 5 years has built a framework and practice for all primary school students, including at-risk students.

Development of the Asia-Pacific Resilience Project The APRP was initially developed in response to a tender from Health Promotion Queensland (HPQ), now a unit in Queensland Health. Initially a Ministerial Advisory Committee, HPQ, was funded to support projects that addressed significant and emerging health issues in Queensland. Traditionally, researchers interested in prevention or early intervention programs spotlighted clinical measures of mental health status as key indicators of poor mental health outcomes. HPQ recognized that such an approach fails to determine “upstream” risk factors that, if addressed through effective early intervention or preventative strategies, directly and indirectly determine clinical outcomes. Additionally, this approach neglects measures of social indicators that reflect the “capital” of a community, which also determines clinical outcomes. This project is based on a model that suggests monitoring upstream indicators, such as the capacity of individuals and communities to withstand the negative consequences of adverse circumstances, is critical. This is because such measures can reasonably predict subsequent demand for intervention services, while also reflecting the wide array of contextual determinants known to have an impact on health outcomes (Mazza & Reynolds, 1999). By fostering the development of personal strengths, or human capital, as well as building social systems that provide healthful environments (social, political, and organizational), the longer-term need for interventions may be reduced. The model identified to incorporate this theoretical perspective and to allow the planning, development, and management of a resilience-based intervention was the “health-promoting school” model (WHO, 2003). Such a model is predicated upon a socio-ecological or holistic perspective,

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but it also has its foundations in what Antonovsky (1987) termed a “salutogenic” or health-building approach. The APRP was, therefore, constructed upon a socio-ecological paradigm of health and sought to explain the interdependence between the school as a social system, or setting, and population health outcomes. This model reflects a commitment to the concept of “place” (or habitus) and its significance to health and wellbeing at both individual and population levels. This approach recognizes that intrapersonal characteristics, life experiences, and dimensions of settings combine to determine our personal capacities for survival in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world (Berkman et al., 2000; Grossman et al., 2003; Shahar & Priel, 2002; Svanberg, 1998). The APRP was developed recognizing that no theory of resilience currently encompasses the multiple systemic influences upon an individual’s development of resilience – the family, peer group, school, or community – and that interventions typically address risk and protective factors within one setting and ignore the potential interactive effects, whether these be additive or subtractive, from other systems of influence. The project commenced in Queensland in 2003 with 10 intervention schools (north Brisbane) and 10 control schools (south Brisbane). It was supported by a project team including project officers, researchers, and funding support to the intervention schools, together with extensive workshops and in-service support for teachers, students, and parents. As part of a strategy to ensure the research community was kept informed of progress, regular papers and posters were presented at national and international conferences. At one of these conferences, delegates from China expressed interest in addressing some of the perceived mental health issues observed in their home provinces, using the resilience approach. Colleagues in China were keenly interested in the issue of resilience, due to an increasing concern with mental ill-health associated with rapid change in China, including urbanization, globalization, high levels of competition, and potential social and behavioral stresses due to high expectations from parents and grandparents. The evidence available regarding the effectiveness of the health-promoting school approach in dealing with mental health promotion has led to enthusiastic endorsement of this approach from school principals, staff, and students in the cities of Nanjing, Hefei, Shenyang, and Shenzhen. There is a high rate of mental health problems among children and adolescents in China, with about one in six children (Lee, 2004) and adolescents experiencing negative emotional feelings. Suicide, in association with depression, is now the primary cause of death for youth, with the age for suicide and attempted suicide continually falling (Parker et al., 2001). A recent study indicates that 30% of “normal” Chinese adolescents reported having depression and 41% indicated anxiety (Hesketh et al., 2003). Children with these “invisible” mental health problems often go unrecognized for a prolonged period. However, currently, there is no generally accepted mental health promotion model developed for children in China.

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In 2005, training workshops were held for school staff in Nanjing and Hefei that clearly showed the relevance of the project to the needs of children, families, and schools in China. The experience in Nanjing and Hefei was broadly publicized and subsequently attracted Shenzhen city (Guangdong Province) and Shenyang city (Liaoning Province) health and education officials to participate in the project, to meet the mental health promotion needs of children, families, and schools in their cities. The 2-week-long training workshops with approximately 40 primary school staff and parents as participants were conducted in each city dealing with (1) the principles of the health-promoting school (HPS) approach and (2) resilience and mental health issues. Six-monthly training workshops were also conducted by our Chinese collaborating institutions in each city. The schools in each city participated in health-promoting activities, using intervention material designed for the study. A prospective intervention study design was used, with intervention schools matched to control schools in terms of school size and socioeconomic status. The study plan was designed to compare the intervention effects on intervention schools in terms of resilience, family functioning, school organization and climate, community social support, health-promoting school features, and social capital. A time series design was used, with pre- and post-intervention comparisons for both intervention and control schools, to examine the intervention effects over time. The HPS intervention group was comprised of selected primary schools in each city with a cohort of school age children from year 1 to 6 using the HPS approach. The control group was composed of primary schools with a cohort of school age children from year 1 to 6 who were matched with the intervention group in grade, school socioeconomic status level, education quality level, and school size. The intervention schools consisted of the following: • • • •

Five primary schools in Nanjing Two primary schools in Hefei Two primary schools in Shenzhen Four primary schools in Shenyang

These schools were matched with a similar number of control schools. In all, there were 13 intervention schools and 13 control schools in four participating cities. A multilevel strategy was devised, consisting of three levels: 1. Level 1: whole school approach to promote student resilience, a supportive school environment, family functioning, community involvement 2. Level 2: teacher support and peer support group for children who encounter problems during school days 3. Level 3: psychological counselling and individual help for children who have psychological problems using psychological counselling service provision

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Development of Resilience Research into resilience began around 40–50 years ago when the concept was initially clinically formulated and analyzed in a clinical setting. Early investigations by Werner and Smith (1982) reported on a 30-year ethnographic study of high-risk children in Kauai. This study followed a cohort of children, born in 1955 in Kauai, Hawaii, into troubled and impoverished families. Werner and Smith discovered that one-third of the high-risk children were vulnerable but succeeded both in school and later at work. The other two-thirds developed emotional and behavioral problems including delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and mental health problems. Werner and Smith found that the successful group could be distinguished by certain temperamental characteristics and social skills, strong relationships with parents or other adults, and support within the community. Of those teenagers who developed problems, some matured to become successful adults. This group tended to have pivotal experiences with supportive people in situations that structured their lives. For example, those who joined the military or a church group, went to college, or developed a stable and close relationship with another person were more likely to succeed. These characteristics were labelled “protective factors” and provided a buffer as well as a reservoir of resources to deal effectively with stress (Resnick, 1997). More recently, Conger and Elder (1994) found similar results in a 10-year prospective study of a cohort of 558 young people and their families. Resilience to economic hardship was promoted by support from parents, siblings, and adults outside the family. Resilience has been used to characterize individuals who overcome difficult and challenging life circumstances and risk factors (Garmezy et al., 1984; Rutter, 1984; Werner, 1992). This perspective has conceptualized resilience as successful adaptation despite risk. Risk factors have been defined as hazards relating to the individual or to the individual’s environment that increase the likelihood of a problem occurring (Rutter, 1987). Resilience has been described as the interaction between risk and protective factors, specifically a process that results from individual reaction to risk factors, or vulnerabilities, that are present in the environment (Luthar, 2003; Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). Studies on resilience in terms of adaptation despite risk often cite protective factors to explain why only the minority of children living in adverse conditions manifest problem behaviors and symptoms of psychopathology (Rutter, 1987). Protective factors have been referred to as those factors in the individual, or the environment, which enhance an individual’s ability to resist problems and deal with life’s stresses. Thus, protective factors exert their effect only when a risk is present (Rutter, 1987). Protective factors have been considered to either compensate the risk or buffer the effect of risk on child development. Antonovsky’s (1987, 1996) salutogenic model focuses on factors that help identify coping resources of children which may contribute to resilience and

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effective adjustment, notwithstanding adversity and risk. The concepts implicit in the salutogenic model have relevance in health promotion and practice. A salutogenic model, as opposed to a pathogenic model, emphasizes competence and healthy children functioning in multiple domains (e.g., social, emotional, and academic) and emphasizes enhancing protective factors in the lives of all children, irrespective of the risk present. Implicit in this approach is the idea that resilience in children can be fostered and promoted by establishing protective factors in the environment (Benard, 2004). The emphasis on resilience within an ecological approach takes into account the influences of social context, both proximal and distal, to children (McLoyd, 1998). This advance is formalized in Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1989) ecological model. It specifies that well-being is affected substantially by the social contexts in which children are embedded and is a function of the quality of relationships among individual, family, and institutional systems. The factors that reside within the individual include a variety of coping skills, for example, self-efficacy, self-esteem, problem-solving, communication, and cooperation. Factors external to the individual considered as protective factors include parental support, teacher mentoring, or school support that promotes positive youth development. The term “external” emphasizes the social environmental influences on child health and development and helps to place resilience in a more ecological context, moving away from conceptualization of resilience as a static, individual trait. Although there is no overall consensus regarding the definition of the resilience paradigm, there is a general agreement regarding its construct and components. These include individual characteristics of the child, family structures, and the external environment (Werner, 1989). Werner argues that resilient children have the following characteristics: a high level of autonomy, empathy, better problemsolving skills, and supportive peer relationships. He also found that variables relating to resilience are protective factors embedded in the family, the school, and the community (Werner, 1992). Protective factors modify, ameliorate, or alter a person’s response to the negative effects of risk (Smith & Carlson, 1997). Family protective factors are those that shape the family’s ability to endure in the face of adversity and risk. Key characteristics of family protective factors include warmth, affection, cohesion, commitment, and emotional support for one another (McCubbin, McCubbin, & Thompson, 1987b). These factors have also been found to be associated with resilience in children (Smith, 1999; Werner, 1995). School experiences that include a safe and supportive environment, positive peer relationships, positive teacher influences, and opportunities for success have also been found to be positively related to children’s resilience (Rutter, 1987; Werner, 1995). Such variables may have a decisive impact on a child’s ability to cope with stress or challenge and may be crucial in determining the extent to which a stressful situation will escalate into harm or resolve itself into adjustment and resilience. Community support includes participation in the activities of pro-social organizations, such as clubs or

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scouts. It also includes neighborhoods possessing high collective efficacy (high levels of social cohesion and informal social control), a high level of public safety, effective emergency social services, and good public health and health services. Thus, the presence of protective factors may determine a child’s ability to adjust and cope with adversity in the family, school, or community. Researchers have commonly assigned resilience-related factors into two broad categories: (1) those falling within the domains of individual personality attributes or dispositions (Rutter, 1990; Werner, 1992) such as social competence, problemsolving, autonomy, and sense of future and purpose and (2) those relating to environmental influences such as peers, family, school, and local community (Rutter, 1987; Werner, 1995).

Resilience and Student Well-Being Numerous studies indicate that most threats to the development of children are those derived from adversities that undermine the basic human protective systems for development. The APRP attempted to promote resilience by focusing on preventing damage to these basic protective systems. Effective schools were believed to be those where there are strategies that are likely to help children to overcome challenges and achieve resilient outcomes and trajectories. Interventions that promote effective teaching and learning and engagement of committed parents, teachers, and community members in the lives of children are also critical. Primary school education is directly concerned with resilience because of its twofold focus on risk and positive adaptation. First, its focus is on the development of competence among young people, including those who have encountered adversity. It is estimated that more than 20% of children in China, Australia, and the United States, especially those in urban environments, are at risk for school failure and significant social, emotional, and behavioral problems, such as depression, anxiety, aggression, suicide, and unhealthy risk-taking (Ellickson et al., 1996; Lau et al., 1999; Sawyer et al., 2000; Zhang et al., 1997). As research demonstrates, many children face multiple and interacting risks in their families, communities, peer groups, and school environments (Cicchetti & Toth, 1996; Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). Without intervention, young people confronting multiple adversities have a greater risk of developing substantial problems and dysfunctions along their developmental pathways. Second, in organizational terms, schools are confronting problems and needs of immense scope, for which they are largely unprepared. School resources are limited, making it a challenge for them to address many students’ problems, behavioral management, and learning needs. Yet, without intervention coordinated by schools or community agencies, young people are unlikely to receive the required help. Schools are important settings for prevention, health promotion, and intervention and are the setting where most developmental, intellectual, social, emotional, and physical tasks engage and transform children.

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Development of Resilience Measures The criteria used to define resilience relating to students included, first, successful individual adaptation (e.g., self-esteem) and, second, a sufficiency of provision of external support from family, school, and community at context level. The APRP, which was mainly exploratory in nature, had two main purposes, one methodological and the other practical. First, from within the general conceptual framework of the resilience approach, we wished to devise a new and feasible method for identifying resilient outcomes among primary school children in primary schools. Second, we wanted to explore the effectiveness of a resilience approach to promote student well-being, based on a number of outcome measures chosen from among some of the main resilience dimensions. The main instruments through which APRP attempted to define and measure resilience were via three questionnaires: a student resilience, a parent or caregiver resilience, and a staff resilience instrument. At the student level, resilience measurements in relation to the personal characteristics examined in this study were drawn from the relevant literature. They included self-esteem, self-efficacy, capacity to solve problems, willingness to cooperate and communicate, sense of purpose in life, autonomy, and perceptions of family, peers, school, and community (Rutter, 1990; Werner, 1992). Family-level variables examined focused on family functioning, family coherence, and how the family as a unit copes with the stresses of life. Family coherence pertains mainly to the elements of coping, problem-solving, support, communication, and understanding (Rutter, 1990; Werner, 1992). Resilient families generally have the resources to access support from the community, friends, and kinship network. At the school level, variables examined included parental perceptions of the school organizational environment, its capacity to provide good structure, clear rules and regulation, and the extent to which a supportive psychosocial environment was present in the school. Numerous studies have indicated that social support has the ability to moderate the effects of family stress (DuBois et al., 1994; Murata, 1994; Spilman, 2006); hence, community-level variables in the study examine social support as perceived by parents/caregivers. The family stress and coping literature is replete with emphasis on the importance of social support both as a protective factor and as a recovery factor. Such community, friend, and kinship networks can help to give meaning to a situation, help to develop coping strategies, and, more importantly, foster the family’s ability to face challenge and change situations (McCubbin et al., 1987a). A number of school factors have been identified as being able to influence children’s mental health. Specifically noted is the school ethos, climate or environment, the curriculum, the rules and discipline regarding management of student behavior, expectations of the staff and parents, and opportunity for positive relationships with adult models in the school (Baker et al., 2003). The school-level variables examined also included staff perceptions of the school’s health-promoting nature and social capital. Other researchers have identified similar health-promoting school factors including school policy, school physical environment, and school social environment but have also identified personal skill building, access to health service,

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and school-community relations (Booth & Samdal, 1997; Deschesnes et al., 2003; Rogers et al., 1998; Scriven & Stiddard, 2003) to be important aspects of the healthpromoting school environment. The intervention strategies using socio-ecological, health-promoting school principles in intervention schools emphasized related themes, as summarized in Table 55.1.

Integration of Mental Health and Educational Practice The APRP strived to overcome the traditional distinctions between mental health and educational practice in work with students. The project shows that academic success acts as a protective factor for at-risk youth, providing them with a sense of self-efficacy and tools for life success. Thus, in a virtuous cycle, as academic success increases, the risk for delinquent student behaviors decreases, and as risky behaviors decrease, academic progress begins to improve. Prevention and intervention then come not only from outside schools but also from within and are focused on eradicating the barriers that obstruct students’ learning. The fact that the project fully incorporated educational goals in schools supports its success. Teachers, parents, and principals viewed the project as supporting the learning goals of the schools rather than as a distraction from their primary goals. The APRP was designed with the concept of partnership at its core, to work with schools to maximize health and thereby contribute to the achievement of learning outcomes. In terms of planning, management, implementation, and evaluation, the project illustrated the vital significance of collaborative structures, partnerships, comprehensive and integrated approaches, as well as consistent, integrated, multidisciplinary, coordinated approaches when dealing with health issues for children and young people. The project provided evidence of the need for inter-sectoral awareness of the developmental, social, and health needs of children and young people, together with an example of effective, evidence-based, and collaborative action to address the mental health and developmental issues of this group. It also illustrated a model that can strengthen existing formal and informal links and partnerships with other sectors as well as support a family-centered and setting/ place-based approach. Also, as an important educational objective, it allowed opportunities for young people to participate in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of developmental, social, and health interventions. One of the research questions addressed by the project was the relationship between resilience and depression, as depression may affect many areas of a child’s life in the school, such as diminished academic performance (Kovacs & Goldston, 1991), poor peer relationships (Connolly et al., 1992), conduct problems and socialized delinquency (Norvell & Towle, 1986), suicide (Phillips et al., 2002), and disturbed family relationships (Hamilton et al., 1997). Subclinical depression must also be taken seriously, as adolescents with subclinical depression have been found to be significantly more likely to develop clinical disorders over a subsequent period of 2 years (Horwath, 1992). Adolescents with high self-report depression

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Table 55.1 Intervention activities Themes Professional development for staff and parents

Student resilience building

School environment

Community partnerships

Curriculum development

Extracurricular development

Psychological counselling

Activities Run workshop and training for staff and parents in: • Resilience • Parenting skills in relation to parent-student relationship development, communications between school and families, parental engagement in school activities Through various activities and curriculum to develop students’: • Problem-solving skills • Social skills • Communication skills • Peer relations • Assertiveness skills Decoration of school to develop physical and social environment to address issues of: • Safety • Anti-bullying • Friendship • Respect • Good student-teacher relationship • Good student relationship • Assembly to celebrate success and give awards to students with good behaviors and social-emotional competence Intervention schools build partnerships with: • Local communities • Psychological associations • Police office • Parent association • Youth club Resilience issue is addressed in key learning areas: • Maths • Literacy • English • Health and social study • Drama • Sports The resilience skills were addressed through extracurricular activities: • Excursion • Family activities such as BBQs, picnics • Parent-student activities • Develop psychological counselling center: provide psychological support when students need help • Referral service: liaise with local psychological counselling service when students have behavioral and emotional problems

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scale scores have been found to be three times more likely to develop depression compared to those without elevated scores. The results indicated that a low level of resilience is significantly related to depression symptoms. Important findings from our study extend the work of various intervention programs (Barrett et al., 2003; Cutuli et al., 2006; Shochet et al., 2001). First, constructs relating to resilience were extended to other aspects such as social support from peers, families, school, and communities, in addition to individual resilience characteristics such as self-esteem. Second, depression is related to low level of family support, to low level of school support, and to low level of community support. To date, virtually all of the research that has examined predictors of depression in children and adolescence has focused on individual characteristics, such as selfesteem or self-competence. However, it is apparent that much more research needs to be conducted examining potential predictors of depression, such as social support from family, school, and community, since depression and anxiety are common during adolescence (Compas et al., 1993; Lesionsohn et al., 1994; Sun & Stewart, 2007). Also, gender differences in relation to anxiety problems become apparent during this time, with boys at more risk of experiencing problems than girls in primary schools. An intervention program to reduce the depression rate in primary school children was then incorporated into the curriculum, extracurricular activities, school policy, school ethos, and environment. With regard to the prevention effect, it was expected that the intervention group would be associated with fewer depressive symptoms at the post-intervention phase compared to the nonintervention group and that children’s resilience levels in the intervention group would also be increased. In testing these hypotheses, results show that there were significant differences between the pre- and post-intervention phase in the proportion of students who had subclinical depression symptoms in the intervention schools and differences between intervention and controls schools in the post-intervention phase. Only 21.6% of students in the intervention schools compared to 29.4% of students in the control schools in the post-intervention phase were subclinically depressed. From a health promotion perspective, 2.8% of subclinical children in the intervention schools fell into the normal category; in contrast, 8.1% of healthy children moved to the subclinical category in the control schools at post-intervention. These results confirm that children in the intervention schools showed a significantly greater decrease in depressive symptoms as measured by the Kovacs Children’s Depression Inventory (Kovacs, 1992) at the post-intervention phase. For both subclinical and clinical depression groups in the intervention schools, all resilience scores significantly increased, compared with scores in the pre-intervention phase. One aspect of the findings that is difficult to interpret is that there was a significant difference between the pre- and post-intervention phase for the nondepressed group in terms of resilience scores in the intervention group, such that all resilience scores except goals and aspirations decreased for the nondepressed group students. Further investigation is needed to examine if their decreasing scores in resilience factors may lead to later depressive symptoms. Major beneficiaries of the program were those subclinical students who began with moderately elevated depressive symptoms. Those in the intervention program were more likely to shift into the healthy range and less likely to fall into the clinical

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range. There were 2.8% of students with subclinical depressive symptoms who moved into the normal range. These results are consistent with recent studies which have indicated that a mental health promotion intervention program is likely to be most beneficial to subclinical groups (Shochet et al., 2001). The universal nature of the intervention program also appeared to be of benefit to adolescents who were initially considered healthy. That is, there was a significant difference between the pre- and post-intervention phase in the proportion of students who were in the healthy categories in the intervention group. At post-intervention, none of the healthy students moved into the subclinical category; however, in the control schools, 8.1% of healthy children moved into the subclinical category. This result is similar to Shochet et al.’s (2001) study where 10.1% of the healthy adolescents moved into the subclinical category if they were not recruited into a universal intervention program. The intervention program was, therefore, clearly beneficial to both subclinical and healthy groups. This evidence adds weight to the importance of any action taken to maximize mental health and well-being among populations and individuals. It also emphasizes the importance of enabling people to maximize their health potential through influencing environmental conditions. These results, therefore, support and renew the current emphasis on prevention and early intervention. The model used in this project, the healthy school community (or health-promoting school) model, provides a mechanism to achieve these goals. The prevention of mental health problems and mental disorders relies on reducing the risk factors for mental disorder as well as enhancing the protective factors that promote mental health. Developing social, emotional, and behavioral skills using the concept of resilience to promote mental health and well-being can be seen as both a broad preventative initiative at a population or whole school level and also as an opportunity to identify at-risk students and help to prevent them moving to further levels of depression. The results of this study are encouraging in terms of the value of investing resources in a comprehensive intervention program, due to the prevention impact on children with subclinical depressive symptoms as well as healthy children in primary schools in China.

Resilience Enhancing Environment and Student Mental Health Numerous programs have been developed to reduce or alleviate problem behavior or disorders and/or assist positive youth development (Browne et al., 2004), with the majority of these intervention programs focused on behavior or treating child mental health disorders and symptoms such as attention-deficit hyperactivity. The effects of an adverse social environment are likely to be cumulative. The Kauai Pregnancy Study (Werner, 1992), for example, examined the impact of perinatal stress and the quality of the environment on children’s physical, intellectual, and social development. At 10 years of age, social class was found to be significantly associated with achievement, intelligence, and emotional problems. Early environmental deprivation had an even greater impact at 10 years of age than at 2 years of age, indicating that the effect increases with age. The significance of the school at this age has also been recognized in a range of studies; effects have been found of school structural

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variables, characteristics of school principals/teachers, and aspects of the school policy relating to student achievement and well-being. A growing body of evidence indicates that school environment plays a critical role in children’s development. The APRP accepted the significance of a comprehensive, universal context-focused approach (Browne et al., 2004) through statistical analysis that has confirmed associations between children’s social-contextual experiences in schools and mental health. The resilience approach requires a substantial change in the way schools, their staff, and students interact with each other and promote health and well-being. This involves moving from practices that rely mainly on classroom-based health education models to a more comprehensive, integrated construct of health promotion that focuses both on children’s attitudes and behaviors and on their environment (Stewart et al., 2004; Sun & Stewart, 2007). To achieve maximum benefit, the APRP considered these school contextual and environmental characteristics, namely: (1) the formal health curriculum that gives school-aged children the essential knowledge and social skills that will allow them to make enlightened choices affecting their physical and psychosocial health; (2) the school environment, which refers to the quality of the physical environment and the social environment, the health services, and policies of the school; and (3) school/ community relationships. In terms of partnership with community health services, APRP provided evidence of a productive partnership in mental health promotion, seeking to develop protective factors by increasing the supportive environment. Most of the studies published on the effect of school health promotion policies deal with only one behavior (such as smoking or alcohol and drug use) with few aspects of community and intersectoral partnerships and school support system (Browne et al., 2004). Wells et al.’s (2003) review suggested that long-term interventions that promote the positive mental health of all students and involve changes to the school climate are likely to be more successful than brief, class-based mental illness prevention programs. The intervention program using resilience approach in APRP is to investigate the significance of the school ecology, its social and environmental characteristics, on mental health promotion, characterized as the promotion of “resilience.” School staff indicate that they consider that there have been significant improvements in the areas of physical and social environment in relation to curriculum development focused on resilience, on mental health service provision and partnership with the community and health service providers, on mental health policy development in their schools, on school organizational structure, and in terms of promoting positive life experiences for students. The study also gives strong support to the resilience approach that links schools with relevant agencies and groups, embeds protective factors into the curriculum, and encourages school members’ participation. It also indicates the opportunities available for mental health promotion through school members’ involvement in the intervention. The project indicates that a resilience approach to get the whole school’s participation is effective in creating a healthy mental health promotion environment within primary schools in China.

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School environment indicators, such as the school social environment, schoolcommunity relations, and curriculum development, were all aligned with resilience. Intervention schools, in a relatively short timescale, showed immediate effects compared with schools that were not using a holistic approach. This improvement was shown across all mental health promotion areas. Numerous factors have the potential to influence the extent to which the physical and social environment of the school setting can influence health, broadly defined (Greenberg et al., 2003). Evidence from this study supports the contention that we should focus attention on changing organizational, physical conditions, and social environment rather than solely focusing on the individual. The evidence relating to the significant improvement in school organization in the current study supports strategies that encompass the school environment, structural issues, and organizational practice. Such areas should become key components of mental health promotion programs.

Conclusion Over the last three decades, a holistic approach has received increasing emphasis, underpinned by Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1989) ecological theory. The APRP explored the significance of the school ecology, its social and environmental characteristics, on mental health promotion, characterized as the promotion of “resilience.” It specifically focused on staff reports on an intervention project that used the resilience approach to promote resilience across the whole school community in a number of cities in China. School staff indicate that they consider that there have been significant improvements in the areas of physical and social environment, in relation to curriculum development focused on resilience, on mental health service provision and partnership with the community and health service providers, on mental health policy development in their schools, on school organizational structure, and in terms of promoting positive life experiences for students.Results from the APRP indicate that: • Resilience and contextual factors are significantly related to depression, even after demographic characteristics are controlled in the analysis. • School organization and climate are significantly related to student mental health. Family functioning related to family environment is significantly related to student mental health. • Social support related to community-family relationships and community social support for family is significantly related to student mental health. • Health-promoting school features are significantly related to student mental health status. These broad environmental improvements, derived from a large population-based study, are strongly supported by statistical evidence.

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Values in Motion From Confident Learners to Responsible Citizens

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Tim Small

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intrinsic Motivation to Grow and Change Over Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Awareness and Learning How to Learn and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Nature and Importance of Effective Learning Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Teacher/Mentor’s Role in Supporting Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Lessons from Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suggestions for the Self-Reflecting Practitioner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter will review, from a practitioner’s perspective, aspects of a particular program of related research into learning, values, assessment, and citizenship at the Universities of Bristol, Christchurch Canterbury, and Newcastle in the UK and some action research enquiries through which the findings and ideas have been tested in practice. The aim is to identify some unifying principles for a values education pedagogy that integrates the development of personal and social responsibility with the notion of movement, as in a journey, toward publicly assessed curricular goals. The five principles identified are concerned with: the intrinsic nature of motivation to learn; the importance of self-awareness to that motivation and the impact of learning relationships upon it; the facilitation of autonomy; and the integration of personal and social development with achievement. The chapter finishes by suggesting a practical approach to self-evaluation for teachers and schools seeking to reconcile the “humanity agenda” with the “achievement agenda.” T. Small (*) Ahead Space, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_56

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Keywords

Values · Values in motion · Confident learners · Responsible citizens · Selfawareness · Autonomy · Personal and social development

Introduction Findings from a study of 16- to 19-year-olds’ perceptions of virtues, values, and character formation are used to show a relationship between “moral agency” and the capacity for learning and personal growth over time. The principle of intrinsic motivation to learn is identified and then linked with the “ELLI” research at Bristol, which characterizes and assesses the attitudes, values, dispositions, and beliefs of the “effective lifelong learner.” The nature of the relationships between learning, selfawareness, and personal change are further explored with reference to findings from action enquiries applying and testing the ideas in a range of educational settings. The impact of learning relationships upon power to learn is explored, together with its implications for the role of the teacher. Examples of learners’ increased self-reliance and reduced dependency on teachers are used to illustrate and underline the value of developing and supporting learners’ autonomy. A close relationship is found between the practical implications of these enquiries and two reviews of worldwide research into the impact of citizenship education on schooling, learning, and achievement. The theme is identified of an integral relationship, rather than a dichotomy, between values education and the sustainable achievement of the imperatives of public accountability. As a former teacher and secondary school leader in the UK, I represent a practitioner’s perspective in exploring the connection between a particular program of research with which I have been engaged and potential and actual developments in the practice of values education. This research into learning, values, and citizenship education at the University of Bristol, in partnership with other universities and researcher-practitioners in the first decade of this century, has foregrounded a complex set of interconnecting factors and processes, driven by emancipatory values, that combine to form what is best described as an optimum “ecology” for learning and achievement. The purposes of this chapter are, firstly, to review aspects of a group of studies selected for their commonality in illuminating some unifying principles, showing how closely these five principles relate to the values of character formation, virtue, and good citizenship, and, secondly, to explore the implications of these principles for pedagogy: offering, in other words, a strategic application of the research findings that not only addresses economic and political imperatives but enhances humanity. The five linked, emerging principles, between them, encompass and interconnect the concepts of personal growth, learning, and achievement. The first is about intrinsic motivation to learn and change over time and its manifestation in the expressed values of young people. The second is about the value of self-awareness in optimizing and harnessing motivation. The third concerns the impact of learning

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relationships on self-efficacy and the sort of context in which it is most likely to be encouraged and enhanced. The fourth principle is about the teacher’s role in the facilitation and support of learners’ developing autonomy and responsibility. The fifth and last is concerned with a dynamic and integrating relationship between personal and social development and curricular or “public” achievement. The chapter ends on a practical note by using the aforementioned principles as the basis for a pedagogy for values (or citizenship) education, offering a set of suggestions for teachers to use in self-evaluation: what we might do more of, and less of, if our purpose is to develop effective learners who are learning both to be good citizens and high achievers.

Intrinsic Motivation to Grow and Change Over Time The first piece of research I want to refer to is an in-depth case study of three Sixth Form centers in Bristol, led by Christchurch Canterbury University between 2004 and 2006. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 551 students as part of a four-phase investigation of how 16- to 19-year-old students understood the concept of virtues and values and what they perceived to be the main influences on the formation of their own characters (Arthur et al., 2006). One of the overall findings of this study was that these young people “have a strong sense of themselves as ‘moral agents’ in society with clear ideas about what virtues and values matter (and) a sense of their own growth and change over time” (ibid., pp. 110–111). Following a preliminary theory building stage, an 81-item character questionnaire was designed and administered to the entire population and a factor analytic study selected as the most appropriate means of exploring whether there were any coherent underlying themes or factors that could be understood as dimensions of character formation. This enabled new scales to be created for each of the factors, which were tested for reliability. Fifteen key dimensions of character emerged from the study, which were then scored according to the questionnaire responses (see Table 56.1 below). The mean scores indicate the strength of the students’ self-report on each factor. The factors I want to focus on here are those ranked second, third, and fifth in the table: critical learning and becoming; ambition, meaning, and purpose; and challenge and responsibility. It is worth “unpacking” these, with these extracts from the first-person descriptions in the report: “Critical learning and becoming” is characterized thus: I know how to become a better person, am continually changing and growing as a person, and I have overcome lots of difficulties in my life, which have helped make me the person I am today. Current events make me think about the meaning and purpose of life and I know that there is sometimes a gap between what I do and what I know is right. . . .I often change as a result of my learning and I usually take responsibility.

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Table 56.1 Rank of mean scores for dimensions of character (Arthur et al., 2006, pp. 58–59) Character factor Living my virtues and values Critical learning and becoming Ambition, meaning, and purpose Critical social justice Challenge and responsibility Family influence Teachers respect for students Identity in relationship Influence of peers Critical values and school Community engagement Wider family influences Political engagement Media and community influences Spiritual and religious engagement

Mean 76.1630 74.0045 73.4795 73.2164 71.7809 70.7899 70.7193 69.9858 62.2942 58.9110 51.1586 49.8936 43.5029 35.0149 34.3845

Std. deviation 10.70520 11.15371 15.63086 14.35784 14.83962 20.42706 15.18821 13.39381 17.90240 14.38256 25.63368 25.85417 20.94131 22.92697 32.49014

“Ambition, meaning, and purpose” includes: I have a strong sense of my own purpose and meaning in life and what I would like to be doing in the future. I am ambitious to do well in life and my exams. “Challenge and responsibility” is as follows: When I struggle with something I will persevere with it, I challenge others’ opinions and am open to being challenged myself and I am able to take full responsibility for my own learning. (Arthur et al., 2006, pp. 57–58)

The fact that the mean scores in these three dimensions are relatively high suggests that a large majority of these young people think of themselves as “continually changing and growing,” having a sense of “meaning and purpose” in life and identifying and desiring in time to close this “gap” between how they behave and how they aspire to behave. This appears to be linked to an openness to challenge and acceptance of “full responsibility” for their own learning. This willingness to accept responsibility and the desire to change for the better can be seen as a deep-seated “learning energy” that one would hope teachers are in a position to identify and foster. The most important implication for teachers, though, and the first of the five principles that I am proposing for a values-based pedagogy, is that the drive to learn and improve is intrinsic to the human condition and does not need to be somehow “implanted” or seen as the teacher’s responsibility to engender. A skilled and experienced teacher will spot it, know it, value it, exploit it, and refuse to blame anyone else for their failure to do so. Any apparent weakness, or indeed absence of such motivation must be interpreted as being as much or more a contextual factor than a reflection of the personality or temperament or innate

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capacity of the individual learner. The context is the teacher’s responsibility. Given that, motivation is the learner’s!

Self-Awareness and Learning How to Learn and Change Perhaps the research most important and relevant to the notion of self-motivated personal growth and change over time is the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) research at the University of Bristol’s Graduate School of Education (Deakin Crick et al., 2004a). Its core aims were to identify and define the values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior characteristics of the effective lifelong learner and to construct an assessment instrument to measure them through self-report and assist their development. Seven dimensions of “learning power” emerged, via factor analytic studies, each with cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects, representing a holistic view of the learner as a “thinking, feeling, and doing” human being: Changing and learning – a sense of myself as someone who learns and changes over time Critical curiosity – an orientation to want to “get beneath the surface” Meaning-making – making connections and seeing that learning “matters to me” Creativity – risk-taking, playfulness, imagination, and intuition Learning relationships – learning with and from others and also able to manage without them Strategic awareness – being aware of my thoughts, feelings, and actions as a learner and able to use that awareness to manage learning processes Resilience – the readiness to persevere in the development of my own learning power A 72-item questionnaire was created and later validated through further research (Deakin Crick & Yu, 2008) in order to measure the strength of these “learning dispositions” in any individual, through self-report. Administered online, this produces feedback for each learner, in the form of a seven-spoked spider diagram. A frequency chart is also produced for the whole class. This feedback then becomes the starting point for mentoring conversations and strategies for developing learning power, individually and collectively. One of the most widely reported benefits is of learners and teachers becoming confident with a whole new language of learning. Individuals often report particularly significant change in the dimensions they target and work on (Millner et al., 2006). If a second survey is taken, the tool superimposes a new profile on the original, so any gains made can be seen graphically (see Fig. 56.1). An important element of the ELLI survey tool, from the researchers’ point of view, is that it generates comparable data about the different levels of self-reported learning power, of different groups of learners, in different contexts, pre- and postinterventions, which can change both learners’ behavior and contexts, by changing the way learning is managed.

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Fig. 56.1 An ELLI profile, pre- and post-intervention

Through a program of research and development from 2004–2008, for the leadership of which I had some responsibility, these ideas have been applied and tested in practice in a series of collaborative action enquiries in which a researcher/ practitioner facilitated partner practitioners in schools, universities, and other formal learning contexts in administering the ELLI research and using the data reflectively, diagnostically, and formatively with individual learners. Qualitative data about impact, response, and perceived change was collected from students and staff and analyzed alongside the quantitative data generated by the ELLI research. Sample sizes ranged from nine “NEET” learners (not in education, employment, or training) on a state-funded training course to improve access to employment, to 1897 learners of all ages from 18–70, across 14 higher education institutions. One of the most significant and immediate benefits reported by learners was the positive impact of the visual characterization of their own self-report. Given an understanding of the seven learning power dimensions, they now saw themselves as learners in a way they had never done before and had a language with which to communicate about it. In one study in a secondary school in the northwest of England, for instance (which had used professional actors to personify the seven dimensions), an 11-year-old student reported that on noticing that her strategic awareness was relatively weak, and before even discussing her feedback with a teacher, she had started doing her homework on the day it was set, instead of leaving it “until some other time” (Small, 2008). This echoed a male student of the same age in a study in a school in the South of England the previous year, of a sample of 199 students in their first year of secondary education in the UK:I used to leave homework till the last minute, now I do a piece every day and plan ahead (Small, 2007). Quotations from other students in this latter school context reveal the impact of the ideas on their sense of identity and efficacy as learners: I have clear targets and I can set myself ones now Even if teachers don’t tell you to, you can still use it (ELLI) to help with your work. (ibid.)

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Further benefits and insights were widely and consistently reported, including an increase in confidence, reduced dependency on teachers, and enhanced capacity to manage transitions, such as between cultures, between work and formal learning, and between one learning institution and another. The higher education study found, for instance, that the population reporting the highest levels of learning power were mature adult, part-time learners who were engaging with formal learning in a workrelated context, with a clear, vocational purpose. One might assume that these mature students had naturally attained a higher level of self-awareness than younger, full-time students and, sure enough, it was the traditional, full-time, 18–22 year-old students just out of school who reported the lowest levels of learning power (Small & Deakin Crick, 2008). The clearest finding of this study was of improved engagement in reflection upon self and learning, the cultivation of which tutors reported as previously problematic, especially with this youngest section of the university student population. One of the most interesting interventions using these ideas involved three quite small, disparate, subsamples of young learners: a dozen 15-year-old high-achieving students in a state comprehensive school, the nine 16-year-old NEET learners (“not in education, employment, or training”), and subsample of 6 out of 32 young offenders convicted of serious offences and locked up between the ages of 12 and 18 (Millner et al., 2006 and reported in Deakin Crick, 2009). The self-assessment of learning power through the ELLI tool was used to “scaffold” their engagement with a personalized enquiry, so that they became aware, for instance, of the value of critical curiosity in finding out more about a chosen and cherished object or place, or strategic awareness in planning ahead, learning relationships in linking with experts, tutors, or each other, and, of course, resilience when they were “overwhelmed” by the scope of their enquiries. In response to their feedback, they each selected two dimensions of learning power to focus on during their enquiries. The overall purpose of the study was to see how far it was possible for learners from these very different backgrounds to achieve objectively assessable, publicly valued outcomes through a learning process which begins with and is grounded in personal choice, a methodology pioneered with undergraduates by Professor Milan Jaros at the University of Newcastle (Jaros & Deakin Crick, 2006). The sample was small, but the results were extremely positive and the students’ evaluations contained material both profoundly revealing, as here in one high-achieving student’s insight into the role of personal narrative in learning and achieving: Learning how to tell your own story would make it easier to do all the other things you have to do - learn subjects, get grades etc. (Deakin Crick, 2009, p. 12)

and encouraging, as here with the words of Danny, one of the previously most disengaged and disaffected NEET learners, who said, It’s changed what I think I can do!. (Millner et al., 2006, p. 24)

These two quotations sum up most eloquently the second principle I am seeking to illuminate here: that self-awareness is a powerful element in motivation to learn

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and change. The link with the first principle is clear: that if that motivation is intrinsic, then becoming more aware of their “learning identity” and a “learning journey” or “story” can help learners to find and release their intrinsic motivation. The ELLI tool is reported to be a factor in increasing self-awareness, particularly in relation to learning and personal change. Unlike most measuring and assessment undergone by students in formal education, this is not a test by which they are being judged as successes or failures. The ELLI tool “holds a mirror” up to learners, with no judgement implied other than that contained within their own interpretation of the feedback. With the help of a skilled mentor, their response is most often found to endorse the face validity of the feedback, embrace the possibility of self-motivated change, and anticipate the continuation, or resumption, of a “learning journey.”

The Nature and Importance of Effective Learning Relationships Having and utilizing effective learning relationships is identified by the ELLI research as one of the seven key “dimensions” of learning power and is characterized thus: Effective learners are good at managing the balance between being sociable and being private in their learning. They are not completely independent, nor are they dependent. They like to learn with and from others and to share their difficulties, when it is appropriate. They acknowledge that there are important other people in their lives who help them learn, though they may vary in who those people are, e.g. family, friends or teachers. They know the value of learning by watching and emulating other people, including their peers. They make use of others as resources, as partners and as sources of emotional support. They also know that effective learning may also require times of studying – or ‘dreaming’ – on their own. (Deakin Crick, 2007, p. 141)

This important balance between collaborative and solitary learning often appears to get lost in the pursuit of either “independent learning” on one hand, or “social and group learning” on the other. The implication is that the “use of others as a resource,” the sharing, watching, and emulation that are all part of this dimension of effective lifelong learning, can either increase a learner’s capacity for autonomy or create a dependency upon the external sources of support. The learning relationships found to be most beneficial to the development of learning power were summed up by practitioners involved in the original ELLI research as being “characterised by trust, affirmation and challenge” (Deakin Crick, 2007, p. 147). Although the term “learning relationships” in the ELLI research covers all the “social resources” available to a learner, it is student-teacher relationship that I want to focus on here, since the research suggests that it can be a key influence in the decisionmaking involved in personal change. The students in the Bristol study investigating their attitudes to values, virtues, and character formation, described above, reported that “the most important feature of school is that their teachers respect them, like them and value them as individuals.” They reported that they respond most readily to teachers who encourage and lead by example and that they “perceive a relationship

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between good relationships with their teachers and their learning” (Arthur et al., 2006, p. 113). It is important to note, here, that these teachers were not necessarily those with responsibility in a “pastoral” role for the students’ character formation or wellbeing; they might be teaching them anywhere in the curriculum. This relates to evidence that where mentoring support is designed and implemented strategically and appropriately, it appears to be a significant factor in the power of the ELLI tool to inspire and inform personal change. In another quasiexperimental study involving 199 students and their form tutors in their first year at a secondary school in the South of England, students and tutors alike reported the single most powerful intervention to be the use of mentoring conversations, framed by the ELLI feedback: Tutors placed a high value on the mentoring conversations as a context for guidance and target-setting using the ELLI profiles to inform and differentiate their advice, though their success depended upon the promptness and enthusiasm with which such conversations were followed through and sustained. Especially in the context of the mentoring conversations, students appeared to find their ELLI profiles particularly helpful in prompting choices and focussing their target-setting.

The tutors’ feedback included such phrases as: Mentoring is key!

and students said such things as: (My mentor) explained the profiles which was very useful. . . They (mentoring sessions) were the starting point for talking about our profiles. . . (We) talked about it with mentors and (had) written targets to improve our weaker points. . . One-to-one talks made the intentions clear. (Small, 2007, p. 11)

In a survey conducted by the school, 88% of students reported that they had discussed their ELLI profiles or dimensions in mentoring and found it helpful. The principle that is emerging here is about the value and power of a professionally intended and skillfully managed relationship between the learner and someone in a position to offer structured, mentoring support for increasing self-awareness and experimenting with strategies for improving learning effectiveness. The evidence suggests that it is a key environmental variable in a context where young people are most likely to be motivated to accept the risk of learning characterized by personal growth and change.

The Teacher/Mentor’s Role in Supporting Autonomy These findings raise important questions for the classroom teacher. How far is it possible within a normal timetable for teachers to adopt and provide this kind of mentoring role in relation to individual students? How far is it challenged by the

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conventions of authority, control, and curriculum coverage? In short, what would a “values education pedagogy” actually look and feel like that combines the goals of personal and social development with those of curricular achievement? The research suggests that a teacher cannot accomplish this in isolation. It needs to be part of a “learner-centered” culture. The role of the teacher as motivator and facilitator is illuminated by McCombs and Whisler (1997) whose principles of “learner-centered practice” were tested and assessed as a co-variable with ELLI learning power data in a piece of research in Bristol (Deakin Crick et al., 2007) from which the notion of an optimum “ecology” for learning and citizenship was developed. The purposes of this study were to explore the relationships between the seven ELLI variables and other constructs known or presumed to be key features of an effective learning environment. These were teacher beliefs and practices, students’ perceptions of their teachers’ practices, student motivational variables, organizational emotional climate, and student attainment outcomes. The findings suggested strongly, perhaps predictably, that students who report themselves as having the highest levels of learning power, on the seven ELLI dimensions, also report their teachers as having the highest levels of “learnercentered practices.” These include, as four core “domains,” the teacher: providing positive classroom climate and relationships; honoring student voice and providing individual challenge; encouraging higher order thinking and learning skills; and adapting to individual developmental differences. (Deakin Crick et al., 2007, p. 45)

According to McCombs, the learner-centered teacher also shows high levels of selfefficacy, or “self-concept of ability” (McCombs & Whisler, 1997, p. 30), believes unconditionally in the learning potential of the students, and gives structure and support for students’ autonomy, rather than seeking simply to retain “control” of her class: in short, treating them as “co-creators in the teaching and learning process” (ibid., p. 33). Again, optimal characterizing of the relationship between learners and their teacher is seen as among the most important contextual conditions for effective learning. In the study with disaffected and disengaged learners and high achievers already referred to, a key idea to emerge concerned the relationship between the learner and teacher, or rather, in this case, the nature of the researcher’s role as “learning guide,” rather than “teacher” in the conventional sense. A “learning guide” was found to be as essential to success, especially of the fragile and disaffected learners, as their own motivation. The role as proposed by the researcher has two main aspects. The first is that of making critical professional judgements about the “elasticizing” of scaffolding and support, sometimes in the form of rules and limits, recognizing on one hand, in the words of one of the high achievers, that “limits make you more creative” and on the other that freedom enables and requires the learner to take responsibility. These judgements had to take account of learner, context, and task, and might change from one day to the next as confidence waned and grew. A second, essential aspect of the role reported unsurprisingly, therefore, by the researcher, was a “commitment to the life narrative of the learner rather than to a set of learning objectives devised on her behalf” (Millner et al., 2006, p. 35).

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The fourth principle, then, is the necessity of a progressive, responsible, and welljudged “handing over” of power and control to learners, through involving them as “authors” of their own learning journeys, cocreating knowledge, curriculum pathways, and criteria for evaluation, and developing a culture of responsibility and partnership based upon the values of humanity and learning, rather than on compliance or complicity in narrowing the task to one of meeting external objectives or targets invented by “the system.”

The Lessons from Citizenship Education The last two studies I want to refer to are reviews of all available empirical research, worldwide, into the impact of citizenship education on the provision of schooling and on learning and achievement (Deakin Crick et al., 2004, 2005). The purpose of the first of these reviews was to address, through a synthesis of the evidence from research, the relationships between citizenship education and the activities, processes, and structures of schooling. The purpose of the second was to build on the first, to explore in particular the impact of citizenship education on student learning and achievement. It was my task to summarize both of these reviews into pamphlets for professionals in teaching and teacher education (Small, 2004, 2005). What is clear from both reviews is a sense of the essential and integral relationship between education for personal and social development and education for lifelong learning and achievement by publicly agreed standards. It was also clear that if it is to mean anything, citizenship education must be understood to be about everything that happens (in schools), rather than just about what happens in a particular “citizenship” curriculum “slot” designated for that purpose. In this sense, it is synonymous with values education. Here is an extract of some of the findings of the first review in respect of the impact of citizenship education upon teaching and learning: • The quality of dialogue and discourse is central to learning in citizenship education • Transformative, dialogical, and participatory pedagogies complement and sustain achievement rather than divert attention from it • Students should be empowered to voice their views and name and make meaning from their life experiences • Listening to the voice of the student leads to positive relationships, an atmosphere of trust and increases participation. It may require many teachers to “let go of control” • A facilitative, conversational pedagogy may challenge existing power/authority structures • Such pedagogies require a quality of teacher-pupil relationships that are inclusive and respectful. (Deakin Crick et al., 2004b)

The principles of a pedagogy for enhancing both humanity and achievement shine clearly through these findings: the implication is of near-equal power relationship, where listening and influence work in both directions between teacher and student and knowledge is co-constructed, so the student is fully engaged in the

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learning. The finding that acknowledges the challenge this represents to more conventional views of authority and instruction should not be lightly dismissed. The experience of trust and affirmation, as well as challenge, in the relationship means that confidence, on both sides, is developed as a foundation ultimately more reliable and self-sustaining that control can ever be. The findings of the second review make an even clearer link between “a pedagogy for citizenship education” and raised academic and educational achievement, in terms of cognitive and affective, as well as social and personal outcomes. Here are some of them: A pedagogy appropriate for citizenship education: • can engage students to seek cognitive understanding of the meaning of their personal stories and experiences when learning about lesson content and gaining awareness of others’ situations • may lead to greater participation when lesson content is pertinent to student experiences • can enhance students’ higher order cognitive and intellectual development • can result in statistically significant positive changes in formal operations of movement from concrete literal thinking to abstract and scientific thinking, resulting in higher levels of reflection • may empower students, leading to increased self-confidence, more positive self-concept and greater self-reliance • can impact on affective outcomes as well as cognitive growth in areas, such as the development of self-concept increased self-confidence and more positive behaviour. (Deakin Crick et al., 2005)

Just as with the “ELLI” research into learning power, the power of this review’s findings is in its holistic view of the learner as a “thinking, feeling, and behaving” human being. For too long, educators have concentrated on either cognitive or personal and social functions and created schooling systems where the two are managed separately. What these reviews are asking, between them, as summed up in the pamphlets, are fundamental questions about the educational culture in which children are expected to grow into effective citizens. Is it to be a culture characterized by control and accountability, or one based on trust and responsibility? Is it to be a culture in which students are generally treated as anonymous, passive consumers, or one in which they are known and valued as contributors to, and partners in, the learning process? It is clear from the findings of both reviews that effective education for citizenship requires a shift in emphasis toward the latter kind of culture: where learning experiences are progressively shaped and “owned” by the learners themselves, rather than prescribed and determined, in both content and delivery, by those in positions of power. It is a culture in which interactions and processes are given at least as much attention as content and outcomes. Citizenship, again in common with values education, is as much about how things are done, as what is done. It is about habits of daily life, demonstrated and experienced in practice, not just in theory. Where experience is most valued, it is generally lived, not handed down from on high.

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If we wish to encourage young learners to make sense of the world of which they are a part, then we must make increasing personal and institutional coherence the fifth and last of our principles for strategic change in the pursuit of a values education pedagogy. It is about recognizing the intricate and interconnected relationship between “personal growth” and “academic achievement.” It is about creating an environment and learning experience where everything hangs together, for the learner. Schools struggle with the behavior of their students at times yet overlook inconsistencies in the behavior of adults toward them. Citizenship education requires the values of justice, equity, and democracy to be part of the currency of the classroom and intrinsic to decision-making at every level in a school and schooling system. If we expect young people one day to take an active interest in improving the world, perhaps they should all now be democratically involved in improving their schools. Equally, if schools are expected to make space in the curriculum and trust learners to help shape their learning and their schools, then school leaders, too, need to be given space and trust by legislators and policymakers, through easing the pressures of curriculum coverage, assessment and testing, performance management, and accountability, which tend to promote standardization, routine, and uniformity at the expense of creativity, flexibility, and diversity.

Suggestions for the Self-Reflecting Practitioner Lastly, since this chapter is written from a practitioner’s point of view, I want to end it with even more specific interpretation of these five principles into action and practice. In summarizing these two reviews and their findings, and interpreting their implications to professionals, it was included in my task to compile, for each, a list of suggestions of what teachers might do more of, and less of, if their purpose was to enhance the citizenship of their students – wherever in the curriculum they might be teaching (Small, 2004, 2005). In the light of the research and its practical applications reviewed in this chapter, and in support of the integration of professional and organizational self-evaluation into our culture of accountability, I thought I would end the chapter by offering a condensed version of these lists as a framework for professional self-evaluation and review of practice. If they help to support personal and professional change, they may represent another step toward enabling professionals to shape a pedagogy not only for values education but for integrating the core educational goals of raising academic standards and enhancing the human potential of all learners, including teachers. I have used these lists, adapted for the purpose, in workshops with practitioners who have found them useful, if challenging, (as intended) as a means of evaluating their practice against many of the principles which I have attempted to extract from selected studies referred to in this chapter. The adaptation simply involved adding a “Likert scale”–type scoring system on which we could score ourselves from 1–4 on

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each line of the lists of positive practice, according to whether we practice this “all or most of the time; some of the time; occasionally; or rarely or never.” It would have been contrary to the spirit of the reviews’ findings simply to tell teachers what to do. Nevertheless, the evidence was very clear that some approaches enhance citizenship, or values education, while others are likely to hinder or obscure it. The intention was to encourage teacher educators to encourage teachers to experiment with these approaches, reflect on them, and build their practice both on this sort of research evidence and their own experience of success. With the help and support of those responsible for our training, supervision, and continuing professional development, those of us working with values in education might therefore consider: How often and well do I do this: • Listen to students, as individuals as well as groups • Encourage them to pose questions of their own rather than simply answer those posed for them • Coach them in asking “why?” and “how?” questions and refusing to accept propositions at face value • Admit to “not knowing” but suggest how to find out • Take time out to get to know individuals in their own right • Create opportunities for sharing personal “stories and journeys” and relating programs of work to them • Seek and use opportunities to help students link the content of the curriculum to their personal stories and experiences • Take a genuine interest in the lives, feelings, preoccupations, and views of students, beyond classroom and school, and allow space for their growth as “whole people” • Ask open questions, such as enquiring what students really think and feel about things, giving time for reflection, and listening intently to the answers • Ensure that all students are included and involved in ways that suit their learning needs • Model and encourage relationships characterized by trust, affirmation, and challenge • See quality of relationships, between teacher and students and students and each other, as a prime responsibility and hallmark of good teaching • Make a feature of cooperation and collaboration, to build trust and enable all students to risk being heard • Anticipate and welcome the participation of more and more students in dialogue and discussion as they see the relevance of the learning to their own lives • Make judgements about the degree of responsibility that can confidently be expected of each individual at every stage • Make use of students’ ability to teach each other while relating what they know to what they need to find out

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• Progressively and safely “let go” of the need or desire to control things singlehandedly and make explicit everyone’s personal and collective responsibility for respectful, orderly conduct and collaboration • Involve students in formulating the expectations and “ground rules” which create the conditions for respectful dialogue and discourse • Take responsibility for upholding these and periodically renewing commitment to them • Confront and clarify any apparently deliberate attempt to undermine or subvert such agreed “ground rules” and take appropriate and predictable action • Organize and (with the students’ help) continually reorganize the classroom so as to indicate the equal value of every voice and facilitate face-to-face dialogue between pairs, in groups, and in the whole class forum • Build in time for reflection, for myself, and my students • Reflect back to individuals and groups the learning about values that I am demonstrating through collaborative processes as well as content and output • Include these intended learning outcomes in the objectives I plan for and make them explicit at the start of sessions • Involve learners in structured self-evaluation and inform my own assessment judgements by this means • Inform myself about the rights and responsibilities of good citizenship, including matters of justice, ethics, equity and equality, lawful and unlawful discrimination, social formation, economic awareness, democratic accountability and participation, public and private finance and accountability, political pressures and processes of government, as well as civic and human rights • Practice articulating my own social vision and values while encouraging a critical, questioning response • Coach students in the same skills • Encourage learners to develop criteria for the validation of opinions, attitudes, and beliefs • Make the processes of learning an explicit part of the curriculum and its assessment • In particular, foreground, develop, and assess communication skills as channels of learning • Take responsibility for structures and processes that allow students to take responsibility for their own learning • Understand and remember that academic achievement is enhanced by attention to personal and social development • Plan lessons and set objectives to allow for unpredicted, as well as intended learning outcomes • Seek and use opportunities for students to engage in higher-order, cognitive activities, such as asking “Why?” questions, thinking about thinking (metacognition), and learning about learning • Notice and reflect back to students their increasing ability to move between concrete or literal thinking and abstract, figurative or scientific thinking

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• Encourage and make time for reflection, to embed cognitive development and higher-order thinking skills • Reflect back to students their progress toward “deeper meanings” and their development as “interpreters” • Remember that thinking, feeling, and action are closely interrelated and avoid seeming to place intellectual development in a realm of its own • Practice reflective self-evaluation, with the help of professional “critical friends” and monitor the extent to which my teaching models and expresses (nonverbally as well as verbally) the values I seek to promote • Be ready to ask for help, ideas, and examples, including the chance to see this kind of teaching in action in other classrooms. and how well do I avoid these things: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Asking more questions than my students Saying more than all the class put together Asking questions to which I already know the answers Seeing myself as the main repository of knowledge or wisdom Using the content and knowledge base of the curriculum as the sole organizing principle for my planning Arranging students permanently in rows of desks facing the front Using my power to suggest an unequal right to opinions, attitudes, and beliefs Suggesting that there are simple, right, and wrong answers or “quick fix” solutions to matters of personal and social morality Assuming that learners understand why they are there and what they are intended to learn Keeping criteria for assessment judgements to myself and impose those judgements summarily and without explanation Stopping people talking just to get some “peace and quiet” Thinking that academic success can be achieved simply by accumulating knowledge Dismissing feelings, ideas, personal connections, and anecdotes as irrelevant, however “wacky” Limiting the development of thinking skills by restricting discussion to what is already known or strictly relevant Seeing myself as the prime decision-maker and controller of learning Being suspicious of digression and reflection Controlling behavior by denying opportunities for interaction Stimulating negative behavior by naming or spotlighting it and so “feeding” it with attention Thinking that the way something “has always been taught,” however well, will always be the best way Seeing intellectual or academic development as somehow separate from feelings, relationships, and personal growth

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Conclusions The message is as clear for leaders and policymakers as it is for students and teachers: that improved academic performance is not best accomplished by being made the single, main, or ultimate goal of learning. It would seem, though, that it is the virtually inevitable by-product of meaningful, integrated programs founded upon the five principles that I have framed out of the research reviewed above: • First, that desire and motivation to learn are intrinsic to the learner and need to be fostered, rather than usurped by the system • Second, that self-awareness and the capacity for interpreting and telling our own stories can “move” us to accept responsibility for our lives and purpose • Third, that this is greatly helped – and may only be possible for most of us – in the context of learning relationships characterized by trust, affirmation, and challenge • Fourth, that the challenge, on both sides of the teacher-student relationship, includes giving power to the learner and recognizing that no one can truly exercise responsibility without it • Fifth and last, that learning to learn, grow, and change is inseparable from learning to meet curricular goals: the strategy needs to be holistic and the experience to make coherent sense, if humanity is to be enhanced by what we achieve. Classrooms and learning environments informed by these principles are characterized by learners’ own enquiry, rich interaction and effective two-way communication, attention to personal and social development, self-assessment, and the encouragement of reflective self-awareness in learners and their learning teachers. They are alive with a sense of wonder, purpose, community, and discovery. When change occurs and guidance, resources, or support suddenly become unavailable, or when tests have to be passed and grades to be got, people take these things in their stride as part of what it means to be effective lifelong learners. In short, values education pedagogy, done well, moves people to close the gap between what they value and how they live out their stories: mapping the journey of learning and achievement for everyone.

References Arthur, J., Deakin Crick, R., Samuel, S., Wilson, K., & McGettrick, B. (2006). Virtues and dispositions in 16–19 year olds with particular reference to the religious and spiritual. Canterbury Christ Church University/University of Bristol. Deakin Crick, R. (2007). Learning how to learn: The dynamic assessment of learning power. Curriculum Journal, 18(2), 135–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170701445947 Deakin Crick, R. (2009). Inquiry-based learning: Reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaeological pedagogy. Curriculum Journal, 20(1), 73–92. (forthcoming).

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Deakin Crick, R., Broadfoot, P., & Claxton, G. (2004a). Developing an Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory: The ELLI project. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy, and Practice, 11(3), 247–272. Deakin Crick, R., Tew, M., Taylor, M., Ritchie, S. (2004b) A systematic review of the impact of citizenship education on the provision of schooling. In Research in education library. Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, EPPI-Centre. Deakin Crick, R., Taylor, M., Tew, M., Samuel, E., Durant, K., Ritchie, S. (2005) A systematic review of the impact of citizenship education on student learning and achievement. In Research in education library. Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, EPPI-Centre. Deakin Crick, R., McCombs, B., Haddon, A., Broadfoot, P., & Tew, M. (2007). The ecology of learning: Factors contributing to learner-centred classroom cultures. Research Papers in Education, 22(3), 267–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701497555 Deakin Crick, R., & Yu, G. (2008). Assessing learning dispositions: Is the effective lifelong learning inventory valid and reliable as a measurement tool? Educational Research, 50(4), 387–402. Taylor & Francis, London. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131880802499886 Jaros, M., & Deakin Crick, R. (2006). Personalised learning in the post mechanical age. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 423–440. McCombs, B., & Whisler, J. (1997). The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. Jossey-Bass. Millner, N., Small, T., & Deakin Crick, R. (2006). Learning by accident. Vital Partnerships. Small, T. (2004). Developing citizenship education. Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning, University of Bristol. Small, T. (2005). Enhancing learning and achievement through citizenship education. Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning, University of Bristol. Small, T. (2007). The learning agents. Vital Partnerships. Small, T. (2008). Learning in the outdoor dimension. Vital Partnerships. Small, T., & Deakin Crick, R. (2008). Learning and self-awareness: An enquiry into personal development in higher education. Vital Partnerships.

Transmitting Social and National Values Through Education in Singapore

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Tensions in a Globalized Era Jasmine B.-Y. Sim and Li-Ching Ho

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Singapore State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ideology and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values Education in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Singapore Social Studies Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Cohesion and Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meritocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Economic Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Economic Development and National Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meritocracy and Social Cohesion Viewed Through Economic Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

This chapter explores the transmission of national values through social studies at the secondary school level in Singapore through an analysis of the curriculum. We examine how a set of prescribed national values is addressed and identifies the tensions and challenges that surface in the context of globalization. In doing so, we problematize the conception of values education in Singapore and identify its context. Keywords

Social values · National values · Globalization · Singapore J. B.-Y. Sim (*) National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] L.-C. Ho Madison, WI, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_57

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Introduction Everywhere, governments are concerned about the development of young people as members of society (Taylor, 2006). While the family, media, and peer group are key influences on the developing values of young people, and thus society at large (Halstead, 1996), schooling remains a main source of formal values education for young people. Lee Kuan Yew (1966), the patriarch of Singapore once said: The two factors in the formative influences of a young man or a young woman’s life are the home and the school. We cannot do very much about the home, but we can do something about the school [Italics added]. (p. 1)

The task of socializing the next generation to the directions of the nation-state is so important that schools, directed by many governments, have been specifically assigned that duty. Formal values education is seen as the one avenue over which many governments, in particular those with highly centralized systems like Singapore, assume they can maintain high levels of control and accountability (Le Métais, 1997). This chapter explores the transmission of national values through social studies at the secondary school level in Singapore through an analysis of the curriculum. We examine how a set of prescribed national values is addressed and identifies the tensions and challenges that surface in the context of globalization. In doing so, we problematize the conception of values education in Singapore. In the sections that follow, we set out the context for values education in Singapore. Next, we identify three important recurring themes in the social studies curriculum, namely social cohesion and consensus, meritocracy, and economic pragmatism. We suggest that the values promoted by the state are essentially instrumental in nature and are governed by the ideology of national survival.

The Singapore State Singapore is a tightly controlled nation-state regulating schooling through a highly controlled educational system. The mission of the education service in Singapore is Moulding the Future of the Nation (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2009a); the purpose of schooling is to prepare the next generation to continue the nation. Like all postcolonial countries, the People’s Action Party (PAP) which has formed the government since Singapore attained independence in 1965 is single-minded in the pursuit of values education. Most immediately, the concern is to foster a sense of national identity and solidarity among the citizens and inculcate a set of national values and common moral sentiments in students. Following Ho Wing Meng (1989), national values in this chapter is defined as “a set of values, principles, and conventions, which may conveniently be described as common to the nationals of a particular country” (p. 674). The Singapore government lays great emphasis on values such as pragmatism, social cohesion and consensus, and meritocracy (Mauzy & Milne, 2002). These values

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were described by then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (1997) as “the right instincts. . .and attitudes” that must form “part of the cultural DNA which makes us Singaporeans.” The purpose is to help Singaporeans “bond together as one nation” and “thrive beyond the founder generation.” As Singapore is a young country, Lee argues that it was essential to “make a concerted effort to imbue the right values and instincts in the psyche of our young,” so that these “national instincts” can be passed on from generation to generation. Close attention has therefore been given to values education at the very top echelons of Singapore’s political hierarchy, where no less than the survival of the nation is seen as riding on its success (Chan, 1971; Gopinathan, 1988; Lee, 1966, 1997). We argue, however, that values education in Singapore is instrumental; the underlying intention is to sustain the economy as the source of political legitimacy for the state (Castells, 1992; Chua, 1995). Singapore achieved independence when it suddenly separated from Malaysia in 1965. Faced with severe, multiple challenges, its existence was threatened from the very beginning. A tiny island at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore is without natural resources and was initially an undeveloped economy with high unemployment. Demographically, it has a multiethnic population with a Chinese majority in a region surrounded by Muslim countries. The early years witnessed racial tensions and social unrest brought about by struggles against communists, communalists, and labor unrest. The Japanese Occupation and the racial riots reiterated this extreme vulnerability, emphasizing to the governing elite that for Singapore to survive, the challenges of developing a shared national identity, and modernizing the economy were urgent (Chua & Kuo, 1991). The Singapore government consolidated the country’s independence through the politics of survival, emphasizing pragmatism, built on multiracialism, meritocracy, and multilingualism. The goal of pragmatism is to ensure continuous economic growth, perceived to be inextricably linked to national survival. Very early on, the government turned to schools as allies in this nation-building cause. The education system was centralized and brought under government control, putting into its hands an important ideological state apparatus (Althusser, 2006). Clearly, Singapore was not meant to be politically and economically viable. Yet in three decades or so, the government propelled Singapore out of the material difficulties of a Third World ex-colony to a First World economy (Boisot, 1997). The ability to promote and sustain high rates of economic growth is arguably the source of the ruling party’s political legitimacy (Castells, 1992). In governing Singapore, their philosophy is that the citizens favor the right to a better life over political ideology. Accordingly, a strong economy is the basis to a good life for Singaporeans. So long as the ruling party can provide for Singaporeans jobs, homes, and security, citizens will continue to accept its rule (Low, 2001; Singh, 2007). Not surprisingly, the state feels a profound sense of vulnerability, recognizing that its achievements are always transient. Hence, it develops a siege mentality that views the country as being under constant threat. There is a need to constantly push Singapore forward in every aspect, in which there is no room for failure, otherwise it risks oblivion (Singh, 2007). Consequently, the state has developed a tight system of political control that allowed few opportunities for dissent to maintain social order

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(Ho, 2000; Tamney, 1996; Tremewan, 1994). The population had to be transformed into a tightly organized and highly disciplined citizenry, all pulling in the same direction with a sense of public spiritedness and self-sacrifice in the national interest, and adopting the moral attitude of putting the national community above oneself (Chua, 1995; Green, 1997; Quah, 1990; Yao, 2007). The impact of globalization however has made the ruling elite anxious about their ability to sustain prosperity and to engage young Singaporeans. Growing up amidst affluence in the cosmopolitan city, the well-educated, technologically savvy, and highly mobile young Singaporeans greatly value freedom and individual choice. Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (2001) expressed his concern that many of them “will pack their bags and take flight when our country runs into a little storm,” especially when the national newspaper reported that as many as 53% of Singaporean teens would consider emigrating (Straits Times, 2006, p. 4). The state viewed with concern the values transformation of young Singaporeans primarily because values are perceived to determine national competitiveness, prosperity, and survival of the nation (Quah, 1990). As the Minister of State for Education exhorted: In this rapidly changing tomorrow’s world let us also remember our basics. Without a strong body frame and a strong engine, an aircraft cannot fly higher and travel safely. We are ultimately a small city-state, made up of different communities, located in a potentially turbulent region. We must therefore, remember to retain all our good moral values and ethics. Our people must be united, our families must be cohesive, and our communities must be strong as we try to fly higher and faster. (Chan, 2005)

Ideology and Education Education is concerned with matters of ideology; education systems have long been used to promote, manufacture, or legitimize national historical traditions, symbols, and values (Hobsbawm, 1994; Smith, 1991). Schools are deliberately created institutions nested within particular social, political, and economic realities. The school has historically been a site where individuals “come to understand themselves as having a national identity and ‘citizenship’” (Popkewitz, 2003, p. 267). Formal schooling, Apple (2003) argues, “by and large is organized and controlled by the government” (p. 1). Schools can control meaning through the distribution of “legitimate knowledge” and give recognition to the cultural legitimacy of particular groups (Apple, 2004). Consequently, schooling is about the construction of knowledge and truth from what is included and excluded in the curriculum, so as to maintain social control and sustain the established order (Apple, 1993). Schools in Singapore closely reflect the state’s priorities and ideals (Tan & Chew, 2004). Curriculum development in the centralized education system begins at the highest level of government. Political leaders wield direct influence over curriculum policy and implementation, where all curricula are developed by the Ministry of Education (MoE) to ensure that the curricular objectives and content are congruent with national goals. Within the public school system, the subjects of history and

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social studies have traditionally been used for identity building and the creation of a sense of historical consciousness. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the governing elite has chosen to utilize these subjects to promote a particular vision of the nationstate. Students as captive audience in the schools spend a major portion of their life experiencing a high degree of methodical exposure to subjects and activities. The effect is a saturation of the consciousness with ideas and values that reflect the established order (Apple, 2004; Lovat & Smith, 2006). Such an attempt, Clammer (1993) explained, is to bring “real reality” and the governing elite’s version of it together so that they appear identical. As former Prime Minister Goh noted, Singapore’s “leaders and the people must share the same broad ideas, the same core values, the same vision of what they want their society to be” (as cited in Chong, 1991, p. 110). These ideas and values are portrayed as natural and commonsensical, manifested in the reality of everyday actions, decisions, and practices. Once accepted, the ideological order will be sustained through the production and reproduction of these “common- sense” practices, providing the ruling elite with the power to shape the political and social system (Chua, 1995; Kong & Yeoh, 2003).

Values Education in Singapore This section gives an historical overview of values education in Singapore. The purpose is to situate the development of social studies at the secondary level within the chronology and ideological trajectory of values education in Singapore. Since Singapore attained self-government in 1959, there has been a coordinated and sustained effort to transmit relevant knowledge and desirable values to meet perceived social and national needs. The transmission of knowledge and values has taken many forms. In the initial years of self-governance and independence between 1959 and 1973, the state’s primary concern was developing the right conduct, perceived by the ruling elite as essential to good citizenship. Values such as politeness, honesty, and kindness were inculcated through the subject of ethics, to “lay the foundation for character development in young children so that they would develop into self-respecting individuals and good citizens” (Ong, 1979, p. 2). Shortly after independence, ethics was revised and renamed civics in 1967 to focus on nation-building. Civics aimed at fostering in Singaporean pupils a sense of social and civic responsibility (Chew, 1998; Gopinathan, 1974, 1988), and “a love for their country and its people” (Ong, 1979, p. 3). The concern was to develop a sense of national identity, and to inculcate values of patriotism, loyalty, and civic consciousness in children. The nationbuilding focus was reinforced by the quick replacement of civics by education for living (EFL) in 1973. EFL integrated history and geography into civics, to “enable pupils to obtain a better understanding of how (Singapore) developed and of (its) geographical environment” (p. 3). The rapid industrialization in the 1970s and 1980s raised concerns that the adoption of science and technology and the increasing use of English were causing

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young Singaporeans to become too Westernized. The state perceived values in dichotomous terms. Western values appeared to emphasize individualism while Asian values emphasized communitarianism and the associated values of hard work, thrift, and sacrifice (Quah, 1990). This shift in values, according to the state, caused a moral decline because it was perceived to have deculturized and individualized society (Hill & Lian, 1995). The state saw this as a threat to social cohesion and national competitiveness (Quah, 1990). Consequently, the state emphasized the acquisition of “cultural ballast” through the learning of the culture and values of one’s ethnic group, also through the use of the mother tongue. Though contestable, the belief was that Asian values such as closeness in family ties, filial duties, and loyalty would be more effectively conveyed in the mother tongues. To counteract the growing influence of Westernization among the young and strengthen moral education, two new programs, Being and Becoming in secondary schools and Good Citizens in primary schools, replaced civics and EFL by mid-1980s. In addition, religious knowledge and Confucian ethics were also introduced in 1982 to supplement the teaching of moral values. The latter two, however, were soon abandoned by the end of the decade as they were found to heighten religious fervor, thereby threatening racial and religious harmony, and social cohesion (Hill & Lian, 1995; Tan, 1997). Interestingly, Being and Becoming employed a deliberative pedagogical strategy instead of the usual transmission and didactic approach and encouraged pupils to reflect on value issues, debate, and arrive at their own judgment. Notably, the deliberative approach, which is grounded in the liberal belief that individuals should select and pursue their notion of the good life, conflicted with the view that certain Asian values were right and appropriate for students. The MoE revised both the Being and Becoming and Good Citizens programs in 1992. The former was renamed civics and moral education (CME) in 1992 to focus on moral and political socialization. Both curricula were further revised after 1997 to strengthen the nationbuilding focus. Framed by the government’s latest nation-building initiative, National Education (NE), social studies was introduced to 15- or 16-year-old upper secondary school students in 2001. NE was launched in 1997 because of increasing government apprehension about young Singaporeans’ lack of knowledge and interest in their country’s recent history and the central issues key to national survival. This was a matter of serious concern to the government (Goh, 1996; Lee, 1997). Then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong claimed that young Singaporeans might take peace and prosperity for granted, thus he argued that young people required adequate historical knowledge so that they would be committed to the nation and to the statedefined shared values such as pragmatism, social cohesion and consensus, and meritocracy. National Education is therefore aimed at developing and shaping positive knowledge, values, and attitudes of its young citizenry toward the community and the nation. The purpose is to develop national cohesion, the instinct for survival and confidence in the future by: (1) fostering a sense of identity, pride, and self-respect in being a Singaporean; (2) relating the Singapore story: how Singapore succeeded against the odds to become a nation; (3) understanding Singapore’s

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unique challenges, constraints, and vulnerabilities, which make us different from other countries; and (4) instilling the core values of our way of life and the will to prevail, all of which to ensure our continued success and wellbeing (MoE, 2009b). The purpose is systematically translated into six key messages to facilitate understanding and implementation in schools. The six messages are: (1) Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong; (2) we must preserve racial and religious harmony; (3) we must uphold meritocracy and incorruptibility; (4) we must ourselves defend Singapore; (5) no one owes Singapore a living; and (6) we have confidence in our future (MoE, 2008). In essence, social studies is a vehicle for NE that reflects the government’s continuous pursuit of values education to meet perceived national needs. Notably, the state initiated NE in the absence of any real crisis by which the citizenry is often tested and nations are built. From time to time, states engender crisis in the citizenry so that leaders can present themselves as possessing means to solve people’s crises, reinforcing the ideological consensus (Benjamin, 1988). Crisis construction and management is a strategy used openly and consciously to enhance a sense of dependence on the state, thereby maintaining the nation (Hill & Lian, 1995). Given that the timing of the launch of NE coincided with an intense worldwide interest in citizenship education in response to globalization, a critical interpretation suggests that NE is an attempt by the governing elite to maintain power in contexts in which that power is increasingly challenged by forces of globalization. Regardless of the forms values education has taken over the years in Singapore, the focus has consistently been one of inculcation. The concern is not about helping children develop skills to think independently about social and political issues (Chew, 1998). Instead, the purpose is to instill the state-defined national values in students and their acceptance of the status quo. Even for social studies introduced with the aim to “develop thinking and process skills which are essential for lifelong and independent learning” (MoE, 2008, p. 3), the nature of thinking is depoliticized and closely linked to economic development. The purpose is to develop the workercitizen, specifically an innovative workforce who are creative problem-solvers and possess a mastery of skills, processes, procedures, and practice in the context of an intensively global, competitive economy (Goh, 1996; Koh, 2002; Sim & Print, 2005).

The Singapore Social Studies Curriculum Social Studies is an integrated subject that includes elements of history, economics, political science, and human geography. Social studies is a required 2- or 3-year program for all 15- to 17-year-old upper secondary students in the Express and Normal (Academic) tracks that culminate in a high-stakes national exam – the Singapore–Cambridge GCE “O” Levels. The centralized nature of the Singapore education system results in the Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD) of the MoE creating the national curriculum framework, producing the detailed syllabus for use in all secondary schools and also authoring the social

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studies textbooks used by all students in Singapore. Apple and Christian-Smith (1991) argue that curricula materials and textbooks signify “particular constructions of reality” and they participate in “creating what society has recognized as legitimate and truthful” (p. 4). Not surprisingly, there is a close relationship between state ideology, government policies, and the social studies curriculum. The social studies curriculum is organized around the two core ideas – “Being Rooted” and “Living Global,” and requires students to: • Understand issues that affect the socioeconomic development, the governance, and the future of Singapore • Learn from the experiences of other countries to build and sustain a politically viable, socially cohesive, and economically vibrant Singapore • Develop thinking and process skills which are essential for lifelong and independent learning • Develop into responsible citizens with a global perspective (MoE, 2008, p. 3) The curriculum is divided into six thematic units. Table 57.1 summarizes the six themes, with their corresponding guiding questions and values. The social studies curriculum frequently utilizes national myths (Woodward, 2003) to promote “a deep sense of shared destiny and national identity” (MoE, 2008). For example, the social studies syllabus regularly highlights certain key traumatic episodes such as the racial riots of the 1950s and 1960s between the Chinese and the Malays. Stories of national achievement, such as the rapid development of the Singapore economy, are also given prominence. As Goh and Gopinathan (2005) provocatively state: . . . though NE deals with issues such as loyalty and religious harmony, the key thrust centers around the ongoing construction of a politically expedient narrative of the past. The key message relates to the successful transformation of an island engulfed by ethnic and religious strife into an independent city-state that enjoys unprecedented and sustainable economic and social progress. The quality of leadership, vision and incompatibility of the PAP is portrayed as having been indispensable to this transformation. (p. 221)

To better understand the official curriculum, we reviewed and analyzed the social studies syllabus and texts which were current in 2007–2009. We highlight three important recurring themes that reiterate and reinforce the national values promoted by the government – social cohesion and consensus, meritocracy, and economic pragmatism.

Social Cohesion and Consensus A key element of Singapore’s national ideology, the education system, is portrayed as the “cradle of multi-racialism” because of its promotion of interracial harmony and understanding (Barr, 2006, p. 15). The Singapore government has consistently emphasized the importance of racial and religious consensus, and this is

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Table 57.1 Themes, guiding questions, and values in the social studies curriculum Theme Singapore as a nation in the world

Guiding question How do nations come into being and what challenges do they face?

Understanding governance

Why is governance important?

Conflict and harmony in multiethnic societies

Why is harmony in a multiethnic society important to the development and viability of a nation?

Managing international relations

How important is deterrence and diplomacy in maintaining international relations among nations?

Sustaining economic development

How do nations sustain their economic development in a globalized world?

Facing challenges and change

What can nations learn from the rise and fall of Venice as a city-state?

Values/Attitudes Commitment Loyalty Resilience Interdependence Self-reliance Resourcefulness Adaptability Responsibility Accountability Integrity Prudence Respect Empathy Appreciation of differences Commitment Harmony Trust Commitment Reciprocation Patriotism Peaceful coexistence Vigilance Enterprising spirit Risk-taking Proactiveness Self-reliance Lifelong learning Adaptability Rootedness Commitment

unambiguously reflected in one of the six NE messages that states, “We must preserve racial and religious harmony: Though many races, religions, languages and cultures, we pursue one destiny” (MoE, 2007a, p. 7). The recently revised version of NE in 2007 continues this emphasis on social cohesion and consensus, “We must preserve racial and religious harmony: We value our diversity, are determined to remain a united people” (p. 7). The importance of social harmony and integration to Singapore is further reinforced by the challenges and impact of globalization and changing global realities. The Parliamentary Secretary of Education, Hawazi Daipi, said:

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With globalization, we will invariably have foreign talents and we cannot insulate ourselves from the outside world. Foreigners and foreign talents will continue to come here to work, study, set up businesses the equilibrium will invariably change as these foreigners bring with them their own lifestyles and values. (2002)

Likewise, Dr Aline Wong (2000), the Senior Minister of State for Education, argued that Singapore’s future as a country depends on national cohesion and stability. The education system is thus a key linchpin in the government’s push to promote economic progress and preserve social cohesion. Educators should, according to Dr Wong, inculcate in students “the core national values and social instincts so that they will remain committed to the country while being members of the global community.” Similarly, Mr Hawazi reiterated, “A strong national identity, healthy values and racial and religious harmony are needed to withstand the divisive impact of globalization and the attractions of imitating the West” (2002). Predictably, the social studies curriculum also calls attention to these national ideals. The Secondary Three textbook begins by defining the key characteristics of a nation and emphasizing the importance of a common national identity, particularly in the diverse Singapore context: A nation is formed when a group of people accept one another and see themselves as having something in common. This sense of identity can come from common lineage, culture and historical experiences. It can also be built on common experiences. Therefore, a nation is formed when the people think and feel that they share a common bond. (MoE, 2007b, p. 4)

This national identity, built on shared cultural and historical experiences, consequently serves to enhance social cohesion: As there are many different ethnic groups in most states, national identity must be built to bring about social cohesion. With cohesion, there will be unity among the people and peace in the country. (MoE, 2007b, p. 5)

This extract demonstrates a clear link between the development of national identity and social cohesion. Without this, the text implies, the nation will descend into chaos and conflict, thus affecting the long-term viability of the nation-state. Several disturbing photographs of destruction to businesses and properties caused by racial and religious conflicts, such as the IRA bombing at Omagh (p. 129), the race riots in the city of Paris in October 2005 (p. 139), and the 2005 conflict in Lebanon (p. 141), visually reiterate the severity of the consequences. This message is further reinforced by raising, yet again, the specter of past instances of ethnic and religious conflict in Singapore that appeared to threaten the very survival of the nation: After experiencing the Indonesian Confrontation and race riots, tension remained among the different ethnic groups . . . Thus, the challenge was to create a bond among the people and develop a national identity. The people must also have the confidence and belief that Singapore could survive as a nation. (MoE, 2007b, p. 21)

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In summary, both the official syllabus and the textbooks highlight the importance of building a common national identity in order to enhance social cohesion and consensus in a diverse nation-state. Both constantly remind students about the negative consequences of interethnic conflict, thus the need to be “vigilant against the forces of divisiveness that cause conflict and disintegration of societies” (MoE, 2008, p. 11). Without social stability and cohesion, the nation’s economic development and progress will be disrupted and this poses a threat to the state’s survival. The final section of the theme, conflict and harmony in multiethnic societies, posed this question: “Why is it important to manage ethnic diversity?” (MoE, 2007b, pp. 154–155) and concluded that the primary purpose is to ensure “security and peace” and “economic progress,” the former as means to the latter end. “Harmony in Singapore,” the textbook asserts, “has made progress possible . . . with peace and stability comes economic progress. Foreign investors invest and set up their companies in Singapore because their investments would be protected” (p. 154). In essence, the state perceives social cohesion and stability as a means of ensuring a “better life,” largely defined in economic terms. This instrumental understanding of the need for social cohesion and consensus continues throughout the curriculum. Chapter Four from the Secondary Three textbook, for example, is devoted to examining the causes and consequences of conflict in multiethnic societies. Two case studies are highlighted: the Tamil–Sinhalese Sri Lankan conflict and the Protestant–Catholic divide in Northern Ireland. The chapter begins with this cautionary statement, “Differences among people can also cause a society to fall apart” (MoE, 2007b, p. 93). Again, the specter of the potential disastrous consequences of racial and religious divisions, including the disintegration of society, dominates the chapter. In both case studies, the text highlights the lack of a common national identity and the issue of divided loyalties. This absence of a unitary national identity, the text argues, prevents building of common understanding and cohesion among racial and religious groups, thus resulting in high levels of tension. This division is further exacerbated by the segregated housing and education systems. This extract is particularly instructive: In the public schools, Protestant children are taught British history and play British sports such as rugby, hockey and cricket. They are very loyal to the British. For example, they would sing the British national anthem. On the other hand, Catholic children learn Irish history, take up Irish sports such as hurling, and are taught the Irish language and culture. They tend to regard Britain as a foreign country. (MoE, 2007b, p. 119)

In an explicit repudiation of the divisive policies of the Sri Lankan and Northern Ireland governments, the textbook, in the next chapter, carefully emphasizes the neutrality and equality of state policies in Singapore: The policy of multi-racialism promotes equality among the races, with no special rights granted to any particular racial or religious group Favouring a certain group of people because of their race or religion that is prohibited by the constitution (MoE, 2007b, p. 145).

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The textbook makes it abundantly clear that the Singapore government’s policies, unlike that of Northern Ireland, are based on racially and religiously neutral meritocratic criteria. Notably, the notion of meritocracy is not problematized. “Every Singaporean,” contends the text, “has an opportunity to succeed regardless of their background.” The textbook, in addition, also highlights other measures introduced by the state to promote a common national identity and reduce ethnic divisions, including the daily national flag raising ceremony in schools, the policy of bilingualism, safeguarding the interests of minority groups, and developing common space through activities organized by grassroots organizations and schools.

Meritocracy Meritocracy is perceived to be one of the founding principles of postcolonial Singapore and is also a key governmental strategy for ensuring social consensus and cohesion. Simply put, meritocracy is rule by the most able, and is perceived to be “highly compatible with the multiracial model of society” (Wong, 2000). The emphasis on multiracialism and meritocracy, argued Dr Aline Wong, then Senior Minister of State, “has helped to build multiracial harmony out of diversity in Singapore and fuelled our economic development in the past three decades” (Wong, 2000). Featured prominently in the national pledge, written by Singapore’s first Foreign Minister, S. Rajaratnam, the national goal is to build a society that, “regardless of race, language or religion,” is based on the twin concepts of “justice and equality” (MoE, 2007b, p. 134). In other words, as Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister of State for Education, said, “ we have to work hard to preserve a sense of mobility in Singapore society, especially through education. Every citizen must know he is getting an equal chance to improve himself and develop his talents” (Tharman, 2002). The concept of meritocracy is also constantly promoted in public discourse and in numerous ministerial speeches. Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations and currently the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy spoke of the “virtue of meritocracy” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2008) at length. In it, he pointed out that the four Asian tigers, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, shared the same goal of ensuring that the “fruits and opportunities of development were shared between all classes, from the top to the bottom.” This was, according to Professor Mahbubani, a win–win situation for both the governing elite and the population: The main point here is that it is in the interest of the ruling elites to introduce meritocracy. When hundreds of millions of new brains enter the marketplace, the economy becomes bigger and the society more socially and politically stable. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2008)

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Notably, the raison d’être of the principle of meritocracy is couched primarily in terms of national economic development and the survival of the governing elite. This particularly pragmatic viewpoint is encapsulated in a quote, attributed to Deng Xiao Ping, that is frequently used by members of the governing elite, “It does not matter whether a cat is black or white; if it catches mice, it is a good cat” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2008). It is unsurprising, therefore, to find that this theme is also central to the social studies narrative. The second chapter of the Secondary Three textbook, titled “Governance in Singapore,” clearly articulates the government’s definition of meritocracy: Meritocracy is a key part of the principle ‘Reward for work and Work for reward’. Meritocracy means a system that rewards hard work and talent. When people are rewarded based on their abilities and hard work, they are encouraged to do well . . . Meritocracy helps to give everybody in society an equal opportunity to achieve their best and be rewarded for their performance, regardless of race, religion and socio-economic background. (MoE, 2007b, p. 37)

It is apparent from this definition that the Singapore government is anxious to emphasize the equitable nature of the Singapore system. The problematic subtext of this message, however, particularly the segment that speaks of reward for hard work and talent, implies that if a person is not rewarded adequately, it is because of his or her own lack of ability and effort. The authors, like the government, ignore the possibility of the existence of structural or institutional impediments and implicitly place the blame on the individual. To reinforce the importance of meritocracy and the dangers of not adopting this national value, the social studies textbook describes two case studies of societies that have experienced interethnic conflict, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. The text places great emphasis on the discrimination faced by the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Catholics in Northern Ireland. In the section titled “Why Are the Sinhalese and Tamils in conflict?”, the textbook highlights numerous examples of policies that appeared to discriminate against the Tamil minority: After 1970, the government introduced new university admission criteria. Tamil students had to score higher marks than the Sinhalese students to enter the same courses in the universities. A fixed number of places in the university were also reserved for the Sinhalese. Admission was no longer based solely on academic results. The system is still in place today. (MoE, 2007b, p. 100)

Similarly, in the case study of Northern Ireland, the textbook remarks upon the absence of a meritocratic system of employment: Another cause of conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland is the competition for jobs. It is generally more difficult for Catholics in Northern Ireland to find

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jobs, especially government jobs. The Catholics feel that although they may be as academically qualified as the Protestants, they do not have the same opportunities in getting the jobs that they want. (MoE, 2007b, p. 118)

The social studies textbook thus draws a sharp contrast between the Singaporean meritocratic system and the ethnically or religiously based policies of these two societies. The latter examples are seen to contribute to deep-rooted unhappiness and friction between the different ethnic and religious groups, consequently hindering the country’s economic progress and development. The text makes the implicit argument that Singapore cannot afford the same ethnic or religious discord and the subsequent, inevitable economic problems. Ergo, in order to ensure the nation’s survival, this apparently fair meritocratic system is necessary to achieve the stated objectives of economic growth and continued prosperity.

Economic Pragmatism Despite the prevalence of the themes of social cohesion and meritocracy in the social studies curriculum described in the previous two sections, these issues, we contend, are clearly subordinate to the national ideology of economic pragmatism, development, and modernization. The key national goal, as perceived by the government, is survival. As Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the Senior Minister of State for Education, in 2002 explained: We have to recognize our limitations as a small country Can we afford a complete free for all Small countries like Singapore are in a less privileged position. Left entirely to the market, there is no guarantee of winners emerging in Singapore and being able to provide continued growth, investment and employment for the majority of our people. (Tharman, 2002)

This philosophy is neatly encapsulated in a speech given by Raymond Lim, the Minister for Transport, in 2006: Singapore does not have the luxury of pursuing a foreign policy of abstract ideals. Like that of other countries, ours is a servant to the national goals of survival and prosperity. The guiding principle is national interest. (Lim, 2006)

In the next section, we make the case for economic development and survival as being the most important theme in the grand narrative of the social studies curriculum as we argue that the ideals of meritocracy and social cohesion are, in fact, perceived by the government in a very instrumental and pragmatic light.

Economic Development and National Survival The primacy of the capitalist economic paradigm is evident. For example, in the unit addressing the challenges of globalization, economic development and national

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survival remain the primary focus. The guiding question, “How do nations sustain their economic development in a globalized world?” (MoE, 2008, p. 14) sets the tone for Unit 5, titled “Sustaining Economic Development.” Areas of focus include the impact of globalization on national and world economies and increased competition for investment markets and labor. Even the need to manage the environment in a sustainable way is couched in economic terms. For instance, one of the learning outcomes described in the course syllabus states, “Students will be able to . . . understand how environmental management is necessary to ensure economic growth” (p. 14). This philosophy is also clearly articulated in other units. In Unit 2, titled “Understanding Governance,” for example, students explore a case study of the public opposition to the setting up of a casino in a new resort in Singapore. The textbook states that “more opportunities have been created to involve the people in decision making” (MoE, 2007b, p. 38) and cites the example of the government “consulting” the people on the issue of having a casino as part of a new resort. Despite objections on the part of many religious organizations and the public who were concerned about the social impact of a casino, the government ultimately decided that the economic benefits accruing from having a casino outweighed its social costs. Here, we see how hard-headed, pragmatic economic arguments take precedence over moral concerns, as it is explicitly stated in the textbook, “Policy decisions are made to serve the needs of the nation” (p. 39). The textbook also places great emphasis on the economic impact and consequences of almost all the issues examined in the text. Even issues such as population change, housing, education, and health care are overtly linked to the overarching theme of national economic development. On managing health care, the British welfare system was used as a contrasting case. The message is clear: The welfare state is financially burdensome for the government, saps the will of the people to be self-reliant, so that they become “a give-it-to-me. . .sit-back-and-wait Britain” (MoE, 2007b, p. 85). Former Prime Minister Goh warned that it “will affect people’s incentive to work” (p. 68), thereby threatening the economic viability of the country. Similarly, the use of the case study of Venice in the Middle Ages in “Challenge and Change” (Unit 6) provides a warning to all students that Singapore cannot afford to ignore and be resistant to changes if growth and prosperity are to be maintained. Students are told in apocalyptic tones that “the failure to respond to the changing global landscape over time may result in a nation fading into obscurity” (MoE, 2008, p. 15). The dominance of the theme of economic development and survival within the curricula is inevitable when one considers the key characteristics of the national ideology of Singapore. As Wee (2004) has pointed out, Singapore is a society “subjugated to the needs of capital” (p. 5). This has resulted in the ascendancy of industrial and commercial understanding of culture in which “manufacturing and productive institutions as the collective basis of social life became the new cultural system” (p. 2). Singapore’s headlong rush to modernize and “Westernize” development has provided the universal rationality for nation-building and, consequently, this is similarly reflected in the social studies curriculum.

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Meritocracy and Social Cohesion Viewed Through Economic Pragmatism As described earlier in the chapter, the state’s emphasis on meritocracy and social cohesion is primarily based on the principle of economic pragmatism. Meritocracy is necessary in order to ensure social cohesion and harmony. Social cohesion is also desirable, according to the government, because it is a necessary precondition for economic development and, ultimately, for the survival of the nation-state. The official school curriculum, state documents, and government ministers reflect this particularly instrumental understanding of these national values. According to Dr Aline Wong, the former Senior Minister of State for Education, meritocracy is a tool for enhancing social cohesion in a diverse society: Meritocracy is highly compatible with the multiracial model of society, as its very essence lies in allowing all races to advance in whatever field, solely on the basis of achievement, merit and hard work Indeed, under this system, the minority groups have made big strides in social mobility through their own efforts. (Wong, 2000)

While cultural, racial, and religious issues and themes permeate almost all areas of the social studies curriculum in Singapore secondary schools, a closer reading of the text reveals that the rationale behind the emphasis on ethnic and religious harmony is primarily driven by pragmatic concerns. Evidence for this instrumental perspective of culture can be found in the unit titled “Conflict and Harmony in Multicultural Societies.” This unit emphasizes the importance of racial and religious harmony for the continuing economic success of Singapore and the dire consequences of not preventing ethnic conflict are constantly repeated. The question, “Why is harmony in a multi-ethnic society important to the development and viability of a nation?” (p. 11), provides a framework for the unit and is a clear indication of the priorities of the state. This theme is echoed later in the unit by this statement, “When bonds among the people are strong and stable, there will be happiness, prosperity and progress” (p. 133). Apart from emphasizing the negative consequences of not having peace and harmony between the different racial and religious groups, the text also pragmatically points out the economic benefits that would accrue to Singaporeans from having a multiethnic population because “the multi-ethnic characteristics of Singapore’s population attract tourists from all over the world” (p. 155). The instrumental view of the values of society found in both texts is unsurprising largely because values such as multiracialism have been used as a means of social control by the state (Chua, 2003; Clammer, 1985). The Singapore state has, for example, cynically and selectively used the concept of Asian values in international and national politics (Wee, 2004). In the 1990s, for example, political leaders in Singapore, such as the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and the Permanent Representative to the United Nations Kishore Mahbubani, suggested that “Asian values,” based largely on Confucian values that subordinated the rights of

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individuals to those of the community, were key factors that helped promote the extraordinary economic growth in East Asian countries. The valorization of these cultural identities (e.g., Chinese–Singaporeans) also allowed the state to make links to a perceived Asian capitalist modernity spearheaded by the Asian economic powerhouses like Japan. The “Asian values” discourse too served both as an ingredient for successful economic development and as a “cultural ballast” against the “corruption” of Western, liberal individualism” (Chua, 2003, p. 67). Scholars, in addition, have also suggested that this discourse was used to suppress dissent and political pluralism (Wee, 2004). The national ideal of economic pragmatism becomes particularly apparent at the end of ▶ Chap. 5 when students are asked this question, “Why is it important to manage ethnic diversity?” (MoE, 2007b, p. 154). The answer provided by the text again reinforces the idea that social stability and cohesion is valued for its contribution to the economic development of the country: One of the benefits of living harmoniously in a multi-ethnic society is the security and peace that all Singaporeans enjoy. . . With peace and stability comes economic progress. Foreign investors invest and set up their companies in Singapore because their investments would be protected. (MoE, 2007b, p. 154)

As seen in the extract above, the authors abandon all pretence of speaking of a broader concept of “progress” and instead focus their attention on one particular dimension – economic progress. This is further reinforced by yet another example of how Singapore would experience economic dislocation if the country was beset by internal strife. The textbook states that this would negatively impact tourist arrivals because “tourists generally avoid visiting countries that are caught in violence and conflict” (p. 154). This explicitly draws the student’s attention to the situation in Sri Lanka and the impact of the violence on tourism: Tourism, one of Sri Lanka’s major income earners, was seriously affected by the violence and internal conflict. Tourist arrivals steadily decreased after the July 1983 riots. The decrease resulted in a loss of jobs and a fall in earnings. This in turn affected the economy adversely. (MoE, 2007b, p. 108)

The chapter, in addition, emphasized the economic consequences of internal conflict and the lack of social cohesion in the international case studies, including Northern Ireland, by highlighting how both foreign and domestic investors were discouraged from investing in the country. Likewise, the text also chose to draw attention to the high levels of unemployment faced by the Sri Lankans as a consequence of ethnic conflict, describing how thousands of factory and plantation workers lost their jobs as a result of the Sri Lankan riots in July 1983. The widespread looting and vandalism that resulted also contributed to the economic malaise experienced by the country. In the words of the authors, “all parties suffered in the conflict” (MoE, 2007b, p. 107). The chapter concludes with this statement that clearly reiterates this philosophy of economic pragmatism:

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The case studies of Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland show us that it is important for people of different races and religions to live in harmony. Conflict between people of different races and religions destroys lives, homes and property. Everyone suffers. (MoE, 2007b, pp. 130–131)

In summary, a close reading of the text reveals that the rationale behind the emphasis on meritocracy, and social cohesion and consensus is driven by the functionalist need to maintain economic growth and sustain development. These national ideals are not cherished for their intrinsic value but are prized for their economic worth, both to the state and to the survival of the governing elite. As a result, according to Chua (2003), this has resulted in the “inculcation of intense individualistic competition in both the production and consumption and . . . the valuing of secular, technological knowledge over the sacred and religious” (p. 67).

Conclusion It is hard not to arrive at the conclusion that in Singapore, economic pragmatism is “political ideology par excellence” (Yao, 2007, p. 186). In this chapter, we argued that social studies is designed with the very pragmatist motivations of the nation achieving economic success. We showed how for a state that presumably cares so much about values, “it seems remarkably lacking in moral magnitude” (p. 187). Economic pragmatism is promoted as the only viable vision for the nation. Values are simply “pragmatically valuable” (Tan, 1994, p. 61). And when economic pragmatism operates as ideology, it reduces intrinsically desirable values such as social cohesion consensus, and meritocracy to commodities that can be exchanged. In other words, these values are important because they are first and foremost instrumental to economic development. Consequently, Tan and Chew (2004, p. 598) argued that what is practiced in Singapore is essentially citizenship training and not values education, with the former as an instrument of statecraft that “has no respect for moral truths per se.” Instead, through social studies, “students are held to be disciplining themselves acquiring knowledge and attitudes for citizenship at a later time” (Shermis & Barth, 1982, p. 27). Since pragmatic policies have brought about substantial benefits and visible abundance to Singapore, it explains the government’s ideological currency. But therein lies the danger, for in the government’s scheme of things, economic usefulness is undoubtedly the most crucial. With globalization, however, the state can no longer guarantee sustained prosperity, as evidenced by the current global recession. A Singaporean’s loyalty is presumably shallow (Chang, 2003), given that it is based on the exchange of support for the provision of economic welfare. Consequently, the social, political, and economic pressures, brought about by the forces of globalization, could cause an erosion of the state power (Mutalib, 2000). Pragmatic policies have also led to an increasingly cynical, materialistic, consumerist, and individualistic citizenry. Well traveled and spoiled by the freedom of the Internet where alternative views are easily accessible, what is stopping the young from emigrating

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to countries that may be more free or prosperous than Singapore? We do not deny that there are countries freer and more prosperous than Singapore. Ironically, this is the very situation that the ruling elite wants to avoid. Singapore is a small country with limited resources and if the young generation does not feel rooted to the nation, there may be severe economic repercussions in the future. While the transmission approach to values education underlined by economic pragmatism may have worked in the past, they cannot work now in this age of globalization. Indeed globalization is characterized by rapid changes and unpredictability, where the “government can no longer pick winners in the economy” (Gopinathan, 2007, p. 68). Students are now more individualistic, and have easy access to alternative points of view. In such a context, traditional methods of getting students to unquestioningly accept values from authority are no longer tenable. Values education must necessarily take a new form. The position we take is that values ought to be taught but not as dogma or indoctrination. Here we are suggesting that students view themselves as participants in the social world of which they are part, rather than being mere observers and passive recipients of the values. Therefore, what should constitute the desirable values shared by the Singaporean community ought to be deliberated by citizens at all levels, starting from the school. In the schools, values recommendations should be deliberately discussed in an open manner, where teachers encourage students to seek out the reasons behind them. Multiple perspectives on the recommendations should be raised, and students encouraged to understand, respect, and critically evaluate them. The hope is that providing opportunities for students to voice their views will subtly increase the stake they have in their own nation (Fraenkel, 1977; Hirshberg, 2006). Finally, it has been argued that most Singaporeans have internalized the anxieties of living in Singapore particularly in the global context (Velayutham, 2007). It therefore is no longer sufficient to only provide opportunities for citizens to benefit from the nation’s economic success. Of greater importance is to provide citizens with the opportunities to exercise their citizenship that will lead to affective commitment to the nation.

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Tan, T. W., & Chew, L. C. (2004). Moral and citizenship education as statecraft in Singapore: A curriculum critique. Journal of Moral Education, 33, 597–606. Taylor, M. J. (2006). The development of values through the school curriculum. In R. H. M. Cheng, J. C. K. Lee, & L. N. K. Lo (Eds.), Values education for citizens in the new century (pp. 107–132). The Chinese University Press. Tharman, S. (2002). We will prevail, and emerge flying. [Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister of State (Trade and Industry & Education), in Singapore Parliament Debate on the President’s Address, 5 April 2002]. Ministry of Education, Singapore. Retrieved March 19, 2009, from http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2002/sp08042002.htm Tremewan, C. (1994). The political economy of social control in Singapore. Macmillan. Velayutham, S. (2007). Responding to globalization: Nation, culture and identity in Singapore. Institute of South East Asian Studies. Wee, C. J. W.-L. (2004). Forming an Asian modern: Capitalist modernity, culture, ‘East Asia’ and post-colonial Singapore. Identity, Culture and Politics, 5, 1–18. Wong, A. (2000). Education in a multicultural setting – The Singapore experience. Keynote address by Dr Aline Wong, Senior Minister of State for Education, Ministry Of Education, Singapore, at the International Baccalaureate (IB) Asia-Pacific 16th Annual Regional Conference on Curriculum, Assessment and Cultural Equity, Singapore, Friday, 24 November 2000. Retrieved February 9, 2009, from www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2000/sp24112000_print.htm Woodward, G. C. (2003). The idea of identification. State University of New York Press. Yao, S. C. (2007). Singapore: The state and the culture of excess. Routledge.

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Socratic Circles Pedagogy Dialogue About and Demonstration of Values Catherine Devine

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enduring and Evolving Aims of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialogicality and a Socratic Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Socratic Circles Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Voice and Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Case Study of Socratic Circles Pedagogy Through a Values Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Achieving Transformational Dialogue Through Socratic Circles Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter will focus on evidence of deep learning about and demonstration of values through the use of dialogic pedagogies in diverse cultural learning settings. Young people have an extraordinary role to play in bridging the divide between cultural groups, transcending the historical differences which have separated groups and created tensions. A renewed understanding of the congruence of an education in values with the enduring and evolving aims of education prompts consideration of how to build character and nurture active and responsible citizenship. Educators can choose pedagogies that provide dynamic scaffolds for critical thinking, communicative competence, and relationship building. Socratic Circles Pedagogy promotes the synthesis of divergent views and

This chapter is drawn from the PhD thesis by the author: Transformational Dialogue through Socratic Circles Pedagogy: Deep learning and social cohesion in microcosms of democratic communities (Nov 2020). https://doi.org/10.26199/acu.8x947 C. Devine (*) Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_58

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experiences by balancing existing tensions in safe spaces promoting respect and connection while seeking truth. Teachers play an essential role in nurturing these democratic microcosms of inclusive communities where critique and dissent are valued within a commitment to the common good. Socratic Circles Pedagogy is characteristically agentic, whereby the individual participant is both an agent of change and is changed, within the community of learners, by the agency of others. In light of the educational imperatives of deep learning related to social challenges and insights drawn from the case of the Melbourne Interfaith Intercultural Cluster (MIIC), the Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework provides an architecture for the key elements of Transformational Dialogue. Keywords

Values education · Socratic Circles Pedagogy · Deep learning · Transformational Dialogue · Agency and change

Introduction Young people have an extraordinary role to play in bridging the divide between cultural groups, transcending the historical differences which have separated groups and created tensions. Young people, recognized as full citizens, have a vital role in imagining and creating more peaceful and cohesive societies, and yet, adolescent learners often experience a sense of disconnection and disengagement from learning. The pedagogical choices that educators make can contribute to critical and creative thinking, enable more democratic communication processes, and engender relationship building. This is an imperative as our communities, including school communities, become more culturally diverse. School leaders and teachers can support the development of deep, authentic intercultural understanding based upon respectful relationships. To sustain such an imperative, a concerted effort supported by governments and educational institutions is necessary. Young people need to develop social confidence for active citizenship, while having a sense of identity and a positive regard for their own cultural history.

Enduring and Evolving Aims of Education A renewed understanding of the congruence of an education in values with the enduring and evolving aims of education prompts consideration of how to build character and nurture active and responsible citizenship. The seminal work of John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916), articulates the characteristics of a democratic society and applies this understanding to the nature and place of education. Dewey contends that communication is the primary mode of transmission in education and that, through communication, experience is

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shared and becomes meaningful. Within this process the disposition of the participants (1916, p. 6) can constitute a transformative element within the teaching learning process. For Dewey, education is a fostering, nurturing, and cultivating process. The terminology used is growth-based as Dewey argues that the conditions of the educational environment are naturally social and developmental. In this light, the learner develops the attitudes and dispositions necessary for a productive life in society through the “intermediary of the environment” (1916, p. 22), that is to say, the experience of learning is a socially constituted experience. Dewey’s proposition that individuals and groups need guidance and that by participation in joint learning experiences all learners grow in their knowledge, understanding, and social capacity has enduring significance. Moreover, in Dewey’s description of education as growth, he explores the realm of habits. Furthermore, his contention (1916) that the measure of the value of school education is the extent to which it creates in learners the desire for continued growth and the means to enable that growth is relevant. He states: Active habits involve thought, invention, and initiative in applying capacities to new aims. They are opposed to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. (Dewey, 1916, Part 4, Summary)

He advocated for the educative value of reflective thought and integrated perspectives and elaborated thus: Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence – a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome. . . Each phase is a step from something to something–technically speaking, it is a term of thought. The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. (Dewey, 1910, pp. 3–4)

The concept of learning as being a process of engagement and integration presents as significant in a contemporary context with an enlightened focus on student agency and diversity. Teacher moderation of the learner experience ensures relevance of learning connected to individualized student needs. Complementing the enduring works of Dewey, the insights of Immanuel Kant provide a basis for understanding the potential of pedagogical approaches in support of values education. In his central work on education, Lectures on Pedagogy (Kant, 2009), Kant acknowledges that while education involves some training and conditioning, it is built upon the concept that what really matters is that individuals learn to think and “make good use” of their freedom (Kant, 2009, p. 259). In this light, the role of teacher becomes highlighted, a role that Kant characterized as an art, “the practice of which must be perfected over the course of many generations” (Louden, 2002, p. 54). Generations build upon the knowledge of the previous generations and contribute to an education leading humanity toward its vocation (Kant, 2009, p. 256).

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A synopsis of Kant’s philosophy of education by Louden (2011) highlights education as a process of developing within students the realization of their “inherent human powers and capacities” (Louden, 2011, p. 141). This is the growth of freedom. It is a focus on education by Kant as a skill-centered process which enables liberation and is borne out in the right of every child to an education as enshrined in Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (United Nations, 1989) and articulated specifically in Article 29 (1), which states that: 1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to: (a) the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential; (b) the development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations; (c) the development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own; (d) the preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin; and (e) the development of respect for the natural environment. (United Nations, 1989) The significance of Article 29 has been documented by the research arm of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, 2001). The five subparagraphs of Article 29 express collectively the desire for the realization of the dignity and full rights of every child and the role that education plays in bringing this aspiration to fruition. Importantly, Article 29 does not merely address a child’s right to access education but reflects the importance of the content of education to guide and support a child to respond to the inevitable challenges of exponential change driven by new technologies and rapid globalization. Such challenges are identified in Learning: The Treasure Within (Delors, 1996), the seminal report to the UNESCO as including: The tensions between. . .the global and the local; the individual and the collective; tradition and modernity; long- and short-term considerations; competition and equality of opportunity; the expansion of knowledge and the capacity to assimilate it; and the spiritual and the material. (Delors, 1996, pp. 16–18)

The challenge of education in addressing the collective and related tensions identified by Delors (1996) intersects predictably with a values-laden educational experience. In seeking to respond, Article 29 provides guidance as to the underlying tone of inclusion and respect for one’s own and others’ cultural identities. The call is

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toward a balanced approach which requires reconciling diverse values through a dialogical approach (UNICEF, 2001). The assumption that “Children are capable of playing a unique role in bridging many of the differences that have historically separated groups of people from one another” (UNICEF, 2001, Article 4) becomes significant and confirms the transformative potential that education holds to create change for social cohesion. Article 29 of the UNCRC highlights the progressive and cumulative intentions of education and the community responsibility for the education experience and supports the protections (physical punishment) and provisions (access) stated in Articles 23, 28, and 37. In essence, Article 29 reveals the whole-of-community’s duty for the child’s education. By referencing children’s school participation through the criteria identified in Article 29, more practical, educationally relevant, and effective adherence to the whole UNCRC can occur. Additionally, implicit in Article 29 are the imperatives of voice-inclusive practice (Sargeant, 2018) which support the best interests of the child principled in Article 3. By anchoring practice to Article 29, the visible actioning of the child’s education rights is more likely. The UNCRC (United Nations, 1989) elaborates the right to “express views freely” (Article 12); “the right to freedom of expression [. . .] to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds” (Article 13); and the right to “freedom of thought” (Article 14). This broad statement of educational possibilities has been described as “being able to have access to and participate in dialogue is a basic freedom and an essential element of a democratic life” (Cam, 2000, p. 10). Accordingly, education can be understood to be multidimensional in purpose to allow young people to develop all aspects of self. This universal right to education was affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948) as “Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory” (Article 26, No. 1). Notwithstanding the free and compulsory provision of elementary education, the developmental stage of adolescence is characterized by change and demands of educators a consideration of the most effective learning activity and environment to respond to the needs of adolescents as a distinct group of learners. In this regard, Dewey’s advocacy of quality educational experiences that have a high impact and are memorable and transferable (1938, p. 16) is especially critical for adolescent learners. Paolo Freire provides a profound narrative about education as having a “dialogical character” (1993, p. 66) which allows the practice of freedom. He sees the potential of education, through the pedagogical choices of the teacher, to transform and enhance humanity (1993). Freire offers an insight into critical thinking as an essential element of the experiential undertaking of true dialogue asserting that it cannot exist: unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking–thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and the people and admits no dichotomy between them– thinking which perceives reality as process, as transformation.. . .Only dialogue, which

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requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. (1993, pp. 65–66)

Contemporary educational philosophies encompass the enduring themes of significant educational thought. The lasting contribution to educational philosophies by Dewey, Kant, and Freire provide an important foundation of understanding to situate and interpret contemporary educational thinking. Dewey gave significance to experiential education encouraging experimental inquiry and the role of the teacher as moderator of the learner experience. Kant articulated the transformational potential of education to advance the growth of freedom. Freire further added to the insight of co-construction in the learning process and the agency of the teacher and student as being responsible and responsive to each other thus: “Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them” (Freire, 1993, p. 50). Significantly, international treaties such as the UNCRC (UN, 1989) echo these enduring waves of educational philosophy. The enduring philosophies of education do not stand alone but contribute to the consolidation of a body of theory which reflects quality education within a contemporary period. The dual and sometimes competing aims of education, to inform and form the person, can create a hierarchy of priorities. The resolution of the tension between a measurement-driven curricula with an emphasis on holistic development is evident in the work of Lovat and Toomey (2009) who adopted the double helix metaphor to characterize the interwoven links between quality teaching and values education. Quality teaching engenders in students the capacities of intellectual depth, communicative competence, empathic character, capacity for reflection, self-management, and self-knowledge (Lovat & Toomey, 2009, p. xviii). Intellectual depth encompasses the competencies of interpretation, communication, negotiation, and reflection, with a focus on self-management (Lovat & Toomey, 2009, p. 3). It is in the interaction and combination of these substantial capabilities that values education finds its deepest expression of quality. Explicit teaching of a values-based pedagogy that engages the whole person has been advocated consistently (Curtis, 2013; Lovat et al., 2011). Pedagogy which encompasses aspects of values education can support the overarching aims of the Melbourne Declaration, through schools’ promotion of “the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians” (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 4) and more recently in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration (Education Council, 2019). In both national (Bereznicki et al., 2008; Zbar & Toomey, 2006) and international (Benninga et al., 2006; Lovat et al., 2010) contexts, research supports the benefits of values-based pedagogies which consider the holistic needs of the child. Values-based holistic pedagogy “has the potential to enable students to be more self-knowing, self-managing and reflective” (Toomey et al., 2010, p. vii).

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Dialogicality and a Socratic Disposition Educators can choose pedagogies that provide dynamic scaffolds for critical thinking, communicative competence, and relationship building. The ancient Socratic philosophy promoting a dialogical approach to teaching and learning intersects with more contemporary theoretical elaborations influenced by the various fields of psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and education (Renshaw, 2004, p. 1). In relation to this approach, Vygotsky (1985, 1987) and Bakhtin (1986) have been influential in advancing an understanding of the social nature of learning and thinking. Dialogue plays a mediating role “in the development of thinking, the formation of individual identity and the construction of different communities of practice” (Renshaw, 2004, p.1). Dialogue is more than conversation; it is interaction, more than merely exchanging content knowledge but includes the qualities and elements of communication that encompass dispositions. Based on the writings of Bakhtin (1986), Timothy Koschmann (1999) develops a theoretical framework for understanding learning as a socially grounded phenomenon. Koschmann argues that “learning is enhanced when it occurs in settings of joint activity” (p. 308). The concept of dialogicality developed by Bakhtin (1986) is predicated upon the understanding that no discourse exists in and of itself but can be interpreted more broadly and contextually (1986, p. 137). The concept of dialogicality is summarized as referring to the idea that human psychological functioning is inherently dialogic (Eun et al., 2008), and therefore the unit of analysis of human consciousness should be dialogue (Radzikhovski, 1991, p. 8). Dialogicality is conceptualized as a basic capacity of the mind to “conceive, create and communicate about social realities in terms of ‘otherness’” (Marková, 2003, 91). Therefore, knowledge is co-constituted by individuals with others – it is essentially a social process. Engestrom (2014) notes that in another of Marková’s (2000) readings of Bakhtin (1981) dialogicality provides “a provocative dynamically and socioculturally based” approach to human cognition and language. Therefore, dialogicality brings about “the epistemology of social change” (Engestrom, 2014, p. 122). The heterogeneous nature of interactions that are dialogic allow for voices of the other to expand the knowledge. The notion of provocation being a key to the development of knowledge is worthy of consideration. New meanings and understandings add and interrogate previously held ideas with some tension. It is through dialogue in the tension where conflicting processes enable changing relevancies (Engestrom, 1999). Through dialogue, the other voices become incorporated into one’s voice, thinking, and expression (Koschmann, 1999, p. 308). Bakhtin described “word” as a two-sided act, that is, the product of the reciprocal relationship between who is using the word and for whom the word is intended (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 86). This relationship has been characterized as a kind of conflict between “intersubjectivity – the need to develop shared understanding with others, and alterity – the opposing need to distinguish oneself from the other” (Wertsch, 1998). Dialogicality is a process of understanding

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whereby “the utterances of a listener meet and confront the utterance of a speaker” (Wertsch & Smolka, 1993, p. 74). Within this context is the agency of the participants (Koschmann, 1999). Identifying a renewed interest in dialogue allows an opportunity to reengage with the purpose of public discourse, “not as persuasion but as an ongoing exchange in which we test and contest and create ideas in cooperation and when necessary in conflict with others” (Zappen, 2004, p. 2). Zappen (2004) examines the source of Socratic methods driven by questioning and sums up his interpretation of Socrates as “not seeking but rather questioning universal definitions because he believes that others uphold definitions that they do not understand, definitions that are grounded in cultural values that they do not question, definitions that are moreover, in conflict with each other” (p. 3). Furthermore, Bakhtin observes in the Socratic dialogue “the same emphasis upon the dialogic nature of truth–the juxtaposing and testing, the colliding and contesting, the collectively seeking and birthing of ideas–that he finds in the Dostoevsky novels” (Zappen, 2004, p. 5). Bakhtin (1986) questions how we can “bridge the experiential abyss between ourselves and others” (Zappen, 2004, p. 7). In the early dialogues of Socrates, he is characterized as one who “tests and contests and creates ideas in dialogue. . .with others” (Zappen, 2004, p. 13). This Socrates is “not the speaker/writer/rhetor who seeks to persuade others to accept his own account of the virtuous life–his own logos–but the listener/reader/respondent who renders and receives accounts with others thus contributing to the multiplicity of meanings associated with the term and the concept of logos in the ferment of the fifth century BCE” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.13). Bakhtin’s understanding of Socrates is as: The questioner who draws forth and juxtaposes the inconsistent and conflicting beliefs of others, thus testing not only their ideas but also their persons (for the idea and the person were not yet separate), not only what they think but who they are and how they live. He is the midwife who brings together diverse ideas, thereby creating new ideas, new cultural hybrids. (Zappen, 2004, p. 13)

Bakhtin’s Socrates provides “one kind of response to the challenge of individual differences, the seemingly unbridgeable gap between self and other . . . this Socrates also provides a response to the problem and the challenge of cultural differences” (Zappen, 2004, p. 18). Socratic thinking and dialogue have a pedagogical role to play in engaging with opportunities presented by culturally diverse learning communities.

Socratic Circles Pedagogy Socratic Circles as a pedagogical approach was developed by the American English teacher Matt Copeland in response to disengagement of teenage students in his literature class (Copeland, 2005). As a methodology for classroom discussion, its main application has been in the area of literature analysis. It is a development of the

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Socratic methods of dialogue and questioning based on the Socratic theory of knowledge that learning takes place best through disciplined conversation (Copeland, 2005). Socratic seminars center on a text and invite the participants rather than the leader to conduct an intellectual conversation which is essentially exploratory. Copeland (2005) believes that classroom activity should not always focus on learners knowing the correct answers but on their developing the skill to ask the right questions. Paul and Elder (2006) noted that answers suggest an end to a thought or thinking, an absolute or finality to the thinking process, whereas questions generate the continuation of thought allowing for further exploration and understanding. The Socratic Circles structure (Fig. 58.1) involves organizing students into two concentric circles. The inner circle being the discussion group and the outer circle the feedback group. Students respond to a prompt question based on stimulus material disseminated prior to the dialogue, allowing for individual study, analysis, and reflection. Students are supported in their learning to prepare a commentary and questions for the dialogue and are scaffolded through the process, receiving direct instruction related to analytical reading of texts and providing constructive peer feedback. The inner circle begins the discussion with participants responding to each other’s prepared questions and contributing ideas and opinions based on their close

Fig. 58.1 The Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework: values focus

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reading of the material. The addition of the feedback outer circle element promotes active listening as students observe and listen to their peers as they prepare to share constructive, growth-focused feedback after the dialogue. The governing process of the Socratic Circles learning strategy follows the notable schema employed in the Living Values Education Program (LVEP) at Aventura City of Excellence School (Shea & Murphy, 2009). Students, in response to various values stimuli, receive information, reflect internally on the meaning of that information, and then explore the associated values which are either inherent or ascribed. Understandings, beliefs, and perspectives are questioned and tested within the group discussion through a series of questions. Setting a safe space for discussion and exploration of ideas is a critical feature of any values education process. According to Tillman (2005), the LVEP schema can be used across cultures as the transferable nature of the open-ended questioning practice allows students to explore values and the different cultural contexts in which they are expressed. Teachers play an essential role in challenging and supporting critical thinking in students. At times teachers are specialists engaged in direct instruction, at other times models of the learning and/or skill, and other times moderators or facilitators of the thinking and dialogue.

Student Voice and Agency The place of student engagement within the construction of the learning process is articulated as the concept of student agency or student voice. Lundy (2007) provides a critique of the concept of pupil voice in relation to Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: 1. State Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. 2. For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law. (United Nations, 1989, Article 12, Parts 1 & 2) Lundy (2007) asserts that reductive phrases such as “pupil voice” do not fully represent the extent of the obligation that is enshrined in Article 12 as “the practice of actively involving pupils in decision-making should not be portrayed as an option which is in the gift of adults but a legal imperative which is the right of the child” (p. 931). The Lundy model for a comprehensive conceptualization of Article 12 comprises four interrelated elements: • Space: children must be given the opportunity to express a view. • Voice: children must be facilitated to express their views.

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• Audience: the view must be listened to. • Influence: the view must be acted upon, as appropriate (2007, p. 933). Demonstration of this right requires an assurance, a proactivity to encourage the child to express their views (Lundy, 2007, p. 934). The importance of canvassing a diverse range of children so that the process does not privilege the more capable students is underscored (Flutter & Ruddock, 2004, p. 137). In summary, Lundy (2007) captures the importance of due attention to Article 12 in noting that “the strongest argument for guaranteeing the implementation of this right derives from its capacity to harness the wisdom, authenticity and currency of children’s lived experience to effect change” (p. 940). The UNCRC prompted a revision of the role of teacher from that of lecturer to facilitator (Hammarberg, 1997). Student-centered teaching is characterized by a facilitative relationship between teacher and student, whereby the teacher engages with each student where they are in their learning and responds with effective and well-timed instruction to maximize students’ potential for success in achieving their learning goals. The teacher-student conversation in the classroom shapes the learner’s development of communication skills for lifelong learning. The teacherstudent relationship is widely recognized to be significant as the impact of positive relationships between teachers and students on student motivation has been welldocumented (Hattie, 2012, pp. 157–158). The technical proficiency of the teacher in knowing the content and how to teach it is another crucial factor for student inclusion and achievement of potential (AITSL, 2015). More recently, as an authentic manifestation of the UNCRC, the concept of voice-inclusive practice has been developed which promotes the empowerment of children to articulate their views and influence the provision of their own education (Sargeant & Gillett-Swan, 2015). Progressive research reveals the value of student voice in promoting relevance and deep engagement with learning and speaks more directly to the expectations of the educational process by governments and system authorities. There is a congruence between the review of the National Goals for Schooling (Education Council, 2019) and the educational priorities of the Six Global Competencies (Fullan et al., 2018). The six competencies, character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking, are asserted to be the skills and attributes required for learners to “flourish as citizens of the world,” and deep learning is said to be the process by which these skills and attributes are acquired (2018, p. 16). The movement supporting students as agentic in their own learning is further evidence that a shift in recognizing student agency is more fully realized in the international field. Student voice and agency as integral to the learning process are confirmed but warrant consideration equally in the wider educational process that recognizes teacher identity and competency operative within variable school communities and environments with their unique and often particular emphases. While student agency is therefore significant, so too is the importance of understanding teacher identity and local school mission. A study that informs this question is that of Sultmann and Brown (2019) in which the variables of teacher identity are coupled with school mission in light of student agency. The conclusions of the paper

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reinforce the importance of relationships which are in a continuous process of engagement and learning encounter which in their fullest form reinforce agency, equity, and authenticity for both teacher and learner. Agency is seen in exercising voice by both teacher and learner; equity is evidenced in inclusive practices which are responsive to the rights and needs of every learner; and authenticity is represented in the particular understanding of the human person and the school’s intention to educate in this light. Important to the quality of relationship of agency, equity, and authenticity are the roles of dialogue and identification of pedagogical processes that maximize this intention.

A Case Study of Socratic Circles Pedagogy Through a Values Lens Socratic Circles Pedagogy is an example of a values-based holistic pedagogy which seeks to maximize agency, equity, and authenticity and the focus of a research study exploring its impact within the context of an Australian National Values Education initiative, designed for adolescent learners within an intercultural and interfaith setting. Three groups of participant stakeholders, operating at the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of the Melbourne Interfaith Intercultural Cluster (MIIC), contributed to the study. The MIIC was cross-sectoral and included participants from five Melbourne secondary schools including government, independent Islamic, independent Jewish, and Catholic schools. The MIIC constituted a single case study with data drawn from sequenced, semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus group interviews, processed through constant comparative analysis. This study was conducted using a process of data collection which employed a constant comparative analysis (CCA) technique supporting a progressive refinement of themes related to the project inquiry and research focus (Dye et al., 2000). During each phase of the data capture, a specific focus was identified for the in-depth individual and focus group interviews to explore respondent insights on the aims of education, the purpose of the values education reform initiative, and the specific aims of the MIIC. This study led to conceptualization about the teaching and learning of values using Socratic dialogue in adolescent contexts, through a study of the perceptions and experiences of stakeholders at the three distinct levels of policy planning, development, and implementation. This research study sought to understand what the use of an innovative pedagogical strategy could reveal about successful values education specifically and education more broadly. The data was collected and analyzed concurrently. Through a continuous comparative process, the data were analyzed, and distinct categories and subcategories were identified as they emerged. As these distinct categories and subcategories emerged, relevant literature was sourced and referenced to support the researcher to isolate and reveal significant insights and understandings. The emerging theories related to each category were subjected to further analysis and interrogation through a comparative iterative process of constant comparative analysis. The process of data collection and analysis supports a progressive refinement of themes related to the research focus toward emerging insights (Dye et al., 2000). Each phase of the data

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capture was guided by a specific focus for the interviews to explore respondent insights related to the case. The process was enacted according to the three levels of investigation at the system, macro; school, meso; and student, microlevels of reform. (For further detail see link to thesis in the Reference list.) As an innovative approach to the teaching, learning, and demonstration of values, the Socratic Circles Pedagogy was shown to support the development of cultural understanding and social cohesion in adolescent learners. Socratic Circles Pedagogy is characteristically agentic, whereby the individual participant is both an agent of change and is changed, within the community of learners, by the agency of others. This is at the heart of Transformational Dialogue, defined in the study as an enabling dialogic process that allows for depth of reflection, insight, and learning through structured, focused, and democratic interaction. In light of the educational imperatives of deep learning related to social challenges, the Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework (Fig. 58.1) provides an architecture for the key elements of Transformational Dialogue. The integrative Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework brings together the key structural, contextual, and foundational conditions and practices for the application of effective pedagogy as part of comprehensive curriculum reform for student learning. The framework identifies the overall outcome in values education; encompasses three levels of engagement specified in a primary goal and their elements – the system environment for government and nongovernment school policy-makers and administrators; the school environment for leaders and teachers; and the learning environment for students; and utilizes an “arrow” mechanism to depict the relationship among the key components. The model represents the key findings of the research and illustrates the complexity, integrative, and dynamic aspects of values education and the importance of the Socratic Circles as a relevant and effective pedagogy in this process. This outcomes-focused approach achieved through Transformational Dialogue is education in values that underpinned the core aims of the MIIC. However, this model has application across many and diverse focus areas where deep learning is desired and facilitated through a dialogic approach that can foster critical thinking, engender communicative competence, and develop interpersonal skill. The summary of findings in the study invites further analysis and prompts the elucidation of eight integrative elements which combine to comprise the Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework for effective and sustainable educational reform regarding the use of Socratic Circles Pedagogy in the teaching, learning, and demonstration of values.

Achieving Transformational Dialogue Through Socratic Circles Pedagogy Transformational Dialogue achieved through Socratic Circles Pedagogy is both a process and an outcome. The structural features of the Socratic Circles Pedagogy Outcomes Framework provide the architecture for the pedagogical process which promotes learning and relational outcomes. Transformational Dialogue is

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understood in the context of the learning activities of the MIIC to be both an intellectual activity and a relational encounter. It is able to draw together divergent ideas or experiences balancing the tension in a safe space of respect seeking truth and connection. Transformational Dialogue is evident when students move from the theoretical to the enacted as they demonstrate the values of acceptance, tolerance, respect, and understanding through dialogic practices. Transformational Dialogue was identified as a key outcome of the integrative, differentiated, and creative pedagogy employed to scaffold the learning in the MIIC. The Socratic Circles Pedagogy in the MIIC provided learning experiences, “to elicit immediate and responsive interaction among participants and between participants and the teacher” (Davey Chesters, 2012, p. 29). From a student perspective, this learning process encouraged openness to the lived experience and opinions of others, while allowing for freedom to express oneself fully and honestly. The structure and dynamism of the Socratic Circles approach to dialogue in the MIIC promoted equitable participation reflecting democratic communities of learners (Burgh et al., 2006). Learning took place through disciplined conversation indicating that the structure of Socratic Circles allowed freedom of expression conducive to participatory experiential learning (Copeland, 2005). An education in values can connect more specifically with fostering social inclusion and intercultural understanding when pedagogies support deep learning through a dialogic approach that promotes the very values it provides a framework to consider. In particular, when the subject matter of dialogues is contentious, Socratic Circles Pedagogy provides an appropriate framework which objectifies conflict and creates a safe space for a multiplicity of views to be expressed. Transformational Dialogue surfaces assumptions, perspectives, and prejudices for exploration, examination, and finally integration in a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Learning about values in diverse cultural settings through the pedagogical process of Socratic Circles dialogue provides opportunities for deep transformational learning. When successful, learning moves from the theoretical to the enacted, from an idea to an encounter. As reported in this case, the students in the MIIC experienced learning about values as part of a co-created diverse community of young people. Complementarily, the values being discussed, such as respect, understanding, and freedom, were those present in the lived experience of the Socratic Circles. This convergence of experience and focus consolidates the learning and contributes to the authenticity and relevance of the learning experience.

Conclusion A renewed understanding of the congruence of an education in values with the enduring and evolving aims of education prompts consideration of how to build character and nurture active and responsible citizenship. Socratic Circles Pedagogy promotes the synthesis of divergent views and experiences by balancing existing tensions in safe spaces promoting respect and connection while seeking truth. Teachers play an essential role in nurturing these democratic microcosms of

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inclusive communities where critique and dissent are valued within a commitment to the common good. Leaders and educators emboldened by the aspirations of education can enable transformational learning opportunities, as Socratic Circles Pedagogy provides, to support young people as they imagine and create a future for themselves with others.

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A Reflection on the Value Implications for Learner Well-Being of Engagement in Vocational Education and Training

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VET as a Sector of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individual Well-Being and the VET Value Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Values Learned and Well-Being Developed Through VET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Limitations of VET as a Provider of Individual Well-Being Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Vocational education and training (VET) may be recognized on good grounds as a distinct sector of occupational learning. Policy, provision, and curriculum in that sector are currently vary largely informed and shaped by the sector’s commitment to design epistemology, through which it promotes a number of values – such as those of achievement and individual autonomy – contributing to individual student or learner well-being. However, the designist nature of VET also severely limits the scope of that set of values – excluding individual well-being values such as those of tolerance and resilience. If the VET sector were to embrace such individual well-being values now excluded, a different informing epistemology would need to prevail: ideally one of a developmental nature but more realistically a reflexive epistemology, which has been argued elsewhere as more likely to develop in the changing contemporary cultural context.

R. G. Bagnall (*) Griffith University, Nathan, Australia e-mail: r.bagnall@griffith.edu.au © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_59

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Keywords

Well-being · Vocational education · Vocational training · Design epistemology · Reflexive epistemology

Introduction The focus of this chapter is on the value implications for learner well-being in vocational education and training (VET). It is presented as a reflection on the contribution to individual learner well-being of the values promoted in VET curriculum and prominent in VET student learning. The contemporary construction of the VET sector is distinctive, particularly when viewed from the more mainstream – primary, secondary, and tertiary – sectors of education. Accordingly, the first substantive section here provides a brief overview of VET as an educational sector. The nature of well-being values and of VET as a context for their promotion and learning is then examined, before introducing individual well-being values that are promoted and learned through VET. The limitations of VET as a provider of individual wellbeing values are then outlined, before the chapter closes with a discursive conclusion on the ideal and likely future contribution of VET to the learning of individual wellbeing values.

VET as a Sector of Education The use of “vocational education and training” (VET) as the label for a sector of educational provision and engagement is standard in Australia and increasingly internationally (Moodie, 2002), although the shorter, “vocational education,” is also used in acknowledging contemporary attempts to erode the difference between education and training (Meister, 1998). Other equivalent labels for the sector include “technical and vocational education and training” (TVET), the official UNESCO term (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2006); “technical and vocational education” (TVE), the earlier UNESCO term (UNESCO, 1999); “vocational and technical education and training” (VTET) used by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Centre for Vocational and Technical Education and Training (SEAMEO VOCTECH) and a number of jurisdictions in the region (Omar & Paryono, 2008); “technical education and vocational training” (TEVT), used by the Asian Development Bank (2004); and “career and technical education” (CTE), used especially in the United States (Silverberg et al., 2004). In Australia, the primary providing institution – that of technical and further education (TAFE) – is often used as a synonym for the field of vocational education (Goozee, 1995). More recently, “technical and vocational skills development” (TVSD) has been suggested as a term to “capture both the older sense of technical and vocational expertise, as well [as] the newer and more general term, skills development” (King, 2009, p. 175).

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Traditionally, the VET sector has been identified with educational provision that is directed to occupational learning for types of work that are seen as requiring only lower-level skills, commonly “manual” rather than “intellectual” skills, and which may be taught, because of that, through focused “training,” rather than through a more expansive engagement in “education” (Moodie, 2002). The types of work involved here include particularly those known as the “trades” – construction, metal working, manufacturing, and such like. The initial education for such occupations has traditionally occurred in the workplace itself, with, increasingly, supporting formal provision in “technical” or “further” colleges. Other forms of educational provision directed to occupational learning have been excluded from the field of VET as requiring proper “education,” rather than just training, and as being therefore the province of the higher education sector (Boshuizen et al., 2004). The types of work involved in this latter category include the professions such as dentistry, medicine, law, veterinary medicine, engineering, and architecture. Straddling these two sectors have been “paraprofessional” occupations such as those of nursing, school teaching, and laboratory technicians. These latter occupations have tended to become progressively more professionalized and university-based for their initial education, as the higher education (university) sector has expanded to embrace them (Brennan, 1990). In many educational jurisdictions, though, they remain marginal to varying degrees within the VET sector. The nature of the occupations served by the VET sector, though, has been evolving progressively in recent decades into one more demanding of intellectual, higher-order skills commonly associated with traditional professions. The rise of business, communications, and service industries and the evolution of economies into knowledge-based societies have transformed VET, especially in the more economically developed countries, into a sector more focused on “education” than on “training,” of much greater significance economically and socially, increasingly located in tertiary educational institutions rather than in workplaces, and less clearly demarcated from occupational learning in higher education (Hyland, 2002). Nevertheless, the traditional sectoral distinctions continue, often with government responsibility vested in separate ministries, operating under separate legislative acts, and evidencing distinctive funding and career profiles (Elias, 1995). The traditionally strong status differentials between the VET and higher education sectors also largely remain, as they do for the occupations that the sectors serve (Barnett & Ryan, 2005; Grollmann & Rauner, 2007). It thus makes sense, still, to recognize the VET sector, albeit much changed and less clearly demarcated. It is with the teaching and learning of well-being values in this sector that we are here concerned. Like more professional forms of occupational teaching and learning, the sector includes both initial pre-service and continuing in-service education, both work-based learning and learning through formal educational provision (Clarke & Winch, 2007). VET has traditionally involved a strong focus on work-based learning in initial forms of education and training, such as apprenticeships, but also in less formal situations, through “on-the-job” learning (Ainley & Rainbird, 1999). Work-based learning for professional occupations has traditionally followed initial occupational

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education or has come later in the initial block of educational engagements – in the form of mentorships or internships (Houle, 1989). Although that distinction is increasingly being eroded – both through earlier programs of work-based learning in the professions and through increasingly formal initial educational engagement in VET (Boud & Symes, 2000) – it remains the case that work-based learning is recognized, in policy, practice, and research, as being a more important feature of VET than it is of occupational learning for the professions. As well as programs of an apprenticeship or traineeship type, structured work-based learning and informal work-based learning are both seen as being of major importance to occupational learning in VET. The well-being values taught and learned in and through VET are thus strongly influenced by those of the occupations or workplaces to which the curriculum is directed and for which the learning is sought. Another feature of VET that impacts significantly on the well-being values taught and learned in and through it is the all-pervasive focus on the instrumental material utility of its provision, its goals, and its achievements (Bagnall & Hodge, 2022). The general contemporary cultural context in which VET is embedded and which it serves is shaped by its focus on instrumental reason, through which individual and societal decisions and actions are valued to the extent that they are rationally directed to achieving valued ends or goals (Mulder, 2017). Instrumental reason foregrounds the values of effectiveness and efficiency in the engagements directed to attaining those ends (Hyland & Winch, 2007). Desired ends – and derivatively, also the means to their attainment – are valued primarily for their economic value or utility, in other words, for the extent to which they contribute to individual or collective material well-being (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2019).

Individual Well-Being and the VET Value Context Following Aspin (2007), values are here taken as being individual or collective preferences for being, thinking, or acting in particular ways. They thus constrain our commitments, intentions, and actions. The notion of a constraint here is thus that of a guide to work toward particular ends, to be a particular sort of person, and to act in particular ways, as distinct from a restraint, which is a guide not to work toward particular ends, not to be a particular sort of person, and not to act in particular ways (Bagnall, 1992). Individual and cultural value sets are recognized as being heterogeneous fields of value, from which we artificially recognize and articulate particular values, through critical reflection, discourse, and scholarly analysis (Gergen, 2001). The notion of values is, clearly, a cultural construct intended to capture what we observe to be humane tendencies of commitment, intention, and action and to make sense of and manage those tendencies. As such, it is crucial to our understanding of human action and being. It may be seen, also, as including virtues, as values of individual character (Crick, 2010). Individual (and hence student and learner) well-being is understood here as the extent to which one’s value preferences are realized in one’s experience. It is thus

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essentially experiential in nature: the holistic subjective apprehension of one’s being in the world, in which the diverse dimensions of that apprehension all play a part in creating a sense of one’s well-being that is richer than the sum of its component dimensions (Field, 2009). It is, in that respect, a humanistic (Valett, 1977) or gestalt (Harris, 1999) conception of well-being. Nevertheless, individual well-being is understood within the context of the contemporary international preoccupation with individual and collective wellbeing, championed by agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (e.g., Boarini, 2015) and the World Health Organization (e.g., Topp et al., 2015). That preoccupation is focused on the development and application of measures of individual well-being that permit the comparison of aggregate well-being scores across time and political jurisdictions in assessing the impact on well-being of social, economic, and educational development programs (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2013). Those universal measures, though, are culturally situated through individual experience. They are necessarily predetermined as a consequence of their comparative function but are being developed to capture the diversity of conceptualizations of individual well-being, historically regarded as competitive alternatives but now being combined in unitary scores. Through them, individual well-being is thus accepted as encouraging not only opportunity dimensions, such as material or economic wellbeing, levels of skill development, available social services, environmental quality, creative output, political freedom, and mental and physical health, but also subjective or existential assessments of how individuals experience those different aspects of their lives. Engagement in VET, then, may be seen as molding or shaping the individual value preferences of learners or students through their learning from that engagement. The value preferences will be shaped by those values that are immanent to the contexts of the engagements. Over the last half century, those contexts, globally, have been increasingly informed by what has been termed a “design epistemology of lifelong learning” (Bagnall & Hodge, 2022). The notion of an informing epistemology here is that of a coherent body of beliefs about the sort of knowledge that is to be most valued in VET, how that knowledge is to be learned and taught, how its learning is to be assessed, and what qualities are to be sought in its teachers, trainers, and assessors (Bagnall & Hodge, 2017). The authors of that notion have identified five distinctive epistemologies as being important in informing contemporary lifelong learning as a whole. Through the commitments and actions of advocates, policy-makers, and practitioners working from within each of the epistemologies, the latter are seen as becoming increasingly differentiated over time, to the point where there are strongly held differences – even incommensurabilities – between them. Design or instrumental epistemology has been argued to be currently dominating the field of lifelong learning – including the VET sector – in part at least due to its compatibility with the internationally prevailing contemporary cultural context of instrumentalist individualism. That dominance has, though, been seen as particularly marked in VET, where educational and training approaches of a designist nature have become overwhelmingly dominant (Bagnall & Hodge, 2022). Accordingly, the

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analysis here of the values promoted and learned in VET focuses on VET informed by design epistemology, with the following critique of that value set focusing on the educational and training approaches encompassed by the epistemology. Design epistemology foregrounds knowledge seen as informing the procedural efficacy with which particular desired ends can be achieved through rationally established procedures. The ends, though, to which action is directed, are essentially external to the epistemology, being drawn from the prevailing cultural context, rather than the epistemology itself. And the identification of the procedures for the attainment of those ends is a strictly formal process – indicating the grounding of the epistemology in technicism (Bagnall, 2004). Designist VET thus tends to be directed to enhancing the quality of the outcomes of the actions being taken. Designist learning takes the form of educational engagements directed to the end of informing contextually valued action that will be demonstrated behaviorally by the learners under appropriate conditions (Hyland, 1993). Its core focus is on learning engagements in which learners develop and practice skills, predetermined to be appropriate to the identified task or role (Harris et al., 1995). Both the nature of the intended behavioral attainment and the conditions for its demonstration or display are specified prior to educational intervention. Educational approaches are most commonly those of a behaviorist, outcomesbased, or competence-based form (Bagnall & Hodge, 2018), although competencebased education and training are commonly seen as the paradigmatic approach in design epistemology (Mulder et al., 2007). Behaviorist education is education consistent with behavioral psychology and the principles and techniques related to learning that are grounded in it (Thomas, 1990). Outcomes-based education focuses on an educational and training design process that begins with a more or less clear picture of what is to be learned as an outcome and working from that picture to determine learning activities and assessment design, great care being taken to formulate clear outcomes in highly accessible language (Mager, 1962). Competence-based education focuses on a certain kind of outcome – that of competence in performance – from educational or training endeavor being valued above all others. The idea of competency combines related knowledge and skills with practical application (Kearns et al., 2017), application providing the rationale for segmenting educationally serviceable parts of what might start out as a holistic undertaking. Pertinent knowledge and skills only enter a statement of a competence to the extent that they are directly relevant.

The Values Learned and Well-Being Developed Through VET What, then, are the value preferences most likely to be learned by students or learners in such approaches to VET? Acknowledging that the following values have been artificially teased out from the holistic field of value preferences learned through contemporary VET engagement and that they are presented here in no particular order beyond that of linguistic convenience, we may paint a picture of them as follows, drawing heavily on the work of Bagnall and Hodge (2017, 2022). It should

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be noted, though, that all these values are learned in the particular vocational contexts of the VET concerned. The extent to which they are then likely to be generalized by learners beyond those particular contexts to other domains of their lives is, in itself, a matter of some contention (ref., e.g., Nägele & Stalder, 2017). Suffice it to say here that learning is always context-specific and that both the generality of any learning context and the leaner’s generalization of their learning to other contexts are matters that probably need to be specifically addressed in the VET provision if they are to be at all inclusive. In that regard, it is not at all clear that such matters are a normal or even a likely component of VET curricula. The first value preference likely to be learned in VET may be identified as that of achievement in itself: a value focusing on the constructive, creative act of producing something worthwhile through one’s actions (Bagnall, 2007). The achievement may take a diversity of different forms, for example, a concrete object (such as a piece of furniture), a solution to a problem (such as the diagnosis of a malady), or an enhanced state of affairs (such as improved health). Such a sense of occupational achievement may be expected to contribute to one’s sense of personal fulfillment: a value focusing on the feeling of joy or pride in one’s engagement (Barrow & Keeney, 2001). To be engaged in constructing or creating something worthwhile is thus recognized as contributing to one’s self-satisfaction. Relatedly, vocational achievement may be seen as contributing to one’s selfrespect: a value focusing on one’s sense of being worthwhile as a person and which is captured within the contemporarily common psychological concept of self-esteem (Kristjánsson, 2010). It may also be seen as including the contemporarily common ethical concept of caring for the self (Wain, 2004). Such self-respect itself may be expected to contribute to one’s self-confidence: a value focusing on the sense that one is capable of engaging successfully in constructing or creating something worthwhile: that one’s capacity to engage successfully in contributing to the worthwhile vocational outcomes will, in itself, stand to deliver them, without reliance on good luck, chance, or serendipity (Kristjánsson, 2010). Such self-confidence may itself contribute to the extent to which one has and exhibits the value of respect for others who similarly exhibit the capability to engage in constructing or creating something worthwhile (Downie & Telfer, 1969). Valuing oneself for one’s capacity to achieve through one’s actions is thus accepted – given the irreducibly social nature of humankind – as contributing to the extent to which one values others for their capacity to do the same. Such respect, though, is essentially anthropocentric: excluding nonhuman entities, such as other species, ecosystems, and cultural heritage (Monteiro, 2014). Nevertheless, each of the foregoing values may be seen as an expression of the value of individualism, in which the individual human will is at the center of one’s perceptions, interpretations, decisions, and actions (Lawson, 1985). Such individualism, though, is thoroughly socially embedded and other-regarding, as well as being self-interested (Semetsky, 2010). Individualism is expressed through one’s individual autonomy: a value with a particular focus on one’s empowerment to act as an individual in the constructive or

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creative engagement that is being learned, not or not just, as one acting heteronomously in response to contingent expectations and demands (Rychen, 2009). Such autonomy, then, may be expected to enhance one’s commitment to the value of individual responsibility for the outcomes of one’s engagements in constructing or creating something worthwhile (Lawson, 2000). Accepting oneself as an autonomous human being, acting according to one’s own free will, must assuredly encourage one to accept responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, regardless of whether or not the consequences were intended or expected. VET involves, essentially, teaching, training, and learning to undertake particular tasks. Its focus is thus strongly on the value of procedural knowledge, in which the students or learners develop knowledge that allows them to manipulate symbols, concepts, beliefs, values, or material situations: to do particular things, toward particular desired ends, in particular ways and under particular circumstances (Wain, 1987). In that regard and straightforwardly, VET thus also promotes the value of instrumentalism, in which valued action is necessarily directed to achieving a valued end state, the worth of which is itself a matter of its instrumental value in empowering learners to use it fruitfully (Hyland & Winch, 2007). The nature of that valued end state is necessarily identified before any action is taken: limiting the possibility of either achieving or recognizing alternative outcomes. The valued end states sought through VET tend, though, to be assessed in monetaristic ways, as does the relative instrumental value of alternative approaches to attaining those end states effectively and efficiently (Avis, 2017). The value of economic utility is thus strongly promoted and learned in VET. VET also promotes a value commitment to goals that are external or extrinsic to the constructive or creative engagement that is being learned to produce the outcomes (Field, 1991). In other words, the teaching, training, and learning of procedural knowledge are not a valued end in itself; ends are valued for what they allow one to do beyond the engagements involved in their attainment (Bagnall, 2004). Instrumentalism also entails and promotes the value of procedural formalism in the form of rule-governed behavior (Bull, 1985). An instrumental focus on achieving predetermined ends draws one into identifying and following procedures that may be expected reliably and efficiently to produce the desired outcome. Procedural formalism involves the creation of learning opportunities to achieve the desired learning outcomes through the prior analysis of what is required to achieve those outcomes. Such analysis is essentially reductive and technical in that it involves the identification of component items of knowledge at progressively finer levels of detail through the use of formal procedures accepted as being efficacious in that task (Collins, 1984). Such reductive technicism is thus a value preference promoted and learned in VET. In its focus on instrumental, procedural knowledge identified and taught through the formal procedures of reductive technicism, contemporary VET tends also to focus strongly on knowledge in the form of skills, whether they be intellectual, manual, social, or whatever (Winch, 2010). Knowledge as skill may thus be seen as a value preference promoted and learned through VET.

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Such knowledge, and the procedures through which it is generated, taught, and learned, in itself encourages the learning of conservatism as a value preference: involving the valuing of engagements known to be efficacious in achieving particular valued ends over alternative engagements that may carry either greater risk of failure or that are less well-known in their outcomes. The prior identification of mostly skill-based teaching, training, and learning goals and procedures for effective and efficient teaching, training, and learning involves a preoccupation with procedures and knowledge that are already well-known to meet the learning goals within the criteria for instrumental efficiency and effectiveness – encouraging a culture of conservative formality (Bagnall & Hodge, 2022). Although contemporary VET is often presented as an educational and training approach to achieve individual, workplace, and other cultural change and as an approach to respond to changes in the contemporary cultural context (Popov et al., 2017), its content and procedures in so doing are irreducibly conservative: facilitating the learning of a conservative value preference. Nevertheless, the focus of VET on achieving individual, workplace, and cultural change through learning does also encourage learning for life as a value preference, by which is meant here a value preference recognizing the importance of learning in advancing one’s goals in life (Rubenson, 2009). VET may thus be seen as facilitating and reinforcing the development of a commitment to lifelong learning, which is promoted quite generally as essential to individual well-being in the contemporary cultural context (Field, 2009).

The Limitations of VET as a Provider of Individual Well-Being Values Scholarly criticism of the impact of VET on learner well-being has tended to focus on the limitations of the individual well-being values that it is taken as developing in learners. Such criticism has been the subject of many published works, including two early papers by the present author (Bagnall, 1993, 1994). More recently, he and Steven Hodge (Bagnall & Hodge, 2017, 2018, 2022) and Paddy O’Regan (Bagnall et al., 2022) have reviewed a range of such work in their accounts of design epistemology. The brief review here relies on those works in focusing on the limitations to individual well-being in the set of values promoted and learned through VET. Those limitations may be seen as arising from the illiberal nature of designist VET: its failure to promote a broad and well-grounded understanding of the human condition and the world that we inhabit through the exercise of reason drawing on evidenced-based disciplinary knowledge, with individual choice being informed by that understanding and the wisdom of humane values embedded in individual character and capability to liberate learners from the yoke of ignorance, dependence, and amorality (Bailey, 1984). The sort of values that are argued to be missing from learning through VET, but which one would expect from education truly directed to developing individual wellbeing, have been variously identified as including the following: (1) truth (as a value

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preference for choices grounded in reason and evidence), (2) provisionality (as a value preference for accepting that what one now knows to be true is subject to future modification in the light of further evidence and reason), (3) skepticism (as a value preference for maintaining a questioning commitment to all that one now regards as being true), (4) deliberation (as a value preference for critical reflection on the place of one’s vocational learning in one’s life and cultural context), (5) objectivity (as a value preference for beliefs grounded in empirical evidence of the world as it is, through ontological realism), (6) perspective (as a value preference for beliefs and choices that take into account the broader human, cultural, and environmental context of that empirical evidence), (7) universality (as a value preference for beliefs that are true across all like situations), (8) holism (as a value preference for grounding one’s character and choices in the broader context of their impulse and impact), (9) moderation (as a value preference for avoiding decisions and actions that are extreme from the perspective of their holistic context), (10) wisdom (as a value preference for well-informed belief, decisions, and actions), (11) tolerance (as a value preference for accepting alternative beliefs and choices), (12) moral integrity (as a value preference for making choices that are consistent in their regard for affected entities), (13) belonging (as a value preference for seeing oneself as an integral part of more encompassing living realities, such as communities of practice), and (14) resilience (as a value preference for coping with adversity and error through wisdom, moderation, and moral integrity). Contemporary VET, then, may be seen as failing to contribute to the learning of those values important to individual wellbeing.

Conclusion In spite of continuing policy interventions, in many countries, directed to integrating VET and general education, the field of VET continues to evidence – in at least its historical development, its approaches to learning, its curriculum, its outcome expectations, and its place in the contemporary cultural context – the distinctiveness of a separate sector of educational and training provision, engagement, and learning. That distinctiveness importantly embraces its contemporarily overwhelming reliance on design epistemology to inform its approaches to education, training, and learning. Through that design epistemology, VET may be seen as contributing to the individual well-being of its learners through its promotion of the values of achievement, personal fulfillment, self-respect, self-confidence, respect for others, individualism, individual autonomy, individual responsibility, procedural knowledge, instrumentalism, economic utility, goal externalization, procedural formalism, reductive technicism, knowledge as skill, conservatism, and learning for life. On the other hand, published critique of VET suggests that its contribution to individual learner well-being is limited by its failure to contribute significantly to the learning of other values that education more broadly is standardly expected to

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promote, especially through the individual well-being values of truth, provisionality, skepticism, deliberation, objectivity, perspective, universality, holism, moderation, wisdom, tolerance, moral integrity, belonging, and resilience. Those two sets of value preferences are not intended here to be comprehensive but rather as indicative of the field in both cases. They are essentially those that have struck the present author as being straightforwardly suggested in the pertinent scholarship on design epistemology, both supportive and critical. It is also important to note that VET provision and engagement are invariably undertaken in quite specific domains of occupational practice: domains which may be expected to constrain the contexts of student and learner engagement in which the learned values of individual well-being will be seen as pertinent. Thus, the extent to which the values of individual well-being learned through VET may be expected to be transferred by learners to other contexts of their lives is questionable and uncertain at best. For any such generalization of the well-being values learned in VET to be a feature of values learning from VET engagements, it may well be that it would need to be explicitly and strongly addressed as a goal of VET provision and engagement. To that end, any such development in VET would require its epistemological transmogrification into a sector informed by an epistemology other than that of design. Of the major epistemologies identified by Bagnall and Hodge, the most fruitful one in this regard would seem to be their developmental epistemology, which foregrounds knowledge seen as informing individual and cultural development, its concern being with the qualities of what it is be human and with the progressive individual and cultural development of those qualities, through individual emancipation from traditional cultural constraints by empowering learners in democratic political contexts as self-aware, self-determining, autonomous beings whose actions are informed by knowledge, values, and commitments grounded in experience and formal, rational enquiry: an individualism, though, that recognizes the irreducibly social nature of knowledge and language through which it is articulated. However, the likelihood of that transmogrification actually occurring would appear to be slim, given the press from the contemporary cultural context toward a more instrumentally reflexive epistemology which foregrounds knowledge that informs individual identity – affirming or enhancing it – making a virtue of epistemic reflexivity, accepting the humanist subjective influences on what we take to be knowledge as ineradicably important to knowing. Knowledge of the world is therein accepted as depending on the questions that we take to our search for it, and those questions are accepted as being determined by the frameworks of understanding through which they are generated. VET informed by a reflexive epistemology is directed to achieving authenticity and well-being through informing and advancing one’s life projects within the broader cultural context of trends, beliefs, and expert knowledge. Such an epistemology would at least seem to be an improvement on the present designist VET offerings in its potential to contribute significantly more fully to the promotion of individual well-being values.

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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visitation Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principal Tenure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . School Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principles for Continuity of Character Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1086 1087 1088 1089 1091 1093 1093 1095 1109 1111

Abstract

In 2000, the John Templeton Foundation sponsored a project to research the relationship between character education implementation in public elementary schools and the academic achievement of their students. Our results showed that, in general, elementary schools with higher character education scores also had higher achievement test scores. They not only showed positive relationships

The research described in this chapter was made possible through support from The John Templeton Foundation, West Conshohocken, PA, and California State University Fresno’s Kremen School of Education and Human Development. Opinions cited are those of the authors. J. S. Benninga Bonner Center for Character Education and Citizenship, California State University, Fresno, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. M. Tracz (*) California State University Fresno, Fresno, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_60

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between the extent of character education implementation and their academic indicators that same year, but also positive correlations on those measures across the next two academic years. Keywords

Character education · Values · Respect · Courtesy · Responsibility

Introduction Golden Tree Elementary School had much going for it in fall 1999. Its scores on California’s achievement test and its corresponding academic performance index (API) were high, and its programs for student social development were in full swing. Golden Tree emphasized three core values – its walls were painted with the words respect, courtesy, and responsibility – that its principal described as “the keystones which form the foundation of everything that we are and hope to become.” The operational slogan to ingrain these values was labeled “The Golden Tree Way,” providing an orientation to the school’s way of life. Its discipline plan emphasized responsibility, respect, positive learning attitudes, and school pride and was communicated through the parent handbook, monthly principal’s letter, and teacher communication. Teachers’ opinions were solicited and considered in the decisionmaking process and parents were considered an integral part of the school program. However, by fall 2004, many programs at Golden Tree Elementary had changed. Three principals had come and gone since 1999, and Golden Tree’s brand new principal was in the middle of her first year. The respect, courtesy, and responsibility emphases, “keystones” only 4 years earlier, had been replaced by a district imposed character education curriculum intended to help students make good choices and to stay away from alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. The school motto, “The Golden Tree Way,” with its reflective student questions “Is it safe? Is it courteous? Would it be okay if everybody did it?” was seen by the current administration to be a carryover from a previous principal. “I haven’t heard it” noted the new principal. Indeed, many of the programs that formed a foundation for Golden Tree Elementary School’s application for California’s Distinguished Schools Award in 1999 were no longer in place 5 years later. The school-wide discipline plan, emphasizing responsibility, self-respect, positive learning attitudes, and school pride, was replaced by a district adopted student wellbeing curriculum, peace builders. Instead of out-of-school suspensions, the new principal instituted an after-school suspension program. In our work with schools, we have noticed a similar pattern. Principals at good schools and principals at not-so-good schools are regularly reassigned. While principals at low-performing and failing schools are replaced (e.g., Smith, 2008), principals at high-performing schools who have established good programs and who create and maintain positive school and community relations are also frequently

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replaced. In many of those good schools, exemplary programs established by those principals are not continued, but rather fade away with time. When we looked for an explanation for these principal reassignments, we could find no consistent justifications. Indeed, when we asked Golden Tree Elementary School’s young principal why her school had previously had so many short-term principals in just a few years, she replied she had “no idea,” but she speculated that her district put principals there “just before they were ready to retire.”

Background In 2000, the John Templeton Foundation sponsored a project to research the relationship between character education implementation in public elementary schools and the academic achievement of their students (Benninga et al., 2003, 2006). Applications submitted in December 1999 for the California School Recognition Program (CSRP), California’s distinguished school award, were stratified by their Academic Performance Index (API), then randomly selected and thoroughly reviewed for character education content. Of the 681 applications submitted, 120 were selected for our study in this manner. We developed an operational definition for character education and a rubric and scoring scale to evaluate the applications. The resulting character education scores of those 120 schools were correlated to their API and academic achievement test (SAT9) scores. Our results showed that, in general, elementary schools with higher character education scores also had higher achievement test scores. They not only showed positive relationships between the extent of character education implementation and their academic indicators that same year, but also positive correlations on those measures across the next two academic years. And, over a multiyear period from 1999–2002, rankings on the API and scores on SAT9 were significantly and positively correlated with four of the character education indicators we had identified: • A school’s ability to ensure a clean and safe physical environment • Evidence that a school’s parents and teachers modeled and promoted good character • Quality opportunities at the school for students to contribute in meaningful ways to the school and its community • School programs that promoted a caring community and positive social relationships These were promising results, particularly because the total character education score for the year of the school’s application (1999–2000) was significantly correlated with SAT9 language achievement scores and mathematics achievement scores for a period of 3 years (1999–2002) as well as for reading achievement scores in two of those years. In other words, quality character education was positively associated with academic achievement, both over time and across academic domains.

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Method The question at the core of this chapter relates to the continuity of positive school character education programs. We know from our previous research (i.e., Benninga et al., 2003, 2006) that in the best of our character education schools high academic achievement scores persisted over a period of several years, but we had no way to determine the stability or continuity of school programs that covary with achievement. Would good character education programs continue to experience continuous improvement? Would they be sustained or would they fade out? And what might account for those changes? With schools primarily focusing on specific curriculum areas because of NCLB, and where assessment results in literacy and mathematics are publicly reported, would school efforts at curriculum sustainability be notably decreased in other curriculum areas for which no such standard assessments were formally conducted or publicly reported – e.g., among them, character education? Research of this sort is examined on a complex and circular continuum in which qualitative and quantitative methods couple to confirm what we know and to generate theory, namely a generalizable explanation for what accounts for stability or for continuous improvement of good character education programs in good schools (Ridenour & Newman, 2008). Taken together, this study and our earlier work in this area (Benninga et al., 2003, 2006) demonstrate such a qualitative– quantitative research continuum. While the earlier Benninga et al. studies examined the quantitative research question of whether various measures of effective character education and academic achievement would be correlated, this study seeks to close the loop of the interactive continuum where quantitative research leads to qualitative research and vice versa. Our purpose here is to “understand phenomena” and to “add to [the] knowledge base” (Ridenour & Newman, 2008, p. 177) as we explore the results of our “interview study” (p. 31) utilizing good school cases as our sample. Nine of the 120 schools originally identified in 2000 for this follow-up, because all had received high ratings on our character education scale (Benninga et al., 2003), were contacted in 2004 for personal interview/visitation appointments. A letter was sent to each school in June 2004, before summer vacation, informing principals of the intention to visit in fall 2004. A second letter was sent to each principal in September 2004 explaining the purpose of the research and our request to visit the school. Finally, individual follow-up e-mails and phone calls were exchanged with each school to respond to their questions and to set up meeting dates. As a result of this correspondence, two principals – a first-year and a second-year principal – declined in September 2004 to participate in the study. The principals at these two schools explained that at neither school had character education remained a central focus. The remaining seven schools comprised the cases for this study. This group represented schools in our original study scoring in the top 10% of total character education scores or in the top 10 schools on at least three of four of our character education indicators (see Benninga et al., 2003 for specific methodologies). Six of

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the seven schools made both lists. Four of the seven schools also received the California School Recognition Award (CSRP) in 2000, the baseline year for this sample. Grade ranges at these schools were K-5, K-6, and K-8. A middle school program (e.g., grades 7–8) existed at two of these schools, but that level was not assessed as part of this study. Only the elementary, K-5 or K-6, student programs were studied at each school. The schools had an average of 527 elementary (K-5 or K-6) students. Ethnic diversity of the sample schools varied, with a range of White students from 7–81.3%. API scores for 2000 ranged from 670–836, and in 2004 from 667–864. The API is a performance index (or scale) for schools that ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. California set a statewide API performance target for all schools at 800, but schools were not required to reach that goal by 2000, the first year of API implementation. Principals of these schools had a range of experience at their schools from 2 months to 9 years. Specific information on these categories is included in Table 60.1.

Visitation Procedures At each school, the principal worked out a full agenda for the visitation. All visits included a school tour and an extensive principal interview. In addition, most visits included time for interviews with the school counselor, small groups of teachers, and parent leadership. But in two schools (Fir and Golden Tree Elementary Schools), the interviewer was allowed only to speak with the principal. The interview procedures were consistent across schools, although not all the questions were the same for each school. For our original 1999 sample (Benninga et al., 2003), we scrutinized schools along nine dimensions of good character education implementation and determined four of those to be correlated positively with schools’ academic achievement. It was the continuity/discontinuity of those four criteria at each school 5 years later that constituted the interviews developed for those schools. Thus, we were specifically interested in what had continuously improved, what had remained stable, what had changed, and what had been eliminated – and why – in programs originally scoring high along the four dimensions. Although school case interview protocols focused on the four indicators, each consisted of specific questions unique to individual school cases. The interviews were semistructured (Gall et al., 2007), allowing ample time for discussion, for deep probing on protocol, and for examination of off-protocol topics. All interviews were conducted by the first author, and were taped and transcribed. In order to establish investigator triangulation, both researchers thoroughly and iteratively examined all data to arrive at the patterns and results of the school case interviews reported here, constituting further evidence of validity (Krathwohl, 1993). A final aspect of validity is action validity, to be determined in the future by whether results of this study prove to be used by schools and districts and in future research (Kvale, 1995).

K-6

K-8

K-6

K-5

K-5 K-8

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No No

411 539

461

765

420

461

Total students K-5/6 1999–2000 (%) 633

53.8 81.3

80.0

71.9

67.2

34.5

White 7.0

791 825

836

833

834

670

API 2000 769

821 790

b

864

863

667

API 2004 864

4 61

5

0

NA

18

Number of suspensions 2003–2004 9 (2002–2003)a

Suspension rates for 2003–2004 for Ash Elementary could not be found There was a reporting problem for Elm Elementary in 2004. Its API was 895 in 2003 and 915 in 2005

b

a

School Ash Ele School Birch Ele School Cedar Ele School Dogwood Ele School Elm Ele School Fir Ele School Golden Tree Ele School

Grade range K-6

CSRP school in 2000 Yes

1st 1st

1st

2nd

3rd

5th

Principal tenure in 2004–2005 (years at school) 9th

Table 60.1 Student population, percent White, achievement index scores, suspensions, and principal tenure at each of the sampled schools

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School Leadership Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) summarize a general consensus about school leadership. They write that, “an effective principal is thought to be a necessary precondition for an effective school” (p. 5). To support this opinion the authors cite the eloquent wording of a 1977 U.S. Senate Committee Report on Equal Educational Opportunity: In many ways the school principal is the most important and influential individual in any school. He or she is the person responsible for all activities that occur in and around the school building. It is the principal’s leadership that sets the tone of the school, the climate for teaching, the level of professionalism and morale of teachers, and the degree of concern for what students may or may not become. If a school is a vibrant, innovative, child-centered place, if it has a reputation for excellence in teaching, if students are performing to the best of their ability, one can almost always point to the principal’s leadership as a key to success. (as cited in Marzano et al., 2005, pp. 5–6)

Consequently, issues of leadership and leadership development are one strong focus of the recent literature in educational administration. Much of that professional literature concerns variations on the theme – leadership behaviors (Covey, 1989; Marzano et al., 2005), types of leadership (Leithwood, 1994; Sosik & Dionne, 1997), leadership contexts (Hersey et al., 2001), leadership characteristics (Bennis, 2003), leadership strengths (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001), leadership levels (Collins, 2001), leadership for change (Fullan, 2001), and leadership sustainability (Fullan, 2005). Although the above characteristics and configurations associated with school leadership are ways to understand more fully the principal’s role, it is reasonable to assume that time-in-location is a requisite for principal success. If principals with excellent potential do not spend sufficient time at one school, opportunity for sustained positive change is reduced at those schools. Even the most visionary principals cannot work their magic if not allowed sufficient time and support to work their craft. Surprisingly, there is not a great deal of information on school principal stability. Research by Donaldson, Buckingham, and Coldarci (2003) studied the principals in one state (Maine) and found that one-third of that state’s principals turn over every 2 years and that two-thirds of its principals have been in their current position less than 8 years. At the national level, the principal tenure situation is similar. An institute of education sciences study, The Condition of Education 2007 (US Department of Education, NCES, 2007), found that, like Maine, 67% of principals nationwide had nine or fewer years as principal, and of that group, more than 50% had three or fewer years’ experience (34.2% of the total number of elementary principals in the USA). Though it is a frequent phenomenon, there is very little information on the effect of principal turnover on program sustainability. Major school administration research centers and professional organizations have not looked at the issue of principal succession or turnover, while at the same time, school districts, at least in California where our research took place, seem to rotate principals regularly.

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Professor Stephen Gordon of The National Center for School Improvement at Texas State University opined that “principal stability is every bit as important as faculty stability” (S. Gordon, July 15, 2008, personal communication), and experts at other universities felt the issue to be “very important.” Fred Brown, Senior Associate Executive Director of Leadership Development and Outreach for the National Association of Elementary School Principals, acknowledged the paucity of research in this area. But, from his extensive background with principal development, Brown offered the following perspective on the turnover issue: For many years, superintendents had the arbitrary right to transfer principals to whatever school was open. This has been reduced somewhat with collective bargaining and “Meet and Discuss” changes, but many school systems retain the right to transfer principals at will, or on a predetermined schedule. The initial thinking behind this was three-fold: (1) to keep principals fresh by always having them to relearn new communities of learning, (2) to eliminate entrenchment by school principals in schools and communities that were satisfied with the status quo, and (3) to permit new ideas to be shared district-wide as principals rotated through numerous schools. Of course, there have also been transfers made as punishment and in hopes of “encouraging” the individual to move on. There is very little anecdotal research to quantify the practice of principal rotation, either positively or negatively. What works well in one setting may be disastrous in another. (F. Brown, June 10, 2008, personal communication)

Regardless of why principals move on, or are replaced, it would seem reasonable that the ultimate goal of school districts in replacing principals would be to ensure an improvement in, or continuity of progress. But according to Michael Fullan (2005), “the current decade represents a massive exodus from the principalship. The consequences of the failure to focus on [principal] succession are amplified under circumstances of high turnover. There is not much planned continuity going on at all” (p. 32). In one of the rare series of publications to investigate leadership succession, Andy Hargreaves of Boston College and his colleagues (Hargreaves, 2005; Hargreaves & Fink, 2003, 2004; Hargreaves et al., 2003) studied the effects of leadership succession and sustainable leadership in American and Canadian secondary schools. He notes as follows: [A] central issue in leadership succession is whether a transition in leadership establishes continuity or provokes discontinuity—and to what extent this is deliberatively planned . . . . Most cases of succession ended up being a paradoxical mix of unplanned discontinuity and continuity: discontinuity with the achievements of a leader’s immediate predecessor, and continuity with (or regression to) the mediocre state of affairs preceding that predecessor. (Hargreaves, 2005, pp. 1–3)

Hargreaves and Fink (2004) warn that, “[in] general, leadership succession is rarely successful. Charismatic leaders are followed by less dynamic successors who cannot maintain the momentum of improvement. Leaders who turn around underperforming schools are prematurely transferred or promoted before their improvements have had a chance to stick” (p. 9).

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Principal Tenure The first and most obvious indictor differentiating schools in our sample was the matter of principal tenure. Each of these schools had applied in December 1999 for California’s highest school recognition award, but in only one of these schools was the same principal who originally supervised the writing of that application still at the helm in fall 2004. Many of these schools had multiple leadership in the 5 years since applying for exemplary school status. Four of the schools had at least two intervening principals in addition to the current principal, and one school had five different principals over that five-year period. There is indication that “creating a sense of stability is critical for maintaining an image of effective leadership ...” (Hoy & Miskel, 1996, p. 207), but principal stability for this sample was notably lacking. During an interview with a group of teachers at one school that had experienced multiple principals, teachers told the interviewer that the program “keeps adjusting” because of the new administrators, but that the school had been stable because there has not been much teacher turnover and “the teachers are strong.” This perception may have been more accurate about pedagogy within individual classrooms than about programs that transcended the school and that involved its overall climate. To the contrary, there is evidence that principal succession is more traumatic than those teachers let on. Indeed, evidence suggests that few people are more aware of the impact that a change of principals has on a school than its teachers: For most members of the organization, a leadership succession event is often an emotionally charged one surrounded with feelings of expectation, apprehension, abandonment, loss, relief or even fear. There may be grieving for well-loved leaders who have retired or died, feelings of abandonment regarding leaders who are being promoted and moving on, or relief when teachers are finally rid of principals who are self-serving, controlling or incompetent. Incoming principals may be viewed as threats to a comfortable school culture, or as saviors of ones that are toxic. Whatever the response, leadership succession events are rarely treated with indifference. (Hargreaves et al., 2003, p. 4)

School Descriptions Table 60.2 details the character education programs of schools in our sample in place in 1999 and the status of those school programs and new school initiatives in fall 2004. Comparisons were drawn in Table 60.2 between the school as described in 1999 and its practices as observed in 2004. Schools are listed in order by the length of principal tenure – the continuous service of the most recent principal at that school. Notice the general tendency for schools with the most frequent succession of principal leadership (particularly Fir and Golden Tree Elementary Schools) to have experienced the least continuity of program stability.

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Table 60.2 Character education programs in place in 1999 and as observed in 2004–2005 Schools, principal tenure, and succession since 1999–2000 Ash Elementary Nine years as principal at Ash

Programs as described in California’s distinguished schools award application (submitted in December 1999) 1. Community of caring 2. Campus cleanliness and beauty programs 3. Teacher modeling and support 4. Cooperation with after-school program 5. Family literacy night 6. Ethnic teas

Birch Elementary Four years as principal at Birch Second principal since 1999–2000

1. Book of virtues/virtue of the month 2. Virtue wall painted on outside wall 3. Dress code and behavior code 4. DARE/Red ribbon week 5. “I’m Peer proof” 6. Weekly “Flag Deck” ceremony 7. Citizen of the month 8. Study buddies 9. Student tutors for special education

Cedar Elementary Three years as principal at Cedar Fifth principal since 1999–2000

1. “Structured School” philosophy 2. Emphasis on respect, responsibility, and rights of others 3. Motto of the Day 4. Character counts! 5. Quest 6. Project alive 7. Conflict resolution 8. Parent–child–school compact 9. Full parental involvement

Dogwood Elementary 2 years as principal at Dogwood

1. Tradition is important 2. Collaborative management approach 3. Character Counts! 4. Awards ceremonies: monthly, quarterly, and semi-annually

Programs as observed in school visits (conducted between October 2004 and January 2005)a 1. Community of caring 2. Campus cleanliness and beauty programs 3. Teacher modeling and support 4. Cooperation with after-school program 5. Family literacy night 6. Ethnic teas 7. Identification of target children for special attention 1. Expanded virtues of the month woven into developmental assets 2. Virtue wall destroyed during school reconstruction. To be repainted 3. School behavior expectations and school motto developed and implemented 4. – 5. – 6. Expanded to daily “Flag Deck” ceremony 7. Expanded to student of the month 8. Study buddies 9. Student tutors for special education 10. Teacher modeling and professional behavior 1. “Structured School” philosophy 2. Emphasis on respect, responsibility, and rights of others 3. – 4. – 5. – 6. – 7. – 8. Parent–child–school compact 9. Full parental involvement 10. Peer mediation program initiated 1. Tradition is important 2. Collaborative management approach 3. Character Counts! 4. Awards ceremonies: monthly, quarterly, and semi-annually (continued)

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Table 60.2 (continued) Schools, principal tenure, and succession since 1999–2000

Programs as described in California’s distinguished schools award application (submitted in December 1999)

2nd principal since 1999–2000

a

Elm Elementary Less than one year at Elm Third principal since 1999–2000

1. Emphasis on protecting the environment 2. Partner with Native American school 3. “Kids with character” 4. Monthly award assemblies 5. Peer mediation program 6. Goal setting conferences 7. Garden of Learning

Fir Elementary Less than one year at Fir 3rd principal since 1999–2000 Golden Tree Elementary Less than one year Golden Tree Fourth principal since 1999–2000

1. School uniforms 2. Conflict avoidance program 3. Campus cleanliness 4. Discovery Garden 1. Emphasis on three core values 2. Card system to reward and punish behavior 3. Campus cleanliness 4. “The Golden Tree Way”

Programs as observed in school visits (conducted between October 2004 and January 2005)a 5. General rules of student conduct 6. Athletic code of ethics and behavior 7. Spectator code of conduct 8. Cross-aged tutoring 1. Emphasis on protecting the environment 2. Partner school relationship diminished 3. “Kids with character” expanded to include “We can do it Wednesdays” 4. – 5. – 6. Goal setting conferences emphasis diminished and left up to grades 7. – 8. Community service hours required in 5th grade 1. District-wide dress policy 2. District-wide discipline plan 3. – 4. – 5. Life skills program 1. – 2. – 3. – 4. – 5. District adopted peace builders program 6. New referral system 7. Reading buddies

Indicates discontinued program at schools

Principles for Continuity of Character Education The schools we studied received high character education scores derived from the CSRP applications submitted to the California Department of Education for California’s highest school award in December 1999. But then, several of these schools seemed to have lost that articulated character education emphasis by 2004. While some of these good character education programs (e.g., at Ash, Birch, Cedar, and Dogwood Elementary Schools) remained consistent or developed over

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this time period, in other schools (e.g., Fir and Golden Tree) programs were altered, replaced, or dropped without apparent sense of continuity. It could be that school leaders new to their positions at some of these schools, and simply because of their recent appointments and lack of familiarity with their schools’ histories, were more task oriented, viewing the various aspects of their schools’ programs discretely and not as interconnected. This is a mark of an inexperienced principal (Hargreaves et al., 2003, pp. 12–14). Correspondingly, the principals of Fir and Golden Tree schools were less able to articulate a whole-school conceptualization in our interviews with them. But, newness to the principalship or recency to the school site cannot fully explain the sustainability of good programs in some schools or the discontinuity of good programs in others. The following are six principles and conclusions drawn from our observations and interviews of these previously good schools that illustrate the character education continuity/discontinuity continuum over a five-year period (1999–2004). Together these principles and conclusions may provide guidance for districts seeking to maintain sustainable leadership in nonmandated programs (e.g., character education) during a time of high rates of principal succession. 1) No one program defines character education. Schools in this sample implemented such national programs as Community of Caring, the Book of Virtues, and Character Counts! But, many schools in our sample also created their own idiosyncratic programs such as the Structured School, Kids with Character, the Block Award, We Can Solve It Wednesday, and the Flag Deck Ceremony. It is not clear that either the national programs or the locally developed programs produce better outcomes. Indeed, the state of character education research in 2008 (at the time of this writing) is only slightly clearer than it was in either 1999 or even 2004. In 2004, and to a great extent today, many programs of character education are what Berkowitz and Bier (2005) call “grass roots character education,” homegrown approaches developed by teachers or other educators with good intentions, practical knowledge, and a desire to help students improve their behaviors, values, and attitudes. Many of those programs seem to work well, particularly if implemented by their authors. However, little is known of their effectiveness since few such programs are supported by objective research. The federal government’s What Works Clearinghouse (see: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/topic.aspx?tid) has established a character education site to review the research on effective programs as those evaluations are conducted and cleared. In the schools from our 1999 sample, those with strong character education programs took their programs seriously, implemented them deeply, and improved them over time. But none of these schools conducted research to determine the effectiveness of its program. 2) Good program continuity is most probable in schools where leadership is both visionary and stable. Of the seven schools studied for excellence of their character education programs in 1999, in only one was the principal still the instructional leader of that school in 2004, 5 years later. This was a surprising result. At a time when great pressure is placed on schools to perform academically, and while schools remain a major forum

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for the preparation of students for adulthood, it would seem that consistency of programmatic excellence might be considered an important priority (Chrisman, 2005). Instead, four of the seven schools in this study, each an excellent school in 1999, had at least three intervening principals (including the current principal) within the five-year-period leading to 2004. Such revolving-door district procedures may actually interfere with the transfer of accumulated knowledge to the new principal (Hoy & Miskel, 1996, p. 400) and may exacerbate programmatic discontinuity. Indeed, David Hargreaves (as cited in Fullan, 2005) admonishes as follows: We may have it wrong in education in assuming that “fresh blood at the top” is the lever of school improvement. While this may apply to schools that are (close) to failing, it may need an insider to take a good school to greatness because it builds on what they inherit rather than striving towards a different vision against the inclinations and preferences of the staff. (p. 31)

3) Previously good character education programs in schools with stable leadership (e.g., Ash and Birch) were maintained and improved while such programs were often discontinued in other previously good schools with subsequent high leadership turnover (e.g., Fir and Golden Tree). The trend documented in Table 60.2 is clear. Generally, schools where the leadership, the program, or both remained stable were more likely to retain their school’s high emphases on the character education of their students. This is axiomatic. The program at Fir Elementary is a good example of one that discontinued its high scoring character education program of 1999 by 2004. Its new principal had little knowledge of the school’s recent history and its ways of being. Hargreaves et al. (2003, pp. 12–13) state that new principals like Ms Atwood may be preoccupied with establishing their authority over the parents, teachers, and students at their new school, and may encounter tensions when they do not understand the school’s professional culture. Although it was very early in Ms Atwood’s tenure as a new principal at Fir Elementary, it was evident that after 10 weeks on the job she was not well versed with the programs in place only a few years before that had distinguished her school and led it to apply for designation as one of California’s best. Case Study: Fir Elementary School

The principal of Fir Elementary School, Barbara Atwood, was appointed in August 2004, just a few weeks before the beginning of the 2004–2005 school year. She was the third principal at Fir since 1999. The principal who supervised the writing of the 1999 CSRP application left the school; the next principal served for 3 years – from 2001 to 2004. According to Ms Atwood, her predecessor left Fir for a more “prestigious” school. The population served by Fir was decreasing, and the school instituted an open enrollment policy. Any parent in the district could opt to enroll children in Fir. (continued)

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On its application for the CSRP award in 1999, parents were reported as rating the school as “very safe and very clean.” The custodian was given credit and he worked with a School Safety Committee to conduct quarterly inspections of school buildings and grounds. Problems, if found, were corrected. School rules, student conduct, and behavior standards were listed in a Student Conduct Handbook. At that time Fir Elementary was in its fourth year of a school uniform policy, explained to parents on a flier titled The Fir Elementary School Look, detailing appropriate top, bottom, and feet attire. A Fir Elementary conflict avoidance program was implemented that focused on three techniques for compromise: apologizing, active listening, and negotiation. Each teacher discussed and modeled those skills for each class. The school described itself in 1999 as one where “friendship and cooperation exists among teachers.” Close cooperation existed as well between the school faculty, parents, and the outside community. A neighboring church provided 85% of the many adult volunteers for an after-school homework club for at-risk students, local hardware/garden stores supported the school’s Discovery Garden maintained by Fir’s 5th graders, and the local symphony came regularly to campus to provide firsthand exposure to classical music. In addition, several classrooms shared peer tutors. By November 2004, the date of our visit, Ms Atwood had been in place for approximately 10 weeks. She noted that despite low enrollment at Fir, parents expressed concern that they wanted to maintain the school climate. The uniform policy, in place in 1999, was still in place in 2004 and is “pretty much district wide” according to Ms Atwood, with the school district now charged with creating the uniform and implementing related dress policies. The school’s conflict avoidance program had been replaced with a districtwide program called, Say What’s Wrong and Make It Right, a program created by two local teachers. The Fir Elementary conflict avoidance program was no longer a school program, but the principal felt that teachers still talked about conflict avoidance and the three techniques for compromise described in its 1999 application. “I don’t know if the former principal emphasized it, but teachers continue to use it.” The 5th grade Discovery Garden had been fenced off and was neglected. The school’s students no longer tended the garden and Ms Atwood did not know why the area was no longer used as a school garden. She said she hoped to bring it back. While not referring to the cooperative spirit among teachers that had been described in 1999, she spoke about attempting faculty cohesion by organizing social activities like a Family Movie Night for teachers and their families. When asked about Fir School’s signature programs, Ms Atwood replied that Fir had a successful rewards program. As an example, she noted the Friday Flag Assembly that went with the Fir Life Skills Program. If teachers saw exemplary behavior, a “caught being good card” was given to the child. (continued)

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The card was put in a jar and a drawing held. In each class every teacher picked a child to be rewarded with a school pencil. Atwood changed the school’s theme to “Fir Bears are Sharp—We act Sharp, We think Sharp and We dress Sharp.” She hoped the new theme would integrate the school’s uniform policy, its behavior policies, and its academic program.

4) A good principal can add depth and meaning to a school’s program by altering the manner that teachers and parents understand children and the instructional process. The principal of Ash Elementary had been in her present position for 9 years and is the best example of this principle. Throughout those 9 years she reflected on her role as instructional leader and refined her school’s curriculum, constantly aware that she needed and wanted the backing and support of her teachers and the school’s parents. As a consequence, her school’s Community of Caring program became deeply entrenched throughout the school’s varied academic and social and cultural emphases, and every year brought new discussions and new insights on how to make the program stronger so as to better serve the students and the school’s community. Likewise, Birch Elementary School’s principal, at her present school for 4 years in 2004, substantially enhanced her school’s character education program by integrating new emphases into the existing framework of her school’s curriculum. Despite considerable demographic changes at her Title I school in the years immediately before 2004 (i.e., increased student mobility and percentage of minority students), Birch’s API scores over this period were generally maintained. This is consistent with attitudes of mature and motivated principals found by Hargreaves et al. (2003) in their review of principal career stages. They report it is during years 4–8 of the principal’s tenure that they may begin to express constructive selfquestioning and increasing effectiveness as instructional leaders and that enthusiasm and effectiveness become their paramount motivators (pp. 14–15), building on an earlier idealism and enthusiasm. Indeed, a follow-up web search of Birch Elementary in 2008 showed the same principal with a strong commitment to character education still in place, and with API scores improved by over 160 points. Case Study: Ash Elementary School

Suzanne Romero, principal at Ash Elementary School (K-6), was in her 9th year as principal in fall 2004. In 1999–2000, Ash was in its second year of Community of Caring, a character education program built around five core values. Ms Romero described that program as one that created a school environment that “respects differences and values each student’s culture.” This was accomplished through focusing on the five Community of Caring (continued)

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values, on teacher practices that reflected brain research, and on an integration of activities throughout the core curriculum. By 2004, the Community of Caring program at Ash Elementary School had become fully integrated in the ongoing school program. Ms Romero had a clear notion of character derived from many discussions with her faculty over the six-year implementation period. She described character as [starting] “with the professionalism of the teachers and who they are as people and the norms they have established among themselves and the learning community. . . . And that’s modeled. We bring it up constantly in all the subjects we teach. At first we spoke about the value and taught it directly. But over time we’ve integrated it well into the ongoing curriculum.” Ms Romero continued, describing the application of the school’s character program to student behavior: “Behavior is a big issue—the way in which they treat other children and their teacher. So teachers have a real strong understanding of what it means to be respectful to each other and they take issue with children that show disrespect. They [teachers] demonstrate respect in so many ways throughout the day with kids and they talk about that.” One example was the identification of “target children” in each classroom. All teachers picked four students in each classroom who might be at risk for not being successful and gave them special attention. “We’re keeping an eye on them this year,” Romero said, “and we’re actually recording what strategies we use and what efforts we’re making for parent communication.” Academic and social goals were developed for these kids. The first year for this program was 2004–2005 and at each grade level teachers came up with their own criteria and kept a check-off list of how they intervened with those children and how they kept their parents informed. Campus cleanliness and beauty remained an important character consideration at Ash. Each classroom had an area of the campus to keep clean because “it’s also our job to keep our classroom clean.” An ongoing project was school beautification, noted in the 1999 application. In 2004, that tradition continued. Flowers were planted around the flagpole in front of the school, and many classrooms had gardens they were responsible for maintaining and watering. Teacher modeling and respect for teachers was a continuing theme for Ash Elementary. Eleven new teachers were hired in a two-year period and teachers stated they were involved in the hiring process in 1999 (on the CSRP application) and again in 2004. Describing her role as interviewer, one teacher stated, “When we interviewed new teachers we just let them know ‘this is how it is at Ash—we really care about each other; we really respect each other, and we help each other out as much as we can’. It starts with us, and we let it flow through us to the kids. We want to hire new teachers who are on the same page.” (continued)

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Over 50% of the Ash students were Asian, mostly Chinese, and an attempt was made to find and hire Chinese teachers, but the principal was adamant that “excellent preparation is a first consideration” for hiring, although she realized that a match with the students’ culture was important. When Ms Romero interviewed new teachers, she looked for their philosophical belief systems. She asked about children’s behavior and their reactions to that behavior. “I ask them about their being able to look at issues in a critical manner and their ability to articulate their thinking, and their openness to discuss issues. . . .” She continued, “I ask them a lot about what they think about children and their misbehaviors and what should happen and discipline. I get a good sense about how they treat children. I create scenarios and ask them what they would do. Also, the questions they ask me tell me a lot about who they are.” New teachers at Ash Elementary School met weekly with their assigned mentor as they did in 1999, and regularly with the principal. The plan to support all teachers, described in 1999 was still in place, but was improved 5 years later. For example, three or four times a year grade level teams worked together for a full day. Ms Romero noted, “The little money I have, I spend it on their own development working together as a team.” Wednesdays were grade level articulation days where teachers met to discuss grade level objectives/activities. Great attention was devoted at Ash to ensure a sense of community. Originally, there were perceptions among the Chinese parents that Ash teachers were not asking enough of their children. So the principal asked the local Asian Pacific Center to train its faculty. The Center worked with Ash faculty on conversation styles, belief systems, American vs. Chinese education systems, and storytelling differences. In addition, the teachers at the afterschool program for Chinese students housed at Ash, the Day Star program, regularly met and exchanged ideas with the principal. Said Ms Romero, “We talk and share ideas about what’s best for kids, regardless of cultures. We’re like one family with them now.” Many programs originally designed to draw the Ash Elementary School community closer were maintained and had been expanded over the 5 years. For Family Literacy Night (“pajamas, pillows, and pizza”) kids come in pajamas and bring a pillow. The school orders pizzas. Everyone meets in the cafeteria, the teachers read a story, and the kids can choose which teacher they want to go to. Children rotate through three teachers/stories. This program has grown over the years – originally it was mainly the younger kids who would come, now its attracting older kids as well. Some of the 6th graders want to come back to see their kindergarten teacher read. Ash holds Ethnic Teas. “I believe in connecting with parents as a community,” says Ms Romero. “With the Latino population, I felt a certain reserve. I felt they were not participating enough in the school. So I started having meet(continued)

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ings just in Spanish. Only six parents came. I had meetings in Chinese and 50 parents came; I had a translator, had [the meetings] in homes [because of the long relationship with parents]. Hispanic parents said that they felt uncomfortable bringing kids to others’ homes, so we had Hispanic meetings at school. All we did was talk about each other—background, history, hopes and dreams for their kids. We decided to get training in Latino Literacy groups—principal, teachers and parents. We read literature, talked about literature, and we cooked (all in Spanish). The program continued on all year under the leadership of a teacher.” Finally, there were opportunities for students at the school to give back to their school. Activities mentioned in the 1999 application included some afterschool programming for students, students’ active role in maintaining the school planters and grounds, and various collection drives. By 2004, a significant new activity had been added. The Big Buddies program paired 3rd grade classes with kindergarten classrooms. Once a week they got together to do an activity, an activity that the teacher could not do by herself, or a reading activity. The teachers developed a cue card system so that the 3rd graders could remember what to say to the kindergarteners and how to say it appropriately. These were called “responsibility tips” given by the kindergarten teacher to the 3rd graders – ideas for becoming a responsible teacher. NCLB focused Ms Romero’s attention on academic achievement. But her real focus was the curriculum and the necessary teacher development that fosters a community of learners. About that she stated, “One of my goals has been [to work with teachers] to become problem solvers. I do that by talking with them in small groups, discuss with them, have them read books and articles I’ve read that have made an impression on me. I actually go through the process of having them trained with me in leadership. I spent a lot of money having them trained for two years in Leadership Academy. All my teachers have journals they write in. So, before we have a staff meeting, they write in their journal a response to a focus question I’ve given them, and then we’ll discuss it and then we’ll discuss what they’ve written in their journal that they want to share. The reflective piece is a big piece of the changes we’ve been able to make over the years. I ask them a lot about how they feel about what just happened in order to have them reflect on their experiences.” When teachers were asked about their school’s signature programs, there was uniformity of understanding. A newly hired Kindergarten teacher commented about the cooperation she had noticed at her school. “I’ve never seen a school where the teachers are cooperating along with the principal in running the school.” Other teachers agreed. One veteran commented, “Everybody here puts kids first. All you have to do is walk through the classrooms to see the evidence.” Ms Romero, describing her Community of Caring program, said, “Our approach to Community of Caring is . . . based on a professional (continued)

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learning community. That’s all encompassing because in a professional learning community there is a continual connection with people in order to learn and a respect for that process.”

5) A well-conceived and established school or district culture can structure the environment for successive principals that allows for program continuity. Both Cedar and Dogwood Elementary Schools were examples of this principle. Principals at both schools were experienced at other schools in their districts and moved to schools with a very long, consistent curricular history. That history, with which both principals were familiar, served as an anchor for them, for their teaching faculty, and for their community. The consistency of both programs allowed these principals to modify and tweak their school programs in context, relating their innovations and personal insights to the already ongoing excellent and wellestablished program of their respective schools. Case Study: Dogwood Elementary School

In 2004, Mike Hernandez of Dogwood Elementary School was in his second year, but had over 10 years administrative experience at other schools in his district. Dogwood Elementary had a long tradition of excellence prominently noted in its 1999 CSRP application. Mr. Hernandez recognized the good job that the former principal had done at the school and intended to follow through. “Tradition is important,” he volunteered. “There are good moral values here.” He continued, “We’ve talked as adults about how to keep that going. It was important for all of our teachers to be able to articulate what it is we stand for. When people ask me, ‘what do you do as far as teaching moral values?’, I say—‘well, we hire good people; we hire role models.’” Dogwood Elementary School is very conscious to provide both a physically safe and a psychologically secure environment for its K-6 student population. Its Parent/Student Handbook is very specific about this and the security of students was addressed in the interview. Specific Guidelines for Student Behavior were enumerated in the 2004–2005 handbook. The introduction to the Student Behavior section states: In order for any organization to operate effectively, it is important that all concerned parties be aware of what the rules are and why they exist. The rules governing the behavior of students and the operation of the school reflect three guiding principles: (1) the school exists as a place to learn; (2) teachers have a right to teach and all students have a right to learn; and (3) self-discipline is the key to discipline. Our expectations for student conduct, therefore, boil down to common sense, good manners, and respect for one another.

(continued)

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Thirteen General Rules of Student Conduct and 12 state code rules were listed and specifically discussed with all Dogwood students. Students were informed of specific expectations in all aspects of school life. For example, the handbook lists a set of 17 bus safety rules, with the admonition that, “Student misbehavior constitutes a serious safety hazard on the bus. Students not conducting themselves properly will be issued a citation by the bus driver that must be signed by the parent before the student may be readmitted to the bus.” And there was an elaborate Athletic Code of Ethics and Behavior for students participating in sports at Dogwood Elementary as well as Spectator Code of Conduct for parents and other adults. Both codes carry specific sanctions. The safety of the students was paramount. According to Dogwood’s viceprincipal, “Little kids worry about things that adults don’t necessarily worry about and we’ve got to be in touch with that—going to the bathroom, bullying. We just try to take the approach here that we’re not going to accept that [bullying]. We let kids know that what they’re doing is not appropriate and do they have an appreciation how what they’re doing is being received? [This is] the teachable moment—this is not what Panthers do. There’s a Dogwood mantra: ‘You have to have good behavior and hard work.’ This is repeated by everyone regularly.” In 1999, the CSRP application described Dogwood Elementary as having a Collaborative Management approach, a spirit of sharing and cooperation among the faculty. The school was described then as a place where “faculty felt they have a real voice in how the school is run.” By all indications, the sense of collective ownership was still in place 5 years later. Teachers participated in the hiring of other teachers and sat on interview panels for the new principal. One teacher told the interviewer, “The staff is very professional. Regardless of the time involved, we want to do what’s best for kids.” Another teacher noted the caring school community at Dogwood and the “comfort level” of the people who work there. She noted the closeness of the faculty, that the school was a caring place for adults to work in and parents to be involved in. Both Mr. Hernandez and his assistant principal noted two signature attributes of Dogwood: (1) the focus on high academic achievement and (2) the equally high expectations for personal conduct of the students. Said the principal, “We’d like to think that Dogwood students, as they move into 7th grade, are going to be successful in all the usual ways and will be viewed as a credit to their parents and community.” A series of well-articulated programs helped students become wellrounded community citizens. Students were publicly recognized for their successes in meeting the standards of each program at regularly scheduled formal school ceremonies. Public recognition at such ceremonies was a hall(continued)

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mark of this school. Guidelines for each program were detailed in the school’s Parent/Student Handbook. (a) Monthly recognition programs. Dogwood holds a monthly award ceremony to recognize students for both academic and character traits. For example, the “Student of the Month” (three per month selected by classroom teachers) is selected for demonstration of good behavior, hard work, and a good example for others. Parents are invited to attend the ceremony. The “Character of the Month” is awarded to the student who best exemplifies the Character Counts! Pillar of the Month. (b) Quarterly recognition programs. A “Personal Responsibility” program has been in place at Dogwood since the 1980s that provides public recognition and rewards for students in grades 1–6 who meet program guidelines. Each classroom has posted a Personal Responsibility Award chart. Teachers check off students whose behavior violates the school’s General Rules of Conduct. Included on that chart are items such as inappropriate behavior in class, incomplete homework and assignments, unexcused tardy, and cafeteria referral. If a student receives more than three checks in any one quarter, that student is eliminated from the award that may include a field trip or other fun activity. (c) Semester recognition program. Perhaps the most comprehensive character education program observed at Dogwood is the “Block Award Program.” The Block Award is “the highest award a student may earn at Dogwood Elementary and is available to 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students.” The handbook describes the award as follows: “This award is designed to recognize students who exemplify the qualities that Dogwood Elementary School hopes to foster in all of its students, namely: (1) the desire for selfimprovement; (2) dedication and commitment in reaching for goals; (3) concern for and service to others; and (4) the willingness to be a positive role model to others.” The Block Award requires student participation in a full range of school activities. Students must have demonstrated leadership and volunteerism by running for school office, working in the cafeteria or school library, or other school event. They must demonstrate academic merit and participate in the performing arts and in athletics. And, they must have received at least three of the school’s many awards or honors. Teachers keep records of student participation and students can download criteria forms from the school’s web site. Dogwood’s faculty instituted a variety of opportunities for students to contribute to the school and to the community, and many students seek to participate. There are cross-age tutoring programs with training for the tutors, and many ways for students to participate in keeping the school, its class (continued)

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rooms, and grounds in good shape. Said Mr Hernandez, “We have very little discipline that occurs for infringements between older and younger children. This is their school.”

6) Mentorship is important to program continuity and stability in good schools experiencing principal succession. Elm Elementary School is a good example of this principle and Fir and Golden Tree are counterexamples. Even though the current principal at Elm Elementary was the third principal at her school in 5 years, the first, long-serving principal was still in the district, still admired for his work (he was the current district superintendent) and still involved with curriculum. He hired the new principal at Elm from outside the district and provided mentoring to her. The Elm School principal was regularly in touch with her predecessor (and now boss) and discussed her ideas with him. This mentoring relationship worked so well that she remarked that “Tony’s philosophy and mine are very similar.” She had found a good coach, one who knew her school and who could provide knowledgeable, site-specific, and sound feedback. On the other hand, principals at Fir Elementary School and Golden Tree Elementary Schools noted no such mentoring relationships. The new principal at Fir was the third in 5 years, and the new principal at Golden Tree was the fourth in 5 years. They mentioned no contact with their predecessors. Indeed, when the Golden Tree principal was asked about a particular transition, she responded, “We’re completely new to this school and all of this was done prior to us.” The Fir and Golden Tree school principals, however competent they may be, had little historical context within which to make changes and believed they were left to pursue initiatives independently. Case Study: Elm Elementary School

Monica Feldman, principal of Elm Elementary School, was in her second month as principal at the time of the interview in fall 2004. She was the third principal at Elm School since 1999. The principal in 1999, the one responsible for the preparation of the CSRP award application, served the school for 13 years before being promoted to the district office. He was the current district superintendent. A next principal served for 2 years. Ms Feldman was an experienced teacher from a nearby district in her first principalship. Elm was 80% White with a history of high API scores. A carefully thought-out child-centered focus typified Elm Elementary School in 1999, with quality programs in music and the arts supplementing its academic emphasis. In addition, the Elm School expected children to develop important character traits and environmental understandings. Students were encouraged to bring only “no-trash” lunches – all reusable/recyclable con(continued)

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tainers. Earth Week was a major celebration, culminating in the release of butterflies raised by the children. Maintaining the grounds and the physical environment of the school was a priority. Elm students had an ongoing relationship with a nearby Navajo school, sending class letters, food, clothing, and books on a regular basis and hosting the Navajo students at Elm for an annual visit. In addition, book drives specifically aided an inner city school in another California city, and many Elm students participated in the Jump Rope for Heart Campaign. A program called Kids with Character was developed at Elm Elementary in 1999. This program was described as including monthly school-wide themes with various activities that teachers structured to suit student needs and ongoing classroom activities. Themes included respect, friendship, responsibility, kindness, justice, compassion, tolerance, citizenship, honesty, and fairness. An extensive literature list and classroom materials were assembled to match the traits, and a separate monthly newsletter, the Elm Elementary School Kids With Character Newsletter, included articles by the students themselves, dinner discussion theme suggestions, and a Dear Abby-type column (for example, “I love to play basketball at recess, but a couple of the kids in another class never follow the rules. How can I get them to follow the rules and for everyone to have fun?”). Monthly school assemblies included a recognition program for students demonstrating the character traits. A second component of the Kids With Character program was a peer mediation program. A team of teachers and parents trained over 30 fifth graders in conflict resolution techniques for recess and the playground. Parents were fully involved in Elm Elementary School and were trained to participate in the instructional program. As a result, parental interest was high, with the average classroom in 1999 hosting parent volunteers for 25 h per week. In addition to clerical tasks, parent volunteers were described as delivering the Great Works of Art program and a physical education program to each class. Another unique feature involved goal setting by 2nd through 5th graders. In that program, parents and their children met with the teacher to discuss individual goals. For example, one 2nd-grade parent noted that her daughter was afraid of speaking in front of the class. This was shared with the teacher at a goal setting conference, and overcoming that fear became her goal. Many of the programs described in 1999 were ongoing, but others had been dropped or modified by 2004. Bringing no-trash lunches to school had become school policy. The relationship with the Navajo school continued, but with no mention of reciprocal visits. Goal setting conferences continued, but in 2004 were voted on by individual grade levels. Fourth- and fifth-grade teachers voted to keep the goal setting conferences, but Kindergarten voted not to. The Garden of Learning, with greenhouse, garden, and decorated ceramic tiles (continued)

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described in the 1999 CSRP application, was dropped by the second principal (of the three), but Ms Feldman is “thinking about bringing it back.” The Kids With Character program remained and grew, with the Elm school counselor nurturing that program with supplementary activities such as We Can Solve It Wednesday, where students dropped by her office to discuss school-related social concerns. The counselor, in consultation with Ms Feldman, initiated visits to each class to conduct an integrated series of character lessons focusing on behavior. Each month, Elm explored a different character trait. She tied those traits to lessons and taught all students a specialized set of vocabulary for understanding behavior (i.e., passive, aggressive, and assertive) and to describe inappropriate and appropriate actions. Each Wednesday the counselor provided ideas to incorporate the traits into ongoing activities. For example, if there was a new student, a class might discuss how it could make that student feel more comfortable in school. The peer mediation program was dropped, replaced by a community service requirement for all 5th graders. In a group interview, parents explained the reason for this change. They felt that some students participating in the peer mediation program were alienated because of their role. They did not feel they were heard. The mediation program ran into a glitch – primary age students wanted an immediate solution; many times the process turned out to be too long for the primary kids, and 5th graders complained that not many kids asked them for help. Then, the second principal instituted a scheduling shift in 2003–2004 that created new demands on student time making it inconvenient for 5th graders to mediate. At our interview, the parents stated they were not pleased with peer mediation. They indicated that children did not feel they were heard and that younger kids may not have understood what the program was all about. One parent felt it was alienating the kids who were the mediators and that there was a tendency for kids to make decisions for others rather than mediating. A significant program that was added was the 5th grade community service requirement. According to a 2004 school publication, “it has become an Elm Elementary School tradition that the 5th grade class donates 1000 community service hours as their class gift to the school. With our on-going Kids With Character program, it has become more meaningful to have our 5th graders perform activities that integrate these character traits with their academic efforts.” Each 5th grader is asked to perform 12 h of volunteering. Students could choose to volunteer with groups outside the school or at the school campus, for example, helping with traffic control. The school counselor provided appropriate, positive training to ensure the students were kind, helpful, and respectful. Parents, the counselor, a group of teachers, the superintendent (the former principal and current mentor), and Ms Feldman were interviewed. All had high (continued)

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praise for the school. The school counselor noted, “Elm Elementary cares for children at every level. We’re dealing with the whole child. Great communication—everyone really feels that these are our children—this isn’t just a job, they’re our kids.” When parents were asked about what they would consider “signature” programs at Elm Elementary, they were quite effusive. For example, one parent noted, “It’s family here, they take care of each other and they take care of the kids.” And another stated, “It’s not any one program—it’s all encompassing—the whole package is so nurturing for our kids.” The teachers felt the same. They were also asked about what they considered the school’s signature programs. Rather than mention specific programs, they noted the school’s high academic and social standards, the parent involvement (“This is a school of parents”), and the sense of community (“We work really well in teams. It’s a comfortable place to go to. Lots of cooperation across grades”). Finally, the new principal added her perspective. She noted, “This is a child-oriented, child-centered, parent-involved school that has tremendous expectations for everything I do.”

Conclusion Character education is the responsibility of adults (for examples, see Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, 2003; Damon, 2002, p. ix; Wynne & Ryan, 1997, p. 1), and its intention is to promote student character development. That process is a formative one. It develops over time as children learn what virtuous behavior is and what it is not. It develops as they practice and refine virtuous behavior – by approximating and modeling ideals (Sherman, 1999, p. 248). And, it is aided as they develop an understanding of the reasons for such behaviors in some deeper, habitual sense (Burnyeat, 1999, pp. 210–211). For such a process to work meaningfully for children, consistent mature adult guidance is required. Yet, there is no consensus on how character education is to be defined, practiced, or evaluated. While the term historically has referred to the duty of the older generation to form the character of the young through experiences affecting their attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors, more recent definitions include developmental outcomes such as a positive perception of school, emotional literacy, and social justice activism. There are sweeping definitions of character education (e.g., the Character Counts! six pillars, Community of Caring’s five values or the Character Education Partnership’s 11 principles) and more narrow ones such as those implemented by some of the programs described here. Regardless of the type of good character education program implemented in our schools, stability and continuity for its students are important. Children, even adults, need predictability and consistency in their lives. They need to under

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stand what they are expected to do and how to do it and they need to be able to depend on stable relationships for those understandings. Such consistency is behind research that documents the connection between high parental expectations and children’s sense of competence and self-reliance (Maccoby, 1980), as well as a cluster of traits described by Baumrind (1973) as promoting children’s instrumental competence – a combination of parental control, clarity of adult communication, maturity demands, and nurturance (i.e., concern for the children’s wellbeing and pleasure in their accomplishments). So, when significant adults impose relatively high demands, their children tend “to be (1) low in aggression (boys); (2) altruistic rather than egoistic; and (3) above average in competence and agency” (Maccoby, 1980, pp. 382–383). And, when those adults consistently enforce those reasonable rules and demands, their children have been found to be: “(1) able to control aggressive impulses; (2) high in self-esteem at age ten or eleven; and (3) competent and agentic—i.e., able to approach new situations with confidence and persist in tasks once begun, generally positive in mood and not withdrawn or immaturely impulsive” (pp. 381–382). Yet, the research on leadership stability and continuity in schools is sparse. Current school leadership research tends to focus on the shrinking pool of available principal candidates (e.g., Cusick, 2003), or practices to assist new principals (e.g., Franklin, 2005), or the myriad leadership styles or leadership behaviors noted earlier in this chapter, but the issues of principal turnover, particularly principal succession in well-functioning schools, are scarcely evident in the educational literature. The research by Andy Hargreaves and his colleagues (Hargreaves, 2005; Hargreaves & Fink, 2003, 2004; Hargreaves et al., 2003) is a notable exception. Consistent with Hargreaves’s findings, when the principals interviewed for this study were asked about how their districts made decisions about assigning or reassigning school leaders, their understandings were not clear. Indeed, Marzano et al. (2005) cite the “relative paucity of empirical studies” (p. 6) on school leadership in general as a problem for the field. But according to Hoy and Miskel (1996), “For administrators in schools, creating a sense of stability is critical for maintaining an image of effective leadership and is an ongoing social pressure. Stability occurs in situations where the set of relationships among elements remain constant and in situations that are either unchanging or changing slowly” (pp. 206–207). While this conception may not apply wholly to the schools described in this study, it is evident from the principles we derived from our school case study descriptions that those school environments providing greater stability – through consistent leadership, mentoring support, or enduring curriculum perspectives – are ones best able to support deeper and more lasting change.1

1

Endnote: Names of schools and individuals are pseudonyms.

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References Baumrind, D. (1973). The development of an instrumental competence through socialization. In A. D. Pick (Ed.), Minnesota symposium on child psychology (Vol. 7). University of Minnesota. Benninga, J. S., Berkowitz, M. W., Kuehn, P., & Smith, K. (2003). The relation of character education and academic achievement in California elementary schools. Journal of Research in Character Education, 1, 17–30. Benninga, J. S., Berkowitz, M. W., Kuehn, P., & Smith, K. (2006). Character and academics: What good schools do. Phi Delta Kappan, 87, 448–452. Bennis, W. (2003). On becoming a leader. Basic Books. Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2005). What works in character education: A research-driven guide for educators. Character Education Partnership. Buckingham, M., & Clifton, D. (2001). Now, discover your strengths. Free Press. Burnyeat, M. F. (1999). Aristotle on learning to be good. In N. Sherman (Ed.), Aristotle’s ethics: Critical essays (pp. 205–230). Rowman & Littlefield. Center for the Fourth and Fifth Rs. (2003). What is character education? Retrieved June, 18, 2008, from http://www.cortland.edu/c4n5rs/ce_iv.htm Chrisman, V. (2005). How schools sustain success. Educational Leadership, 62(5), 16–20. Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. Harper Collins. Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change. Simon & Schuster. Cusick, P. A. (2003). A study of Michigan’s school principal shortage. Michigan State University, Education Policy Center. Retrieved October 3, 2005, from http://www.epc.msu.edu Damon, W. (Ed.). (2002). Bringing in a new era in character education. Hoover Institution Press. Donaldson, G. A., Buckingham, D. A., & Coldarci, T. (2003). The Maine principal study: Stability and change among Maine principals, 1997–2001. University of Maine. Franklin, J. (2005). When the principal is the new kid at school. Education Update (ASCD), 47(10), 1. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. Jossey Bass. Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership sustainability: System thinkers in action. Corwin. Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W. R. (2007). Educational research: An introduction (8th ed.). Pearson. Hargreaves, A. (2005). Leadership succession. Educational Forum, winter. Retrieved July, 14, 2008, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4013/is_200501/ai_n9473826 Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2003). Sustaining leadership. Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 693–700. Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2004). The seven principles of sustainable leadership. Educational Leadership, 61(7), 8–13. Hargreaves, A., Moore, S., Fink, D., Brayman, C., & White, R. (2003). Succeeding leaders: A study of principal succession and sustainability. Ontario Principals Council. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from http://www.principals.on.ca/CMS/display.aspx?pid4509&navpush&cid5124 Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Johnson, D. E. (2001). Management of organizational behavior: Leading human resources (8th ed.). Prentice Hall. Hoy, W. K., & Miskel, C. G. (1996). Educational administration: Theory, research and practice (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Krathwohl, D. R. (1993). Methods of educational and social science research: An integrated approach. Longman. Kvale, D. (1995). The social construction of validity. Qualitative Inquiry, 1, 19–40. Leithwood, K. (1994). Leadership for school restructuring. Educational Administration Quarterly, 30, 498–518. Maccoby, E. E. (1980). Social development: Psychological growth and the parent-child relationship. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. ASCD.

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Ridenour, C. S., & Newman, I. (2008). Mixed methods research: Exploring the interactive continuum. Southern Illinois University Press. Sherman, N. (1999). The habituation of character. In N. Sherman (Ed.), Aristotle’s ethics: Critical essays (pp. 231–260). Rowman & Littlefield. Smith, L. (2008, October 15). What McCain and Obama can learn from successful school principals. Education Week, p. 32. Sosik, J. J., & Dionne, S. D. (1997). Leadership styles and Deming’s behavior factors. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1, 447–462. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2007). The condition of education 2007 (NCES 2007-064). U.S. Government Printing Office. Wynne, E. A., & Ryan, K. (1997). Reclaiming our schools: Teaching character, academics, and discipline (2nd ed.). Merrill.

Mathematics Education and Student Values The Cultivation of Mathematical Wellbeing Revisited

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Philip Clarkson, Alan Bishop, and Wee Tiong Seah

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Impact of Values Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Affect and Attitudes in Mathematics Education Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Values in Mathematics Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teachers’ Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Institutional Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Societal Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Students’ Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Development of Mathematical Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relating Mathematical Wellbeing to Cognitive, Affective, and Emotional Educational Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Developing a Research Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Addendum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The chapter explores the essence and spirit of values education with especial application to mathematics and mathematical wellbeing. The importance of values in mathematics education will be foregrounded with reference to issues of affect, attitudes, and emotions. P. Clarkson (*) Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Bishop Monash University, Melbourne, Australia W. T. Seah University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Lovat et al. (eds.), Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_61

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Keywords

Values · Mathematics · Wellbeing · Student affect · Student performance

Introduction For a long time, the association between student affect and performance in school mathematics has been well known. However, the intricacies of this association are still being teased out. In the current political environment when educational institutions are being explicitly asked to foster an environment that promotes student wellbeing, this association has taken on a new and significant meaning. School mathematics is not just about the performance of students, although some politicians and others in the community have tried to define it in this manner. Equally, “working mathematically” means far more than being good at a specified set of skills and more than being able to show mastery of various conceptual structures. Experienced teachers do understand that the wellbeing of many students diminishes when they are asked to engage with mathematics learning. Underlying such engagement and hence mathematical performance, although not always recognized by all teachers in the hectic activity of a classroom, is a command of a specific language that holds the conceptualizing process together (Ellerton & Clarkson, 1996). Moreover, and of particular importance for this chapter are the values, and their language, embedded within mathematics and its pedagogy. We will structure this chapter in four sections. First, there will be a review of some of the relevant research literature related to affect, attitudes, and emotions in mathematics learning and teaching. Second, the discussion will then focus in on pertinent literature concerning values in mathematics education. Third, these strands of the literature will be brought together with a new construct: mathematical wellbeing. Finally, this construct will be used to elaborate a research and development agenda.

The Impact of Values Education Values in education in Australia became a focus for research and action in schools when the federal government in the early 2000s announced its intention of funding projects that highlighted the teaching of values. This initiative sidestepped the notion that any time a teacher teaches, values are being enacted, since there is interaction between people. Nevertheless, this government action initiated a great flurry of activity, some of which are reported by Toomey (2010). Much of the implementation and research looked at obvious questions of how values are best taught and what influence context plays in such teaching; for example, formal teaching contexts versus nonformal situations. It appears that most situations that were developed in schools were cross-curricular by nature. That was understandable since the nine

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values1 highlighted in later government publications (DEST, 2005), and which became the focus for funding, are clearly drawn from societal values, none of which would be denied as being important in young peoples’ formation. However, many educators were skeptical of such a listing to be the focus for values education (Jones, 2009). As one participant of a focus group called to discuss the implication of the government policy for university teacher education courses put it as follows: “These are motherhood statements. No one is going to disagree about teaching kids these values. BUT the key is what you mean by them and that will rely on the teaching contexts developed.”2 One issue then is, are these or other values clear to the students as they go about the business of their normal routines of school life? If values are foundational to students’ wellbeing,3 then certainly they need to become aware of them and how they influence their normal living. Given that for students their schooling revolves around “going to classes,” do they experience values that they recognize in those class times? It would seem to be counterproductive to the development of values if the only time that they became important was at special times, such as when completing cross-curricula projects, unless such projects are the norm for a particular school.4 So, can the values that are targeted be embedded in the normal teaching of school subject areas? There seems to be no doubt that this is so, although the aim of many government-funded projects seemed to suggest that the explicit teaching of values in other than normal teaching was what was needed. However, there is a class of values that was not embedded within the current general debate on the teaching of values to young people in school and which we will argue also is imperative for students’ wellbeing. These are values that are central to the formation of particular subject areas and guide their scholars in how they should act and think if they are to become practitioners at a deep level of the subject. Students might be able to answer test items correctly, but unless they know what the values are, and can enact them, they may have difficulty comprehending the deep structure, nuances, and understandings that come with being a geographer, linguist, or scientist. Furthermore, unless they are aware of such values, as well as the procedures of manipulating knowledge, the experience of connectedness, purposefulness of learning, some sense of control over your learning, producing productive work, and engagement with others and the task, all aspects of what the research literature suggest link to students’ wellbeing, will not be present (Chapman et al.,

1

Integrity; Freedom; Responsibility; Respect; Doing your best; Honesty and trustworthiness; Fair go; Care and compassion; Understanding, tolerance, and inclusion. 2 This was one of the four focus groups at four different universities that Clarkson was asked to chair as part of the Australian Council of Deans Committee Project to promote the teaching of values. Comments such as this one were voiced in all groups. 3 “Wellbeing refers to students’ physical, social and emotional well-being and development ...these elements are integral rather than incidental to learning. Learners will find it difficult to engage with learning programs, if they are distracted by significant physical, social and emotional issues” (Catholic Education Office, Archdiocese of Melbourne, 2008, p. 1). 4 Most Australian schools run their teaching days through specific subject teaching.

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2007). We argue that this is true for mathematics, although an unexpected implication for some. Indeed the learning of the values embedded within mathematics will start at a very early age of schooling, whether teachers, students, or parents are aware of this implicit values learning. In this chapter, we explore some of the research literature on this issue that began in the early 1990s, although we acknowledge that there were precursors to this issue that prefigured some of what we debate today. We discuss what values are embedded in this mathematical aspect of our culture and how they differ from attitudes, beliefs, and other affective dimensions that have been explored in education. We also reflect on some of the research that has looked at teachers attempting to explicitly teach these values, and hence in Lovat’s terms impinge directly on teacher effectiveness (Lovat, 2005). We will argue that given mathematics takes up a substantial period of a student’s time when at school, their knowledge of and knowing acquisition of the embedded mathematical values will impact on the whole of their wellbeing, but in particular on a new construct that we describe, their “mathematical wellbeing.” But we begin by taking a brief broad view of affect in mathematics education research, and in particular the most common variable, that of attitudes. This will help position the explicit research undertaken on values, which then follows. We bring the chapter to an end by moving beyond the notion of values per se and suggest a new emotional domain, paralleling Bloom’s cognitive and affective domains (Bloom et al., 1956; Krathwohl et al., 1964), in association with the new construct of mathematical wellbeing (MWB).

Affect and Attitudes in Mathematics Education Research Prior to the 1980s, there was a general understanding that attitudes of students to their mathematical study were important, and much research was conducted. However, normally the final aim of this research was to understand how attitudes impinged on students’ understandings and how attitudes impeded or enhance performance, rather than for its own sake. During the 1980s and the 1990s, a change occurred. One key point that possibly marks the end of this change was the chapter by McLeod (1992) in the first handbook published by the influential National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in the USA. Affective issues, rather than the catchall term of attitudes used until then, began to be seen as important in their own right. Hence, by 2004, in summing up of the “Working Group” sessions on “Affect and Mathematics” at the International Congress of Mathematics Education in Copenhagen, a key comment was that we certainly need to be studying students’ knowledge of mathematics, but there was also a need for the study of affective issues in their own right, not just into the impact they have on performance or understanding (Clarkson & Hannula, 2008). However, the two-way relationship between knowledge and affect was also an important area of research. Hence, there was a “triple bottom line,” to borrow a business term, for this research area. In some ways, this reflects recognition of the different cognitive and affective domains that Bloom and his coworkers had mapped out in the 1950s and the 1960s, although the affective

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domain was little used in mathematics education. The two-way influencing between the two however is perhaps new. Further detailed exploration of these issues will be undertaken in later sections of this chapter. During the 1990s and the 2000s, it is true to say that research in this area has also become more nuanced. “Attitudes” are seen as important, but as noted above this term is no longer used as the summary or “catchall” term. The broader term “affect” is now in common use. Therefore, students’ beliefs and values on the one hand and their feelings and emotions on the other have also become the foci for research. Attitudes are often now seen as an intermediate area between these extremes. Although these affective notions are often simply positioned in diagrams to indicate relationships between them, rarely is there discussion as to whether there is any movement between these identified affect notions, and if so, what might be the cause. This is an area of research that needs to be undertaken. Another change is that this area of research now concentrates both on the students and on their teachers. In particular, preservice education students are often used as participants in research projects. Thus there is far more differentiation in present-day research. There is now recognition that different key participants in the learning classroom may hold different values or beliefs, and the interplay between these is important. In the past, there seemed to be far more research devoted to the attitudes of students only. Assumptions were made that of course students would model their values or attitudes or other affective disposition on those of the teacher in mathematics classrooms. In the last few years, these associations have been problematized and are the focus of study. Before briefly reviewing some of the relevant research literature, it is instructive to note the place and role of affect in curricular documents that teachers work from, as well as other professional avenues that mathematics teachers consult. Statements discussing the importance of students having a positive attitude, disposition, motivation, confidence, or just plain “liking” of mathematics were easy to find in a variety of state education system curriculum documents. Indeed, it would be a surprise if such statements were not to be found in such documents. An electronic search was also made of the presentations given at the 2005 Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers’ conference. Again, a variety of papers clearly suggested that having a positive disposition to mathematics for both students and teachers was important. Finally many articles in professional journals, which give teachers interesting topics or approaches that will hopefully capture the attention of students and promote positive attitudes to mathematics, were easy to find (for example, Hekimoglee, 2005; Shallcross, 2005). Hence, it is reasonable to suppose that the mathematics teaching profession regards positive attitudes toward mathematics as important. Rather than complete a comprehensive search of worldwide literature, we inspected the research undertaken in Australasia in the last four years, an important and influential subset of the worldwide mathematics education research. The first notable point to make is the lack of research in this area. Although a variety of journals and conference proceedings were inspected, there was relatively little indication that ongoing deep research into attitudes and other affective variables

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was taking place. Apart from some focus on values and beliefs (dealt with in the next section), by far the main variable considered in the research was that of attitudes. In the main the notion of attitudes was mentioned as important within research reports and at times was included in the rationale for the particular study. Rarely was attitude itself isolated as an issue for which data were collected, however, and nor was it mentioned in the conclusion of such studies. The impression is gained that although students’ and teachers’ attitudes are of some importance, other constructs should and do take center stage. In the reporting of research results, attitudes are at best an afterthought to ensure that there is some roundedness to the results. One wonders whether key terms that drive research on student learning and mathematics teaching, such as notions of “community of practice” and “the zone of proximal development,” are really thought of as more than theoretical notions. If researchers really considered what it takes to have a “community of practice” that actually functions well, or a situation where students’ “zones” become key teaching parameters, then for the participants to possess attitudes to each other and their mathematical activities that are positive becomes self-evidentially crucial (Scott et al., 2011, 2012). This review of the literature on attitudes suggested however that researchers are not seeing this crucial assumption that they are making and leaving underexamined. However, even with this rather somber assessment of the research on attitudes, there have been snippets in recent research that are well worth noting. Leder and Groternboer (2005) comment at some length on the role that attitudes play in relation to beliefs, values, feelings, and the like. In reviewing the literature, they suggest that for them attitudes are an intermediary category, more stable than emotions and feelings, but not as stable as beliefs and/or values. In reading this short but useful introduction to the area of research several notions come to mind. The first centers on whether there is always a potential developmental path from feelings toward beliefs. Clearly, some feelings do transform into deeper belief, but whether there is a set path, which may or may not include attitudes, would be interesting to research in the mathematics context. Further it might be that researchers need to take more care in this area when engaging in self-reporting studies. How the issue of whether respondents are reporting their more surface emotions and feelings, or whether the deeper attitudes and indeed beliefs and values are influencing responses, in self-reports is rarely noted as an issue by researchers. Even for observational and interviewing data, it seems to take careful preparation, insight, and persistence by the researchers to discern whether respondents are going beyond feelings and emotions. These notions are complex in themselves, as is the interplay between them. In these comments, we have to some degree played down feelings and emotions in preference to attitudes, beliefs, and values. However, this may not be appropriate, as we argue more fully later in this chapter. Many of us in everyday circumstances act on our surface perceptions, rather than deep well-thought-through beliefs. This may be reflecting an undervaluing of emotions and feelings, as seems to be happening at present in the research community. Hence, we may not be capturing all that is needed. Thus the interplay and perhaps transition between all of these notions need further research.

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Of the few studies that looked at attitude and mathematics as a core aspect, there were few surprises about what was studied and the results. Hence, Handal and Bobis (2004) found that when using a novel teaching approach, students’ attitudes initially increased, but then tended to fall away to give no lasting change. Beswick, Watson, and Brown (2006) found that the students’ attitudes to mathematics fell as they progressed through school. The authors also noted that many of the teachers they were working with were ambivalent and uncertain regarding the pedagogy they should use in teaching mathematics, but interestingly they had in general quite positive beliefs about the mathematics they actually had to teach. Clearly teachers can and indeed do have quite varying attitudes to subject matter and pedagogy. Nisbet and Grinbeek (2004) commented that it is often assumed, naively by many, that teachers change in a simple linear fashion, including changing their attitudes. But the authors, reflecting on their results, pointed out that change is always complex, multifaceted, and indeed takes a long time. Finally, Cooper, Baturo, Warren, and Grant (2006) reminded us that indigenous approaches to attitude and motivation are important, and these need to be integrated into teaching to suit the cultural milieu. In particular, indigenous conceptions of these personal attributes vary quite considerably, compared to Western notions, and hence the way they operate in classrooms may well be very different. It seems that this is a crucial area that needs much further and urgent attention. Finally it is worth noting the results of an international study as it impinges on Australia. Australian students participating in the PISA study have shown that two aspects of student beliefs, namely, mathematics self-efficacy and self-concept, correlated positively with mathematical literacy performance. Multilevel analysis “suggests that the factors that may have the greatest influence on Australian students’ mathematical literacy, as assessed in PISA, are the attitudes and beliefs of students, which stand out above any of the other factors incorporated into the model” (Thomson et al., 2004, p. 203). However, below-average self-efficacy means were reported both by higher performing countries (compared to Australia) such as Finland, the Netherlands, and Korea and by lower performing nations like Brazil and Thailand (Thomson et al., 2004, fig. 7.12). This suggests that the direction of beliefs may not be a determinant of performance as might be assumed. Asian students (from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau) reported the four lowest mathematics self-concept scores, the other self-belief variable, among the nations surveyed. From a sociocultural standpoint, this result may have implications for Western nations which are experiencing high numbers of Asian immigrants. Interestingly, there is another idea, related to affective issues, that does not seem to have been canvassed at all in the mathematics education research literature, which would be worthwhile to explore. It was noted above that one of the relationships explored at length has been how attitudes impact on understanding and performance in mathematics. However, there are other relationships that might also be important. At present there is much discussion in the education literature and in public as to why there are so few students who continue with the serious (undertaken for its own sake and not to gain bonus points for tertiary entry, as happens in some Australian education systems), noncompulsory study of mathematics in the last years of

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secondary school and go on into university. In this discussion, much has been made of the mathematics curriculum, students’ performance in mathematics, and the lack of adequately qualified mathematics teachers throughout secondary schools. All these seemingly do have an impact. However, a little-considered variable in this important debate is students’ attitudes to mathematics and its teaching. Khoo and Ainley (2005) have shown that students’ general attitude to schooling does impact on whether students begin tertiary education, but also that students’ performances on literacy and numeracy tests have little impact. Interestingly, these trends seem to have been set by the time students were in the middle years of secondary schooling, well before the final years of school, which are often regarded as the time students make up their minds about what they will do with their lives. It may well be that students have already made up their mind about at least what might be foundational issues by then. An analogous study with mathematics as the focus, rather than general schooling, may well be useful. Indeed this type of research needs to be broadened beyond whether students continue to tertiary studies, to the impact of their mathematical studies through life. This would ask whether affective issues, rather than their cognitive performances, or the interplay between these sets of issues, have any impact on people’s lifelong learning disposition. We return to this theme in the last section of this chapter. Before dealing with the future, however, we now turn to a specific analysis of the central affect issue for this chapter, values, and the closely related notion of beliefs, as they are understood in mathematics education research.

Values in Mathematics Education Unlike attitudes, the role of values in mathematics education has been explicitly acknowledged and researched only over the last two decades or so, although the nature of values has meant that they would have underpinned the different studies in this field all along. An explicit focus on values as they relate to the learning and teaching of mathematics can be traced back to Alan Bishop’s (1988) book Mathematical Enculturation: A Cultural Perspective on Mathematics Education. In this publication, Bishop proposed that the development of mathematics in the Western civilization has demonstrated its valuing of three pairs of complementary values, each corresponding to one of the three components of culture as described by White (1959). Thus, the valuing of rationalism and objectism5 in Western mathematics would reflect the ideological component of cultures, while the valuing of control and progress reflects the sentimental (attitudinal) component, and that of openness and mystery, the sociological component. This culturally laden nature of mathematical values is evident in similar research in other cultures. For example, Xu and Wang (2008) contrasted the valuing of rationalism in Western mathematics with the 5 Unfortunately, in the 2010 version of this chapter, “objectivism” was used here and was not corrected during the editorial process. That is incorrect. Bishop used the term “objectism.”

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valuing of artistry in Chinese mathematics. Similar discussions are represented at length in Zhang and Wan (2006). In the mid-1990s, Bishop’s (1996) conception of values that are relevant to mathematics pedagogy saw a need to categorize values, namely mathematics values (which are related to the discipline), mathematical educational values (related to the pedagogy of the discipline), and general educational values (related to general educational objectives). Later, Seah’s (2004) research with immigrant teachers of mathematics led to a proposal of another category that plays out in the professional lives of teachers, which he called the organizational values as these reflect what the schools or local educational authorities regard as important. How does educational research regard values in mathematics education? According to Bishop (1999), “. . . values in mathematics education are the deep affective qualities which education fosters through the school subject of mathematics” (p. 2). In this definition, Bishop’s regard for the pervasiveness of values was evident in his assertion that values are more internalized than conceptual and procedural knowledge. One way of interpreting this development from affective qualities to values can be found in Seah (2004), when he proposed “values represent an individual’s internalisation, ‘cognitisation’ and decontextualisation of affective constructs (such as beliefs and attitudes) in her socio-cultural context” (p. 43). Another approach to understanding values is in terms of its operation. Regardless of their sources (that is, affective or otherwise), values constitute an individual’s soft knowledge that underlies the individual’s command of hard knowledge, which in turn has both cognitive (e.g., mathematical thinking) and affective (e.g., mathematical wellbeing) components. That is to say, cognitive and affective functions that are activated in one’s engagement with mathematics and other things are mediated by the relevant values one espouses. The experience gained from the various values research studies that were conducted over the last decade or so – and the accompanying informal communication and interaction among some of the researchers involved in these studies – had been helpful also in supporting an increasingly clear picture of the nature of difference between values and beliefs. These two terms are sometimes used interchangeably in daily speech, yet Bishop and Seah (2008) assert the following about them: (They) have based . . . [their] current research on the theoretical notion that values operate, and are revealed, when choices are made ........ The essential difference between values and beliefs is that one may hold various beliefs but it is when one must make choices that one’s values come into play. (p. 131)

That is, if a belief is concerned with what one considers to be true, then what one values would represent the emphasis and importance one accords to the related belief(s), and indeed the behavior that flows from the value rather than the background beliefs (Clarkson & Bishop, 2000). As an example, we may believe that it is true that student use of graphic calculators or CAS frees up time for learners to engage in higher-order thinking activities in mathematics. The value, on the other hand, is a

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manifestation of what we value personally, be it technology, higher-order thinking or efficiency, or indeed all three. That is to say, the emphasis we place on one or more of these values influences, and in turn are influenced by, our beliefs about student use of graphic calculators or CAS. Thus, alternative research findings that have been emerging, which distinguish among the several concepts, such as attitudes, beliefs, and values as noted in the previous section, had traditionally been regarded collectively as affective in nature (see, for examples, Krathwohl et al., 1964; McLeod, 1992), providing insights to the stance adopted in the literature that values are more internalized modes of other affective modes. The distinction above between beliefs and values beyond their relative positions on a cognition–affect continuum is an example. The underlying influence of values in the articulation of attitudes and beliefs, as well as of cognitive processes, is a research strand that further highlights the implicit power of values. In addition to the idea of soft knowledge mentioned above, there is also Mandler’s (1989) theory that perceives emotions as an expression of values. Research into values in mathematics education can generally be regarded as having been developing in two different directions. One is concerned with the fostering of “desirable” civic, ethical, and moral values in the younger generations through mathematics learning (see, for example, Seah & Kalogeropoulos, 2004; Wong, 2005). The other direction relates to ways in which mathematics learning (including performance) might be enhanced through the teaching of values (see, for example, Seah et al., 2008, for a review of research conducted in recent years in Australasia). It appears that between these two research directions, interest among mathematics education researchers has been understandably more evident in the latter. In the current discussion of the mathematical wellbeing of students, and of how this relates to a sense of mathematical wellbeing in society, it is thus the research into how values optimize mathematics learning and teaching that would be reviewed below. This review will now look specifically at the knowledge we have currently regarding what teachers, wider institutions, society, and indeed students’ value in the contexts of mathematics, mathematics pedagogy, and school education. It is envisaged that this approach will enable us to better understand how interactions between participants in the mathematics learning and teaching process, and between them and their sociocultural context, might contribute to a sense of wellbeing in mathematics learning or teaching. It is our thesis that this aspect of affective health is a key factor of the overall experience of wellbeing in an individual.

Teachers’ Values To many students, the mathematics teacher is the “public face” of discipline. Thus, it is reasonable to suggest that it is the teacher’s own values about mathematics and mathematics pedagogy that play such a crucial role in shaping students’ wellbeing in discipline and in its learning. The Values and Mathematics Project [VAMP] acknowledged this and sought to investigate the extent of control teachers have over their own portrayal of values in mathematics lessons in Australia. A challenge

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faced in this values research project, which took place in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, was the observation of a lack of shared vocabulary among teachers with which to discuss values and their role in (mathematics) education (Clarkson et al., 2000b). What teachers value in their practice appears to be affected by pre- and in-service teacher education programs, as well as by the intended curricula. A 2005 survey of 2924 teachers of mathematics and 612 heads of mathematics in Australia found that “irrespective of their tertiary background or years of teaching experience, teachers [of mathematics] valued ongoing professional development” (Harris & Jensz, 2006, p. 20), and that “in general, teachers [of mathematics] valued their disciplinary grounding and the practical aspects of their education studies” (p. 28). Another study researching with a smaller group of teachers echoed this observation: “teachers’ values in the classroom are shaped to some extent by the values embedded in each subject, as perceived by them” (Bishop et al., 2005, p. 158). Yet, teachers’ values were also found to be shaped in some ways by official curriculum statements. The authors also found that features of mathematics pedagogy that were valued by the primary and secondary teachers reflected the ideals of constructivist, reformoriented mathematics lesson planning, as opposed to those of more “traditional” pedagogical practices. Teachers’ values as they are espoused in their mathematics teaching have “a powerful (negative or positive) influence on students’ affect” (Frade et al., 2008, p. 11). The research team had adopted VAMP’s conception of values as being beliefs in action (e.g., Clarkson et al., 2000a) in their work in Brazilian urban secondary schools. Also, teacher identification in questionnaires of what they value was also found to be different from what was interpreted through the lesson visits, thus echoing VAMP’s concern over the validity of self-identification of values. Immigrant mathematics teachers’ values with regard to mathematics, mathematics pedagogy, and education in general were investigated in Australia by Seah (2004). Through the professional experiences of teachers coming from different cultures, a sense of what the mathematics education system in the state of Victoria valued could be identified. This study was also interested in the ways in which these immigrant teachers negotiated about perceived differences in values between cultures, and it was found that each participating teacher adopted a variety of strategies in such situations depending on the context they were in. Five main responsive strategies were recorded (see Seah, 2005), with the first three (that is, status quo, assimilation, and accommodation) signaling an increasing acceptance of the “other” culture. The other two approaches, namely the amalgamation or appropriation, represent the embracing of the essence of the different cultures in one’s worldview, decisions, and actions. These two approaches thus have the tendency to generate new cultures as a result of the interaction among the different values from different cultures (see Seah, 2005, for details). A parallel project to VAMP was undertaken in Taiwan that worked not only with teachers as VAMP did but also with students. Chin and Lin (2000) found that the values subscribed to by teachers were identified and matched with the values of their respective students. The shared experiences of teachers and their students in the

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mathematics classroom developed and shaped what the Taiwanese research team called the pedagogical identities of one another. This seemed to give firm evidence that the influence of teachers on students’ value formation is a real effect. In summary, teachers at times find it hard to articulate the values they are teaching or espousing in mathematics classrooms, but there is no doubt that they are teaching values whether they do so consciously or not. The Taiwanese work also assures us that students are aware of the values espoused by their teachers, and the teachers’ values do impact on those that students are learning. However, as indicated earlier, teacher values are not the only factor in play.

Institutional Values Classroom discourse and interactions are continually shaped and reshaped by institutional and societal phenomena. There is potential for “desirable” institutional values to be introduced to students through school mathematics, at the same time optimizing the quality of the mathematics learning experience for students. Wong’s (2005) conception of a NE XME matrix illustrates one such example, in which NE refers to the teaching in Singapore of its nationhood and values in National Education and ME refers to the mathematics education program. It is noteworthy that Wong established a case for the culture dimension to complement the existing knowledge and process dimensions of mathematics education, wherein this third dimension relates to “things about mathematics, rather than mathematics itself . . . [and which] includes a strong value element” (p. 6). An Australian study by Ingvarson, Beavis, Bishop, Peck, and Elsworth (2004) studied the significance of the role played by mathematics departments in secondary schools in Australia, with a view to seeing how the departments structured and influenced the teaching by the individual mathematics teachers in the department. This is a relatively unexplored area for research, but as they say: “Student learning is typically affected most directly by the quality of opportunities for learning that individual teachers can provide. However, the quality of teaching is in turn affected by a wide variety of conditions at the school (and community6) level” (p. 15). Their research uncovered a wide variety of departmental structures, both formal and informal, together with an equally wide variety of significant values fostered in those departments. For example, at one school the interviewed teachers “see their goal as creating a mathematics learning community, which they call ‘a Mathematics Network’. One example of this is that some staff run extra after-school mathematics problem solving sessions two days a week, sometimes based around the Mathematics Olympiads” (p. 60). In another school, there are no weekly meetings, but plenty of informal ones, mainly about mathematics. “We have to interact because of the common tests in the school.” Also one afternoon after school once a term the staff have a meeting followed by wine, etc. It is then that they discuss new texts, some

6

Our addition in parentheses

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Table 61.1 Comparison of PISA ranking of schools and schools’ self-ranking (see Ingvarson et al., 2004, p. 44)

PISA Rank Low High Total

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School Low 5 0 5 (18%)

High 5 17 22 (82%)

Total 10 (37%) 17 (63%) 27 (100%)

χ 2 ¼ 10.4: Sig. p ¼ 0.003

calculator programs, and it is also a time for sharing interests. “We’re a consistent, coherent group with basically a program in mind, that we can execute, and there are no slackers. Those who can’t hack it don’t want to be in it”. “You have to build the ethos” (p. 63). The authors also compared schools at which students scored high in the PISA international assessment with those where the students scored low, and then looked at the level of consensus within a mathematical department within these schools. The results suggest that principals and department heads in “high PISA” schools were more likely to report a high degree of consensus amongst staff about standards for quality teaching and learning mathematics (see Table 61.1). The extent to which textbooks play an institutional role varies from one education system to the next. It is fair to say, however, that whether the survival of textbooks is determined by market forces in one culture or the publication of textbooks is subject to governmental approval in another, textbooks are often written with the intended curriculum in mind. That is, to varying degree, textbooks portray institutional values of different education systems. Seah and Bishop (2000), for example, analyzed two sets of Years 7 and 8 textbooks used in Singapore and two sets from the same year levels in Melbourne, Australia, to compare and contrast the mathematical and mathematics educational values that were represented. Dede (2006) in Turkey used the same framework to analyze eight sixth and seventh primary mathematics textbooks, arriving at similar findings as Seah and Bishop (2000). The only two differences were in the ways in which Turkish textbooks emphasized openness more than the complementary value of mystery, and their greater emphasis on the mathematics educational value of accessibility over specialism.

Societal Values The various values that are enacted by different participants of the mathematics learning and teaching process are also mediated by what are valued in the respective communities and societies within which the lessons take place. One way to see this influence is to note the disruption that sometimes occurs when members of different societies interact. Galligan’s (2005) ethnographic research with Australian lecturers teaching university preparatory mathematics overseas, for instance, has revealed how the conflicting values they experienced were grounded in the respective Hong Kong and Australian cultures. This prominence of societal values has meant that mathematics teachers’ professional wellbeing can be affected when they teach in

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foreign lands, such as when they migrate. Given the common misconception among teachers that mathematics is culture-neutral and mathematics teaching does not involve (cultural) values (Seah, 2004), it can be expected that migrating mathematics teachers will be hit hardest since they are likely to be least prepared for value differences in the ways in which mathematics is effectively taught in different cultures. Such disruption does not necessarily lead to an impasse. Seah’s (2004) work with immigrant teachers of mathematics in Australia revealed that value differences, as perceived by these teachers, could be negotiated in a variety of ways depending on the context in which the value differences took place. The variety of ways of negotiating value differences represents varying degrees of espousing one value and rejecting the other, as well as different ways in which the values are synthesized to draw out desired features inherent among the values concerned. This knowledge is especially significant in this discussion because the teachers’ negotiation strategies represent alternative ways in which differences of values might be resolved and, in doing so, teachers’ professional wellbeing can be reclaimed. There are certainly direct implications for students’ mathematical wellbeing. In particular, the negotiation strategies of status quo, assimilation, and accommodation represent the different extents to which values attributed to one societal culture are embraced over values attributed to another societal culture. Existing cultures are redefined and reconstructed, however, through the strategies of amalgamation and appropriation; in this sense, these two strategies are more culturally productive as the teachers’ perception of value dissonance is addressed, and professional and mathematical wellbeing is reclaimed. Research into values by the mathematics education research community might have been more active if the community had not experienced what Clarkson (2005) called a lack of a shared language with which to discuss values. This phenomenon may well reflect the relatively young history of mathematics educational research into values. Nevertheless, related research conducted around the world to date has highlighted the real possibility of mathematics, mathematical educational and educational values impacting on the quality of learning and teaching through the ways in which they shape individual student’s mathematical wellbeing. This brings us back to consider students’ values in the next section.

Students’ Values An understanding of what mathematics students value in their learning process constitutes our fourth dimension of capturing and incorporating relevant wisdom of practice in mathematics education research. As Keitel (2003) has said; “Their [students] explication can serve as a base for [the] interpretation of classroom practices and outcomes” (p. 4). An analysis of children’s drawing representing situations when they were learning mathematics well in Victoria, Australia, showed that young children valued the learning of mathematics and numeracy concepts in out-of-school contexts as much

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as within schools. The participating students were also valuing concepts beyond number and computation (Bishop & Clarke, 2005). Another study, also conducted in Victoria, collated primary school students’ drawings of their individual impressions of effective mathematics lessons in schools. The findings revealed that in the primary school years, these lessons featured a co-valuing of fun, (teacher) experience, board work, and (teachers’ explicit) explanation/instruction by both students and their teachers (Seah, 2007). In particular, 67% of the 118 students related the valuing of fun in mathematics lessons in which they learnt particularly important. Similar feedback from preservice primary school teachers’ recall of their experiences as mathematics learners in Australia and Singapore were sought (see Seah & Ho, 2009), and fun is once again the most highly valued feature of effective mathematics learning. Yet, “enjoyment or fun is rarely connected to doing mathematics, in contrast to other school subjects” (Keitel, 2003, p. 5). The high school student participants in Chin and Lin’s (2000) study also identified fun as one of the few values they acted on in evaluating assessment items. What do these findings imply for the facilitation of more effective mathematics pedagogy then? If mathematics and/or its teaching can be made to be more fun and enjoyable, what will that look like in ways which are sustainable? What implications does this have for learning mathematics in depth? How can we guard against students feeling increasingly immune to what are potentially fun and enjoyable mathematics learning activities, such that this value is continually sought after, but rarely experienced? Keitel’s (2003) analysis of what German high-ability secondary students articulated in post-lesson interviews revealed the values held by them with regard to mathematics learning. These included application, enjoyment/fun, mystery, assessment, and collaboration. What is significant about this study is that some of the values which the students identified, namely application, enjoyment/fun, and collaboration, were not perceived by them to be similarly valued by the education system. Equally significantly, “they demonstrate that the ‘same’ teacher’s script is very differently understood and experienced by students, and that there are also commonalities and differences in inventing ways for living with their struggles” (Keitel, 2003, p. 4). With the above consideration of some of the pertinent research on values in mathematics education, we can now turn to a new construct that builds on this work.

The Development of Mathematical Wellbeing Having explored the relevant ideas associated with affect in general, and attitude and values in particular as they relate to mathematics education, we are ready to bring these lines of research together and propose the notion of mathematical wellbeing (MWB) as an idea which we believe impacts crucially on aspects of mathematics learning. It would certainly be useful for teachers and educators generally to have an understanding of this idea, since in our view it has the potential to link cognitive, affective, and emotional educational objectives, something that is lacking in our field. As noted earlier in this chapter, there was a time when the aim of learning

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mathematics was only perceived as a cognitive objective – when explanations of mathematical achievement or nonachievement were couched purely in cognitive terms. Later came the acceptance of the necessity to consider affective objectives also, not just as an adjunct to the cognitive but also as a “driver” of mathematical learning or nonlearning. Central to a deeper understanding of the role played by the affective aspects was the teasing out of what some of these aspects actually were. We have argued here and elsewhere that a pivotal aspect was in the notion of values. We now propose that a consideration of wellbeing offers a new way of recognizing the importance of the emotional aspects of mathematics learning, and where the emotional strand can also be the driver of affect and cognition. Our conception of MWB is a developmental one, based on the ideas from a taxonomic stage approach developed by Benjamin Bloom and his coworkers (Bloom et al., 1956). They originally proposed a six-level cognitive domain structure. This was then added to with a five-level affective domain (Krathwohl et al., 1964) (see Table 61.2). A third domain was originally proposed that dealt with the kinesthetic development of students, but this was never published. Although much research has tended to concentrate on one or the other of these two domains, and hence has driven something of a wall between them, in the original grand plan these domains were seen as working in concert with each other, and together being useful in describing and explaining learners’ overall abilities as they related to a specific area of learning. For example, it is clear that students use the thinking skills embedded within the cognitive domain to make decisions related to the affective domain. This does not mean, however, that students move in a related lock-step fashion through the levels of both domains. Nevertheless, clearly there is a relationship between the domains. It is hard to imagine many students operating at level 5 in the cognitive domain but operating at only level 2 in the affective domain when considering a particular area of study. The reverse scenario is also difficult to imagine for many students. But before proposing an MWB construct, we believe a gap in the literature needs to be filled. The MWB construct cannot just be derived from the cognitive and affective domains developed by Bloom and his colleagues. An emotional component is also needed. Hence we first propose, on the way to developing an MWB construct, a third emotional domain (see Table 61.2). This is followed by our proposal of the MWB construct (Table 61.3)7 before, in the following section exploring tentatively the relationship between the two. A continuing major concern for teachers is when students seem to develop an overpowering negative set of feelings for a particular set of situations in their school. This clearly is often exemplified with students’ feelings in mathematics sessions. In essence, this is an overpowering emotional response to the situation. Indeed, by the time some students are in the middle of primary school, it seems that they have become fixated at the second alternative of level 3 of the emotional domain

7

This is an updated version of the MWB construct compared to 2010. The main difference is the original Stage 1 is now divided into Stages 0 and 1.

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Table 61.2 The three domains: cognitive, affective, and emotional Cognitive The cognitive continuum begins with the student’s recall and recognition of Knowledge (1.0)

It extends through his/her Comprehension (2.0) of the knowledge

His/Her skill in Application (3.0) of the knowledge that is comprehended

And the skill in Analysis (4.0) of situations involving this knowledge, his/her skill in Synthesis (5.0) of this knowledge into new organizations, and finally A skill in Evaluation (6.0) in that area of knowledge to judge the value of materials and methods for given purposes

Affective The affective continuum begins with the students merely Receiving (1.0) stimuli and passively attending to them. It extends by more actively attending to them, and by Responding (2.0) to stimuli on request, willingly responding to these stimuli, and taking satisfaction in this responding His/her Valuing (3.0) the phenomenon or activity so that he/she voluntarily responds and seeks out ways to respond, by acceptance of a value (3.1), by preference for a value (3.2), and by commitment (3.3) to a value And through Conceptualization (4.1) of each value responded to, so that there is an

Organization of these values into systems (4.2), and finally organizing the value complex into a single whole, leading to a Characterization (5.0) of the individual

Emotional The emotional continuum begins with having some Feelings (1.0) toward a school subject, recognizing that in its presence some feelings are created, and these Grow to become the student’s behavioral and emotional Responses (2.0) to the situation, either positively or negatively, which then Leads to a regular and Expressed reaction (3.0) in the context of the school subject, together with an active searching for a range of pleasurable experiences, or an avoidance of any nonpleasurable experiences, with an increasingly Conscious (4.0) awareness and rationalization of the feelings experienced and the choices made, leading to

An Organized (5.0) set of lifestyle choices, maximizing the satisfactory experiences and minimizing the unsatisfactory

(Table 61.2) with the exhibition of avoidance behavior toward mathematics. We suggest that this third domain may give teachers some guidance in gauging students’ emotional responses to such situations. We also wonder whether they may also be able to overtly plan learning situations, being more conscious of their students’ potential emotional responses by using the emotional domain that we propose.

Relating Mathematical Wellbeing to Cognitive, Affective, and Emotional Educational Objectives Just as important as the stages in this portrayal of MWB development is the idea of how the MWB provides a framework for seeing links between the cognitive, the affective, and the emotional aspects of mathematical educational objectives. An

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Table 61.3 Stages of the construct “Mathematical Wellbeing” Stage 0: Awareness and acceptance of mathematical activity At this first stage the learner is aware of mathematics, not as a coherent body of knowledge but as a collection of mathematical activities. There is an awareness of the different nature of mathematics from other activities/subjects/topics at school. Learners hear parents as well as teachers make constant reference to “mathematics,” particularly the need to succeed in it Stage 1: Recognition and acceptance of mathematical activity The learner recognizes mathematics as a coherent set of activities, different from a language or a sport activity, for example, and they are accepted as a worthwhile pursuit. The learner feels comfortable in the mathematical learning context, although having a passive acceptance of such experiences and being disinclined to seek them out Stage 2: Positively responding to mathematical activity At this stage, mathematical activity invokes a positive response. More than just acceptance of the activity, here there is a welcoming of it and some pleasure in its pursuit and in its achievement. This pleasure develops feelings of self-confidence and positive self-esteem, which reinforce the acceptance and worthwhileness of mathematical activity in general Stage 3: Valuing mathematical activity At this stage the learner appreciates and enjoys mathematical activity to the extent that there is an active seeking out of those activities and of people with whom those activities can be shared. An awareness grows of the human development of mathematical knowledge and of one’s place in the mathematical scheme of things. The learner reaches acceptably high (to them at their grade level) levels of mathematical competence Stage 4: Having an integrated and conscious value structure for mathematics At this stage the person has developed an awareness of their appreciation of mathematics, of how and why they value it, and where that valuing might lead them in the future. The learner is confident in their level of skill and competence and in their ability to judge their own strengths and weaknesses Stage 5: Independently competent and confident in mathematical activity At this stage the learner is a fully independent actor on the mathematical stage. Sufficiently independent to be able to hold one’s own in mathematical arguments at various levels, the learner is able to critique and criticize other’s arguments from well-rehearsed criteria

approach might be to compare these three domains of educational objectives against the development of mathematical wellbeing as presented in Table 61.3. There, as a student develops his/her mathematical wellbeing, we can see features of cognitive, affective, and emotional objectives being satisfied at each stage. Thus, for example, a student who has been feeling a greater sense of MWB might be beginning to respond more positively to mathematical activities (that is, Stage 2) either knows or comprehends the mathematical demands inherent in these activities or tasks (cognitive domain), and at the same time that the act of responding is reflective of both affective and emotional educational objectives. The attainment of mathematical wellbeing, then, accompanies student developments in the cognitive, affective, and emotional domains. At the same time, the interaction between mathematical wellbeing and growth in cognitive, affective, and emotional objectives leads to these factors feeding on each other, given that a positive sense of wellbeing can stimulate selfconfidence and foster enabling attitudes, and so on. In fact, in recognition of student (dis-)engagement being a prominent issue in mathematics classrooms, and to the

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extent that student engagement with mathematics relates to the state of an individual’s mathematical wellbeing, there is a strong case for academic consideration of the ways in which the cognitive, affective, and emotional growth of students in their working with mathematics can contribute to the many benefits brought about by the corresponding development of their individual MWB. That is to say, if the interaction between MWB and cognitive/affective/emotional growth is indeed so mutually dependent and influential, then our ongoing quest to confront student disengagement (one of many manifestations of MWB) takes on new meanings, highlighting the importance of adopting a multiprong approach involving cognitive, affective, and emotional considerations. The role played by values in this process of facilitating MWB is likely to be considerable, given its significance in the affective domain, and also in the cognitive and emotional domains. The central place of values within the affective educational objectives is relatively explicit in the ways in which the taxonomy has been articulated; Levels 3 through 5 are concerned with the development within the learner of a value complex that characterizes the individual. In the emotional domain, on the other hand, the involvement of values is more clearly expressed through the organization of personal lifestyle choices in Level 5, but it is also reasonable to perceive of the personal valuing process taking a part in the Level 4 operation of rationalizing feelings and subsequent decision-making. Similarly, as a student grows cognitively, he/she acquires the competence to value materials and methods and can make decisions as to their quality related to given tasks, represented by Level 6 of the cognitive domain. Students attain cognitive, affective, and emotional educational objectives to different degrees at every stage of their mathematics learning. At any one time, the different domains shape, and are shaped by, the student’s state of MWB. The higher order functioning of the different domains – a capacity expressed as the ultimate educational objectives in the respective taxonomies – involves the evaluation and fine-tuning of an individual’s value system, which in turn results in an increasingly integrated and conscious value system (see Table 61.3) that regulates MWB. This higher-order functioning constitutes a student’s life skill, which he/she then takes from school in order to contribute to the economic and social life of society. In other words, a more successful school (and mathematics) education equips the student with this level of independence and (mathematical) wellbeing to deal with the many types of issues one comes across in life. At this level of personal growth, values and (mathematical) wellbeing are both stable enough to be regulating, and fluid enough to allow for adjustments as new insights and experiences “make one wiser”! This relationship between values and wellbeing had been investigated in contexts which are not directly related to mathematics education. Eckersley (2004), for example, discussed how cultural values such as individualism and materialism affect a person’s wellbeing. Amin, Yusof, and Haneef’s (2006) study with nearly 3000 students in Malaysia had revealed the impact of social values on human behavior, which then affects personal wellbeing. Douglas (2005), then chairperson of the research and development group “Australia 21,” called for a need to enact four

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major value shifts in people’s lives so that health and wellbeing within communities could be sustained. Our central point is that the fostering of positive MWB needs to take into account how individual values have been – and continue to be – shaped and harnessed. As an example, the successful cultivation of a student’s valuing of resilience and hard work presents the student with opportunities to respond to intellectually challenging instances in his/her mathematics learning experience with a positive and enabling MWB. Alternatively, a student’s valuing of creativity will likely support a more positive approach to novel mathematical problem situations, boosting his/her MWB in the process. On the other hand, one could picture a senior student who has developed over many years a relatively negative MWB, sadly not an unusual state of affairs in schools. Her higher-order cognitive, affective, and emotional functioning has shaped this outcome. However, this outcome need not be regarded as a given that is fixed for life. Our argument for this perspective of the interaction between MWB and cognitive/affective/emotional educational objectives has provided us with an insight into how we can capitalize on creative and purposeful designs of learning activities to stimulate such a student’s independent critique and reviewing competence to potentially redefine his/her MWB. We acknowledge that this is highly complex, but at this level of functioning the learner is well equipped to evaluate cognitively, rationalizing her emotional experience and decisions, in ways which characterize her being and wellbeing.

Developing a Research Agenda Earlier in this chapter, we proposed a new construct (MWB). To build that construct we needed to develop a new emotional domain. We have indicated why we believe the MWB construct is needed and briefly speculated about how the underlying processes operate. The perspectives we propose are both empowering (for teachers and learners alike) and exciting. Part of the excitement resides in the many opportunities that these perspectives open up for researching. There seems to be at least three areas on which it would be worthwhile for future research to concentrate: 1. Investigating the construct 2. The utility of the construct 3. The development of students’ MWB We have identified a number of research questions within these three areas that we anticipate fellow researchers and educators may wish to explore: 1. Investigating the construct (a) How valid is the construct of MWB in terms of its recognizability by teachers and researchers within and between the stages of development? (b) What types of behavior do teachers imagine students will engage in at the different stages?

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(c) What is the theoretical relationship between the three domains of educational objectives and MWB? (d) Is MWB necessarily a developmental construct? 2. The utility of the construct (a) How might teachers be able to use the MWB stages with good effect in the mathematics classroom? (b) Given an imaginary piece of dialogue at a parent–teacher evening, can teachers gauge the parents’ assessment of the students’ MWB stages? (c) To what extent do teachers and researchers agree on a student’s MWB stage? (d) To what extent can students place themselves within the MWB stages? (e) How do teachers know, and just as importantly how do students know, when they are fixated at a particular stage? 3. The development of students’ MWB (a) How does students’ MWB develop in mathematics classrooms? (b) What influence does peer pressure have in students’ progression through the MWB? (c) What impact do factors beyond the classroom have on MWB, and what is their relative importance, compared to factors located in the classroom? (d) How might teachers facilitate the cultivation of students’ MWB? (e) Is the scaffolding that a teacher may use the same for transition between all stages of the MWB? The last two research questions (3d and 3e) are rather distinct from the previous ones. Unlike the preceding research questions, which are relatively theoretical in nature, these last questions particularly explore the specific actions that might be taken by teachers to put in practice the various theoretical and philosophical understandings of the cultivation and development of MWB in students. As the reader might have inferred from our discussion so far, we take the view that by the nature of their work teachers are constantly cultivating and influencing students’ developing MWB, through the ways in which they value various aspects of their professional tasks and their interactions with students, through the ways in which they plan and execute their lessons, and through the ways in which they respond to critical incidents in the day-to-day functioning within their mathematics classrooms. Rather, in proposing these last two research questions, we are encouraging research activities to focus on exploring how the cultivation of students’ MWB might be conducted more purposefully and consciously by teachers. Hence, we elaborate questions 3d and 3e with the following: • How might we tap into current MWB academic and practical knowledge to develop MWB positively among students? • What teacher knowledge might be harnessed to support this task? • How might student attainment of cognitive, affective, and emotional education objectives be guided by teachers in ways that facilitate positive and empowering MWB among students?

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Conclusion It is a common but for us an unpleasant experience that we are still not used to after teaching mathematics between 20 and 50 years: You are at a social gathering and it becomes known that you are or have taught mathematics. Most of the adults then start to recall their negative experiences of doing mathematics at school. Most sad are older people recalling experiences from long ago. With the varying types of nuances and emphases that they use to relate their story, it becomes clear that these and presumably other related experiences are still hurting. This is not a positive advertisement for their mathematical wellbeing. The MWB construct as proposed in this chapter overlaps with the meaning given to the more general construct of educational wellbeing (footnote 4 of this chapter). The MWB highlights the fundamental place of students’ emotional development, an issue that has only gradually acknowledged, although only implicitly, in recent years within the mathematical education teaching and research community. By building this construct, we have tried to give depth to this issue and sought to provide a possible way forward where students’ emotions can now be explicitly addressed when doing mathematics. When speculating on the notions of lifelong learning, we argued sometime ago that although many students master the procedures of mathematics, be these up to mid-secondary school or through to undergraduate university level, rarely is it that any sense of mathematical achievement ultimately stays with people (Clarkson et al., 2001). Rather, it is their emotional feelings about mathematics, and the sense they made of the inherent mathematical values, that linger on through their lives. We now reformulate this speculation and suggest that those few students who are able to positively respond to mathematical activity (Stage 3 and further of Table 61.3) are the ones who do not look back on their mathematical experiences in school as times they wish they had missed. These are people who move into a long-lasting sense of mathematical wellbeing, and hence presumably can be that much more productive within their society and more constructive as they talk to their acquaintances and children about the good times of doing mathematics. Clearly, there is much to be done in mathematics classrooms to reinvent these places of learning. A refocusing on values and emotions, we believe, will help to bring a greater sense of mathematical wellbeing to our students.

Addendum In this addition to the original chapter, we comment on some important additions in the literature that have been published since 2010. This is not a comprehensive listing by any manner of means. However, we believe this addition may be useful for the interested reader. One of the innovative constructs developed in our initial chapter in 2010 was that of mathematical wellbeing (MWB). Interestingly, this notion has been mainly lacking in the subsequent mathematics education literature, although the term has

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been used in a very generalized manner. One who has taken up this concept and redefined it is Julia Hill. Rather than starting with mathematics values as we did in 2010, Hill has framed her work first with important social aspects of wellbeing and mathematics learning, and then layering in the cognitive and affect (Hill et al., 2020, 2021). The question always arises of, how do you introduce teachers and their students to new ideas, in this case the importance of values, and in particular the MWB. Over the years, various conference and seminar presentations and papers have been delivered both at education research conferences and conferences for teachers. During some of these research conferences a different mode was explored, that of role-play (see Clarkson, 2015, 2016). Essentially conferees were first engaged through discussion of values in mathematics teaching and the MWB construct during the first of two sessions. Then in the second session a role-play was performed. One of the organizers acted in the role of the teacher giving a mathematics lesson. One or two (depending on the size of the group) volunteer conferees portrayed the “students” in the class with each acting out a preference for one of the six mathematics values outlined by Bishop (1988). These volunteers were briefed at the conclusion of the first session as to the value they were assigned and what student behaviors had been observed in previous projects which were thought to indicate a preference for a specific value. The volunteers of course brought their own perspectives to their roles. The remaining conferees in the second session acted as research observers and their task was to try and identify which mathematics values were being portrayed by which “students” and what student behaviors lead them to their conclusions. Following the role-play, observer participants were invited to guess who was playing out which value, and by-and-large observers were often correct in their assessments. This then led into a more general discussion again of values and the MWB. It was noticeable that these discussions tended to drift well away from the mathematics values and were far more concerned first with the pedagogical values that arise in teaching mathematics and second the importance of students’ general wellbeing when engaged in mathematics. In schools, the role-play approach has employed JEDI (justifying, essaying, declaring, and identifying). This is a four-step values development approach (Seah, 2019). After initial discussion identifying mathematical and pedagogical mathematics values and their importance in teaching, the group of teachers was divided into two. Each teacher from group A was then paired with one from the group B. Then one of each pair had a short time to try and convince the other teacher of the importance of the value they had chosen to focus on. Then the roles were reversed. After some 5–10 min group A moved in a clockwise direction with group B remaining in their seats. The new pairs went through the routine again of trying to convince their new colleague of their chosen value (think speed dating). The sequence of changing to new pairings was continued until time ran out. Teachers reported that the effort of self-justifying their choice to multiple colleagues over quite a short time period in most cases solidified their choice but also gave them greater insight into what their value meant and how it could be explicitly taught. It was interesting that most teachers chose mathematical pedagogical values rather

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than mathematics values. The session was rounded off with a discussion of the MWB, and how this approach could be used by the teachers with their own students (Clarkson & Seah, 2021). A crucial foundational notion to this handbook is that values are critical to students learning, not only because such notions do impact on their deep understanding of what they study and their wellbeing, but because values and valuing is simply an inherent aspect of our cultural upbringing which if not appreciated leaves students with a most inadequate cultural perspective of their society. We pushed this notion further and wondered what would happen if a subject’s values (for us mathematics values) became the starting point for developing a curriculum, rather than starting to develop a curriculum with the various facts and formulae where the process is always started. We based a number of case studies on the exploration of various mathematical activities that could be used to explicitly focus on one or more of Bishops’ (1988) original six mathematics values. Interestingly, the activities we chose are already in use by teachers but few if any teachers see them as vehicles for explicitly teaching mathematics values although we surmise that such values are being taught implicitly. By extrapolation we wondered whether indeed it would be possible to develop a curriculum in this manner, not by introducing radically different content per se, but by writing curriculum documents in such a manner that mathematics values and mathematical pedagogical values were emphasized in the body of the document using mathematical activities like the ones we explored; that is, on the pages that the teachers read not being relegated to the preface of such a document which teachers routinely ignore (Clarkson & Bishop, 2000). We thought that this was indeed possible, but in the present educational context quite possible but highly unlikely to be tried by educational gatekeepers (Seah et al., 2016). One of the recurring issues in this area of research is the very practical one of what teaching strategies are useful for focusing on values in the mathematical classroom. Kalogeropoulos took this issue as the focus of her PhD thesis and described four such strategies: scaffolding, balancing, intervention, and refuge (Kalogeropoulos & Clarkson, 2019). Subsequently working with a colleague, a fifth strategy Beacon, was added (Kalogeropoulos et al., 2020). Teachers most times want to focus on what will work for them in their classroom. These strategies were developed from observational studies in classrooms and may be a way of leading teachers to a deeper understanding of their own values as well as how to explicitly teach these in mathematical moments. One issue that is somewhat of a conundrum in this literature is the virtual exclusive emphasis on mathematical pedagogical values and the little attention given to mathematics values. Bishop (1988) included discussion of both in his seminal book and argued that both were important in the development of students’ mathematics. In some ways working with teachers, rather than students, as to what strategies they use in their teaching and why is perhaps an easier task and perhaps appears to be of higher importance for researchers who are often involved in both preservice and continuing teacher learning. But here the emphasis is still on pedagogy and very rarely on mathematics values (see a conversation between Clarkson and Bishop where they further explore this matter; Clarkson, 2019).

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An early attempt at exploring specific mathematics values looked at the interaction of “rationalism” and mathematical language (Clarkson, 2004). One would expect that logical connectives would play an important role in such teaching but although they might be explicitly taught/discussed in language classes they rarely feature when mathematical language is the focus of a lesson. Hence students rarely understand that, for example, “or” and “between” have quite specific meanings in mathematical contexts that differ from their use in general English. One other study that explicitly explored one of these six mathematics values was undertaken by Andersson and Wagner (2018) when they considered “mystery.” They make the important distinction between mystery in the sense of wonder with a landscape that stretches forever, if you are willing to start the journey into it, with the alternative understanding of uncovering ideas that have been purposefully concealed by someone who already knows, in most cases the teacher or textbook writer. Although the latter is understood by many as mystery, and perhaps most students would agree with this idea, the authors argued that this is a fabrication of what mathematics mystery should be about. In fact, rather than teaching something about the value of mystery in mathematics, most teaching they opined is more of an exercise in who has the knowledge power. They argued that if mystery is thought of as the boundless journey into an intriguing unknown and this was able to be imparted to students, then the students would have a deeper understanding of what mathematics was about. In their observational interview study with secondary students, they found that in fact the students opted for the latter understanding of mystery and devised barriers for other students to find a way through if they were to understand the notions of the mathematical activity, rather than encouraging their peers to have a sense of wonder. There have been two extensive publications on values, valuing, and students’ mathematical wellbeing since publication of the original chapter. Seah and Wong (2012) edited a special issue of the prestigious research journal ZDM Mathematics Education that focused on the evolving projects in Southeast Asia in this area. A later volume with a wider geographical spread extended the thinking with many chapters contributed and reflecting on discussions we had had at the Discussion Group at the 2016 ICME conference where the affore mentioned role-play was performed (Clarkson et al., 2019). The conversations in this area are maintained through a website The third wave project: Research into values in mathematics education administered by Seah (n.d.).

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Index

A Abbreviators approach, 201 ABCD model, see Affective–behavioral–cognitive– dynamic (ABCD) model Abductive reasoning processes, 803 Abjection, 946 Aboriginal people, 602, 839 Abstract/visual reasoning, 878 Abstract thinking, 114, 116, 119, 122 Academic(s) achievement, 45–47, 651, 695, 812, 872, 883, 1025, 1088, 1102 buoyancy, 872 classes, 532 curriculum, 432, 532 diligence, 8 engagement, 82 integrity, 530 learning, 533 performance, 212, 428, 530, 596, 605 research, 907, 917 subjects, 431 support, 974–977, 989–991 Academic achievement test (SAT9), 1087 Academic, behavior, and character (ABC) outcomes, 337 Academic performance index (API), 1086, 1087 Academic press, 976 Accountability, 368 demands, 989 Accountable professionals, 720 Accumulated gains, 754 Accumulated knowledge, 1097 ACER General Ability Test (AGAT), 876

Achievement, 1077 motivation, 45–47 Acquisition, 73–77 Action competence, 963, 964 Action learning, 962 Active citizenship, 428 Active engagement, 966 Active learning, 975, 985 Active listening, 982 Adaptability, 414 Adaptations, 654 Add-on programs, 531–532 Add on values, 516 Administration, 101 Administrative preparation program, 986 Adolescence, 666, 667 decision-making, 112 emotions, 116 human flourishing, 112 interdisciplinary approach, 113 life adversity, 113 neural connection, 114–118 neural growth, 118–120 neurobiological effects, 112 neuropsychological approach, 118, 122 psychological growth, 113 social affordances, 112 values-oriented thinking, 120–121 Adolescents, 883 animal’s living environment, 245 cheating behavior, 755 child & adolescent (see Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes) children, 236 developmental processes, 236 discovery process, 238

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1143

1144 Adolescents (cont.) identity formation, 239, 241 learners, 1057 power and mystery, 245 wellbeing, 870 Adult education research, 805 Adulthood, 665, 831, 950 Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), 282, 283 Aesthetic creation, 948 Affective alignments, 672–673 Affective–behavioral–cognitive–dynamic (ABCD) model, 326 Affective development, 687 Affective disposition, 1117 Affective domain, 1128, 1129, 1131 Affective education, 687 Affective issues, 1116 AFNorth International School, 405 “A Framework for All”, 729, 734 African American youth, 669 African epistemology, 776 Agency, 662, 666, 671, 771 Alpha-wave activity, 826 Alternative futures, 769 Amalgamation, 1126 Ambiguity signals, 705 Ambition, 311 America, character education, 641 Analytical method, 503 Androcentric theory, 931 Animals, 257 Anonymity, 861 Anti-bullying programs, 562 Anti-dualist ethics, 945 Anti-humanists, 791 Antiquity, 939 Anti-self-realism, 210, 211 Anti-social behavior, 991 Antisocial conduct, 605 Anti-theists, 791 Anxiety, 338 Appreciation of diverse perspectives, 705 Appreciative inquiry, 101, 891 Apprenticeship model, 132 Arab education, 499 Arab society, 498–501 Arab women, 501–502 Argumentation, 358 Aristippus of Cyrene, 872 Aristotelian philosophy, 270, 274, 275 Aristotelian psychology, 387

Index Aristotle, 217, 872 characteristics of oneself, 208 love oneself, 207 people categories, 208 self-realism, 213 self-theory, 208 Artful thinking, 875 Artificial brains, 232 Artificial conditioning, 946 Artificial intelligence (AI), 193, 409 Ash Elementary School, 1099–1101 Asia-Pacific Resilience Project (APRP) development, 997–999 mental health and educational practice, 1004–1007 problem stating, 996 research, 996 results, 1009 Assembly, 403 Assessment, 517, 520 concepts and practices, 521 dispositions, 526 for failure, 229 method, 151, 155, 160, 162, 168 testing, 516 values, 526 values and dispositions, 523–525 values education, 522–523 Asset-based approaches, 435–437 Association of Moral Education (AME), 176 Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), 244 Atmosphere, 404 Attachment, 54–57 Attachment theory, 570 Attention, 32 Attention deficit hyperactivity, 986, 996, 1007 Attentiveness, 825 Attitudes, 368, 378, 433, 1117 Attribution theory, 210 Attunement, 42, 43, 58, 60 Aurora Competence Framework (ACF), 167 Australia curriculum, 599–601 democracy, 747 education systems, 1119 schooling in, 925 values education, 595–599 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), 603 Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), 915

Index Australian Education Council (AEC), 601 Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (AGDEH), 961 Australian Government’s National Framework, 717 Australian Government’s Values Education Program (AVEP), 596 Australian National Values Education, 1064 Australian Values Education Program (AVEP), 2, 9, 17, 222, 727–728 Authentic forgiveness, 777 Authenticity, 208, 525–526, 692, 916 Authentic leadership, 163 Authentic learning approaches, 966, 967 Authentic pedagogy, 3, 5 Authentic self, 690 Authentic teaching, 846 Authoritarian democracies, 765 Authoritarianism, 765, 774 Authoritarian threats, 772 Authority, 387–390, 909 Autonomous moral action, 667 Autonomy, 208, 241, 521, 663, 664, 674, 978, 988, 989, 1021, 1023 Awakening, 195 Awareness, 455, 479 examen, 79 AZA, see Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), 244 B Babel effect, 799 Balance personal growth, 677 Basic determinism, 167 Basic needs, 138 Basic openness, 168 Bayesian predictive brain, 227–228 Bayesian statistical modelling, 228 Becoming-minor, 944 Becoming-other, 941, 951, 952 Becoming-woman, 944 Beethoven’s 9th symphony, 473 Behavioral alignments, 674–675 Behavioral outcomes, 925, 980 Behavioral problems, 980, 986, 990 Behavioral values, 595 Behaviorist education, 1076 Behavior management approach, 718 Behaviors, 324, 325, 328, 329, 333, 334, 336, 337, 340, 341 Being-in-the-world, 917

1145 Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI) accessible and adaptable, 155 applications, 155 belief statements, 154 capacity and inclination, 161 comprehensive, 155 domains, 156–158 full Scale score, 158–162 human resources, 163 international development, 155 leadership role, 163 psychometric instruments, 164 purposes, 154 qualitative items, 156–158 quantitative scales, 156–158 reporting system, 165 research and practice, 154 self-reported, 161 teaching, 153 Belief systems, 670, 1101 Belonging academic support, 974–976 accountability demands, 989 changing classroom conditions/student behavior, 980–984 climate support, 977–979 emotions and organizations, 987, 989 motivation, 985–987 personal support, 973, 974 student learning, 990 students’ personal and academic needs, 972, 973 students’ psychological experience, 972 teacher practice, 984 Berger, P., 500 Berger’s biography project, 542 Bien Etre Beauty Salon, 915 Big-Five research, 214 Big theory, 803 Biography of senior citizen, 538–540 Biological dimensions, 814 Biological homeostasis, 114–118 Biophilia, 847 Bio-psycho-socio-spiritual formulations, 816 Biosphere, 41, 58 project, 964 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 765 Block Award Program, 1105 Blossoming, 197 Bonding, 251 Book of Joy, 474 Boot camp, 139 Bottom up approach, 518

1146 Brain-based device, 231 Brain development, 112, 113, 123 functional connectivity, 826 lateralization, 51–53 plasticity, 57–59 science, 228 Brain-exclusive model, 199 Briefing, 933 British welfare system, 1045 Buddhism, 826 Bullying, 981 Bunya Pines, 839 Burning logs, 584 By-product, 366 C California School Recognition Program (CSRP), 1087, 1089 Cambridge Eddington, 308–311 information technology, 308 phenomenon, 308 Capacities, 159, 196–197, 200 Capitalism, 774 Carbon footprint, 741 Care, 378 Career and technical education (CTE), 1072 Career development, 441 Care for creation, 258 Care theory, 951 Caring, 180 climate, 135 teachers, 973, 975 Carnegie Task Force, 2, 3, 17 Cartesian method, 940 Case-sensitive deliberation, 391 Center for Community Values and Action (CCVA), 626, 631 service-learning program, 627 Centralized education system, 1034 Cerebral cortex, 818 Character, 516, 520 asset score, 442 Character-building value, 536 Character education, 68, 206, 484, 563, 596, 641, 717, 718, 829, 860, 924, 939, 948 background, 1087 cognitive focus, 485 in Colombia, 87 competence and self-reliance, 1110

Index continuity, 1095–1097, 1099, 1103, 1106 definitions, 486 design principles, 88–89 developmental outcomes, 1109 educational systems, 485 empirically Supported Programs, 488 exemplary programs, 1087 findings, 487–490 framework, 109 high demands, 1110 immersion, 89 Jubilee Centre, 268 learning for life research, 269 literature, 490 method, 1088–1089 PRIMED (see Prioritization, Relationships, Intrinsic Motivation, Modeling, Empowerment, and Developmental (PRIMED) Pedagogy) principal tenure, 1093 programs, 1094 re-analysis, 485–486 sampled schools, 1090 school context, 106 school descriptions, 1093 school leadership, 1091–1092, 1110 stability, 1110 in UK Schools, 271–273 update, 485–486 virtuous behavior, 1109 visitation, 1089 Character education dilemma add-on programs, 531–532 integration with academic classes, 532 process strategies, 532 whole-school approach, 532–533 Character education inquiry (CEI) assessment, 642 attractiveness, 642 classroom management and teaching, 644 conclusive/compelling, 643 contemporary educational research, 643 educational environment, 643 interpretation, 644 methods, 642 school-based practice, 643 signature research, 641 youth character, 642 Character Education Partnership, 532 Character perspective, 268 Character power, 540–543 Character-related outcomes, 654

Index Child(ren), 462 attainments, 938 belief system, 823 development, 442 emotions, 433 integrity, 979 psychology research, 813 rights, 293–295 spirituality, 813–814 values, 373–377 voices, 364, 368, 369, 372 well-being, 587, 872, 966 Child & Adolescent Developmental Processes, 238–239 Child & Adolescent Spiritual Development community’s impact, 239 nature’s impact, 239–241 Child Development Project, 650 Child-Friendly Municipalities (CFM), 296–298 Childhood spirituality, 821 Children’s and young people’s participation, 281–283, 291–293 Chinese secondary school, 902 Chora, 947 Christianity, 826 Chronic pain, 827 Circular motions, 408 Citizenship, 207, 1034 education, 865, 924, 1023–1025 formation, 676 rights, 768 Civic education, 207 Civic engagement, 676, 721 Civic learning, 676 Civic responsibility, 1035 Civics and Moral Education (CME), 1036 Civics by Education for Living (EFL), 1035 Clash of ignorance, 784 Classroom activities, 981 curriculum, 597, 606 experience, 977 instruction, 861 management strategies, 990 practice, 653 strategies, 542 teachers, 846 Classroom-based health education models, 1008 Classroom-based practice cognitive developmental approach, 929–932 limitations, 926

1147 prescriptiveness, 924 role play, 932–934 trait approach, 924–926 trial and error, 924 values clarification, 926–929 Classroom-specific values pedagogy, 81–82 Climate attitudes, cognition and behaviors, 135 change, 299, 598, 766, 829, 958, 960 emergency, 851 implicit learning, 134 learning, 136 moral, 137 social, 136 support, 977–979 Cluster-level strategies, 71 Co-agency, 310 Cognition, 2, 4, 53–54, 197 Cognition–affect continuum, 1122 Cognitisation, 1121 Cognitive abilities, 439 Cognitive-based (head) activities, 434 Cognitive constructive epistemic models, 806 Cognitive constructivist paradigm, 800 Cognitive control, 122 Cognitive development, 664, 705, 820, 863 Cognitive developmental approach, 645–648 characteristics, 930 class discussion strategies, 931 classroom strategy, 930 intellectual education, 929 moral dilemmas, 930 reasoning vs. action, 931 socio-cultural influences, 931 stages, 929 structured wholes, 929 substantive issues, 930 universal sequence, 931 values relativity, 932 Cognitive disequilibrium, 647, 705 Cognitive domain, 1128, 1129, 1131 Cognitive function, 433 Cognitive performances, 1120 Cognitive processes, 225 Cognitive reasoning, 943 Cognitive wellbeing, 22, 26, 35 Cognitivist three-stage account, 225 Cohesion, 10 Collaborative inquiry, 873, 883 Collaborative learning, 702, 704, 706, 708 Collaborative management approach, 1104 Collective resistance, 765

1148 Collective responsibility for excellence and ethics (CREE), 545, 549, 550 Colombia character education, 87 PRIMED, 90 Colonization, 601 Communication, 3, 387 skills, 283, 882 Communion, 666, 671 Communist, 464 Communities of practice, 693 Community, 239, 252, 259, 406, 408, 416–417, 464 building, 261, 677 connectedness, 237 culture, 433 engagement, 15, 620 frame, 434 health services, 1008 of inquiry, 873 of learning, 801 of practice, 1118 organizations, 675 school, 259 service, 244, 246, 675 violence, 673 visitations, 15 Community-based programs, 963 Community-engaged learning, 437 Community of Caring program, 1099, 1100 Community-oriented teacher culture, 353 Communityship, 801 Compartmentalized well-being approach, 882 Compassion, 310, 312, 317–319 Competence, 240, 434, 520 Competence-based education, 1076 Competencies, 462, 1063 Competency-based teacher education, 859 Compulsory education, 388 Compulsory elective approach, 620 Conceptualization, 75, 181, 274–275 Concussion, 703 Conference of the Parties, 959 Confidentiality, 369, 861 Confirmation, 941 Conflict resolution, 895 Congestion, 308 Connected Leader Workshops, 836, 837, 847–849 Connected Teacher Course, 836, 837, 844–847 Conscience of craft, 539 Conscience listening, 784 Conscious/learner/individual growth centeredness, 804 Conscious awareness, 826

Index Conscious competence, 76 Conscious incompetence, 74, 76 Consciousness, 197–200, 209, 365, 817, 1035 expansion of, 194 human, 192 resonance and rationality, 195 Consensus, 422, 423, 1038–1042 Consequences chart, 927 Consequentialism, 745, 746, 750, 751 Conservatism, 1079 Conservative pedagogy, 641 Conservativism, 765 Constant comparative analysis (CCA), 1064 Constitution for Europe, 691 Constructivism, 598, 693, 926 Constructivist learning principles, 865 Constructivist theory, 701 Construct of mental states, 906 Consumer society, 916 Contemporary Muslim mentality, 615 Content/instruction/subject centeredness, 804 Contestability, 600 Contestation, 600 Context/society/planetary change centeredness, 805 Continuing education, 944 Co-operative learning, 702 Corporate philosophies, 774 Corpus callosum, 818 Corruption, 1047 Cortico-subcortical circuits, 116 Coschool participant recruitment, 91 Coschool SAS, 87, 91 Cosmic constant, 797 Cosmology, 776, 777 Cost-effectiveness, 875 Council of Education, 686 Counseling, 419–421 Courage, 311 Courtesy, 1086 COVID-19 pandemic, 91, 282, 313, 406 Creativity, 538 Crime Reduction in Schools Project (CRISP) architectural plan, 715 band competition, 715 conducive environment, 716 counselling and education programs, 715 health education program, 715 high schools, 712 insurmountable problems, 716 intervention research program, 714 level of generality, 716 morality and ethical decision making, 716 multiplication researchers, 715 professional and academic disciplines, 714

Index research projects, 713 unanticipated empowerment objective, 714 western contexts, 714 Criminal justice system, 671 Critical consciousness, 771 Critical curiosity, 1019 Critical feedback, 981 Critical knowledge, 744 Critical-self reflectivity, 6 Critical thinking, 784, 875 Cross-case analysis, 256 Cross-cultural intervention, 90 Cross-cultural research, on character, 535 Cross-sectional data, 158 Cross talk, 115 CSE Private School Fellows Report Template, 260–262 Cultivate patient hope, 851 Cultivation, 121 Cults, 455 Cultural absorption, 820 Cultural artifacts, 839 Cultural ballast, 1036, 1047 Cultural hegemony, 774 Culturally responsive teaching, 585 Cultural memory, 602–604 Cultural priorities, 435 Cultural psychology, 181 Cultural relativism, 747, 748, 750 Cultural semiotics, 912–916 Cultural settings, 431 Cultural system, 751 Cultural traits/universals, 749 Cultural views, 988 Culture, 192, 193, 195, 197, 746 of accountability, 1025 anthropologists, 747 of conservative formality, 1079 construct reality, 747 development and adaptation, 746 fragmentation, 793 industry, 914 line of thought, 748 order needs, 749 physical environment, 746 response capacity, 748 Culture and Religious Heritage, 499 Curriculum, 261, 366, 367, 406, 459 activities, 431 development process, 651 formation, 597 knowledge, 597, 598 sustainability, 1088 theorizing, 594 values, 437

1149 Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), 769 Curriculum planning and development division (CPDD), 1037 Custodial ethic, 842 Cyber-Phronesis, 275–276 Cynical theorists, 177 D Dadirri appearance of Ayiwisi, 844 authentic and respectful relationships, 845 deep listening space, 845 listening, 844 national values project, 843 organic schedule, 844 practice, 844 unhealthy rumination, 845 Daily practice, 414 Dalai Lama, 474, 475, 477 Data analysis, 242–243 Data collection methods, 242 Debriefing, 933 Decoloniality, 767 Decolonization, 774 Decontextualization, 1121 Deductive/inductive process, 803 Deep learning, 1063, 1065 Deep listening, 703 Deep water sounds, 844 Default mode network (DMN), 117 Dehumanization, 819 Democracy, 293–295, 313, 521 Democratic citizenship, 141 Democratic society, 594 Democratization, 451 Demographic data, 158 Deontological system, 750 Deontological theories, 746, 751 Department of Education (DfE), 769 Depression, 338, 827, 1004, 1006, 1007 Depth-based assessment, 169 Descartes, R., 208 Descriptive feedback, 982 Design-based research methodology, 805 Design epistemology, 1075, 1076, 1080 Designist learning, 1076 Developmental Contours of Character, 663 Developmental epistemology, 1081 Developmental neuroscience, 185 Developmental psychology, 662, 805, 820, 830 Developmental science, 663 Developmental theory, 667

1150 Dialog(ue), 1059 of authority, 707 collaborative learning, 704 critical openness, 703 cultural patterns, 704 discourses, 703 discussion, 703 human emancipation, 703 movements, 704 organizational change, 704 origins, 703 shared minds, 703 virtues and emotions, 704 Dialogical character, 1057 Dialogicality concept, 1059 epistemology of social change, 1059 intersubjectivity, 1059 provocation, 1059 public discourse, 1060 (see also Socratic disposition) virtuous life, 1060 Dialogic reliability, 877 Dichotomy, 509 Didactic/dialectical process, 803 Differentiation, 509 Digital technology, 466 Dignified life, 281 Dilemmas conceptual roles, 636 educational experience, 635 forked-road situations, 636 identification, 636 issues and challenges, 635 moral training, 637 reversible logic, 637 service-learning values, 634 social changes, 637 student agency and potential, 635 thought experiments, 635 Disambiguation, 228 Discipline, 387–390, 510 Discipline-based learning, 600 Discussion, 414, 419 Dispositions, 222, 433, 523–526, 1117 Dissipative systems, 221 Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), 166 Doctrine of specificity, 642 Dogwood Elementary School, 1103 Domain-specific self-confidence, 213 Domain-specific structuring, 312 Double helix, 5–9, 25 values pedagogy, 9–17

Index Double marginality, 501 Driving force, 862 Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), 152 Drug and alcohol prevention, 487 Dwelling, 705, 917–920 Dynamic development, 49–51, 56 E Early Childhood Education, 896 Ecological damage, 960 Ecological resonance, 165, 167 Ecological theory, 996, 1009 Ecological values cognitive, emotional and social skills, 236 EE, 237–238 Economic agents, 686 Economic bias, 612 Economic competitiveness, 775 Economic conservativism, 769, 773 Economic development, 687 Economic growth, 685, 686, 689, 910 Economic interdependence, 772 Economic pragmatism, 1048 development and national survival, 1044, 1045 meritocracy and social cohesion, 1046–1048 national ideology, 1044 Economic recovery, 771 Economic repercussions, 1049 Economic science, 906 Economic utility, 1078 Economic value chain, 612 Economic welfare, 1048 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 765 Economy of care, 948 Ecosystem services, 286 Education, 283, 393 adviser, 400 challenges, 1056 communication, 1054 community responsibility, 1057 critical thinking, 1057 cultural identities, 1056 growth-based terminology, 1055 inclusive and equitable quality, 768 intellectual depth, 1058 intermediary of environment, 1055 international and markets, 773–776 international treaties, 1058 learning experiences, 1055

Index needs, 872 possibilities, 1057 practice redefined, 33–36 process, 462–464 programs, 444 public sphere, 768 reflective thought and integrated perspectives, 1055 skill-centered process, 1056 socialization, 510 student agency and diversity, 1055 (see also Sustainability) transformational potential, 1058 transformative response, 767 value-laden, 768 values and power, 767 (see also Values education) values-based holistic pedagogy, 1058 values-led responsive praxis, 767 Educational achievement, 212 Educational administration, 1091 Educational approaches, 455 Educational community, 485 Educational development, 752 Educational engagements, 1074 Educational engineering, 654 Educational environment, 580, 624 Educational ethics, 454 Educational goals, 386 Educational investments, 768 Educational leaders, 102, 105 Educational Mondays, 463 Educational movements, 645 Educational policy, 293–295 Educational possibilities, 319–321 Educational programs, 830 Educational publications, 650 Educational research, 228–231, 649 Educational researchers, 799 Educational sciences, 451 Educational thought, 806 Educational value, 211–213 Educational vision, 399, 663 Educational wellbeing, 1134 Education Council, 686 Education for sustainability (EfS) environmental issues, 956 evolution, 956 goals, 961 knowledge, skills and values, 968 learning experience, 967, 968 modeling sustainable practices, 964, 965 national frameworks, 956

1151 next generation, 956–959 policy context, 959, 960 school case studies, 965, 966 school experience, 963, 964 shifting definitions and approaches, 960–963 wellbeing, 966, 967 Educators, 4, 317, 319, 486 Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI), 1017, 1018, 1020 Egalitarian culture, 801 Ego-consciousness, 945 Ego-self split, 822 Electroencephalogram (EEG), 181–183, 229 Electro-encephalographic recordings, 826 Elementary education, 1057 Elementary school teachers, 355 Elm Elementary School, 1106, 1107 Embedded brain, 224, 228–231 Embodied brain, 177, 180, 186, 224, 228–231 Embodied attentiveness, 838 Embodied cognition, 199 Embodiments of Love Academy (TELA), 589 Embrained, 181, 184, 186 Emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL), 620 Emotion, 53–54 Emotional attunement, 161, 163 Emotional competence, 672 Emotional distress, 980 Emotional domain, 1128, 1129, 1131, 1132 Emotional expression, 819 Emotional intelligence, 25, 402 Emotional learning, 68, 80, 83 Emotional literacy, 663, 664 Emotional needs, 989 Emotional quotient, 414 Emotional rationality, 708 Emotional stability, 415–416 Emotional sensitivity, 140, 455 Emotional stress, 813 Emotional wellbeing, 22, 24, 34, 981, 991 Emotions, 433 Empathy, 3, 415 Empathic consciousness, 17 Empathy, 25, 152, 185, 311, 378, 454, 663, 664, 672, 673, 830 Empirical-analytical sciences, 743 Employability, 612 Employment, 268 Empowerment, 740 Engagement ethic, 139 Engineering knowledge, 655

1152 English proficiency, 986 Enlightenment, 195 empiricism, 209 Entity theory, 214 Environmental activism, 773 Environmental education (EE), 241–242, 561, 960 environmental stewardship, 237 K-12 EE programs, 238 multiple-case study, 238 relationship, 237 Environmental education program, 960 Environmental emphasis, 423 Environmental sustainability, 740, 788 Environmental values, 720 Epigenetics, 57–59 Episodic volunteering, 292 Epistemic reflexivity, 1081 Equanimity, 476 ERIC, 487 Ethical behaviour, 530, 533 Ethical challenges, 530 Ethical dilemmas, 743, 745, 751 Ethical dispositions, 870 Ethical education, 398, 409 Ethical intelligence (EI), 404 Ethical leadership, 163 Ethical Learning Community (ELC), 535, 551 Ethical reasoning, 745, 751 Ethical relationalities, 777 Ethical sensitivity, 353–356, 358, 359 Ethical skills, 132–134 Ethical theory, 745 Ethical vocabulary, 404 Ethics, 382, 393, 532 cultural framework, 749–751 Ethics of integration becoming-other, 951, 952 critical and reflective thinking, 940–944 cultural extra-linguistic text, 938 democratic group, 938 external and internal forces, 940 learning, 938 learning events, 946–949 open education, 938 teacher preparation, 944–946 technical measurable objectives, 939 value of relations, 949–951 Ethics of vulnerability, 850 Ethnic diversity, 1089 Ethnographic research, 1125 Eudaimonia (Eudaemonia), 564, 566, 569, 756 Eudaimonic wellbeing, 871, 881, 882

Index Euromodernist design projects, 766 Euromodernist threat, 771, 772 European Social Survey (ESS), 908 European Trade Union for Education, 691 European Union, 685 Euthanasia, 182 Event-related potentials (ERPs), 182, 184 Evidence-based practice, 649 Evidenced-based disciplinary knowledge, 1079 Evolved Developmental Niche (EDN), 130 Exclusive humanist, 791 Exemplary moral functioning, 665 Exemplary teaching practice, 831 Expanding educational vocabularies, 940 Expectance value theory (EVT), 224 Expectancy value, 225 Experience of peace, 240 Experimental science paradigm, 655 Explicitness, 917 Explicit side, 430 Extrinsic reinforcement, 82 F Faculty & staff training, 261 Faith development, 820 Family coherence, 1003 functioning, 1003 protective factors, 1001 values, 149 Farmhouse, 840 Feelings, 226 Finnish Ethical Committee, 353 Finnish schools, 355–357 Finnish teacher education, 352, 358 Fir Elementary School, 1097, 1098 First Nations, 836–839, 842, 843, 847–851 Flexibility, 107 Focus groups, 101–102, 703, 741, 1115 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 649 Forked-road situation, 635 Formal educational provision, 1073 Foundational values mature interdependence, 629, 630 neighborly communities, 630, 631 positive ethics, 630 Free electives, 620 French educational system, 688 French Revolution, 684 Friendships, 368, 372–375 Full Scale score, 158–162 Future-oriented vs. pre-given philosophy, 940

Index G G20 Education Ministers Meeting, 409 Gallipoli campaign, 603 Gender, 358 differences, 1006 sensitivity training, 151 stereotyping, 982 traditionalism, 165, 167 General educational values, 1121 General Reasoning Ability Test, 877 Genuine wellbeing, 917 Geo-philosophy, 940 Giving, 565–571 Glass panels, 400 Global capitalism, 766 Global Citizenship Education (GCE), 768, 769, 774 Global climate change, 298 Global health crises, 310 Global health threats, 960 Global interdependence, 958 Globalization, 445, 945, 950, 1032, 1034, 1044, 1048, 1049 Global resonance, 161, 165, 167 Global self-esteem, 212 Global warfare, 765 Golden threads, 312 Golden Tree Elementary, 1086 Goodie girls, 378 Good practice pedagogy, 2, 3, 5, 6, 17 Good teacher, 382–385, 387, 389, 391, 392 Google Books, 485 Governance in Singapore, 1043 systems, 765 Graphic calculators, 1121 Gratitude, 311 Green teams, 958 Green washing, 766 Ground-breaking template, 807 Group variation, 162 Growth mindsets, 207 Guseinov, A., 464 Gut-feelings, 183, 198 H Habermas, J., 743, 787, 791 Habermasian theory, 752 Habermas’s integrative/Holarchical knowledge aesthetic quality, 798 binary/hierarchical debate, 797 challenges, 794

1153 cognitive interests, 794, 795 communications, 795 communicative capacity/action, 798 communicative knowledge, 796 critical knowing, 796 critical self-reflective, 796 educational theories and practices, 798 emancipatory knowledge, 796 knowledge interests, 787 physical and social events, 794 praxis, 796 technical knowing, 797, 798 trailblazing and transformative theorems, 797 Habitats, 138–139 Habituation, 207 Happiness, 756, 907, 911, 913, 915 Happy victimizer effect, 757 Hard work, 1132 Harmonization of educational influences, 459 Harmony in Singapore, 1041 #Me Too movements, 765 Health-building approach, 998 Health promoting school (HPS), 997, 999 Health promotion, 997 Health Promotion Queensland (HPQ), 997 HealthSTAR, 487 Healthy human brain consciousness, 817 destructive imbalance, 818 emotional perception, 819 knowing, 818 paradox, 818 perpetual tension, 819 scientific materialism, 817 speech centres, 818 whole-brain harmony, 817 Healthy skepticism, 652 Hebbian learning, 224 Hedonic treadmill, 913 Hegelian dialectics, 946, 947 Heisenberg indeterminacy principle, 816 Heteroglossia, 704 Hidden curriculum actions and decisions, 378 defined, 365 educational goals, 366 ideological analysis, 366 informal learning, 364 initial findings, 369–372 planned learning activities, 367 research methods, 368–369 value-laden issues, 364

1154 Hidden reality, 478 Hierarchical integrations, 930 Higher education, 612, 784, 785, 1019 academic discourse, 509 among Arab women, 498, 501–502 in Arab society, 500–501 financial investment, 502 framework, 499 literacy and religiosity, 499–500 Muslim student, 508 public sphere, 511 studies, 509 Higher order thinking strategies, 875 Hinduism, 826 Historical knowledge, 600 Historical skills, 600 Historiography, 601, 602 History curriculum, 594 History education, 599 Holarchical constructive process, 786 Holarchical pillars, 789 Holistic education, 472, 473, 613, 684, 686, 693 joy, 474–476 love, 476–478 mystery, 478–480 trust, 472–473 Holistic learning, 17 Holistic science biology, 827 law of wisdom, 827 person’s transition, 827 physics and chemistry, 827 psychology, 827 school environments, 828 sociology and anthropology, 827 wholeness and cosmic unity, 827 Home context, 80–81 Homeostasis, 114–118, 226–227 Homogeneity, 489 Homophobic, 384 Horse packing, 251 Human capital, 997 consciousness, 192, 817 cultures, 746, 747 dignity, 686 exceptionalism, 849 experience, 386 intelligence/development, 806 knowledge, 743, 744 personhood, 208 professions, 382 psychological growth, 667 relations, 382

Index rights, 281–283, 291, 292, 294, 297, 299 values, 398, 582, 583, 858 wellbeing, 230 Human-centered values, 408 Human-centric assumptions, 850 Humanistic education, 598 Humanistic ontology, 794 Humanistic thesis, 791 Humanist subjective influences, 1081 Humanity-based values, 624 Humanizing education, 624 Humanizing principle, 616 Human nature connectedness (HNC), 561 Human values education (HVE), 581, 585–587, 589 Hume, D., 209, 210 Humility, 479, 771 Humor, 819 I Identity, 207–210, 217 diffusion, 160, 161, 167, 168 politics, 216 IHSAN, areas of action, 622 IIUM Mental Health and Psychosocial Care Team (IMPaCT), 623 Imagination ethic, 139 Imaginative method, 797 Immersion, 248 Impersonality, 391 Implementation Coordinator, 333 Inclination, 159 Inclusion, 78, 311, 392 Inclusive education, 353 Incremental theorists, 214 Independence, 241 Independent learning, 1020 Index data, 158 Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage (ICSEA) score, 876 Indigeneity, 767 Indigenous conceptions, 1119 Indigenous peoples, 602 Individual autonomy, 1077 Individual/collective shadow, 945 Individual difference, 183 Individual identity, 1081 Individualism, 912–916, 1077, 1131 Individual responsibility, 1078 Individual values justice, 595 Individual wellbeing belonging, 1080 deliberation, 1080

Index holism, 1080 moderation, 1080 moral integrity, 1080 objectivity, 1080 perspective, 1080 provisionality, 1080 resilience, 1080 skepticism, 1080 tolerance, 1080 truth, 1079 universality, 1080 VET value context, 1074–1076 wisdom, 1080 Indoctrination, 206 Indoctrinative teaching, 925 Inert ideas, 938 Informal communication, 1121 Information and communication technologies, 356, 687 Information availability bias-effect, 758 Information devaluation trend-effect, 758 Informed consent, 668, 861 Inner curriculum, 404 Innovation, 311 Inquiry-based learning, 606 In-servicing, 861 Inside–outside circles, 927 Institutional binding, 772 Institutional curriculum, 604 Institutional transformation, 807 Institutional values, 1124, 1125 Instructional leader, 1099 Instructional strategies, 974, 990 Instrumentalism, 1078 Instrumental material utility, 1074 Instrumental reason, 1074 Integrative education, 786, 800 Integrative educational process, 952 Integrative education model, 131–134 Integrative Ethical Education model (IEE), 131 Integrative Knowledge, Learning and Teaching Rubric (I-KLT), 806 Integratory capacity, 906 Integrity, 78 Intellectual achievement, 3 Intellectual alignments, 670–671 Intellectual bias, 813 Intellectual depth, 874 Intelligence theories, 805 Intentional interventions, 980 Interactivity, 462 Interconnectedness, 31, 786 Intercultural competence (IC), 562 Inter-ethnic conflict, 1041, 1043

1155 Intergenerational justice, 286 Intergenerational value change theory, 908 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 957 Internal family systems (IFS), 404 Internalization, 433, 434, 1121 International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), 612, 613 International Network for the Study of Spirituality, 814 International organizations, 685 International Values-based Trust (IVET), 405 Interoception, 226–227 Interpersonal association, 382 Interpersonal learning, 804 Interpersonal sensitivity, 354 Intersubjectivity, 917–920 Intervening principals, 1097 Intrapersonal learning, 804 Intrapsychic principle of integration, 663 Intrinsic brain activity, 227 Intrinsic motivation, 980, 1014, 1015, 1017 Intuitions, 198 Iron curtain, 451 i-shape approach, 800, 801 Islamic worldview, 613 Island of Wonders, 456 J Jelapang Jaya Secondary School, 900, 901 John Templeton Foundation (JTF), 268 Jolyon’s beliefs, 314 Joy, 474–476 Jubilee Centre, 269–271, 394 character education in UK schools, 271–273 Cyber-Phronesis, 275–276 Youth Social Action and Service, 273–274 Judeo-Christian traditions, 691 Judgments of responsibility, 665 Justice learning, 675 Justice-oriented educational values, 768 Justifications, 521 Justifying, essaying, declaring and identifying (JEDI), 1135 Juvenile justice system, 672, 674 K K-12 education, 237 environmental education, 241 Kantian-inspired cognitive-developmental approach, 206 Key Performance Indicator (KPI), 612

1156 Kim’s reflections, 314 Kindergarten teacher, 898 Knowledge, 433 management, 517–518 mobilization, 774 power, 1137 relations, 508–509 as skill, 1078 transfer, 774 Knowledge-based societies, 1073 Knowledge-guiding interest, 744 Know thyself principle, 939 Koestle’s thesis, 786 Kohlberg, L., 206 Kohlberg’s theory, 931 Kovacs Child Depression Inventory, 1006 L Language, 748 of description, 865 of values, 77, 78 Language Arts curriculum, 432 Late positive potential (LPP), 183 Leadership, 151, 402, 404, 801 consistency, 734 skills, 902 succession, 1092 Learner achievement, 858 Learner-centered practices, 1022 Learner in society/planet, 801 Learner wellbeing, 1072 Learning, 11, 54, 76, 151, 153, 222, 251, 364–366, 516–521, 524–526, 537 activities, 367 classroom, 377 climates, 136 community, 355, 707, 729–731, 733–735 dispositions, 1017 education’s purpose and integrative view, 788 energy, 1016 engagements, 1076 environments, 733, 874 experiences, 606, 624, 677, 846 facilitation, 371 hidden curriculum, 368 instrumentalist and market-driven agenda, 788 mathematics, 1128 personal and social transformation, 789 4P purpose, 787 power, 1017, 1019, 1020 relationships, 1019–1021 resource, 965

Index tensions, 788 working, 374 values, 364 Learning for life, 1079 Learning for sustainability (LfS), 769 Learning Outcomes in University for Impact in Society” (LOUIS), 167 Learning–teaching approach, 701 Legitimacy, 768 Legitimate authority, 772 Legitimate knowledge, 1034 Legitimization, 176 Letter-writing campaign, 440 Liberal, 170, 171 Liberal-democratic contexts, 383 Liberal international order (LIO), 772 Liberation, 195 Lickert scale, 1025 Lifecycle stage alignment, 94 Lifelong learning, 943, 1075 Life satisfaction, 338, 907 Lifestyle, 467 Lighting, 402 Line of inquiry, 976 Linked schools arrangement, 423 Lisbon strategy, 686 Listening skills, 879 Literacy, 400, 498–501, 506–508 Literature review, 486, 487 Living in Fortuitous Era (LIFE), 621 Living the values, 313–319 Living Values Educational Program (LVEP), 897–899, 1062 Living Values Education (LVE), 406 Living values train the educator (TTE) program, 892 Living values train the trainer (TTT) program, 892 Local/phenomenal theories, 654 Local education authority, 401 Locus of authority, 702 Logic machine, 225 Logic models, 891 Logic of affects, 943 Logos, 1060 Longitudinal data, 158 Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth (LSAY), 45 Love, 476–478, 582, 583, 586, 587, 589 Love, Understanding, Valued, Respect and Safe (LUVRS), 895, 896, 900 Lovingkindness, 476 Lundy model, 1062

Index M Malnutrition, 581 Management of error, 230 Mapleton community service, 244 connectedness to community, 247–248 environmental education, 243–244 relationships with animals, 244–247 school, 243 spiritual connections, 248–249 Marketability, 612 Marketization, 774 Mass education, 768, 774 Mastery learning, 135 Mastery orientation, 976 Materialism, 1131 Materiality, 850 Material wellbeing, 1074 Mathematical educational values, 1121 Mathematical wellbeing (MWB) conferences for teachers, 1135 construct, 1116 cultural upbringing, 1136 development, 1127–1129 educational objectives, 1129–1132 education research conferences, 1135 lifelong learning, 1134 logical connectives, 1137 negative experiences, 1134 pedagogical values, 1135 recurring issues, 1136 research agenda, 1132–1133 stages, 1130 students, 1122 students’ emotional development, 1134 virtual exclusive, 1136 Mathematic Policy Research (MPR), 334 Mathematics learning, 1114, 1122 network, 1124 teaching, 1118 values, 1121 Mathematics education research, affect and attitudes, 1116–1120 values, 1120–1127 Mature dependence, 629 Mature interdependence, 629–631 Maturity, 708 Meaningful happiness, 564, 565, 569 Meaning making, 517–518 Meditation, 474, 475, 478, 825–827 Melbourne Declaration, 599, 604 Melbourne Interfaith Intercultural Cluster (MIIC), 1064

1157 Melbourne Secondary schools, 1064 Memorialization, 602–604 Mental activity, 826 Mental disciplines, 32 Mental health, 605, 622, 623 Mental health promotion model, 998 Mental illness, 830 Mentality, 688 Mentorship, 1106 Mentor teachers, 864 Meritocracy, 1042–1044, 1046–1048 Meta-analyses, 490–491 Metabolic balance, 180 Metacognition, 882 Metaphor, 195 Meta-principles, 490–491 Microgenesis, 198 Military-industrial complex, 772 Mindfulness, 32, 179, 827, 829 education, 558, 560, 568 exercise, 477 Mind-maps, 76 Mindsight, 32 Mind-training practices, 32 Mindweb, 31 Ministry of Education (MoE), 900, 1034 Ministry of Higher Education, 612 Mirror neurons, 584 Misogynist, 383–385 Mitsein, 917–920 Mitwelt, 918 Mixed-method design, 876 Modality of significance, 947 Modeling, 404 Modelling behavior, 863 Modernity, 208, 510 Modernization, 908, 909 Moment of Silence (MOS), 896 Monthly recognition programs, 1105 Moral absolutism, 924 Moral action, 630 Moral agents, 1015 Moral anatomy, 663 Moral and character development theories, 433–435 Moral assets, 443 Moral biography, 925, 926, 935 Moral centrality, 663, 666 Moral character, 444, 486, 533, 534 affective alignments, 672–673 behavioral alignments, 674–675 case study and analysis, 667–668 definition, 663

1158 Moral character (cont.) developmental relational systems approach, 663 development and integration, 664–667 early years, 668–670 intellectual alignments, 670–671 later years, 673–674 middle years, 671–672 systemic outcomes, 663 Moral choice machine, 220 Moral community, 354, 359 Moral compass, 441 Moral contact hypothesis, 759 Moral conviction, 179 Moral-cultural heritage, 925 Moral culture, 465 Moral deterioration/backsliding, 930 Moral development, 389, 820, 931 program, 644, 645 theories, 441 Moral discourse, 719 Moral discussion research program, 647 Moral education, 206, 626, 675–676, 717–720, 860, 866, 899, 902, 924, 931, 950, 951 current state of education, 465–467 exposition, 451 practical implementation, 453 social composition, 450 socially-responsible, 453 Soviet context, 464–465 teaching profession, 450 Moral exemplars, 207 Moral formation, 383–385 Moral functioning, 665 Moral imagination, 784 Moral individualism, 754 Moral interdependence, 941 Morality, 184 Moral learning, 185 Moral philosophy, 722 Moral psychology, 662, 754 Moral reasoning, 647, 663, 664, 670–672 vs. action, 931 Moral resilience, 756 Moral rightness, 754–756 Moral selfhood, 662–664, 666, 667 Moral values, 177, 223, 534, 940 biological basis, 179–181 in brain, 184–186 education, 176, 178 ERP methodology, 182 evolutionary origins, 180 predictive brain, 181–183 subconscious nature, 179

Index Most significant change technique, 72, 79 behavioral problems, 896 benefits, 890, 891 enablers, 891, 892 living values workshops, seminars and TTTs, 892 organizing events, 895 peace and unity, 893, 894 positive learning environment, 896 qualitative and participatory form, 890 safe environment, 896 self-esteem, 894, 898 self-inquiry, 894 training program, 898 Mother Earth Code Breaker, 841 Mother Earth Program, 840–842 Motivation, 25, 122, 510, 665, 754, 985–987, 989, 991, 1022, 1117 theory, 221 Motivational power, 666 Motor ability, 241 Mountain, 839 Multicultural and global citizenship education, 562 Multiculturalism, 945 Multi-institution data, 160 Multilevel analysis, 1119 Multi-level strategy, 999 Multiple modernities hypothesis, 509–511 Multi-racialism, 1042, 1046 Muslim female student, 502 Muslim woman, 502 content, structure and procedures, 505–506 to excel, 503 literacy, 506–508 religious-traditional world, 508 secular studies, 498 socialization process, 503–505 Mutual empowerment, 677 Mystery, 478–480, 1120, 1137 N National Action Plan (NAP), 621 National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), 47 National authoritarianism, 769 National cohesion, 1036 National Colouring Contest, 893 National competitiveness, 1036 National education (NE), 1036 National Education Policy Act, 712 National Framework for Values Education, 722 National Goals for Schooling, 1063

Index National Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 571 National identity, 1034, 1040 National School Climate Center(NSCC), 732 National Teaching Award, 893 National values, 1032, 1046 Nation building, 1035 Natural capital, 286 Natural disasters, 967 Natural ecosystems, 745 Naturalistic theology, 587 “Nature as teacher”, 846 Nauiyu community, 844 Needs fulfillment, 161, 168 Negotiation strategies, 1126 Neoliberal economic globalization, 765 Neo-liberalism, 499 Neoliberalism, 774 Neo-Nietzscheans, 791 Networked structures, 517 Neural dynamics, 185 Neurobiology, 50–51 Neuroception, 56 Neuro-genesis, 27 Neuropeptides, 199 Neuroscience, 801, 805, 812, 830 bi-lateral brain, 26 brain lateralization, 29 cognition/emotionality nexus, 26 domains, 27 information flow, 27 interconnectedness, 28 left hemisphere dominance, 30 reflexive thought processes, 29 right and left hemispheres, 27 spirit relationship, 27 spirituality, 30–31 transpirational integration, 28 VbE, 29 Neutrality, 769 New age psychology, 912–916 New physics, 805 New South Wales (NSW), 728 New technological paradigm, 517 Non-compulsory knowledge, 459 Non-judgemental attitude, 721 Non-verbal communication, 984 Non-violence, 582, 583, 586, 587, 589 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 765 North Carolina Academic Center for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention Center (NY-YVPC), 336 Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER), 902

1159 Nova-effect, 793 Nucleic acids, 816 Numeracy, 400 Numerical reasoning, 878 O Objectism, 1120 Objectivization of subjective experience, 830 Occupational learning, 1073, 1074 Occupations, 382 Ongoing feedback loop, 803 Open-hearted willingness, 310 Openness, 152, 1120 Open-space-making, 310 Opportunity dimensions, 1075 Oppositional attitudes, 978 Optimum ecology, 1014, 1022 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1075 Organizational leadership, 163 Organizational values, 1121 Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), 612 Orthogenetic principle, 664 Otherness, 1059 Our School in Pavlysh, 450, 454, 457, 458, 461, 467 Outcome(s), 152, 153, 160, 166, 168 mapping, 891 Outcomes-based education, 1076 Outreach-reflectivity-outreach, 15 Ownership, 519 Oxytocin, 223 P Paired t-tests, 108 Paradigm shift, 530 Paramount motivators, 1099 Parent/caregiver resilience, 1003 Parent(ing), 184–186, 463 surveys, 79–80 Parker Palmer, 695 Parliamentary Secretary of Education, 1039 Participants, 462–464 in the education process, 462–464 Peace, 10, 582, 583, 586, 587, 589 Pedagogical approaches, 601 Pedagogical compass, 567, 570, 571 Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), 655 Pedagogical dynamics, 3 Pedagogical gifts, 836 Pedagogical strategies, 846

1160 Pedagogy, 5, 178, 179, 185, 186, 398, 400, 401, 460 of engagement, 430–431 as virtue, 385–387 Peer mediation program, 1108 Peer-group behaviors, 551 Peer teaching school partner, 902 People’s opinions, 879 People professions, 390, 391 People’s Action Party (PAP), 1032 Perceived self-efficacy, 213 Percentile/Stanine score, 878 Perceptual senses, 227 Percussion, 703 Perennial philosophy, 587 Performance-based assessments, 35 Performance character, 486, 530, 533, 534, 540 Perinatal stress, 1007 Perpetual training, 943 Personal agency, 677 Personal beliefs, 670, 719, 942 Personal development, 441, 594, 924 achievement scale, 829 attachment and aversion, 821 holistic/spiritual values, 821 independent-mindedness, 822 prized allegiances, 820 safety and security, 821 school-age children, 822 shared habitat/environment, 820 social attitudes, 829 stages, 820 Personal fulfillment, 1077 Personal gratification, 820 Personal growth, 1025 Personal integration, 708 Personal interview/visitation appointments, 1088 Personality system, 665 Personal protective equipments (PPE), 621 Personal relationships, 390–394, 987 Personal responsibility, 1105 Personal support, 973, 974, 977, 991 Personal values, 719 Person-centered approach, 668 Personological approach, 665 Person’s moral concepts, 664 Person’s selfhood, 823 Perspective taking, 663, 664, 670, 672 ability, 290–291, 705 Pervasiveness, 1121 Philosophical inquiry (PI) adolescents’ experiences, 871 children and young people, 870

Index classroom, 873–874 cognitive growth and development, 883 collaborative dialogic approach, 871 critical thinking, 875, 879, 880 dialogic, interactive meaningful subject, 879 explicit values, 870 general reasoning ability, 882, 883 implementation, 870 overall general reasoning, 881 participants, 876 personal growth, 879, 880 procedure, 877 process, 874 qualitative data analysis, 877 quantitative data analysis, 878 quantitative findings, 881 quantitative measure, 877, 878 research design, 876 researchers’ findings, 883 school lessons, 875, 876 school subjects, 878 sense of community and safety, 880 students’ affective well-being, 880 students’ perceptions, 878–881 student wellbeing, 871–873 wellbeing, 881–882 Philosophy for children, 465 Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI), 804 Philosophy of desire, 912 Phoenix, 401 Phronesis, 69, 274–275 Physical dimensions, 814 Physical education, 455 Physical health promotion, 871 Physical wellbeing, 873 Piaget’s stages, 930 PICE-C Opening Retreat Satisfaction Survey, 99 Place-based reflexivity, 770 Place of values, 597 Place responsivenes contact zones and land memory, 839 custodial ethic, relational ontology and silence as learning, 842 embodied attentiveness, 838 emotional connections, 837 engagement, 837 ethic of care, 837 inspiration, 837 moments of enlightenment, 837–843 nature and culture, 849 pedagogy of enchantment, 836

Index process drama and blanket role, 840 radical hope and living with vulnerability, 851 relational ontology and PEEC pedagogy, 849–851 remembering, 839 repressing and forgetting, 839 science and attentiveness, 843–845 uncovering, 838 Place-responsive pedagogy, 836, 837, 840–842 Planning, 538 Pleasurable happiness, 564, 565 Plus, minus and interest (PMI), 927 Policy context, 959, 960 Policy curriculum, 597, 599, 604, 606 Policy decisions, 1045 Political consciousness, 772 Political conservativism, 774 Political convergence, 772 Political economy, 916 Political life, 959 Political polarization, 765 Politico-historical moment, 766 consciousness, 771 crisis of crises, 772 democratic world, 772 economic recovery, 771 global rules-based order, 772 glocal threats, 770, 771 political polarization, 772 survival, 773 technological solutionist approach, 773 techno-scientism, 773 Politics development, 766 Polyvagal theory, 27 Popular culture, 907, 917 Positive action (PA) child and family characteristics, 330 classroom management, 329 evaluations, 330–337 implementation, 339 motivated learning and behavior, 327 philosophy, 326 preK-12 classroom, 325 program exposure, 339 school climate, 329 values, 326 Positive action program, 650 Positive attitude, 1117 Positive Behavior for Learning (PBL), 728 Positive education, 68, 558, 559, 567, 568, 570 Positive ethics, 629–631 Positive psychology, 326, 871, 881 Positive Youth Development (PYD), 325

1161 Posthumanist ecologies, 767 Postmaterialism, 908 Postmaterialist culture shift, 907–910 Postmaterialist human development, 908 Postmodernization, 909 Post-pandemic education, 612 Postsecondary education (PSE) authoritarian nationalism, 785 Canadian context, 784 conscience saturation and influence, 786 educational failing, 785 holarchical phenomenon, 786 informative/transformative learning, 784 institutionalizing stupidity, 784 instrumentalist-inspired foundations, 785 instrumentalist vision, 784 materialistic paradigm, 786 metamorphosis, 785 mission sprawl, 784 practice of education, 784 societal integrity and balance, 786 widening gap, 785 Poststructuralist cultural theory, 938 Post-survey, 74 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 225 Power, 118, 508–509, 530 dynamics, 707 Power2Learn, 543–544, 547–548 Power2Teach, 544–546 Pre-conventional level, 443 Prediction errors, 181, 182 Predictive brain Bayesian, 227–228 in educational contexts, 230 educational research, 228–231 Predilection to value, 184 Pre-empt explicit, 925 Preference satisfaction, 906, 910, 911, 918 PreK curriculum, 336 Preschool program, 456 Presentism, 599 Pre-service teacher training programs, 864, 866 Pre-survey, 74 Preventing countering violent extremism (PCVE), 621 Primacy of morality, 760, 761 Primary school, 420, 422, 457–458 assessment test, 902 education, 309, 1002 PRIMED Institute for Character Education (PICE), 89 character education immersion, 89 Colombia (PICE-C), 91–92

1162 PRIMED Institute for Character Education (PICE) (cont.) evidence-based approaches, 90 team building, 89 PRIMED Retrospective Pre-Post (RPP) Test, 107–108 PRIMED Summer Institute in Character Education (PSICE), 90 Principal succession/turnover, 1091 Principal tenure, 1093 Prioritization, Relationships, Intrinsic Motivation, Modeling, Empowerment, and Developmental (PRIMED) Pedagogy, 491 in Colombia, 90 culminating conference, 93 data collection plan, 100–101 focus group, 101 immersive experience, 102–103 implementation support, 92, 93 pandemic related changes, 100–101 participant’s examples, 103–105 participant’s perceptions, 105 PICE-C, 97 PICE-C opening retreat satisfaction survey, 99, 100 principles, 88 professional development, 92, 93 research-based, 88–89 retrospective pre-post test, 107–108 satisfaction survey, 95–100 Pristine ego, 822 Privacy, 369 Private values, 384 Problem-based learning (PBL) appreciation of diverse perspectives, 704, 705 collaborative learning, 702 constant comparative method, 701 dialog, 703–704 dwelling with questions, 705 interpretations, 700 learning–teaching approach, 700 medical education, 708 modules, 700 research design and methodology, 700 rethinking power issues, 706, 707 small-scale research, 709 values, 701 whole person learning, 707, 708 Procedural formalism, 1078 Procedural knowledge, 1078 Procedural values, 595 Process-oriented assessment, 169 Process strategies, 532 Productive ambiguity, 706

Index Profession, 690 Professional agency, 311 Professional development, 741, 858, 860, 861, 864, 952, 962, 1026, 1123 Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC), 544, 551 Professional ethics, 382, 720, 722 Professional judgements, 720 Professional learning, 315 Professional preparedness, 988 Professional role of teachers, 382, 383 Professional skill, 407 Profile contrast, 158 Profound attentiveness, 843 Profound simplicity, 701 Programmatic curriculum, 597, 598, 600, 606 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 41, 42, 49 international assessment, 1125 ranking vs. schools’ self-ranking, 1125 scores, 571 Program planning, 891 Program sustainability, 1091 Progression, 81 Progressive development, 598 Project-based learning, 538–540 Project cycle, 890 Pro-social behavior, 966 Prosocial imagination, 140 Prosociality, 122 Pro-social organizations, 1001 Protective factors, 1000, 1001 Pseudonyms, 369 Psychic creation, 948 PsychINFO, 487 Psychism, 824 Psychoanalysis, 744 Psychoanalytic nihilism, 913 Psychological and intellectual needs, 456 Psychological dimensions, 814, 816 Psychological equilibrium, 457 Psychological growth, 663 Psychological outcomes, 980 Psychological power, 114 Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (PSSMS), 983 Psychological wellbeing, 674, 984 Psychology research, 812 Psychopathology, 1000 Psycho-social system, 663, 668 Psycho-somatic disorders, 827 Psycho-spiritual capacities, 192, 195–197, 202 PsycINFO, 484 Psy culture, 211 Public accountability, 1014

Index Public achievement, 1015 Public comments, 594 Public debates, 594 Public education, 557, 570 Public instruction, 684 Public performance/presentation, 536 Public recognition, 1104 Public schooling, 382 Public values, 384 Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre (PEEC), 836–838, 849–851 Pupil management, 387 Pupil voice, 389, 1062 Purposive sampling, 891 Q Quality conversation, 545 Quality education, 858 Quality learning, 899 Quality teaching, 3, 25, 587, 1058 Quantum entanglement, 827 Quantum mechanics, 786 Quantum physics, 815 Quarterly recognition programs, 1105 Quasi-Experimental Study (QES), 336 Quiet Revolution, 414 community, 416–417 counseling, 419–421 education methodology, 414 emotional stability, 415–416 school communities, 421–425 social awareness, 417–419 R Racial inequality, 669, 674 Racial inequity, 674 Racism, 670, 671 Radical active cognition (REC), 199 Radical discrimination, 916 Radical hope, 778, 851 Raja Tun Azlan Shah Secondary School, 901, 902 Ramifications, 498 Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) Belize City, 336 Chicago, 334–336 Hawai`i, 332–334 PA Implementation Coordinator, 333 SSLL programs, 333 Ranking, 927 Rational choice theory, 911 Rationalism, 1120, 1137 Rationalization, 509, 510

1163 Reading Newspaper Contest, 893 Real-life situations, 430 Reasoning, 433 Rebellion, 378 Reciprocal authority, 707 Red Cross, 15 Reductionism, 179 Reductive technicism, 1078 Refinement of character, 585 of desires, 462 of feelings, 462 of needs, 462 Reflection, 918 on transaction, 934 Reflective abstraction, 666 Reflective self-awareness, 1029 Reflectivity, 3, 6 Reflexive engagement, 770 Reflexive epistemology, 1081 Reframing education curriculum organization, 812 everyday ego and spiritual self, 822–824 healthy human brain, 817–819 holistic science, 827–828 human experience and understanding, 814–816 human health and wellbeing, 812 mapping personal development, 819–822 meditation, 825–827 school-age education, 829–830 schooling, 812 spirit of child, 813–814 wisdom, 816, 817 wisdom, ancient philosophy, 824–825 wisdom practices, 828 Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE), 621 (Re)humanize education, 612 Reimagining, 767, 775–778 Relational consciousness, 813 Relationality, 850 Relational ontology, 849–851 Relationships, 13–15, 120–121, 311–313 Relationships, Apprenticeship, Virtuous village, Ethical skills, and Selfauthorship (RAVES), 466 Relativism, 929 Reliability, 525–526 Religion, 194, 500, 507, 508, 510, 511 Religiosity, 499–500 Religious connotations, 690 Religious conversion experience, 796 Religious Education supplement, 414 Religious indoctrination, 826 Religious traditionalism, 165

1164 Remoteness, 741 Replicability, 875 Replication, 651 Reputation, 403 Research-based practice CEI, 641–644 character education, 641, 653 cognitive developmental approach, 646–648 economic life, 640 educational science, 653 moral development program, 644, 645 public service, 640 scientific knowledge, 640 21st century, 648–652 values clarification, 644–646 Research-based teaching strategy, 535–536 Researchers’ agenda, 369 Research–practice relationship, 652 Research vs. non-researched programs, 650 Resilience, 6, 44, 48, 53, 57, 60, 605, 675, 759, 1019, 1132 at-risk youth, 997 child’s life, 996 curriculum development, 1009 depression, 1004 development, 1000–1002 environment and student mental health, 1007, 1009 measurement, 1003, 1004 mental and emotional health, 997 mental ill-health, 998 negative development outcomes, 996 student wellbeing, 1002 Resistance, 378 Resource quilt, 675 ResourceSmart Schools (RSS) program, 962, 963 Respect, 152, 311, 1086 Responsibility, 1086, 1102 Responsible research, 621, 622 Responsive strategies, 1123 Restorative practices (RP), 726 adult vs. child perspective, 735 consistency, 734 context, 729–730 educational systems, 726 education goals, 727 equitable and positive approach, 726 goals, 726 implementation, 735 innovative concept, 727 learning environments, 728

Index methodology, 731 positive learning environments, 728 practice domains, 726 proactive intervention, 727 rationale, 730 research objective, 730 research questions, 730 results, 731–734 school climate dimensions, 735 school’s culture, 728 SES, 726 social and community norms, 727 social-emotional capabilities and wellbeing, 727 student’s character, 728 wellbeing pedagogy, 728, 735 whole school and community’ approach, 734 Retrospective pre-post-test (RPP) test, 107–109 Review-certification-adoption model, 649 Revolution of well-being, 915 Right conduct, 582, 583, 586, 587, 589 Right relationship, animals, 257 Rights respecting schools, 296–298 Rights Respecting Schools Award (RRSA), 296 RIMUP program, 901 Rohr, R., 472, 473 Role play acceptable parameters, 934 benefits, 932 definition, 932 play acting, 932 steps, 933, 934 Roshi, S., 473 Rural Adaptation Project (RAP), 336 Rydens School, 423 S Safety, 11–13, 54–57 at school, 57 nets, 675 Salutogenic model, 998, 1000 Saturation, 81 Scale of worth, 950 Scheduling shift, 1108 Schizophrenic identities, 769 School ambience, 11, 586 assessment, 89 atmosphere, 41 climate, 44, 77–79, 726, 732, 733, 735 coherence, 3

Index community, 246, 247, 259, 982 conflict avoidance program, 1098 connectedness (belonging), 44–45, 996 context, 848 culture, 364 curriculum, 398, 406, 408, 594, 598 demands, 376 environment, 730 experiences, 373–377, 1001 impact, 41–42 of joy, 465 leadership, 356, 732, 1091–1092 mathematics, 1114 participation, 1008 principal, 463 principal stability, 1091 routines, 369 systems, 237 and teachers, 283 without caning, 901 without classrooms, 901 School-age education, 812, 829–830 School-base curricula, 352 School-based outcomes, 428 School-based projects, 6 Schooling, 2–5 School-level data, 332 School-level strategies, 72 School Quality Surveys (SQS), 333 School-related systems, 712 School Report Card (SRC) data, 332 Schumacher, M., 540 Science asserting, 823 Science of education, 654 Scientific design, 487 Scientific enquiry, 825 Scientific knowledge, 827 Secondary school(ing), 422, 1120 Second-order learning, 289 Secular humanists, 791 Secularism, 498, 500, 502 Secularization, 500, 691 Sejahtera framework, 614–616 indigenous Malay concept, 613 physical and interactive component, 613 Sejahtera Academic Framework (SAF), 615 academic programs, 614, 615 accountability, 617 attributes, 616 ecosystem, 616 elements, 614 empowerment, 617

1165 flexibility, 617 formal curriculum, 618 generic framework, 615 impact, 618–623 innovation, 617 manifestation, 616–618 non-formal recreational activities, 617 non-formal student life, 615 pedagogical practices, 615 transformative education experience, 615 Selective retention, 655 Selective value-bias, 220 Self, 208, 232 Self-actualization, 141 Self-affirmation, 907 Self-assessments, 542 Self-authorizing, 804 Self-authorship, 133 Self-awareness, 25, 114, 163, 519, 1014, 1017–1021 Self certitude, 163, 168 Self-competence, 1006 Self-concept, 208, 326, 329 of ability, 1022 Self-confidence, 16, 210, 241, 1077 Self-conscious emotions, 210 Self-consistency, 328 Self-control, 825 Self-correct, 212 Self-destruction, 22 Self-determination theory, 46, 667, 674, 981, 989 Self-discipline, 461 Self-disclosure, 934 Self-education, 461 Self-efficacy, 43, 46, 168, 435, 501, 549, 1015, 1022, 1119 Self-empowerment, 328 Self-esteem, 210–213, 241, 283, 874, 1006, 1077 Self-evaluation, 354, 523 Self-expression, 909 Selfhood, 207 anti-self-realism, 211 self-talk, 208 self-understanding, 209 social psychology, 210 subjectivity, 208 Self-identification, 740 Self-integration, 663 Self-interest, 184 Self-knowledge, 209 Self-love, 477 Self-management, 3, 1058

1166 Self-mantra, 211 Self-promotion, 479 Self-protectionist ethic, 139 Self-realism, 209, 215–217 Self-realization, 195 Self-reflecting practitioner, 1025–1028 Self-reflection, 120, 153, 744, 745, 940 Self-regulation, 25, 114, 241, 283, 402, 663, 664, 674, 874 Self-reporting studies, 1118 Self-respect, 210, 1077 Self-satisfaction, 966 Self-separateness, 195 Self-study, 536, 538, 542 Self-sustaining system, 742 Self-system, 666 Self-theory, 213–215 Self-transforming, 804 Semester recognition program, 1105 Semiotic articulation, 948 Semiotic simulation, 916 Semi-structured interview, 668, 731 Senior citizen, 538–540 Sensations, 198 Sense of solidarity, 978 Sensitive issues, 357–359 Servant leadership, 163 Service, 15–17 Service agencies, 675 Service-learning, 207, 486, 561, 675–677, 742 academic class, 439 asset-based approaches, 435–436 broader theoretical framings, 433–435 community-based nature, 437 community service, 436 dynamics, 677 learning objectives, 437 moral development, 438 pedagogies of engagement, 430–431 positive effects, 429 program design, 626–628 (see also Servicelearning values) societal issues, 439 student impacts, 441 students’ assets, 437 students’ character, 429 subject-matter values education, 431–432 values-based program, 626 values development, 429 values education, 429, 439–441, 626 values statements, 629–637 whole-child approach, 439 Service-learning values individual experiences, 633 participant agency and creativity, 632

Index participants, 634 reflection sessions, 634 student applications, 633 time constraints, 634 Service to humanity, 672 Shadow morality, 754 Shapes learners, 160 Shared vocabulary, 423 Shelf-life fatigue, 221 Signature programs, 1109 Singapore citizenship training, 1048 economic growth, 1033 economic pragmatism, 1044–1048 education service, 1032 formal values education, 1032 global context, 1049 ideology and education, 1034, 1035 meritocracy, 1042–1044 multi-ethnic population, 1033 national values, 1032 political hierarchy, 1033 pragmatism, 1033 social cohesion and consensus, 1038–1042 social harmony and integration, 1039 social studies, 1037, 1038 transmission approach, 1049 values education, 1032, 1035–1037 values-transformation, 1034 young people, 1032 Singaporean community, 1049 Situatedness, 756 Skills, 368, 433 Skills for Successful Learning and Living (SSLL), 324–325, 327 implementation, 334 interventions, 337 long lasting impacts, 341 mechanisms, 338 moderating mechanisms, 339–340 Positive Action program, 324 Smart & Good Schools model, 533–535 character education, 531 character needed and developed from, teaching and learning, 537 character power for teaching math, 540–543 excellence and ethics assessment, 546–551 Power2Learn, 543–544 Power2Teach, 544–546 project-based learning, 538–540 research-based teaching strategy, 535–536 Small theory, 803 Sociability clusters, 740–744 cultural relativism, 747, 748

Index culture, 746, 749 ethics, 745, 746, 749–751 human knowledge, 743, 744 values education, 751, 752 Social awareness, 415, 417–419 Social, emotional learning (SEL), 490 Social/philosophical analysis, 721 Social and Character Development Research Consortium (SACDRC), 491, 492 Social and character development (SACD), 334 Social and emotional learning (SEL), 325, 560 Social behaviors, 183 Social change, 176 Social climates, 131, 136 Social-cognitive approach, 213 Social-cognitive learning theory, 536 Social cohesion, 75, 685, 978, 1036, 1038–1042, 1046–1048, 1057 Social connectedness, 672 Social connection, 198 Social constructiveness, 646 Social constructivism, 924 Social context, 82, 1001 Social control, 510 Social demands, 114 Social desirability, 443 Social development, 594 Social dimensions, 814, 816 Social dissonance, 947 Social-emotional and character development (SECD), 325 Social-emotional character, 428 Social-emotional competencies, 870 Social-emotional functioning, 121 Social-emotional learning (SEL), 68, 196, 486, 727, 871, 874, 881 Social-emotional meaning-making, 118–120 Social emotions, 113, 116, 117 Social engagement, 44, 56, 57, 198, 865 Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Scales: Measuring Increase in Competence (SEISMIC), 167 Social environments, 667, 858 Social health, 605 Social imagination, 310, 320 Social indicator research, 906 Social injustice, 858 Social integration, 820 Social interactions, 118 Socialization, 206, 498 process, 503–505 for values, 504 Social justice, 176–179, 216

1167 Social learning technique, 934 Social media, 23, 557, 856 Social relationships, 112, 118 Social resources, 1020 Social responsibility, 140, 1035 Social science, 178 Social Science Index, 487 Social sciences, 509 Social skills, 6, 25 Social structure, 979 Social studies, 924, 1037, 1038 Social transformation, 788, 800 Social wellbeing, 938 adaptive and mimetic concept, 906 analytical, 907 elements, 906 individualism, new age psychology and cultural semiotics, 912–916 intersubjectivity and dwelling, 917–920 Mitsein, 917–920 postmaterialist culture shift and subjective mental states, 907–910 reconstructive, 907 (see also Subjective wellbeing) Social work education, 719 Social worker’s identity, 719 Social work perspective, 722 Societal values, 1125, 1126 Sociocultural construct, 220 Socio-cultural context, 1122 Sociocultural openness, 161, 165, 167 Sociocultural theory, 883 Socio-ecological cooperation, 774 Socio-ecological paradigm, 998 Socio-economic status (SES), 120, 352, 726 Socio-economic systems, 285 Socioemotional convergence, 161 Socio-emotional intelligence, 439 Socio-emotional learning (SEL), 42–44, 49, 50, 58–60, 568, 586 Socio-emotional skills, 120 Sociological imagination, 721 Sociology, 621 Sociomoral capacities, 130 Socio-moral cognition, 428 Socio-pathological pressures, 23 Socio-political constraints, 766 Socratic circles pedagogy classroom discussion, 1060 concentric circles, 1061 education, 1054–1058 learning strategy, 1062 outcome focus, 1061

1168 Socratic circles pedagogy (cont.) school leaders and teachers, 1054 student voice and agency, 1062–1064 transformational dialogue, 1065–1066 values lens, 1064–1065 young people, 1054 Socratic disposition, 1059–1060 Socratic theory of knowledge, 1061 Soft despotism, 913 Soft relativism, 914 Soft skills, 520 Solution confrontation, 933 Sorrow, 508–509 Soundings, 310 Sound technique, 3 Special Interest Group (SIG), 814 SPICES, 614 Spiritual awareness, 823, 831 Spiritual beliefs, 116 Spiritual connections, 252–256 Spiritual development, 121, 122 stages, 823 Spiritual exercises, 828 Spiritual health, 622, 623 Spirituality, 30–31, 113, 116–120, 252, 254, 258–259, 453, 623, 813, 814, 816 child and adolescent developmental processes, 236, 238–239 developmental process, 194 experiences, 194 human existence, 193 human experience, 193 innate human capacity, 236 of teaching, 690 wisdom traditions, 193 Spiritual skills, 828 Spiritual values, 821 St. Michael’s Boys Secondary School, 899, 900 Staff resilience, 1003 Stallion and Outdoor Programs, 253 Stallion Program, 257 Static recognition, 943 Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS), 878 Stereotypes, 511 Stewardship, 246, 248 Stilling, 829 Stories advantages, 891 collection and systematic selection, 890 short-term and long-term project, 891 summative evaluation, 891 Stosovetovuchitelyu, 461

Index Straddling, 1073 Strengths-based approach, 83 Stress, 480 Structural universalism, 756 Structural violence, 775 Student achievement, 807, 861 Student(s) academic achievement, 441 agency, 1062–1064 attention, 8 awareness, 69 behavior, 57 beliefs, 1119 character disposition, 899 cognitive skills, 874 dis-engagement, 1131 engagement, 985 experiences, 254 impacts, 441–443 learning, 22, 29, 206, 230, 874, 1118, 1124, 1136 learning experiences, 741 misbehavior, 1104 moral development, 442 perceptions, 878–881, 976 performance, 1120 personal reflections, 876 reflections, 251 teachers, 862, 863 Student surveys, 73 resilience, 1003 responsibilities, 250 values, 1126, 1127 voice, 1062–1064 wellbeing, 1114, 1115 wellness, 594 Student-centered approach, 436, 437 Student-centered contexts, 925 Student-centered learning experiences, 596 Student-centered teaching, 1063 Student-teacher relationships, 15, 43 Student wellbeing, 26, 36, 41, 222, 229, 230, 598, 605, 968, 1002 academic achievement, 45–47 assumption, 812 attachment, resilience, safety and trust, 54–57 characteristics, 872 dimensions, 872 discourses, 871 domains, 872 educational contexts, 871 education practice, 40

Index epigenetics, brain plasticity, and development, 57–59 experience-dependent development, 40 pedagogy, 870 positive emotions, 872 school climate, 77–79 school impact, 41–42 school life and experience, 48 social and emotional aspects, 873 teacher support and caring, 42–43 teaching-learning context, 49 thinking types, 872 values education, 47–48 Study of lives, 663 Study of variables, 663 Sub-group analyses, 340 Subject-in-process, 947 Subjective mental states, 907–910, 917 Subjective wellbeing, 46 attenuation, 909 Cartesian model, 916 centrality, 910 happiness, 907 income growth, 909 index, 907, 909, 910 internal mental states, 907 methodological problems, 910–912 perspectives, 906 social indicator research, 906 Subject-matter values education, 431–432 Sublime, 240, 254, 255 Submissive absorbers, 597 Substantial majority, 491 Substantive moral values, 604 Substantive values, 595, 929 Sukhomlynsky, V.O., 465–467 approach to moral education, 464–465 educational approaches, 451, 455–456 educational point of view, 453 education process, 453 holistic approach, 452 methodology and technology, 452 middle school, 458–460 position, 453 preschool program, 456 refinement of feelings, 454 senior classes, 460–462 social conditions, 453 students’ schooling, 454 work school, 452 Summer Institute in Character Education (SICE), 90 Superficiality, 929

1169 Super-nova effect, 793 Supportive environment, 978 Surprise effect, 7 Sustainability, 770, 875, 957–959, 968 development, 285–288 education, 284, 288–289 environmental education, 284 Sustainable development, 151, 613, 615, 619, 623, 686, 958–960, 963–965 Sustainable Development Education (SDE), 774 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 281, 409 Sustainable leadership, 1092 Sustainable selves, 169 Sustainable wellbeing, 288 Sustaining climate, 135, 139–142 Sustaining economic development, 1045 Syllabus, 7 Symbolic mutations, 949 Sympathy, 416, 454 Synaptogenesis, 27 Systems of education, 816 System thinking/design, 801 T Tabiona environmental education, 249–250 environmental education program, 256 global studies, 254 relationships with animals, 250–252 school, 249 school’s co-curricular requirements, 256 school’s hiring process, 253 spiritual connections, 252–256 spirituality’s place, 255 Stallion Program, 250–251 Tape-record interviews, 861 Target children, 1100 Taylor’s inclusive ontology thesis, 787 Taylor’s open secular humanistic ontology belief/unbelief transcendence, 791 categories and challenges, 793 immanent order/closed secularism, 793 moral reasoning, 793 philosophical debate, 791 secular and sacred realities, 791 universal values, 794 Teacher, 462 awareness of oneness, 585 behavior, 979 commitment, 353–354, 357

1170 Teacher (cont.) culture of countries, 585 effectiveness, 857 environment, 586 exemplar, 584 head-heart-hands, 586 integrity, 978 knowledge, 861 modeling, 76, 1100 negotiation strategies, 1126 opinions, 1086 practice, 974, 978, 980, 984, 990 preparation, 944–946 professional learning, 799, 804, 806 reflection, 656 religion, 586, 587 self-transformation, 588 as stranger, 313 transformation, 584 role, 964, 1015, 1021, 1023 support and caring, 42, 43 values, 1122–1124 Teacher-directed learning, 43 Teacher education, 712, 719, 720 cognitive construct, 856 component of society, 856 explicit development, 856 investigation contextualized, 861 programs, 691 school’s context, 856 values education, 857–859, 862–865 Teacher ethics commitment, 353–354 ethical sensitivity, 354–355 and principals, 352 school-based curricula, 352 Teacher formation affective dimension, 694 affective education, 694 cognitive and skills components, 684 confrontational model of instruction, 692 contributions, 688–689 distortion of priorities, 695 education nature and goals, 684–687 elements, 692 human person and community, 684 Judeo-Christian believers and secularists, 692 parallel/integrated program, 694 profession and vocation, 689–691 reappraisal of apprenticeship, 693 student–teachers live, 693 younger generations, 691

Index Teacher in Role, 841 Teacher training conventional models, 861 moral dimensions, 860 mutual assistance, 861 problems, 860 programs, 865 single research project, 860 societal values, 859 values in action, 859 Teaching, 516, 517, 519, 537 community, 799 in Finnish schools, 355–357 math, 540–543 personal relationships, 390–394 profession, 692 style, 388 values, 383–387 values education, 720, 721 virtues, 383–387 Teaching Higher Education Certificate (THEC) program, 700 Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI), 804 Team building, 89 Technical and further education (TAFE), 1072 Technical and vocational education and training (TVET), 1072 Technical and vocational skills development (TVSD), 1072 Technical skill, 392 Technoscientific discourses, 766 Temasek Centre for Problem-Based Learning (TCPBL), 700 Tender Loving Beautiful Care (TLBC), 846 Tension, 480 Tertiary education, 1120 Test anxiety, 42, 43, 46 Testing, 545 Text-rich structuring, 312 The Australian Values Education Program, 5–9 The Divine Comedy, 476 The Integrative Ethical Education model (IEE), 132, 134 The Learning for Life research, 269 Thematic analysis, 877 The Normal school day, 372–373 The Ombudsman for Children, 295–296 Theories of mind, 670 Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), 225 The Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC), 535 Therapy culture, 211

Index The Stallion Program, 250 The Stockholm Resilience Center, 286 The University of Cambridge Primary School, 309 Three-dimensional inquiry space, 524 Toogoolawa School (Australia), 588 Total wellbeing diet, 915 Tourism, 1047 Trades, 1073 Traditional schooling paradigm, 745 Training, 106 teachers, 864, 865 Trait approach, 924–927, 934 Transcoding, 942 Transformation, 195 Transformational dialogue, 1065–1066 Transformational elements, 403–404 Transformative change, 948 Transformative educational experience, 616, 952 Transformative learning, 150, 151, 160, 168, 767 Transformative power, 240 Transmission, 386 Transmogrification, 1081 Transnational education (TNE), 773 Transnational systems, 772 Transpersonal learning, 804 Transpirational integration, 28 Transversal/soft-skills enrichment, 806 Traumatic experience, 796 Trial and error method, 653 Triune ethics meta-theory, 139 Trust, 54–57, 310, 311, 378, 472–473 Trustworthiness, 525–526, 877 Truth, 500, 582, 583, 586, 587, 589 Truth-seeking, 777 T-tests, 73 Turnover issue, 1092 Tutu, A.D., 474, 475 U Ubuntu, 669, 670, 776–777 Ukraine, 450, 451, 465 Uncertainty, 599 Unconscious incompetence, 75 Unemployment, 960 Unhappy moralist effect accumulated gains, 754 adults trap, 757–759 childhood, 757 conditions, 756

1171 domains of interests, 760 dynamic system model, 761 elements, 759 fare dodgers, 755 philosophical terms and psychological effects, 755 primacy, 760, 761 situational constraints, 761 Unified field theory, 585 Uniformity, 510 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 280 United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), 960 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 960 Unit of analysis, 952 Unity/internal integrity, 913 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1057 Universal spirituality, 583 Universal values, 522, 794 University Associate Network, 740 University-level events, 613 University of Illinois (UIC), 334 University Required Courses (UniCORE), 618, 619 Unnecessary clash of realities, 784 Upper Division Service-Learning Team (S-LT), 627, 628 U-shape approach, 800, 801, 803, 805, 806 Utilitarianism, 746 V Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE), 167 Validity, 525–526 Value base in teaching, 352, 357, 359 Value-choices, 223 Value-clarification models, 206 Value-embedded learning (VEL) AVEP, 222–223 Bayesian predictive brain, 227–228 concept, 221 educational research, 228–231 EVT, 224 human brain functioning, 220 learning and development, 221 learning brain, 224–226 moral learning, 220 moral values, 220 social and cultural factors, 222

1172 Value-embedded learning (VEL) (cont.) values to value, 223–224 wellbeing, homeostasis and interoception, 226–227 Value-judgements, 950 Value of respect, 862 Values, 149, 364–366, 368, 372–378, 563 absolutism, 925, 935 add on, 516 awards, 72 vs. beliefs, 1121 and capacities, 193 categories, 595 classroom activities, 858 clarification, 644–646, 859, 926–929 consciousness, 77, 192 continuum, 927 definition, 595, 856 and dispositions, 523–526 education, 150, 516, 518, 521 education curricula, 434 higher education and employment, 268 human behavior, 595 in human beings, 149 and ideals, 386 interpretation, 856 judgments, 521 language, 73–77, 521 learning, 517 learning and teaching, 516 in living, 613 locally owned language, 521–522 matrix, 192 metaphor, 516 moral value, 595 Pack, 72 pedagogy, 522–523 personal and public, 384 as relational, 862 Renaissance, 201 self and society, 195 student teachers, 862 teaching, 383–387 theorists and practitioners, 517 traits, 441, 444 in transition, 268 transmission, 859 values-laden, 518 values-oriented approach, 202 vocabulary, 78 young people, 856 Values and mathematics project (VAMP), 1122 Values-based assemblies, 403 Values-based assessment research, 166 Values-based atmosphere, 892

Index Values-based education/pedagogy, 40, 47, 48, 60 Values-based education (VbE), 22, 40, 47, 48, 60, 149, 613, 812, 813, 830 beliefs and values teaching, 151–153 BEVI (see Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory (BEVI)) culture, 403 educational philosophy, 408 emotional intelligence, 25 ethical education, 398 future, 408–409 gravity, 581 high-quality research, 581 home, 401–403 human engagement, 162 human values, 582, 583 HVE, 581 interpersonal relationships, 25, 407 inner curriculum, 580 journey, 399–401 leadership, 398 personal transformation, 581 philosophy and practices, 398 pre-K-12 environment, 162 principles and practices, 399 putative contention, 150 quality teaching, 25 relational cultures, 400 school’s curriculum, 398 school’s educational philosophy, 401 service-learning, 26 students, 405 TEACHER, 583–587 teaching, 151–153 teaching skills, 400 teaching profession, 580 TELA, 589 Toogoolawa School in Australia, 588 transformation, 399 transformational elements, 403–404 triadic relationship, 28 vacancy, 401 VbI (see Values-based intervention (VbI)) VEGPSP, 24 Values-based educators, 168 Values-based environment, 892 Values-based intervention (VbI), 164 backlash effect, 166–169 thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, 150 values-based learning, 166 Values-based learning, 584, 612 environments, 892 Values-based life, 119 Values-based pedagogy, 153, 870, 1016, 1058

Index Values education, 47–48, 51, 184–186, 444, 557–559, 565 actualization of values, 51, 52, 54, 57, 59 application, 751, 752 approaches, 432 Australia, 1114 Australian schools, 924 challenges and opportunities, 22–24 classroom, 863, 864 connection, 6 curricular content, 428 definition, 717 dialogue, 769–770 efforts, 428 engagement levels, 1065 government-funded projects, 1115 justifications, 206 label, 216 learning, 52, 54 literature, 717–719 methodology, 414 opportunities, 22–24 pedagogy, 2, 3, 1055, 1058 politico-historical moment, 770–773 post-apartheid transformation, 712 primary and secondary schools, 436 quality teaching, 596, 949, 1058 schooling, 2–5 schools, 414, 856 self-esteem, 211–213 self-understanding, 215 service-learning (see Service-learning) Singapore, 1032, 1035–1037 societal values, 1115 student-teacher relationships, 14 and student wellbeing, 22 subject-matter, 431–432 teacher education, 857–859 teacher effectiveness, 1116 teachers/social workers, 712 teacher training, 859–861 tolerance, 949 training teachers, 864, 865 training young minds, 420 values conversations, 414 Values Education Good Practice Schools Project (VEGPSP), 22, 24, 47, 48, 70 Values-education pedagogy, 1022 Values-focused pedagogies, 968 Value shift thesis, 912 Values in Action Schools Project (VASP), 69–73, 80, 82 Values in motion academic performance, 1029 citizenship education, 1023–1025

1173 emerging principles, 1014 intrinsic motivation, 1015, 1017 learners’ autonomy, 1014 learning relationships, 1020, 1021 moral agency, 1014 principles, 1029 self-awareness and learning, 1017–1020 self-evaluation, 1015 self-reflecting practitioner, 1025–1028 teacher/mentor’s role, 1021, 1023 Values-laden ambience, 4 Values-led structuring, 312 Values-oriented approach, 202 Values-oriented thinking adolescents’ conceptualization, 121 community organizations, 120 older adults, 120 socioeconomic status, 120 spirituality, 121–122 transcendence, 121–122 Values pedagogy, 10, 177, 184, 594, 596, 597, 605, 606 Australian context, 70–71 cluster, 72 cluster-level strategies, 71 co-design learning, 69 double helix, 5, 9–17 intra-and inter-personal situations, 68 language, 2 learning, 6 model behaviors, 69 parent surveys, 79–80 personal internalization, 69 principles, 70–71 program effects, 72 program implementation, 72 social and academic outcomes, 68 student surveys, 73 Verbal communication, 316 Verbal reasoning, 877 Versions of reality (VORs), 160 Victimization, 981 Violence prevention, 486 Violent extremism (VE), 621 Virtue ethics, 746, 750, 751, 939 Virtue of meritocracy, 1042 Virtues, 352, 357, 387, 388, 390, 393, 394, 523, 525, 1074 Aristotelian, 270 dispositions, 521 ethical theory, 269 ethics, 270 moral, 271 pedagogy, 385–387 phronesis, 274–275

1174 Virtues (cont.) Project, 582 and skills, 387–390 soft skills, 520 teaching, 383–387 and values, 268 Vision 1.0, 308 Vision 2.0, 319–321 Vision of education, 637, 788 Visitation procedures, 1089 Vocabulary, 403 Vocation, 690 Vocational and technical education and training (VTET), 1072 Vocational education and training (VET) critique, 1080 cultural context, 1081 education sectors, 1072–1074 limitations, 1072, 1079–1080 occupational practice, 1081 political contexts, 1081 value context, 1074–1076 value preferences, 1081 values learned and wellbeing, 1076–1079 Vocations, 382 Voice-inclusive practice, 1057, 1063 Volitional agency, 667 Vygotskian perspective, 931 W Watershed moment, 837 Watts, A., 472 Wellbeing, 226–227, 283 children’s and young people, 281–283 definition, 906 empirical studies, 906 multi-dimensional concept, 906 pedagogy, 728 PI, 881–882 social relationships, 918 Wellbeing education, 557, 558, 565–571 anti-bullying programs, 562 environmental education, 561 mindfulness education, 560 multicultural and global citizenship education, 562 positive education, 559 service-learning, 561 social and emotional learning, 560

Index universal patterns, 563 values/character education, 563 Wellness basic needs, 138 habitats, 138–139 informed classroom, 131 “We-relationships”, 907 Western civilization, 1120 Western psychology, 672 West Kidlington model, 414 What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), 649, 651, 652 What Works in Character Education (WWCE) project, 491–493 electronic data bases, 487 findings, 487–490 monographs, 488 in phase 2, 486 in phase 3, 487 SACDRC, 492 Whole community, 734 Whole institutional transformation (WIT), 623 Wholeness, 816 Whole school, 734 approach, 532–533 Wildlife Warriors, 740 Wisdom, 816, 817, 824–825, 828, 829, 831 seekers, 828 training, 31 Wisdom Practice Routine (WPR), 819 Word cloud, 863 Work-based learning, 1073 Working group, 1116 Work-integrated learning experience, 864 World Health Organization (WHO), 996, 1075 World Values Surveys (WVS), 907 Y Y-charts, 76, 927 Yorke Peninsula cluster, 740 Youth development, 996, 1001, 1007 Youth Social Action and Service, 273–274 Yuggera elders, 838 Z Zone of proximal development, 1118 Zoom based meetings, 101