Books
The following books, kits and units of work have been selected and reviewed for values-related content. Those marked NEW are the most recently added resources.
12 to 18: A qualitative longitudinal study of students, values and difference in Australian schools by Lyn Yates and Julie McLeod (Australian Curriculum Studies Association, 2007, ISBN-13: 978-1875864553).
This book reports on an eight-year study that followed a group of young people from four different schools from the end of primary schooling to first year post-secondary schooling. The study was interested in exploring difference in education and how it affected the development of the identities and aspirations of the young people, and how their individual and family qualities and values interacted with their particular school setting.
Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades by Mary Cowhey (Stenhouse, 2006)
A frenzied stomping of ants that have invaded Mary Cowhey’s primary classroom and the anguished protestations of one of the students lead Cowhey and her class on a journey to discover different beliefs on the killing of living things and the value (for humans and ants!) of taking personal responsibility. Cowhey writes with humour and insight into this and other challenges of helping young students to think critically and learn how to make connections between their lives, the books they read, the community leaders they meet, and the larger world.
Bullying Solutions: Evidence-based Approaches to Bullying in Australian Schools by Toni Noble, Helen McGrath, (Pearson Education Australia)
Australian research confirms that as many as four or five students in each Australian classroom are regularly bullied by other students. Bullying is now recognised as a human rights issue and a serious problem for everyone — for those who are bullied, those who take part in bullying, teachers, parents and the communities in which this antisocial and oppressive behaviour occurs. Bullying Solutions explores the issue of bullying in Australian schools as well as providing practical tools for action.
A copy of this book was sent to every Victorian school in 2006.
The Elephant Dilemma, (website), (Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future: A Multimedia Teacher Education program, UNESCO)
The Elephant Dilemma is series of classroom activities from UNESCO that explore sustainability values.
The Heart of the Matter: Character and Citizenship Education in Alberta Schools, (website), (Alberta Education, 2005).
This downloadable document provides guidelines for schools wishing to implement a character and citizenship initiative. Although written for schools in Alberta, Canada it provides a sample framework and practical advice that could be used by schools anywhere. Character and citizenship education is seen not as a course but as a way of nurturing positive attributes by ‘promoting, modelling, teaching, expecting, celebrating and consciously practising them in everyday actions. It is woven throughout the school day for all students, through classroom instruction, extracurricular activities, and school policies and practices’.
How to Inspire and Develop Positive Values in Your Classroom by Neil Hawkes (LDA, 2003, ISBN 1 85503 371 2)
How to Inspire and Develop Positive Values in Your Classroom is a practical tool for classroom teachers and principals to introduce and develop values education both in the classroom and across the whole school. Hawkes is ‘convinced that values education is the way to help our young people to grow into well-balanced individuals who can contribute positively to society’. This accessible book provides practical advice on being a positive role model, introducing a values-based curriculum, maintaining a positive reflective manner and developing reflective skills in students, and a model values education policy. Case studies and quotes enliven the text and there are a number of useful pro-formas.
How to Succeed with Developing Resilience by Jen Allen, Michele Murray and Kelli Simmons (Little Books of Big Ideas series, Curriculum Corporation)
Everyone has the innate capacity to develop resilience and the teacher can have a positive impact on each of their students. Taking personal responsibility for developing and nourishing resiliency and wellbeing is one of the primary steps in a systemic approach to building resilient school communities. The book explores a range of strategies for developing resilience in learners of all ages.
Human Rights Today: Discussing the Issues, Accepting the Challenge by Robert Baker, Beth Gilligan, Kathleen Gordon and Brian Hoepper (Curriculum Corporation, 2007, ISBN: 978-186366-642-8, SCIS: 1333 962)
Human Rights Today is a teacher and student resource developed by Curriculum Corporation for Amnesty International Australia to assist students in Years 9-10 to learn about human rights. Students explore how human rights are defined and formalised, how people experience their rights, how people and organisations defend human rights and actions students themselves could undertake to defend human rights. The resource uses an inquiry methodology to investigate issues such as child labour; the rights of Indigenous people in Australia; the rights of women and girls; and human rights and conflict.
NEW International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing by Terence Lovat, Ron Toomey, Neville Clement (Eds) (Springer, 2010, ISBN: 978 90 481-8674 7)
This handbook analyses values education in the context of a range of school-based measures associated with student wellbeing. Using research from around the world and examples of good practice, the handbook provides evidence of the beneficial effects of a ‘values and wellbeing’ pedagogy.
Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine by Peter Fitzsimons (Harper Collins)
Nancy Wake’s biography is recommended reading for senior students. KLAs: English, History and SOSE; with some careful selection this biography may also be suitable for Year 10 students.
Parenting for Character: Equipping Your Child for Life by Andrew Mullins (Finch)
Parenting for Character is filled with strategies, quotations, practical suggestions and testimonies from parents for building good values habits in families and in classrooms.
Philosophy in the Classroom by Ron Shaw (Curriculum Corporation)
What can The North Wind and the Sun teach us about power? What can a Bundle of Sticks teach us about cooperation? And what can The Lion and the Mouse teach us about kindness and favours? Lots it seems! Philosophy in the Classroom is a practical classroom text using 15 themes – including happiness, wisdom, self-reliance, vanity and judgement – to explore values concepts and ideas. The themes are based on stories from Aesop’s Fables and the stories are used as a springboard for deeper philosophical enquiry. Philosophy in the Classroom uses stories to philosophically engage students in understanding their world and themselves through thought, articulation and consideration.
Plays to Value by Bruce Shearer (Curriculum Corporation)
This book consists of three original plays written for primary school students to read, discuss and perform; The Cantankerous Caterpillar; Herbert the Friendly Ogre; and It’s So Hard to Be Perfect. Each play has an underpinning ‘value’ to be explored.
A Quiet Revolution: Encouraging Positive Values in Our Children by Frances Farrer, (Century, 2000, ISBN: 0712605770; compact edition FH Books, 2005, ISBN: 0955087902), (Search ISBN at DA Information Services)
Neil Hawkes, head teacher at West Kidlington Primary School in the UK, started a ‘quiet revolution’ by placing positive values at the heart of all the school activities whether academic or social. As Farrer writes, ‘Here, schoolwork, and the integrated effort towards harmonising timetable, pupil, teacher and school is seen to be working. If personal improvement is also perceived to be the development of the balanced, contemplative child who can assess situations and people from a position of security and with a degree of objectivity, well, what a bonus that would be! Then there would be the achievement of the objective, which could perhaps be said to be the happy, hardworking child, living and learning within a harmonious community. It would be unfair to claim that West Kidlington achieved this ideal with all of its pupils all of the time, but it is fair to say that it does so for many of them for much of the time, and that in itself is remarkable.’
A Quiet Revolution is an observational study of positive values at West Kidlington school that can be used as an inspirational and practical guide by school leaders, teachers and parents to make values education part of the ethos of their school community.
The Really Big Beliefs Project by Emma Barnard & Thomas Cho with help from Meredith Costain (Allen & Unwin)
The Really Big Beliefs Project is a lively student-centred approach to discover the major religions of the world. It offers many opportunities to explore ideas relevant to the Values Education program.
Reasons for Living: Education and Young People’s Search for Meaning, Identity and Spirituality - A Handbook by Marisa Crawford and Graham Rossiter (ACER Press, 2006, ISBN: 978-086431-613-4)
Reasons for living explores the place of the spiritual and moral dimension in young people’s lives and the links with education, including values education. Implications are considered for educating young people in meaning, identity and spirituality for general curriculum and religious education in public and independent schools. Examples of practical implementation of the theory are also given.
The Six Value Medals by Edward de Bono (Vermillion)
All educators and individuals interested in values education will be interested to learn of the latest contribution from this prolific author.
Steve Waugh presents Chase your Dreams - (kit with DVD/video, DEST)
In Steve Waugh presents Chase your Dreams, Father of the Year 2005, Australian of the Year 2004 and cricket legend Steve Waugh talks to famous Australian sporting and entertainment stars about the events that shaped their lives.
TAKING PARTicipation Seriously (NSW Commission for Children and Young People).
TAKING PARTicipation Seriously is a kit for organisations who want practical advice on how to involve children and young people in activities, events and decision making about issues that affect their lives. The kit is made up of different sections that can be downloaded from the NSW Commission for Children and Young People website.
Teaching Values by Leonie Rowan, Judy Gauld, Jennet Cole-Adams and Andrew Connolly (Primary English Teaching Association, 2007, ISBN 978 1 875622696))
Teaching Values uses a range of written and visual texts sourced from collections held by the National Museum of Australia to explore the nine Values for Australian Schooling. The book consists of a teacher section with chapters on each of the values and a student section containing the stimulus materials. Each chapter in the teacher resource introduces the value and the theme of the stimulus texts through which the value is investigated. The texts are placed within a learning sequence. Activities initially focus on current understanding of the value and then, through exploration of the texts and related activities, critically reflect on the value. Concluding activities provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate new understandings.
True Blue? On Being Australian, general editor Peter Goldsworthy (Allen & Unwin, 2008, ISBN: 978-174175-059-1)
This collection, gathered under the headings of People, Symbols, Place, Sport, and Words, draws together ‘novelists, journalists, poets, cultural icons, historians, commentators, photographers and painters, old voices and new voices, who reflect on the stories we tell about ourselves and the myths we cultivate’. True Blue? On Being Australian is an anthology designed for students of Senior English. Developed with the support of the National Australia Day Council, it was distributed to all secondary schools in February 2008. Teaching and learning activities to support the text have been posted on the NADC website. This text and the accompanying set of activities provide many opportunities for exploring values in the English curriculum.
Values Education and Lifelong Learning: Principles, Policies, Programmes by David N Aspin and Judith D Chapman (Eds.) (Springer, Series: Lifelong Learning Book Series, Vol. 10, 2007, ISBN: 978-1-4020-6183-7).
This book aims to provide ‘an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about the international concern for the nature, theory and practices of the ideas of values education and lifelong learning’. Each chapter is written by an international expert in the field and accounts are given of policies in various national contexts and a range of examples are provided of good practice in policies, programs and curriculum schemes from different schools, school systems and other educating agencies, institutions and organisations around the world.
Values Education and Quality Teaching: the Double Helix Effect edited by Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey (David Barlow Publishing, 2007, ISBN: 978 192133 300 2) draws on the outcomes of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stage 1 and the Values Education Partnership Project. The book presents six rich case studies on the relationship between values education and Quality Teaching.
Values Education, Quality teaching and Service Learning: A Troika for Effective Teaching and Teacher Education by Terence Lovat, Ron Toomey, Neville Clement, Robert Crotty, Thomas Nielsen (David Barlow Publishing, 2009, ISBN-13: 978 192133 321 7).
Lovat and Toomey have previously written on the ‘double helix’ effect between values education and quality teaching. In this book, which draws on research from the Australian Council of Deans Values Education Partnerships project and the Values Education Good Practice Schools project, both funded by the Australian Government, this metaphor for a mutual support structure is extended to that of a ‘troika’, a Russian sleigh drawn by three horses, the third horse being service learning. The three separate research and practice traditions – values education, quality teaching and service learning – can work together to form a powerful pedagogy for transformative learning.
Worlds of Difference: Exploring Worldviews & Values in English Texts by Julie Mitchell (The Council for Christian Education in Schools)
Julie Mitchell is a former English teacher with a long-standing interest in values education and worldviews. She has written three texts: Worlds of Difference 1: Exploring Worldviews & Values in English Texts, Worlds of Difference 2: Exploring Worldviews & Values in English Themes, and Teaching about Worldviews and Values.