Professional Learning
The Professional Learning section of the Values Education website will include sample activities, ideas for use in the classroom and examples of current research. Those marked NEW are the most recently added resources.
For further examples of professional learning visit Values for Australian Schooling resources, Articles, Lesson plans and activities, Survey and data gathering tools for values education and Values in action activities on this website.
Assessment for Learning
The Assessment for Learning Project provides professional advice and activity related to formative assessment.
Building Values Across the Whole School: Professional Learning Program
Building Values Across the Whole School: Professional Learning Program promotes teacher learning about values education and supports teachers as they impart values within all areas of the curriculum.
Calmer classrooms: A guide to working with traumatised children
Calmer classrooms: A guide to working with traumatised children (Child Safety Commissioner, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, June 2007)
This booklet is intended to assist kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers, and other school personnel, in understanding and working with children and young people whose lives have been affected by trauma, particularly by abuse and neglect. Calmer Classrooms encourages teachers to help traumatised children forge positive attachments to school through two key mechanisms: through understanding traumatised children and developing relationship-based skills to help them. Teachers who understand the effects of trauma on children’s education, who are able to develop teaching practices to help them, and who are able to participate actively and collaboratively in the systems designed to support traumatised children will not only improve their educational outcomes but will assist in their healing and recovery.
Case studies: Examples of Good Practice 2004
Case studies: Examples of Good Practice 2004 are case studies, with examples of good practice in values education, from schools which participated in the Values Education Study 2003.
Classroom Strategies
The New South Wales Department of Education and Training has a policy statement, Values in NSW public schools, which emphasises that values are taught in the classroom through all subjects. Some classroom strategies to help bring values to the surface are outlined (with examples) on the Department’s website.
Exploring the links between Values Education and Historical Inquiry
'Exploring the links between Values Education and Historical Inquiry' poses a set of guiding questions that outline a number of ways that values can be incorporated in historical inquiry and the ways historical inquiry can inform values education.
Talking Faiths is a collaborative project that supports intercultural and interfaith dialogue in communities and schools, using migration stories as bridges to increase interest and understanding. Two dialogue programs, Melbourne Interfaith and Intercultural Cluster Socratic Circles, and Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue, were documented in film, video and online discussion. The resulting materials have been structured to provide step-by-step guides to creating multi-faith and intercultural discussion.
 | Jonathan Walter, School Head of Middle School at Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne, has written a paper on ‘Increasing student engagement – the theory behind Learning Journeys’. Although not directly linked to the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools, The Learning Journeys Program is very much driven by the school’s vision and values, which focus on innovation, sustainable living and global understandings. Learning programs throughout the school very clearly encourage students to consider their contributions to the world and the values that drive them as people. Values education seems to be the core driver for this specific Year 9 program that embodies quality teaching and learning. |
Learning to Live Together
Learning to live together: an intercultural and interfaith program for ethics education (Interfaith Council on Ethics Education for Children, Global Network of Religions for Children, Arigatou Foundation, in cooperation with and endorsed by UNESCO and UNICEF, 2008)
Learning to Live Together is an intercultural and interfaith program for ethics education designed to help realise the right of the child to full and healthy physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development, and to education, as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), in Article 26.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in the World Declaration on Education for All, and in the Millennium Development Goals. Learning to Live Together is intended to be an adaptable resource for educators and youth leaders that can be used with children from many different cultural, religious and social contexts to nurture common values and a mutual respect for different backgrounds and traditions.
Student Wellbeing Action Partnership (SWAP)
Student Wellbeing Action Partnership (SWAP) promotes robust and evidence-based discussion connected to student wellbeing with a focus on Victorian primary and secondary schools. It is part of the partnership between the Catholic Education Office Melbourne and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. There are a number of resources for teachers with examples of how student wellbeing has been incorporated into a variety of school situations. Grouped within the Health-Promoting Schools model of school environment, teaching and learning, and partnerships there is information, research and interviews, including vodcasts on implementing values education.
Teachers TV Australia
Teachers TV Australia provides teachers and school administrators with professional development resources focused on classroom and school observation to illustrate how different teachers deal with challenges, ideas, problems, innovation and systems. Free registration will permit you to view two videos related to values education in Australian schools. ‘Interactive values’ concerns Wanniassa Hills School in the ACT using an Interactive Whiteboard to engage students in their own world of values education. ‘Supporting values’ is about the peer support program at Chapman Primary School in the, ACT.
Teaching FEARRR to Students
Teaching FEARRR to Students is a new educational model designed to assist teachers in guiding students confronted with immediate values issues as a result of current events, such as Asian aid, tsunamis, and the debate about refugees.
Teaching for Intercultural Understanding: Professional Learning Program
Teaching for Intercultural Understanding: Professional Learning Program supports teachers in educating about values in intercultural contexts. This values education professional learning resource draws on the intercultural understandings highlighted in the big book Side by Side and the online resource World of Values.
Understanding the Multifaith Classroom in a Secular Society: Teacher’s Resource Kit
Understanding the Multifaith Classroom in a Secular Society: Teacher’s Resource Kit, prepared by the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies Australia from the University of Melbourne for the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria and the Association of Independent Schools Victoria, and supported by the Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations as part of the national Values Education initiative.
This resource kit contains basic information about Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies Australia has attempted to provide balanced information about these three religions, sourcing them from reputable sources and experts from the different faith traditions.
Values activities for the geography classroom
'Values activities for the geography classroom', Jill Sykes, Interaction (Journal of Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria), Volume 33, Number 3, September 2005
This article from Jill Sykes, the Global Education Victoria Project Coordinator, provides some sample learning strategies for the geography classroom designed to provide opportunities for student to explore and articulate their values positions.
Values-centred Schools – A Guide
Values-centred Schools – A Guide is a website designed to support school leaders and schools in building a values-centred school culture using a whole school approach. It provides practical advice, case studies and resources gathered from schools which have implemented values education as part of the Values Education program. It is designed for schools starting to embed values education and schools looking to reflect and improve their practices.
Values Education in Australian Schools: Support Materials for Tasmanian Schools
Jan Kiernan has prepared a rich resource to support Tasmanian teachers in teaching values education, 'Values Education in Australian Schools: Support materials for Tasmanian Schools' (PDF 1MB).
Values for Australian Schooling Kit
Professional learning resources for primary and secondary schools have been developed for distribution to all Australian schools as part of the Values Education for Australian Schooling project. The Values for Australian Schooling Kit is an integrated package of resources for every school in Australia. The following elements of the kit are available for downloading from the website:
- a copy of the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools;
- Values for Australian Schooling Professional Learning Resources – Primary OR
- Values for Australian Schooling Professional Learning Resources – Secondary;
- Values Education Forums - Engaging your school community – a forum resources support booklet.
Values Education in Action
Values Education in Action: Case Studies from 12 Values Education Schools
Values in Education through Performance
Sue Cowie from Werribee Secondary College highlights drama as an effective model for the direct teaching of values in Values in Education through Performance.
Values in Mathematics
'Values in mathematics', David Leigh Lancaster, 2006.
David Leigh Lancaster has written a two-part paper on values in mathematics. The first part is a framework for values in mathematics and mathematics education that explores how values can be related to mathematics and mathematics education in, and through, three distinct but interrelated contexts: cultural and historical; socio-political; and individual. Part two looks at values in mathematics through a history and culture perspective.
Vodcasts
As part of a Values Education Professional Learning Program, funded by the Australian Government, a series of workshops were held in Queensland during 2009. Two vodcasts were made of presentations and are available on the Queensland Department of Education and Training website.
- Brenda Little from Beenleigh State High School (a school in the Values in Action Schools Project) discusses, in ‘Out of Apathy’, the way in which Service Learning, Circle Time and the Arts can be powerful vehicles for delivering values education.
- In ‘Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom’, Liz Fynes-Clinton talks about Philosophy in Schools and Socratic Circles as pedagogical approaches to values education. Liz was a teacher at Buranda State School where Philosophy in Schools has been practised for many years.