Description
Some revision of public schooling history is necessary to challenge the dominant mythology that public schools were established on the grounds of values-neutrality. In fact, those responsible for the foundations of public education in Australia were sufficiently pragmatic to know that its success relied on its charter being in accord with public sentiment. Part of the pragmatism was in convincing those whose main experience of education had been through some form of church-based education that state-based education was capable of meeting the same ends. Hence, the documents of the 1870s and 1880s that contained the charters of the various state and territory systems witness to a breadth of vision about the scope of education. Beyond the standard goals of literacy and numeracy, education was said to be capable of assuring personal morality for each individual and a suitable citizenry for the soon-to-be new nation. As an instance, the NSW Public Instr- tion Act of 1880 (cf. NSW, 1912), under the rubric of “religious teaching”, stressed the need for students to be inculcated into the values of their society, including understanding the role that religious values had played in forming that society’s legal codes and social ethics. The notion, therefore, that public education is part of a deep and ancient heritage around values neutrality is mistaken and in need of se- ous revision. The evidence suggests that public education’s initial conception was of being the complete educator, not only of young people’s minds but of their inner character as well. Terry Lovat is Professor of Education and Pro Vice-Chancellor at The University of Newcastle. He is chief investigator on the Australian Government Partnerships Project in Values Education with the Australian Council of Deans of Education, and is a consultant on several other Values Education projects funded by the Australian Government. Ron Toomey is an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Australian Catholic University. He manages the Australian Council of Deans of Education Values Education Project as well as the research aspects of the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project for Curriculum Corporation Australia. Acknowledgements About the Contributors Introduction: Values Education – A Brief History to Today by Terry Lovat and Ron Toomey Chapter 1: Values Education and Quality Teaching: Two Sides of the Learning Coin by Terry Lovat Chapter 2: Perspectives from Research and Practice in Values Education by Neville Clement Chapter 3: Student Action Teams, Values Education and Quality Teaching and Learning – Case Study from Manningham Cluster, Victoria by Judith Chapman, Sue Cahill and Roger Holdsworth Chapter 4: Placing Values at the Centre of School Policy and Classroom Practice – Case Study at Modbury School, South Australia by Colin MacMullin and Lina Scalfino Chapter 5: Moving Values Beyond the Half Hour: Peer Leadership and School Vision – Case Study of Townsville Cluster, Queensland by Angela Hill and Malcolm Vick Chapter 6: Valuing Diversity in Children’s Voice – Case Study of the Western Australian Cluster by Kathryn Netherwood, Jenny Buchanan, David Palmer, Laura Stocker and Barry Down Chapter 7: Values and Quality Teaching at West Kidlington School, UK by Neil Hawkes Chapter 8: A Perfect Match: Living Values Educational Program and Adventura City of Excellence School, USA by Kathy Shea and Katherine Murphy Chapter 9: The Double Helix of Quality Teaching and Values Education and Its Implications for the Professional Lifelong Learning of Teachers by Ron Toomey References Subject Index Author Index
