Teaching Values

by Leonie Rowan, Judy Gauld, Jennet Cole-Adams and Andrew Connolly

Teaching values can be a delicate undertaking. We all have different values, and we all express our values in different ways. The importance that we place on particular values changes as we change. As Dr Leonie Rowan says in her introduction:

The relationship between our values and our life choices isn’t always entirely transparent. This is because most of us don’t carry around a fully articulated list of values, with an associated brochure indicating which behaviour best reflects each of these values! Values, in many ways, are implied, rather than explicit.

Teaching Values helps tease out the implied and the explicit. It leads teachers and their classes through an exploration of the commonality of values, and the varied ways in which we see those values in our daily lives. By using the vast resources of the National Museum of Australia, it challenges the usual images of values education and provides a fresh new set of texts to work with.

A collaboration between PETA, the National Museum of Australia and Dr Leonie Rowan, Teaching Values has been produced to help teachers to conduct their values-education classes in a way that expresses those values – with honesty, inclusion and respect.