PRIORITY 4:  Lifelong Learning and an Education in Values

In the twenty-first century schools and other educating institutions are being seen as having an important role in assisting young people, adults and the more mature members of the community to make sense of their world, make rational and informed choices about their own lives, accept responsibility for their own actions and understand and develop their personal and social responsibilities as a basis for a life in which they can exercise judgement and responsibility in matters such as those of personal and social relationships,  morality and ethics. Notwithstanding their acknowledgement of the primary role of parents in values formation, a number of countries, including Australia have begun turning their attention to the responsibilities of schools and other educating institutions and agencies in this important area of lifelong learning and are developing national policies and frameworks for various approaches to the implementation of the ideas of Values Education, their nature, aims and purposes. 

Values education programs have always been in place in some schools and school systems especially those schools that have evolved from commitments to particular religious or world views. However, in some countries and  school systems, especially those that emerged from the “free, compulsory and secular” Education Acts of the nineteenth century, values education has been a more controversial and contested field of educational endeavour. Some governments and systems have endeavoured to overcome these difficulties by advising or even prescribing official policies, statements or recommendations about what might be or should count as the values which they believe ought to be promoted and learned by students in their schools. These may be presented in such policy orientated ways as “Values Frameworks for Schooling” or seen in curriculum schemes, for example “Education for Democracy, Civics and Citizenship” and programs of learning activities, such as “Community Service Learning”.

When the Australian Government embarked upon the implementation of the Values Framework for Australian Schools, colleagues associated with the Centre for Lifelong Learning at ACU were asked to be associated with the Curriculum Corporation in the Values Education Good Schools Practice Project (Phase 1 and 2). Together with Professor Terry Lovat, Judith Chapman has co-ordinated the Universities Associates Network of university researchers who work with school clusters in the action research phase of the implementation process. Others associated with the Centre for Lifelong Learning who have worked on the project have included: Dr Pat Cartwright; Dr Marian De Souza; Professor Peta Goldburg; Associate Professor Maureen Walsh , Dr Elizabeth Labone and Dr Ross Keating. This work has issued in a number of book chapters, articles, and presentations at national conferences, such as the National Values Forums.