The The Two-sided Coin of Values Pedagogy

Abstract

The article will explore the two essential elements, or “two-sided coin”, of values pedagogy, an approach to teaching and learning built around values. The two essential elements are referred to in the literature as implicit and explicit. The implicit element concerns the establishment of a safe, conducive, or values-filled, ambience for learning, while the explicit element concerns an approach to curriculum implementation that focusses on the meaning, or value, to be found in the content of curriculum, as against focussing principally on the more easily measured facts and figures. In a word, the explicit element renders a deepened intellectual engagement of the kind articulated in Habermasian epistemology. Evidence of the greater learning effect found in values pedagogy will be drawn from international literature, while grounded empirically in findings from the Australian Values Education Program.