Values Education as Good Practice Pedagogy: Evidence from Australian Empirical Research

Overview & Synopsis

This article focuses on the Australian Government's Values Education Program and, within its context, the "Values Education Good Practice Schools Project" (VEGPSP) Reports and the "Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience," funded federally from 2003 to 2010. Findings demonstrated the capacity of values education, properly implemented, to impact positively on a range of educational goals, emotional, social, moral and academic. On these grounds, it is argued that values education possesses largely unrealized potential to constitute good practice pedagogy. Furthermore, the article underpins these claims with recent insights from the neurosciences that explain in part why values education possesses such potential.