Values education as holistic development for all sectors: researching for effective pedagogy

The paper argues that values education has moved from being associated most heavily with the religious agenda of faith schools to being central to updated research insights into effective pedagogy. As such, it represents a vital approach to education in any school setting. The paper draws on an array of values education research and practice in making the case but centres especially on findings from a number of recent publicly funded projects in Australia with which the authors have been associated. Of special importance is evidence from the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project and the Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience that provide both anecdotal and empirical evidence that high quality values education contributes to holistic educational development, including academic advancement, of students across all school sectors.     

Crossing the Line

The paper charts the progress of the ‘Window Sills’ project in Exeter, UK which brings together artists, art students, cultural organisations, and the community in a plan for urban renewal. Seeking to loosen boundaries, it uses the idea of ‘thirdspace’ to question the notion of public and private space, using the city's and its river's constant changes as an analogy. The window and the window sill become the interface where the project seeks a transformational act in the lives of those involved by locating the experience in the local and the personal, although the implications cross much wider boundaries.