The fountain of character

A very useful contribution to the debate around character and values.  Many of the points resonate strongly with evidence emerging from our own work, and in particular around providing the space and opportunity for young people to critically engage with a wide range of values, to process these through experiential and meaningful learning and to filter, refine these to inform and shape their own character.  With regards the key question as to whether character can be taught, I find myself reminded of the phrase ‘character can not be taught, only caught’

If this is so then as is pointed out in this piece, the role of the educator is vital.  Whether they are consciously trying to impart character or not – they are.  This is why we have focus so much on ensuring educators are given the time and space to explore values  – their own, how they work, how they play out in schools and learning etc – for their own professional benefit ahead of pursuing poorly through through government mandates on values and character.  This is important stuff, but is in danger of going the way of other important stuff and being overly regimented into ill-conceived and poorly understood tick boxes.

It is great to know others are asking important critical questions about this.

The fountain of character.

via The fountain of character.

Implications for priorities within values education – process over content.

Stumbled across a brief references in the TES to some research from US that suggests children gain (learn) more from the behaviour of the adults around them than they do from what those same adults might ask them to do.  See https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/pupils-do-teachers-do-not-they-say-research-finds

Although only the briefest of articles and in full admission that I have not followed it further to the original research as yet, this seems to echo one of the findings from our own work and research around learning through values which is that the process is as important, if not more so than the content.

This has implications for those approaches to values education (or character education) that seek to impose values through pre-determined and often highly contrived content that is delivered through specific values/character sessions or interventions. Whilst we know such sessions can be documented and evaluated in then moment to have produced a perhaps desired outcome, there is still far less evidence available about the lasting legacy of such approaches. More to the point if the pedagogy chosen and the relationships employed in the process of learning do not match the content of such sessions then young people are among the first to recognise the hypocrisy and thereby reject the premise of the learning.

A process rich approach whereby educators model approaches to values through carefully selected pedagogies and through opportunities from across the curricula is, I would suggest, far more effective and though tangential and limited, this recent research would appear to suggest that there is something further to explore here.  The implications for CPD and for the shape of current and future values/character initiatives is significant, but the most striking thing for me is the reminder that those with the most work to do in this field are not the learners but the educators and the culture of the systems that they occupy and work within.

I am also reminded of the popular notion that values can not be taught, only caught – a simple way to capture this much more complex reality.

What is your experience? What are the implications for the quick fix responses now emerging for the teaching of “British Values”?

A caricature of character education? Morgan needs a broader vision

Another contribution to the wider narrative – including some very useful comments. Let’s keep the discussion alive.

IOE LONDON BLOG

John White

The Department for Education has just invited schools and other bodies to bid for money to support projects in character education. Since her appointment last July, Nicky Morgan has shown an especial interest in this area. In a recent talk at Birmingham University, she spoke of “ensuring that young people not only grow academically, but also build character, resilience and grit”.

She went on: “We want to ensure that young people leave school with the perseverance to strive to win…. We want pupils to revel in the achievement of victory, but honour the principles of fair play, to win with grace and to learn the lessons of defeat with acceptance and humility.” These values are reflected in the bidding invitation. Pride of place is given to perseverance, resilience, grit, confidence,

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Character Education is a Waste of Time

Some very useful contributions here to help those concerned about the growing move for the explicit teaching of character. The focus on humanity, experiential learning and the opportunities (time and space) that may exist with the current lifeworlds of the individuals and the school to explore, question, build and reflect on values underpinning character is most welcome and very much in tune with the approach we take through the http://www.learningthroughvalues.org project. All of our experience suggests that the imposition of values (or character) is a non-starter. This is about deep personal identity and being. There is a level of neglect in the way this is being approached by those with power in education at the moment and this is where I feel we get to the elephant in the room – power and the need and desire to control.
Society needs to be challenged and remodeled to reflect the changing realities of our liquid modernity – holding onto a past that has caused so many issues is misguided and short sighted and the imposition of those character traits that underpinned this is simply nonsense – unless of course you are one of the (increasingly) few who benefit from this.
We need an honest debate around these issues and not a short term election response from a dept that does not even know what values are and seemingly from the current funding process, even know what the school year is. Where is the sense in a grant to work with schools running April 2015 – April 2016 – which school year does that fit with? Nonsense.

Speak up, share other voices, create a broader narrative, join in.

Trivium 21c ltd.

One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts

Today I had the honour to debate the following at the Policy Exchange Think Tank in London: ‘Is Character Education a Waste of Time?’ This was further explained by the Chair, Jonathan Simons in this way: “The issue is… can we teach it [character] in the formal way, in the same way as we teach other subjects…?” (You can hear the debate on the audio link below)

This was my contribution:

I never thought I’d be sharing a platform with Toby Young let alone debating a motion where I am on the same side as him. Toby is an extraordinary character as is Anthony Seldon and James O’Shaughnessy, extraordinary characters all. I feel a bit of fraud, a walk on part, sharing the stage with these lead players in our national narrative.

I must admit to something, paradoxically, my day job is…

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Michael Rosen on Gove’s “British” values

Thanks to colleague Sheila Tucker for sending through a link to a Guardian article by Michael Rosen.  He deftly whips through Gove’s list of “British” values and in doing so raises some of the very real concerns that, in part at least, led me to start Values Soup.

What I like however is that it is not just a diatribe (there are plenty of those out there), but an enjoyable raising of key questions and in the last a recognition of precisely what we at Lifeworlds and Learning Through Values see as the key to all of this…

So, I look forward to these guidelines on British values, if only for the fact that it will give our children the chance to put them up for scrutiny. By the way, did it ever occur to you to call them just: “Values”?

…the need to drop the “British”, focus on values and develop the dialogue by better equipping teachers with the necessary time and space to better understand values for themselves.

 

 

The values metric and data heavy diets

We live in an era obsessed with measurement.  Just think about it.  Virtually every news item has some form of metric in it about growth, loss, comparison, change, targets and so on and it doesn’t limit itself to any one subject area either.  This is true of the economy, of education, of leisure, or sport and of virtually anything.  In fact watching the odd bit of the World Cup at the moment it is almost impossible to escape measurement and comparisons and I feel so much the better for knowing that Brazil have not lost a home international since 1975  – or do I?

I am not alone in thinking this and I have many colleagues within sustainability learning and global learning who are very familiar with the notion of trying to ‘measure what we value rather than value what we measure’ but there is still that obsession with measuring!  I found myself straying back into this mindfield yesterday evening when I ended up watching a Channel 4 documentary called ‘The World’s Best Diet’ which took a global look at 50 world diets ranking them from worst at 50 to best at 1.  The list was compiled based on a number of fixed criteria in consultation with nutrition experts looking at issues such as fat, salts, alcohol and ailments including cancer, stroke, diabetes, heart attack etc.  It was interesting (if light) viewing, but I found my mind back in the whole area of values and measuring.  A number of points triggered this:

The measurements used in the programme were based explicitly on health factors.  OK, but what about the impact of diet on the environment?  Many of the ‘best’ diets has a large proportion of fish in them for example, but there was no mention of the regular concerns voiced in the environmental media around declining global fish stocks and empty seas.  Another avenue not explored was that of diet and enjoyment?  I am reminded of an inspiring talk by an Indian professor (whose name escapes me at the moment) some 5 years ago at The Battle of Ideas who talked about economic growth and the rising middle class in India.  He told us that once Indian’s died from starvation and cholera but that now they aspired to die of diabetes, cancer or coronary heart disease!  I could go on – in short I found myself thinking about how do we measure ‘best’ in relation to this programme or anything for that matter.

Values are central to this for me.  What you measure (and how you present it) will depend on what you value?  So here we are existing in a world of data overload where statistics bombard us and compete for our attention, and all of these are value laden and values led.  Think about the debate on immigration that I am listening to right now on the radio in the background.  The data on immigrants shifted from 1.8 to 2.2 million in one sentence.  So which is it and why were both stated – what are they trying to do by using this data?  What is their frame?

 

So how do we measure values?

The complexity of values and measurement is fresh in my mind right now also because of the impending duty on schools to actively promote ‘British Values’.  This is apparently something that the inspectorate Ofsted will measure on their visits, but how do we even begin to measure values and what values lie behind this measurement anyway.  This is an open book for me and I know there are many others trying to evidence the impact (or otherwise) of values-led work in schools.  I look forward to these discussions and to the opportunity to try out new approaches, but I think central to all of this is to remember and reflect upon the values underpinning our desire to measure in the first place.  Data is noise and schools and education are a noisy places these days.  How do we cut through this and find the signal within the noise.  That depends on what you value perhaps.

From Plantation Thinking to Rainforest Thinking

This is precisely the sort of systems thinking that drives our work at http://www.lifeworldslearning.co.uk and through our projects such as http://www.learningthroughvalues.org.

I love the use of metaphor and especially so when drawn from the natural world that I think we have so often overlooked as a source of inspiration and learning. We have had rivers, rice paddies, coral reefs and our own learning through values tree (within the rainforest) and much of this pulls on eco-literacy thinking.
Wonderful to find this and makes useful reading in my current work on resilience and learning for which I had already begun turning to nature and rainforests in particular for some valuable insights.

teacherhead

An analogy I draw upon increasingly to help with my thinking about teaching, learning and school leadership, is the contrast between a plantation and a rainforest.  In general terms I feel that our entire education system is deeply inhibited, shackled and spoiled by Plantation Thinking. This affects government policy, school leadership and the day-to-day of classroom practice. The solution to a lot of our difficulties lies, I believe, in embracing another paradigm: Rainforest Thinking. 

First of all, let’s consider the characteristics of the plantation:

The mono-cultural world of a plantation.

The natural environment is heavily managed with interventions of all kinds to protect againsts pests and disease. There is a narrow view of what the desired outcomes are. Anything that grows outside clearly defined parameters is weeded out. It is important for all specimens to reach certain minimum standards but there is little or no room for diversity. This tendency…

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Character Education vis-a-vis Learning Through Values

One of the most often encountered challenges in our work around Learning Through Values is the idea that we are somehow seeking to impose a particular set of values upon those who work with us (whether teachers, pupils, parents or organisations).  Of course we are not value neutral, on-one is, and neither would it be true to say that we did not have our own ideas about the future we might want to share and the manner in which that might work.  But this is not unique to us.  Anyone engaging in any form of values related education, including those who choose not to engage in values, are making choices and actions based on values.

The key for me is to be open about this and to be willing to air and share your own values, but to give others the same opportunities.  This is what much of our work revolves around, providing the time and space for people to expose, explore and reflect upon their own values and those of others.  Through a process of dialogue and discovery, people frequently then come to have greater ownership of their own values, but to also recognise that there is often a common core of values that they share with others.  This participatory and empowerment approach is of course imbued with its own values and the framing that these have is in and of itself a challenge and research area that we continue to grapple with.

 

The problem with Character…

We find that the root of suspicion, concern or even outright rejection of the values pedagogies that we are developing and exploring is frequently based on them being seen as ‘character education’.  From where I stand this is a very different, but not completely separate, area of practice and research.  Most mentions of Character Education appear to be traced back to political or religious interests (sometimes both) and are about a certain set of character traits decided by a relatively small group as desirable and deliverable to a much wider group.  This is, I know a great oversimplification on one level, but is made because this is how many perceive it and how we are frequently labelled when talk of values is seen as synonymous with the more powerful voices around Character Education.  Note the recent British govt report on Character and Resilience for example – no mention of values in the headlines or title.

The dominance of Character within these discussions is largely as a result of interests in the USA and in schemes such as KIPP that has been on the radar of Gove and is, I suspect, at least partly behind recent announcements on schools promoting ‘British’ values.  This dominance extends to funding too, with much of the major work taking place on Character Education being funded by US-based interests who have pioneered research and development in this area.

Not everyone has been an avid supporter of Character Education however and in particular with the so-called ‘brainwashing’ that it suggests.  I came across this short blog (http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/05/20/problem-character-education) from the US via our friends at Character Scotland with whom we are having great discussions around these challenges.  An extract from the blog serves to illustrate part of this challenge:

“Parents nowadays are growing weary of government attempts to indoctrinate and condition their children according to statist principles. Endless class recycling initiatives, writing assignments on “social justice,” and even collective homework projects all aim to shape children in the progressive mold. In reaction, some insist they want schools just teaching knowledge and not delving into character, habits, and so forth.

Those are worthy sentiments, but they ignore the impossibility of teaching knowledge in a vacuum. What these parents really mean is that they want their children taught values that correspond with their own”

 

Character of Values

What I find most interesting about the above extract is the way it shifts into talking ‘values’ when critiquing character.  This gets to the nuts and bolts of the issue for me which is not to have a polarised view that it is either character or values, but to instead come together to more robustly explore these two approaches.  I feel that at the heart of this is to greater understand the character of values – how they work, where they come from, how they are influenced, framed and shaped, and how they inform our character which is to me the public face of our values.  In short I don’t think there is a ‘problem’ with Character Education, but rather a wider problem with the level and quality of public engagement and discourse around values, character, education, and most significantly what all of this is for?  What is the point?  What is learning for?

We will be holding discussions of this sort with Character Scotland and others in forthcoming events and would welcome other voices to work through this challenge and help to draw out the commonalities,  overlaps and distinctiveness of these approaches.  This is not about competition, but about clarity.  It is not about seeking any form of dominance over the language used to engage schools, but instead to explore those spaces that might be mutually beneficial and to expand each others horizons and extend our own learning further.

Get in touch through www.learningthroughvalues.org if you would like to contribute and get involved in the coming meetings.

 

 

 

 

Learning Through Values – reflections on the longest day…and the longest journey.

21st June 2014 and it is three years to the day since we held our first ‘Festival of Learning’.  The festival was titled ‘Transforming Education, Transforming Ourselves: inspirational spaces for learning and change’ and in some ways it was the first public outing for our work on Learning Through Values.  The event brought together a diverse range of educationalists from a range of subject areas and agendas as well as from across different organisations and phases of schooling.

What held the space was a shared concern with the changes about to come in education in England (the impact of the new coalition government was just starting to become clear at this point) and in particular about the values (though we weren’t explicitly using this yet) that were inherent to those changes. It was a transformational event for many of those there and certainly for me and for my organisation, Lifeworlds Learning, that had organised the festival as its first major community event.  It led to the first conversations around values and in turn this led to the formation of the Leading Through Values pilot project working alongside several partners who had been involved in the Festival and a follow up event in November 2012.

So much has happened in 3 years – the establishment of a new Learning Through Values community and website, the completion of the Leading Through Values pilot project, the development of new values professional learning opportunities, the emergence of new values work and connections in China, fledgling values partnerships with new organisations and authorities, and several new publications and resources for release in 2014-15 school year – and yet it sometimes feels we have gone nowhere!

The announcements just a week or so ago about the expectation for schools in England to actively promote ‘British values’ suggests that Learning Through Values as we perceive it has barely got off the starting blocks and that there is a long journey ahead.  Reassuringly, I believe we are now better equipped for that journey than we have been, and that we have some incredibly supportive and wonderfully challenging traveling companions.  It is not a done deal though.  We have a long way to go and the road ahead will be bumpy, will have its crossroads and dead ends, but the meandering and progress (no matter how gradual), will I believe continue to open up new and exciting avenues for learning and teaching and to inspire the resilient communities necessary to embrace and resolve the issues that will come their way.

If you’re new to this area of thinking and learning, then I warmly invite you to get involved and add your voice to the growing dialogue that has become the soundtrack for our individual and collective journey’s.  Now to enjoy a full 12 hours + of daylight!

“British values” and Global Citizenship: seeing the bigger picture

The announcement by UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove that all schools in England would be expected to “actively promote British values” from September 2014, has provoked an avalanche of comment with strong voices of support, but equally strong voices of dissent.  What has been largely missing however, is a balanced and rigorous debate.  Instead discussion has been dominated by personal opinions, attitudes and platitudes.  This is perhaps not surprising given the idea emerged in response to the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair in which a number of schools, centred on Birmingham, were accused of promoting (or at best failing to prevent) the spread of extreme Islamist agendas.  This is inevitably an issue that raises tensions and opinions, and immediately frames the use of (and reaction to) the term “British values” as used in the governments response.

I do not believe this is the sole explanation for the less than rigorous debate however.  I believe it is also partly due to an unfortunate by-product of values; a living contradiction that must be overcome in order for there to be informed and meaningful progress.  So what is this?  Well in simple terms, values are what motivate us and they reside for the most part within our deep sub-conscience.  They are rarely worn in public, but rather inform our public persona that comprises our attitudes, opinions and actions (what we think, say and do).  Our values tend to only become more visible when something stimulates or aggravates our deeper sub-conscience and brings them to the fore.  Such stirrings are often linked to emotion (an image or story that upsets, a work dilemma that angers for example) and are therefore often experienced as absolutes.  Values are the essence of who we are after all, so when felt, they are often felt strongly.  Most disagreements, conflicts and tensions (of whatever scale) can normally be related back to values clashes.

The living contradiction here, is that it is often precisely those moments at which our values motivate us to act with additional fervor that we need to be able to see beyond our own values; to better understand how they have been formed; and to more effectively engage with the values of others and the manner in which these are articulated and encountered.   But how do we do this?

Seize the moment.  Own the learning.
I have been engaged explicitly in the field of values and learning for the past 5-10 years, and without calling it that, for a good decade beforehand.  More recently I acted as the project lead for a national pilot project in English schools called ‘Leading Through Values’.  This was a collaborative action research/learning project developed by Lifeworlds Learning in partnership with Oxfam, British Red Cross, Think Global and Practical Action.  These five, very different organisations were drawn together by a common interest in the nature of values and how these connect to learning in formal schooling.  As organisations that are all variously involved in Global Citizenship, the project was also concerned with whether (and if so how) a focus on values could support and enhance such approaches.

The findings of the project and the implications for schools have been written up and shared in various forms and can be further explored at http://www.learningthroughvalues.org/projects.html, but two key lessons from the project and my wider engagement in values are pertinent to this piece.

The first relates to giving time to explore values.  Within the project, and subsequent professional training being used in schools, one of the most significant factors has been enabling school communities (leadership, staff, students and parents/carers) to explore values (their own and each others) and to become more familiar with how values work.  What this has revealed is that values are complex and varied for sure, but that there is also not as much disparity in values as might at first be assumed.  Instead it has been possible to identify significant common purpose informed by a largely shared set of values, and this has been used by schools as a driver for whole-school change, seizing the moment and building on this positive energy.

The second (and related lesson) is around the nature of learning – of what is learned and how learning happens.  Again, through the prism of values, schools (and specifically teachers) were asked to audit the learning in their schools against that needed to encourage those values they collectively held or aspired to as a community.  This takes the form of an appreciative enquiry, recognising what already exists, but providing an honest appraisal of what is missing.  Accepting the varied nature of individual schools, there is without exception a point within this process at which those involved experience a disconnect between what it is they are doing and what it is they say they are motivated to do.  Variously termed a ‘dissorientating dilemma’ or a ‘living contradiction’, the key at this point is to provide ownership of that challenge.  It can go either way here.  It is easy to become disheartened and to default to what we do in such circumstances, even if we know that is not necessarily what is right.  Education is rife with examples of this.  What is harder, slower, and certainly more challenging is to use this as a turnaround moment and to take ownership of the learning.  This will require change and it will take time, but it is an energising and ultimately rewarding process that has been shown to reinvigorate teachers and to inspire and motivate learning.

These then, are the two key lessons that inform this piece, and they were chosen with intent, because yet again teachers (and particularly those in a lead role) find themselves approaching a summer break from which they will return to another new requirement on their already overcrowded desks (especially so in September 2014).  This time it is this expectation that they should ‘actively promote British values’, so what exactly does that mean and what we can learn from our existing engagement in values and learning to inform and support schools in this.  More specifically how can we encourage them to seize the moment and own the learning that comes from it?

Seeing the Bigger Picture
My greatest frustration in the week or so since Gove’s announcement on British values has been the apparent inability of politicians and pundits to see the bigger picture.  In the same week as schools have been asked to promote ‘British’ values we have also had stories about ‘White British’ children underperforming relative to other ethnic groups, and heard about the challenges of getting ‘British’ workers to perform the same tasks as workers from East European nations.  So what are the very ‘British’ values that underpin all of this and are ‘British’ values that lead to underperformance in education and work really worthy of promotion?  I am being purposefully provocative here and I recognise that it is far more complex than this, but that is precisely my point.  There are those who will respond to the above with statements like “well that’s because they don’t have good values” and there is hidden in here some truth, but also a great deal of naivety.  No-one is devoid of values and indeed research suggests that there is considerable unity in a set of values held by us all, but enacted very differently according to our context and capability.

A grossly surmised analysis of these two related stories can help us to understand this for it is the “White British” working class children and unemployed from former industrial heartlands that appear to the focus of the aforementioned stories.  But are these not the very same industrial heartlands that made Britain “Great”; that fueled the empire through long hours of arduous work and toil?; that built resilient communities that stood together through adversity forming structures such as the currently struggling co-operatives?  I did say this was grossly surmised, but it hopefully illustrates the point that there is a much bigger picture to any discussion on values and that this discussion is rooted in and informed by our history, literature and art, through sport, landscapes and settlement patterns, and in great advances in science and innovation.  What motivated and continues to motivate all of these and what motivates the selection of what we choose to teach about this is all values laden and values rich.

So for educationalists, the call to actively promote values (I will come to the ‘British’ bit in a moment) might not be seen as another burden, but instead as a fantastic opportunity to engage in learning with new and reinvigorated eyes; to see values as integral to the lifeblood of the school and evident not just in what it chooses to teach but in how it chooses to deliver this and in the feel and ethos of the learning environment.  With schools expected to foster their own ‘local curriculum’ to sit alongside the national curriculum, a values approach provides enormous potential and once initiated is hard to disconnect from the knowledge-heavy foundations of the national curriculum.  Indeed I would suggest that using values in the local curriculum as a lens to interpret and connect to the knowledge of the national curriculum can do much to create wise learners capable of finding meaning and purpose for their education that exceeds that of the necessary grades to proceed in a target driven environment.

There is a big picture to values and learning, but the nature of the term ‘British Values’ risks this being obscured (intentionally or otherwise) by a parochial and patriotic shortsightedness that may only further the differences and alienation that apparently motivated its introduction in the first place.  Writing this on the day that England may well find themselves departing the World Cup party in Brazil, this is tantamount to a disastrous own goal in the first few minutes.

Britain: Island Nation or International Island?
So it is here that I turn to the most contentious element of the past weeks’ discussions – the nature of that term ‘British’ and just what are ‘British values’.  This has been the focus of much of the discussion and has to my mind distracted from the more necessary discussion around the interplay of values and learning as touched on above.  Concerns aside, it can not be ignored.

A YouGov poll carried out within a few days of Gove’s announcement revealed that 79 per cent of people felt that schools should explicitly ‘instill ‘British values’ in pupils,’ but interestingly the same poll went on to reveal that only 70 per cent (of the same sample) felt there were such things as distinctly ‘British values’ which already suggests the need to talk about this as 9 per cent of the sample think they should be instilled but don’t think there are such things.  Furthermore, if you dig into the poll data then there are some considerable questions to be asked.

I will focus on just one – the observation that opinion as to whether there are specifically “British values” varies considerably by age group.  Among the 60+ age group, 85 per cent of participants feel there are specifically ‘British values’, but this steadily declines to 75 per cent in the 40-59 year bracket and 58 per cent among those aged 25-39.  Within the 18-24 year bracket only 49 per cent felt there were distinctly British values, with 33 per cent believing they are much the same as in other countries and can not be specifically defined.  This is significant as it is the closest age group to those upon who these ‘British values’ are to be instilled.  It is also significant because it suggest there is room for a much wider discussion around values that is less ‘British’ in its outlook.

This is where Global Citizenship with its more global and holistic approach to thinking, learning and action has so much to offer to this debate and opportunity.  Unlike the knee-jerk reaction of ill-informed politicians, Global Citizenship has been shaped and reshaped by educationalists, with educationalists and for educationalists and has involved genuinely global dialogue.  There is also considerable evidence from schools that have engaged with such approaches of positive change in the very directions that the government is seeming to want out of this current crisis – greater understanding of diversity, greater responsibility for self and others, greater participation and empathy etc.

What makes it different to the response of government and to my mind compelling, is in how it positions Britain.  Whilst providing space for expressing identity as distinctly British, as part of an historic island nation, it places this within a very firm understanding of Britain as part of a global community replete with all of the messiness that this involves whether around trade, immigration, international relations, or a history of slavery and Empire.  But good learning is often messy so rather than ignore this, Global Citizenship embraces this as a rich context for learning and a meaningful conduit for young people to think, learn and act.

Moreover when combined with the more detailed understanding of values as introduced earlier in this piece, Global Citizenship becomes a vital ally to learning, enabling teachers and learners to access other voices, to think from varied perspectives, and to recognise similarities and more effectively understand differences.  The two create a powerful vehicle for whole-school change and  for creating the kind of wise learners that parents, teachers and learners themselves aspire to.  I find this approach to learning much more relevant and palatable than the potential of an isolated Britain upholding poorly considered “British values” that signify an international island mentality, refusing to accept our place within a changed Britain and an ever changing world.

Rob Bowden is the lead practitioner at Lifeworlds Learning and co-ordinator of Learning Through Values, a community space for dialogue and progress in values and learning.  To stay informed with  latest resources, releases and learning opportunities join the community free via rob@learningthroughvalues.org and to follow current discussions follow the Values Soup blog at https://ltvblog.wordpress.com/

This post was inspired by a conversation with colleagues and friends at Oxfam Education in response to the announcement on promoting British values.  The views expressed are entirely my own however.

See this post at Oxfam Education