Aims to provide an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about the international concern for the nature, theory and practices of the ideas of values education and lifelong learning. Aspin from Monash University and Chapman from Australian Catholic University.

Some revision of public schooling history is necessary to challenge the dominant mythology that public schools were established on the grounds of values-neutrality. In fact, those responsible for the foundations of public education in Australia were sufficiently pragmatic to know that its success relied on its charter being in accord with public sentiment. Part of the pragmatism was in convincing those whose main experience of education had been through some form of church-based education that state-based education was capable of meeting the same ends. Hence, the documents of the 1870s and 1880s that contained the charters of the various state and territory systems witness to a breadth of vision about the scope of education. Beyond the standard goals of literacy and numeracy, education was said to be capable of assuring personal morality for each individual and a suitable citizenry for the soon-to-be new nation. As an instance, the NSW Public Instr- tion Act of 1880 (cf. NSW, 1912), under the rubric of “religious teaching”, stressed the need for students to be inculcated into the values of their society, including understanding the role that religious values had played in forming that society’s legal codes and social ethics. The notion, therefore, that public education is part of a deep and ancient heritage around values neutrality is mistaken and in need of se- ous revision. The evidence suggests that public education’s initial conception was of being the complete educator, not only of young people’s minds but of their inner character as well.

This book declares that lifelong learning teaches values and wholeness and rejects inert ideas or fragmentation. Education plays a vital role in reorganizing and revitalizing the abundant facts from the information explosion. Specialization works at cross-purposes with liberal arts education, which discloses a holistic vision of each person’s being.

Presenting Values Education as a solution to major challenges in education such as student disengagement and teacher burnout, this book provides a wealth of practical advice about how to implement the Education in Human Values approach in schools, promoting wellness and improved educational outcomes. Values Education is a world-wide movement and comes in several forms. This book explains the need for and nature of values education, provides practical, easy strategies for implementing the Education in Human Values (EHV) approach, and outlines the educational theories that underpin it. The practical strategies in this book can be implemented in small increments in all aspects of school life. The focus is on both student and teacher wellbeing. The methods can also be used by teachers to address their own professional and personal challenges and to help them cope with difficult situations that cannot be changed. Written for teachers, teacher educators, and teachers in training, this book is the one-stop-shop for gaining a better understanding of values education, how it can support whole-school wellbeing and how to implement it effectively.

In recognition of the need to adjust higher education to democratic societies’ needs, this book focuses on examples of educational practices concerned with developing the necessary lifelong learning skills for democratic citizenship in the information era, with an emphasis on teacher education. The practices presented in this book primarily address the integration of lifelong learning skills with democratic citizenship skills, encapsulated in the concept of ‘lifelong citizenship’.