Authors:
Döring, A. K., Jones, E., Oeschger, T. P., & Makarova, E.
Goal of the study:
This study explored how UK primary school teachers promote values to their pupils, the strategies they use, and the challenges they face in integrating value education into the classroom.
Findings:
Teachers identified benevolence (caring for others) and universalism (fairness and acceptance) as the most important values to promote in school. In contrast, they saw values such as power (status and control) and achievement (proving superiority) as less important.
This is how teachers said that they promote values at schools:
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- Teachers as role models: Teachers promote values both through teaching and by demonstrating them in their daily behaviour. For example, children learn about the importance of kindness not just through lessons but by observing kindness in action.
- School ethos and leadership: A supportive school culture, led by headteachers, motivates teachers and fosters the promotion of positive values.
- Demonstrate real-world relevance: Connecting lessons on values to current events helps students see how values apply in everyday life.
- Understand values across the wider curriculum: Even in lessons not explicitly focused on values, students learn them indirectly (e.g., teamwork in maths or environmental care in geography).
- Promote values outside the classroom: Values are also reinforced during playtime, extracurricular activities, or school trips. Schools should structure these activities to support positive value development.
Teachers also reported experiencing challenges when teaching values to primary school children. For example, teachers noted that some values, such as universalism and self-direction, are harder for children to apply, even when they understand them in theory. These values can often seem abstract and require more concrete examples or real-life applications to make them relatable to young children. Teachers also noted that school-taught values sometimes conflict with those promoted at home, creating dilemmas for students.
Implications for Educators:
Policy and Curriculum Level
Recent research highlights promising routes to successfully promoting values, which many primary school teachers are following in their day-to-day practice already. Co-creating professional development opportunities and institutional support programmes for evidence-based values education can empower schools to incorporate values education effectively.
School Level
Headteachers hold a key role in fostering a positive school culture where the promotion of values is incorporated in daily life. This includes the school ethos as well as recognising the potential for non-classroom environments, such as playgrounds and extracurricular activities, in shaping pupils’ values.
Schools may provide teachers with opportunities to engage in an open dialogue with school leaders about challenges they experience when promoting values in the classroom, such as conflicts between home and school values.
Classroom Level
There is a wealth of opportunities for teachers to integrate values into everyday lessons and activities, connecting them to real-world examples to help make abstract concepts more tangible to students. Opportunities for values education often occur outside of structured lessons, and identifying these opportunities can strengthen the impact of values education.
Beyond teaching values explicitly, modelling values through their own behaviour, demonstrating their importance in practical, relatable ways is a particularly powerful way to promote values in the classroom.