what is the important of values education

Importance of Value Education

Value education permeates every facet of life, profoundly impacting individual and societal dynamics. This form of education, entrenched in ethics and principles, equips individuals with moral, ethical, and social values that play an instrumental role in personal and societal growth.

It’s undeniable that value education is fundamental to the overall development of an individual. It aids in inculcating moral standards, refining critical thinking abilities, promoting social skills, and encouraging active community involvement, thereby shaping a well-rounded individual.

What is Value Education?

Purpose, need, and importance of value education.

The primary purpose of value education is to equip individuals with essential moral and social values such as honesty, respect, responsibility, and kindness. These values shape individual character and significantly impact the way they interact with society.

The need for value education has become increasingly significant in our fast-paced, digital world, which often pushes ethical considerations to the sidelines. As societies become more diverse and complex, value education acts as a bridge, fostering understanding and acceptance among individuals with different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives.

The importance of value education is profound and far-reaching. From molding a person’s character to shaping their perspective about the world, value education plays a crucial role. It helps to cultivate a sense of social responsibility, creates an understanding of rights and duties, and promotes a spirit of tolerance and peace. Furthermore, value education is crucial in creating a society that values integrity and ethical behavior.

The Five Main Values of Education

Value education centers on instilling key virtues into an individual’s character. These main values, recognized and appreciated universally, form the foundation of a balanced and ethical life:

Responsibility

Value education puts a high emphasis on instilling a sense of responsibility in individuals. It encourages students to understand the consequences of their actions and decisions, and teaches them to be accountable for their choices. This sense of responsibility extends beyond personal interests and includes social responsibilities, making individuals aware of their role in the community and the importance of contributing to its welfare.

Teaching respect is another critical aspect of value education. This value goes beyond the basic etiquette of treating others well—it promotes genuine regard for all individuals, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs. It fosters a culture of understanding and acceptance, teaching students to appreciate diversity and treat others with kindness and consideration. A respectful approach to interactions creates a supportive, empathetic environment, promoting harmony and unity.

Value education encourages the pursuit of excellence. This value is not limited to academic achievement—it extends to personal growth, character development, and the pursuit of individual passions. By teaching students to strive for excellence, value education cultivates a growth mindset. It encourages students to continuously learn, improve, and strive to be their best, promoting resilience and determination.

Perseverance

Perseverance is a key value instilled by value education. It teaches students to remain resilient in the face of challenges, fostering a can-do attitude. Students learn to view failures and setbacks as opportunities for growth, not as roadblocks. This value equips them with the mental strength to overcome difficulties and persist in their efforts until they reach their goals. Through perseverance, students learn the importance of hard work and determination in achieving success.

Types of Value Education

Personal value education.

Personal Value Education focuses on the individual’s moral and ethical development. It encompasses values like honesty, integrity, responsibility, and respect for self and others.

Through activities like reflective discussions, ethical dilemma case studies, and personal goal setting, students learn to make moral decisions, understand the consequences of their actions, and cultivate a sense of personal responsibility. This type of value education forms the bedrock of an individual’s character and guides their actions and decisions throughout life.

Spiritual Value Education

This type of value education helps students explore life’s deeper questions, develop a sense of wonder and appreciation for the universe, and cultivate a mindset of peace, contentment, and holistic well-being.

Social Value Education

Social Value Education places emphasis on the collective over the individual. It includes values like teamwork, cooperation, mutual respect, and understanding. This type of value education aims to foster social cohesion and civic responsibility among students.

Cultural Value Education

Cultural Value Education teaches students to respect and appreciate diverse cultures and traditions. This type of value education aims to foster a global mindset and cultural sensitivity among students.

Activities include exploring various cultural histories, traditions, and customs, participating in multicultural festivals, and learning about global issues. This helps students develop a broad-minded perspective, promoting global unity and cross-cultural understanding.

Environmental Value Education

This type of value education integrates environmental education into all subjects, promoting activities like recycling projects, nature walks, and environmental campaigns. It aims to create environmentally conscious citizens who are proactive in tackling environmental challenges and promoting sustainable living.

Importance of Value Education in Various Contexts

Value education plays a crucial role across various spheres of life. Its influence extends beyond academic settings, into personal life and societal interactions.

Importance in School

Importance in personal life.

Value education extends into personal life, guiding individuals in their daily interactions and decision-making. It helps them treat others with respect, appreciate differences, and uphold ethical principles. This education gives them the ability to differentiate between right and wrong, encouraging responsible behavior. It equips individuals with the ability to approach conflicts with empathy, maintaining harmony in their relationships.

Importance in the 21st Century

In the modern era, value education holds heightened importance. The 21st-century world, with its diverse societies and complex challenges, necessitates individuals who possess not just academic proficiency but also social and ethical awareness.

Scope of Value Education

The scope of value education is vast and versatile. It transcends age barriers, providing continuous learning opportunities:

Early Age Training

The process of instilling values starts at an early age. Childhood is the most receptive phase of life, making it ideal for introducing value education. By imparting basic values like honesty, respect, and empathy early on, value education helps mold a child’s personality. It plays a pivotal role in shaping their future behavior and attitudes.

Student Exchange Programs

Workshops for adults.

Value education is not restricted to children or young students. Adults can also benefit from it. Adult-centered workshops on value education can help refine social and ethical understanding. They can provide insights into better interpersonal relationships, ethical decision-making, and societal responsibilities.

Difference between Traditional and Value Education

Traditional and value education serve distinct yet complementary roles. While traditional education focuses on knowledge acquisition, value education emphasizes ethical and moral values.

Conversely, value education focuses on shaping an individual’s character and moral compass. It instills values that guide personal behavior and social interactions, fostering an understanding of right and wrong, empathy, and respect for others.

While traditional education paves the way for professional success, value education ensures the development of moral integrity and social consciousness, necessary for a fulfilling life.

How Value Education Helps Attain Life Goals

By fostering essential values like determination, honesty, respect, and social consciousness, value education steers individuals towards the realization of their ambitions. It instills a sense of responsibility and integrity, essential traits for professional success.

Moreover, it cultivates empathy and understanding, promoting harmonious personal relationships. Value education, thus, facilitates the attainment of a balanced, fulfilling life.

Five Characteristics of Values Education

Enhancing moral standards.

A key characteristic of value education is its role in enhancing moral standards. Value education instills a strong sense of right and wrong, integrity, and fairness in individuals. It shapes their moral framework, influencing their choices and decisions. This ethical grounding helps them navigate life’s challenges with moral courage and integrity.

Encouraging Critical Thinking

Value education also encourages critical thinking. It urges students to question, analyze, and form their opinions rather than blindly accepting what they are told. This approach fosters intellectual independence and encourages students to reflect on their values and beliefs, promoting a deeper understanding of ethical and social issues.

Promoting Social Skills

Innovations in teaching methods.

Value education often involves innovative teaching methods. Traditional lecture-style teaching is supplemented with activities, discussions, role-plays, and real-life scenarios to make learning more engaging and effective. These interactive methods help students grasp the importance and practical implications of the values being taught, making learning more impactful.

Parental and Community Involvement

Finally, value education thrives on the involvement of parents and the community. It is not limited to classrooms but extends to homes and communities. Parents’ active involvement in reinforcing the values taught at school is crucial for students to internalize these lessons. Similarly, communities can play a pivotal role by promoting values like cooperation, mutual respect, and social responsibility. This comprehensive approach helps make value education more effective and enduring.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can value education contribute to personal growth.

Value education contributes to personal growth by instilling moral and ethical values that shape character and personality. It fosters a sense of responsibility, respect, and integrity, promoting a well-rounded development.

What is the Role of Value Education in Society?

How does value education impact decision making.

Value education impacts decision-making by guiding actions and behaviors based on moral and ethical principles. It encourages thoughtful consideration of consequences and promotes decisions that reflect respect for others and accountability for one’s actions.

Value education holds immense potential in shaping a well-rounded individual and a harmonious society. It equips individuals with the necessary tools to navigate life’s challenges, fostering resilience, empathy, and respect for diversity.

In a rapidly evolving world, the tenets of value education remain steadfast, guiding individuals towards fulfilling lives and contributing positively to society. It’s an investment that yields profound rewards, fostering a world built on respect, understanding, and harmony.

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Home  >  News & Articles  >  Importance of Value Education: Aim, Types, Purpose, Methods

Samiksha Gupta

Updated on 25th June, 2024 , 8 min read

Importance of Value Education: Aim, Types, Purpose, Methods

Importance of Value Education Overview

Value-based education places an emphasis on helping students develop their personalities so they can shape their future and deal with challenges with ease. It shapes children to effectively carry out their social, moral, and democratic responsibilities while becoming sensitive to changing circumstances. The importance of value education can be understood by looking at its advantages in terms of how it helps students grow physically and emotionally, teaches manners and fosters a sense of brotherhood, fosters a sense of patriotism, and fosters religious tolerance. 

"Value education" is the process through which people impart moral ideals to one another. Powney et al. define it as an action that can occur in any human organization. During this time, people are assisted by others, who may be older, in a condition they experience in order to make explicit our ethics, assess the effectiveness of these values and associated behaviors for their own and others' long-term well-being, and reflect on and acquire other values and behaviors that they recognize as being more effective for their own and others' long-term well-being. There is a distinction to be made between literacy and education.

Importance of Value Education: Goals and Objectives

This notion refers to the educational process of instilling moral norms in order to foster more peaceful and democratic communities. Values education, therefore, encourages tolerance and understanding beyond our political, cultural, and religious differences, with a specific emphasis on the defense of human rights, the protection of ethnic minorities and vulnerable groups, and environmental conservation.

Value education ought to be integrated into the educational process rather than being considered a separate academic field. The value of value education can be understood from many angles. The following are some reasons why value education is essential in the modern world-

• It aids in making the right choices in challenging circumstances, enhancing decision-making skills.
• It cultivates important values in students, such as kindness, compassion, and empathy.
• Children's curiosity is sparked, their values and interests are developed, and this further aids in students' skill development.
• Additionally, it promotes a sense of brotherhood and patriotism, which helps students become more accepting of all cultures and religions.
• Due to the fact that they are taught about the proper values and ethics, it gives students' lives a positive direction.
• It aids students in discovering their true calling in life—one that involves giving back to society and striving to improve themselves.
• A wide range of responsibilities come with getting older. Occasionally, this can create a sense of meaninglessness, which increases the risk of mental health disorders, midlife crises, and growing dissatisfaction with one's life. Value education seeks to fill a void in peoples' lives in some small way.
• Additionally, people are more convinced and dedicated to their goals and passions when they learn about the importance of values in society and their own lives. This causes the emergence of awareness, which then produces deliberate and fruitful decisions. 
• The critical role of value in highlighting the execution of the act and the significance of its value, education is highlighted. It instils a sense of ‘meaning' behind what one is supposed to do and thus aids in personality development.

Also read more National Education Day and Women's Education in India .

Importance of Value Education: Purpose 

Value education is significant on many levels in the modern world. It is essential to ensure that moral and ethical values are instilled in children throughout their educational journey and even after.

The main goals of value education are as follows:

• To make sure that a child's personality development is approached holistically, taking into account their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs
• Instilling a sense of patriotism and good citizenship values
• Educating students about the value of brotherhood at the social, national, and global levels
• Fostering politeness, accountability, and cooperation
• Fostering a sense of curiosity and inquiry about orthodox practices
• Teaching students how to make moral decisions and how to make good decisions
• Encouraging a democratic outlook and way of life
• Teaching students the value of tolerance and respect for people of all cultures and religions.

Read more about the Importance of Books  and Distance Education Universities .

Importance of Value Education: Scope 

The scope of value education is as follows- 

• To make a positive contribution to society through good living and trust. 
• Moral education, personality education, ethics, and philosophy have all attempted to accomplish similar goals. 
• Character education in the United States refers to six character education programs in schools that try to teach key values such as friendliness, fairness, and social justice while also influencing students' behavior and attitudes.

Also read more Best Distance Education Institutes .

Importance of value education: types , cultural value.

Cultural values are concerned with what is right and wrong, good and evil, as well as conventions and behavior. Language, ethics, social hierarchy, aesthetics, education, law, economics, philosophy, and many social institutions all reflect cultural values.

Moral Value

Ethical principles include respecting others' and one's own authority, keeping commitments, avoiding unnecessary conflicts with others, avoiding cheating and dishonesty, praising people and making them work, and encouraging others. 

Personal Values

Personal values include whatever a person needs in social interaction. Personal values include beauty, morality, confidence, self-motivation, regularity, ambition, courage, vision, imagination, and so on.

Spiritual Value

Spiritual worth is the greatest moral value. Purity, meditation, yoga, discipline, control, clarity, and devotion to God are examples of spiritual virtues.

Spiritual value education emphasizes self-discipline concepts. satisfaction with self-discipline, absence of wants, general greed, and freedom from seriousness.

Social Value

A person cannot exist in the world unless they communicate with others. People are looking for social values such as love, affection, friendship, noble groups, reference groups, impurity, hospitality, courage, service, justice, freedom, patience, forgiveness, coordination, compassion, tolerance, and so on.

Universal Value

The perception of the human predicament is defined by universal ideals. We identify ourselves with mankind and the universe through universal ideals. Life, joy, fraternity, love, sympathy, service, paradise, truth, and eternity are examples of universal values.

Importance of Value Education in School

The inclusion of value education in school curricula is crucial because it teaches students the fundamental morals they need to develop into good citizens and individuals. Here are the top reasons why valuing education in school is important:

• Their future can be significantly shaped and their ability to discover their true calling in life can be helped by value education.
• Every child's education begins in school, so incorporating value-based education into the curriculum can aid students in learning the most fundamental moral principles from the very beginning of their academic careers.
• Value education can also be taught in schools with a stronger emphasis on teaching human values than memorizing theories, concepts, and formulas to get better grades. The fundamentals of human values can thus be taught to students through the use of storytelling in value education.
• Without the study of human values that can make every child a more kind, compassionate, and empathic person and foster emotional intelligence in every child, education would undoubtedly fall short.

Importance of Value Education in Personal Life

We all understand the value of education in our lives in this competitive world; it plays a crucial part in molding our lives and personalities. Education is critical for obtaining a good position and a career in society; it not only improves our personalities but also advances us psychologically, spiritually, and intellectually. A child's childhood ambitions include becoming a doctor, lawyer, or IAS official. Parents desire to picture their children as doctors, lawyers, or high-ranking officials. This is only achievable if the youngster has a good education. As a result, we may infer that education is extremely essential in our lives and that we must all work hard to obtain it in order to be successful.

How Does Value Education Help in Attaining Life Goals?

Education in values is crucial for a person's growth. In many ways, it benefits them. Through value education, you can achieve all of your life goals, and here's how:

• It helps students know how to shape their future and even helps them understand the meaning of life.
• It teaches them how to live their lives in the most advantageous way for both themselves and those around them.
• In addition to helping students understand life's perspective more clearly and live successful lives as responsible citizens, value education also helps students become more and more responsible and sensible.
• Additionally, it aids students in forging solid bonds with their relatives and friends.
• enhances the students' personality and character.
• Value-based education helps students cultivate a positive outlook on life.

What are the types of value education opportunities? 

After understanding the significance of this important topic, the next step is choosing the type that best meets your needs. The teaching of values can start at a young age (in primary school) and continue through higher education and beyond. Understanding the various opportunities available to you will make it easy to find the right fit. 

Early Age Training

Value education is now being taught in many primary, middle, and high schools all over the world. The best way to learn the skills taught in this training is to be taught how important it is from a young age. 

Student Exchange Programs

One of the best ways to teach students about values and foster a sense of responsibility in them is through student exchange or gap year programs. Student exchange programs are another exceptional way to experience various cultures and broaden your understanding of how people behave and function. This is a fantastic chance for first- and second-year undergraduate students.  

Workshops for Adults 

People who are four to five years into their careers frequently show signs of irritation, unhappiness, fatigue, and burnout, which is a worrying statistic worth noting. As a result, the relevance and significance of education for adults is a notion that is currently steadily gaining support within the global community. 

Methods of Teaching Value Education

Teaching value education can be done using a variety of methodologies and techniques. Four of the many are the most frequently used. They are

• Methods used in classroom instruction include direct instruction, group discussions, reading, listening, and other activities.
• This method includes a practical description of the strategies. It is an activity-based method. This practical knowledge improves learning abilities and helps people live practical lives on their own.
• Socialized techniques: These involve the learner participating in real-world activities and encounters that simulate the roles and issues that socialization agents face.
• The incident learning approach enables the examination of a particular event or encounter in the history of a particular group.

Related Articles-

Traditional Education Vs. Value Education

 Both traditional education and values education are important for personal development since they help us establish our life goals. However, although the former educates us about social, scientific, and humanistic knowledge, the latter teaches us how to be decent citizens. In contrast to traditional education, there is no separation between what happens inside and outside the classroom in values education.

Key takeaways

• The discipline of value education is essential to the overall growth and learning of students.  
• You can acquire all the necessary emotional and spiritual tools for use in a variety of situations by realizing its significance. 
• You can apply the lessons over the course of your academic career. Additionally, there are special education options available for a particular age group. 
• One of the best ways to get the most out of your educational experience is to combine the two types of value education training. 
• It's also crucial to remember that value education is a continuous process that extends outside of the classroom.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 main values of education.

Ans. There are five fundamental approaches to values education, according to Superka, Ahrens, and Hedstrom (1976): inculcation, moral development, analysis, values clarification, and action learning.

What is value education?

Ans. An individual develops abilities, attitudes, values, and other types of positive behavior depending on the society he lives in through the process of value education.

Why is value education important?

Ans. Every person must ensure a holistic approach to the development of their personality in regard to the physical, mental, social, and moral aspects. It gives the students a constructive direction in which to mold their future, assisting them in growing in maturity and responsibility and in understanding the meaning of life.

Does value education increase emotional intelligence (EQ)?

Ans. Yes, value education has been shown to boost emotional intelligence (particularly when given at a young age). For a variety of personal, academic, and professional opportunities, EQ is a crucial factor that is evaluated.

Will I learn how to socialize better if I study value education?

Ans. Yes, you will. You can develop a fresh perspective on people and groups from various communities and professions with the aid of value education. This aerial perspective of various people is a great way to hone your socialization abilities.

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Understanding the Importance of Values Education in Modern Society

Values education is an essential aspect of a person’s growth and development. It refers to the process of teaching and learning about the principles and beliefs that guide an individual’s behavior and decision-making. In today’s modern society, values education has become more important than ever. With the rapid pace of change and the increasing complexity of social issues, it is crucial for individuals to have a strong foundation of values to guide them through life.

Values education is not just about teaching young people what is right and wrong. It is about helping them develop a deep understanding of their own beliefs and values, and how these can influence their actions and decisions. Through values education, individuals learn to respect the diversity of perspectives and beliefs, and to appreciate the importance of empathy and compassion in building strong relationships with others.

In this article, we will explore the importance of values education in modern society. We will discuss how values education can help individuals navigate the complexities of modern life, and how it can contribute to the development of a more just and equitable society. We will also examine some of the challenges and opportunities in implementing values education in different contexts, and highlight some best practices that can help ensure its success.

What is Values Education?

Definition and meaning.

Values education is the process of inculcating moral principles and ethical values in individuals. It is a holistic approach to education that aims to develop the whole person – the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. It involves the cultivation of virtues, character traits, and moral reasoning that will guide individuals in their interactions with others and their environment.

It is important to understand values education because it is a vital component of personal and social development. It shapes an individual’s worldview, attitudes, and behaviors, and influences their decision-making processes. In today’s complex and rapidly changing world, values education plays a crucial role in preparing individuals to navigate the challenges they will face and to contribute positively to society.

Values education is not limited to formal educational settings. It can occur in various contexts, such as family, community, and religious institutions. It is an ongoing process that continues throughout an individual’s life, as they encounter new experiences and form new relationships.

Different Approaches to Values Education

There are various approaches to values education that are employed in modern society. These approaches include religious and moral, secular and humanistic, and cultural and societal approaches.

Religious and Moral Approaches

Religious and moral approaches to values education emphasize the importance of religious teachings and moral values in shaping an individual’s character and behavior. These approaches often rely on religious texts and teachings to guide the development of values and ethics.

Secular and Humanistic Approaches

Secular and humanistic approaches to values education focus on the development of ethical and moral values without the influence of religious beliefs. These approaches often emphasize the importance of individual autonomy, critical thinking, and personal responsibility in shaping one’s values and beliefs.

Cultural and Societal Approaches

Cultural and societal approaches to values education recognize the influence of cultural and societal factors on the development of values and ethics. These approaches emphasize the importance of understanding and respecting cultural differences and social norms in shaping an individual’s values and beliefs. They also highlight the role of social institutions, such as family, education, and media, in shaping societal values.

The Benefits of Values Education

Personal development, self-awareness and self-esteem.

Values education plays a crucial role in promoting self-awareness and self-esteem among individuals. By exploring and understanding their own values, students develop a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world. This increased self-awareness helps them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, which in turn fosters a sense of self-esteem and confidence. As a result, they are better equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities that they encounter in their daily lives.

Responsibility and self-discipline

Values education also fosters a sense of responsibility and self-discipline in individuals. Through the exploration of ethical dilemmas and moral decision-making, students learn to take ownership of their actions and their impact on others. They develop a strong sense of personal accountability and learn to make choices that reflect their values. This sense of responsibility and self-discipline is essential for success in both personal and professional life.

Emotional intelligence and empathy

Finally, values education helps to develop emotional intelligence and empathy in individuals. By exploring the values of others and the impact of their own actions on others, students learn to understand and appreciate different perspectives. This develops their ability to empathize with others and to navigate interpersonal relationships with sensitivity and compassion. Emotional intelligence and empathy are essential skills for building positive relationships and for leading fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Social Development

Values education plays a crucial role in promoting social development by instilling essential life skills and promoting positive behaviors in individuals. The following are some of the benefits of values education in promoting social development:

Cooperation and Collaboration

Values education encourages individuals to work together and collaborate towards a common goal. It promotes teamwork and helps individuals to understand the importance of collective efforts in achieving success. Through values education, individuals learn to appreciate the contributions of others and to work towards a common objective.

Tolerance and Respect for Diversity

Values education also promotes tolerance and respect for diversity . In today’s society, people come from diverse backgrounds, and it is essential to understand and appreciate different cultures, beliefs, and values. Values education teaches individuals to respect and appreciate diversity, which is crucial for promoting social harmony and peace.

Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility

Values education also promotes civic engagement and social responsibility. It encourages individuals to take an active role in their communities and to be responsible citizens. Through values education, individuals learn about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and the importance of participating in the democratic process.

In conclusion, values education is essential in promoting social development by instilling essential life skills, promoting positive behaviors, and fostering cooperation, collaboration, tolerance, and respect for diversity. By promoting these values, individuals can contribute positively to their communities and society as a whole.

Educational Development

Values education plays a crucial role in the overall development of a student. It is important to understand the various benefits that values education can bring to the educational development of a student.

Academic Achievement and Critical Thinking

Values education can improve academic achievement by instilling a love for learning and a desire to seek knowledge. By developing critical thinking skills, students can analyze situations, make informed decisions, and solve problems effectively.

Creativity and Innovation

Values education encourages creativity and innovation by promoting self-expression, imagination, and creative thinking. This can lead to the development of new ideas and solutions to problems, which can benefit society as a whole.

Life Skills and Career Readiness

Values education also helps students develop essential life skills such as communication, collaboration, and empathy. These skills are essential for success in the workplace and can help students navigate their careers with confidence and success.

Challenges in Implementing Values Education

Integration into curriculum.

Integrating values education into the curriculum of modern society poses a significant challenge. The main issue lies in balancing values education with academic subjects. It is essential to strike a balance between the two, as students require a comprehensive education that encompasses both knowledge and values.

Moreover, overcoming resistance from parents and educators is another hurdle. Parents may argue that their children’s time is better spent on academic subjects rather than values education. Educators may also resist integrating values education into the curriculum due to a lack of resources or training.

However, despite these challenges, it is crucial to integrate values education into the curriculum . Values education can provide students with a strong foundation for their future success and help them become responsible citizens. Therefore, it is essential to find ways to balance values education with academic subjects and overcome resistance from parents and educators.

Ensuring Quality and Consistency

Ensuring quality and consistency in values education is a critical challenge that needs to be addressed. This is because the effectiveness of values education depends on the quality of the curriculum, the training of teachers and educators, and the assessment tools used. Here are some ways to ensure quality and consistency in values education:

Training Teachers and Educators in Values Education

Teachers and educators play a vital role in implementing values education. They are the ones who deliver the curriculum and help students develop values. Therefore, it is essential to train teachers and educators in values education to ensure that they have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach values effectively.

Training should focus on the following areas:

• Understanding the principles and concepts of values education
• Developing lesson plans and activities that promote values development
• Using appropriate teaching methods and strategies to engage students in values learning
• Creating a supportive classroom environment that encourages values development

Developing Standards and Assessment Tools

Developing standards and assessment tools is crucial to ensure that values education is of high quality and consistent across different schools and educational institutions. Standards provide a framework for designing and implementing values education programs. They help ensure that the curriculum is comprehensive, relevant, and effective in promoting values development.

Assessment tools, on the other hand, help measure the effectiveness of values education programs. They provide feedback on student learning and enable educators to adjust their teaching strategies to better promote values development. Assessment tools should be developed based on the standards and should measure the specific values and competencies that are being targeted in the curriculum.

In conclusion, ensuring quality and consistency in values education is essential to achieve its goals. By training teachers and educators in values education, developing standards and assessment tools, and providing appropriate resources and support, we can ensure that values education is effective in promoting the development of responsible and ethical individuals who can contribute positively to society.

Strategies for Effective Values Education

Holistic approach.

Incorporating values into all aspects of education is a crucial component of effective values education. This approach ensures that students are exposed to values in a comprehensive manner, which helps them to develop a holistic understanding of the importance of values in their lives. The following are some of the ways in which a holistic approach to values education can be implemented:

• Integrating values into the curriculum: One way to integrate values into all aspects of education is by incorporating them into the curriculum. This can be done by including lessons or activities that focus on specific values, such as honesty, respect, or responsibility. By incorporating values into the curriculum, students are exposed to them in a structured and intentional way, which helps to reinforce their importance.
• Incorporating values into extracurricular activities: Another way to integrate values into all aspects of education is by incorporating them into extracurricular activities. This can include sports teams, clubs, or other organizations that students can participate in. By incorporating values into these activities, students are exposed to them in a more informal setting, which can help to reinforce the importance of values in their lives.
• Emphasizing the connection between values and academic success: A holistic approach to values education also involves emphasizing the connection between values and academic success. By demonstrating how values such as responsibility, integrity, and perseverance can help students to achieve academic success, students are more likely to see the value in incorporating these values into their lives.

Overall, a holistic approach to values education is essential for ensuring that students are exposed to values in a comprehensive manner. By incorporating values into all aspects of education, students are more likely to develop a strong foundation of values that will serve them well throughout their lives.

Collaboration and Partnerships

Working with parents.

Parents play a crucial role in shaping their children’s values and beliefs. Therefore, it is essential to involve them in the values education process. This can be achieved by providing them with resources and tools to help them facilitate discussions on values with their children. Workshops and seminars can also be organized to educate parents on the importance of values education and how they can incorporate it into their daily lives.

Community Organizations

Community organizations, such as religious institutions, schools, and youth organizations, can also play a vital role in promoting values education. These organizations can provide a platform for children to learn about values and engage in discussions with their peers. Collaborating with these organizations can help create a comprehensive values education program that reaches a wider audience.

Government Agencies

Government agencies can also support values education by providing funding and resources for programs that promote values education. They can also work with schools and other organizations to develop curricula that incorporate values education. Collaborating with government agencies can help ensure that values education becomes a priority in the education system and that it is given the recognition it deserves.

Fostering Dialogue and Engagement

To ensure that values education is effective, it is important to foster dialogue and engagement among stakeholders. This can be achieved by organizing forums and discussions where parents, community organizations, government agencies, and educators can come together to share their ideas and perspectives on values education. By encouraging open dialogue, it is possible to create a shared understanding of the importance of values education and how it can be incorporated into various aspects of society.

Continuous Improvement and Evaluation

• Regularly reviewing and updating values education programs : To ensure that values education remains relevant and effective, it is essential to regularly review and update the programs and curriculum. This may involve assessing the needs of the students, the changing social and cultural context, and advances in research and best practices. By regularly updating the values education programs, educators can ensure that they are delivering the most relevant and impactful content to their students.
• Gathering feedback from students, parents, and educators : Effective values education requires ongoing evaluation and feedback from all stakeholders involved. This may involve soliciting feedback from students, parents, and educators to gauge the effectiveness of the program and identify areas for improvement. This feedback can be used to refine the curriculum, adapt teaching methods, and address any challenges or concerns that may arise. By actively seeking feedback from all stakeholders, educators can ensure that the values education program is responsive to the needs of the students and the community.

1. What is values education?

Values education is the process of inculcating and nurturing moral values, ethical principles, and social norms in individuals. It is a holistic approach to education that focuses on developing the character and personality of a person, rather than just imparting knowledge. Values education helps individuals understand the importance of moral values and ethical behavior in their personal and professional lives.

2. Why is values education important in modern society?

In today’s world, values education is more important than ever. The rapid pace of change and the increasing complexity of social issues require individuals who are equipped with strong moral values and ethical principles. Values education helps individuals develop a strong sense of social responsibility, empathy, and respect for others, which are essential for building a just and harmonious society. It also helps individuals make informed decisions and take appropriate actions in their personal and professional lives.

3. What are some of the key values that should be taught in values education?

Values education should include a broad range of moral values and ethical principles, such as honesty, integrity, respect, compassion, empathy, responsibility, and social justice. These values are essential for building a just and harmonious society, and they provide a framework for individuals to make informed decisions and take appropriate actions in their personal and professional lives.

4. How can values education be incorporated into the education system?

Values education can be incorporated into the education system in various ways, such as through curriculum development, teacher training, and extracurricular activities. It can be integrated into subjects such as history, literature, and science, and it can be taught through interactive activities, role-playing, and real-life examples. Schools and educational institutions can also collaborate with community organizations and local leaders to promote values education and create a supportive environment for students to learn and grow.

5. What is the role of parents and families in values education?

Parents and families play a crucial role in values education. They are the primary educators of their children and have a significant impact on their moral development. Parents can promote values education by setting a good example, providing guidance and support, and creating a positive family environment that encourages the development of moral values and ethical principles. They can also engage in family activities that promote values education, such as volunteering, community service, and discussions on social issues.

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The Importance of Values Education

Posted on: April 3, 2024

This paper was written by Roger Gordon Packham , Western Sydney University, Associate Professor, and presented at the Oxford Roundtable on Education in July 2023 . Professor Packham is co-editor of How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing.

Values education is needed for the traditional reasons of education people of character who will ensure a harmonious society, one that can deal in better ways with many of the current social issues and helps to promote the wellbeing of all. Notwithstanding this vital rationale, it is also my contention that the issues of the Anthropocene (the current geologicale age, the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on the Earth, are dramatic and require a values-based approach if they are to be improved such that human and all other life can be sustained. Such issues must be addressed urgently; education holds a key role if society as we know it is to be sustained rather than doomed. 

The place to start is with our own view of human nature. As humans are complex creatures with a good side and a not-so-good side, the questions is: which side do we turn to? Educators need to support the positive view of humankind, that humans are more cooperative rather than competitive, that human kindness and altruism can change how we think and act, as a foundation for achieving true change in our society. This is a key aim of values education, to stand up for human goodness despite the cynicism that this may bring out in others, and the fact that it may need us to stand up against the 'powers that be' since it can threaten their powers.

This more realistic view of human nature has major implications for how young people are educated to this truer view of humankind. What is needed is a change that is rooted in the hearts and consciences of individuals - their innate values. There is a need for a values education that draws on the good work that is already being done and expands it, not as a separate speciality within education, but as a responsibility of all of society, enabling all educators to incorporate values into the whole school environment.

This was the aim of the Australian Federal Government project that ran in the early 2000's and demonstrated many benefits. So how might incorporating values education into schools be developed further today? All teachers are aware of the need to address all three learning domain areas - the affective as well as the cognitive and the psychomotor competences - to achieve a holistic education for their students, with holistic education seen as the development of the physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of a person in an integrated way. However, impediments to teachers introducing values and Character Education in their classrooms include time and curriculum constraints, yet often more importantly, a lack of understanding about exactly what and how to teach in the area of values education. Teachers may be overwhelmed with trying to understand the deeper meanings of desired values, so often they give up, or only pay lip service at a surface level, rather than getting to the deeper understanding that is what brings about changes in students (and themselves).

However, there are many opportunities to teach the principles of human values through all curriculum subjects and topics, with the added advantage that schools do not have to abdicate in any way their responsibility to teach the academic (cognitive) and other skills; however, it does require that they rethink the ways in which they do this.

Two key aspects involved in implementing values education:

• A language of values
• A framework for acquiring values

Every subject taught has a basic vocabulary, a language which expresses, defines, and captures the scope and uniqueness of that particular subject area. Values education is no different; it also needs a vocabulary which allows people to manipulate and tease out an understanding of vlues through an awareness of social behaviour, emotions, and other affective domain issues.

A framework that enables this to be done effectively is the Education in Human Values (EHV) programme. The EHV model is based on eliciting five human values that are seen as universal and inter-dependent, that are already inherent in all of us, and that are traditional to most cultures: Truth, Right Action, Peace, Love and Non-violence. The framework allows for schools/teachers to identify the values that are important for their contexts and wider culture.

A fundamental principle of EHV is that all teaching needs to be based on Love and that the teacher's example in 'living' the values is the most critical component. 

The goals of EHV are:

• To bring out human excellence at all levels: character, academic, and 'being', leading to self-awareness, self-confidence, self-motivation and being 'fully' conscious.
• The all-round development of the child (the heart as well as the head and the hands).
• To help children to know 'who they are'.
• To help children to realise their full potential.
• To develop attitudes of selfless service.

There are several teaching approaches that are particularly useful in drawing out the values inherent within children. Here is an overview of the five key ones:

• Silent sitting, which has some commonalities with the currently popular practice of mindfulness. Silent sitting refers to encouraging pupils to sit quietly and allow their minds to relax for a few minutes, particularly at the beginning of a lesson, to make them feel more focused and peaceful. Often this time is used to listen to soft, relaxing music. Silent sitting is frequently combined with guided visualisation, which can be used in various ways to promote students' understanding of and reflection on their own values.
• The use of quotations or positive affirmations, based on the idea that students' thinking can be influenced by regular exposure to positive statements. The teacher can select quotations that are relevant for the child's age, interests, and culture. Quotations can be displayed every day and used as a basis for discussion, or dimply be left for the students to read for themselves.
• Encourage teachers to utilise opportunities to tell stories and anecdotes about famous people, heroes, and ordinary people who have demonstrated the kinds of values under consideration. By regular exposure to stories of such people, and reflection on the values portrayed in relation to their own lives, the pupils will come to value the good qualities described and then to use them as a framework to drawn on when the need arises.
• Music and song are valuable ways of promoting inner peace and emphasising postive values. These days, with concerns that young people are exposed to many negative values through song, there needs to be counterbalancing by the use of music and songs that promote feelings and celebrate aspects of the five key human values.
• By the careful selection of appropriate examples and recognition of 'teaching opportunities' to promote values education without needing to make any changes to the syllabus.
• By addressing contemporary problems that exist in schools, such as discipline problems, pupils refusing to work, bullying, and lack of respect for authority. The EHV programme empowers teachers to examine themselves and to think about how they might be able to reflect the major human values in their own behaviour, particularly their interactions with students and colleagues. In do doing, they can enhance their own mental health and wellbeing, their resilience to cope with the sresses of teaching, and improve the ways in which their pupils respond to them.

These concepts are expanded, described, and discussed in our forthcoming book "How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A simple guide to the 'Education in Human Values' Approach", Packham, R, Taplin, M., and Francis, K. (Eds), Routledge, 2024.

Bregman, Rutger (2020) Humankind: A Hopeful History, Bloomsbury, publishing, London,UK.

Ellis, E. C., (2018) Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions), Oxford University Press, Oxford

Lovat, T., Clement, N., Dally, K., and Toomey, R. (2011) The impact of values education on school ambience and academic diligence, International Journal of Educational Research. 50, 3, pp. 166-170

Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Clement, N., and Daly, K. (2023) Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing, Springer.

Packham, R., Taplin, M., and Francis, K., (Eds.) (2024a) Chapters 1 and 2, In: How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK.

Packham, R., Taplin, M., , and Francis , k. ,(Eds.) (2024b)  Ch. 4&8, In: How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK.

Packham, R., Taplin, M., , and Francis , k. ,(Eds.) (2024b)  Ch. 11, In: How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK

Packham, R., Taplin, M., and Francis, k. ,(Eds.) (2024d) Introduction, In: How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK.

Packham, R., Taplin, M., and Francis, k., (Eds.) (2024e) Ch. 9, In: How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK.

Packham, R, Taplin, M., and Francis, k., (Eds.) (2024f) How Values Education Can Improve Student and Teacher Wellbeing: A Simple Guide to the ‘Education in Human Values’ Approach, Routledge, UK.

Scheler, M. (1971) Formalism in ethics and nonformal ethics of values: A new attempt towards the foundations of an Ethical Personalism. Trans. M.S. Frings and R.L. Funk, Northwestern University Press, Evenstone, Il.

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström J., Cornell1, S.E., Fetzer, I., Bennett. E. M., Biggs R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W.,  de Wit, C.A.,  Folke1, C., Gerten, D., Heink, J., M. Mace, G.M., Perss, L.M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B., Sverker, S., (2015a), Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet.  Science 13:347, Issue 6223, 1259855.

Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. Ludwig, C., (2015b). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration, The Anthropocene Review. 2 (1): 81–98.

Taplin, M. (2014).   A model for integrating spiritual education into secular curricula.  International Journal of Children's Spirituality,19, 1, pp.4 – 16.

Taplin. M. & Li, L. (2021).  Teachers' perceptions of silent sitting as a buffer to their problems. Ch. 11, In: S. Parakaharan (Ed.) A Human Values Pathway for Teachers. pp.125-150.  Springer, Singapore.

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Value Education Topics: Exploring the Importance

Value education teaches us essential moral lessons and guides how to inculcate good habits. It teaches us to be kind, and honest and respect others. So value education is not only about knowing what to do and when, but it also incorporates why certain values play an important role in our lives.

Table of Contents

Why should Value Education be taught?

Knowing values is crucial because it guides us in making good decisions. Only when we properly define what is right and wrong can we determine how to act in any circumstance. The value of education also tells us to treat everyone with love and kindness. But this is a good thing because being nice to people helps our village thrive.

Different Values Understanding

Bounds’ life is based on many other values. The following are the key values which most of the time given for value education:

Honesty – honesty is an essential part of life, you must speak the truth to do anything. People can trust us when we are honest It feels better to be honest, even though it can sometimes feel like the most difficult thing in the world.

Respect : respecting others is treating them the way we would want to be treated. It might mean spending more time listening to other people than voicing your own opinion, keeping quiet if someone is telling you something rather than interjecting with a remark.

Kindness — doing good things to others The acts can be as simple as letting your friend have a turn with the toys or helping out when you see someone sad in class.

Responsibility : We are responsible for our stuff, and we have chores to do. It also requires you to complete homework on time and assist in house chores.

Appreciate : Appreciation is the ability to see what you believe should be. When someone does something for us, we should always say thank you.

Honour System Stories

Stories are, in many ways a representation of what honesty means. The story spreading like wildfire was called “And the Cat’s in the Cradle”. A boy lies about seeing a wolf, in the story. But when an actual wolf shows up he is ignored because of the lies before. This story tells us how much it is important, to tell the truth, because getting caught in a lie and then when you speak the Truth too, nobody will ever believe.

Being Respectful in Everyday Life

Any of us can learn to practice respect every day. For instance, we learn about sharing and taking turns when playing with our friends. Because it demonstrates that we care about their emotions. Respectful of the teacher: Listening to class without interruption shows respect for both time and effort. When we help around the house, it means that We respect our parents who work hard to take care of us

Acts of Kindness

Kindness comes in many forms. A Little Kindness Can Brighten Someone’s Day. If you notice someone eating by themselves during lunch, ask the person to join you. You could lend your friends a pencil when they forget theirs. Such little gestures of goodwill go a long way in making our school a happier place.

Being Responsible

Responsibility is all about taking care of our work. this might be something like remembering you have homework or making sure your room is picked up. It mainly highlights the fact that when we are responsible; it sets a precedence in saying you can trust us to do what is needed without constantly having to be told. It takes us from being child-like dependent and unreliable to becoming reliable, dependable adults.

Showing Gratitude

It is all about gratitude and saying thank you for everything we have. Thank you is only one possible way to show gratitude. When your mom prepares that meal you love so much, telling her to thank you indicates to her how good and well thought out she is using making the effort for something specific because it makes life more fun than always. Another way to express gratitude is by writing a thank you note for when your friend gave you a gift.

Teachers in Value Education Teachers have a huge role to play when it comes to value education.

One of the most important roles in value education is a teacher. We went there and they did not simply help you examine topics like math or technology… but to be desirable men and women. Teachers modeled respect by respecting others. By being honest with us, they model honesty for us. When teachers acknowledge us for our kindness or responsible behavior, we get more practice.

Value Education at Home

Education value is not always in school, it also starts with you at home. Through our parents, we learn values in action. When parents are kind to one another — realize that their words and actions have the power to teach you how to be kind as well.

Remind us just how when they are truthful. Parents help us to get knowledge and they know what type of values or norms we should follow in our life as per the situations through their experience so, so creating a better environment at home motivates their family members towards the right path.

Activities to Learn Values

Truthfulness Journal: Create a journal to document when you were honest in any situation no matter how, challenging it was Notice how it felt to you.

Picking up on others’ emotions, to do something about it and give everyone a circle of respect: you sit in such a group with your classmates and each takes turns saying one thing they respect in the person next door.

Use A Kindness Tree – Start to grow your tree on the bulletin board and with every act of kindness in class, hang a leaf. See the tree grow as kindness spreads.

Responsibility Chart: Construct a chart in the home or classroom that lists tasks, such as completing homework assignments or chores and checking them off after completion.

Gratitude Jar – Write something you are grateful for on a small piece of paper and place it in the jar. Read them to our family/class on the last day of each week.

The Impact of Value Education

These values are what can add to the quality of our lives, and that one day when we start practicing these real human beings come into existence in all ways possible! These ideals are what help us fortify strong friendships, and a sound sense of decision-making and even shape better individuals. We can use learning to value and practice the same at our school, home, and community.

Education of value is the journey that takes us to a better understanding of life. we need to educate them on the importance of values like honesty, respect for others and property; kindness — doing nice things that make others happy without expecting anything in return; responsibility (cleaning up after oneself); and gratitude towards living life itself.

In this way, we will be able to establish a favorable atmosphere for us, in which other people are also comfortable. So the lesson is value education does not concern knowing what is right and wrong; It just means we ought to do it every single day.

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Ethics and Values Education

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• Vojko Strahovnik 2  

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Ethics education ; Moral education ; Values education

Introduction

Ethics and values education encompasses a wide variety of aspects, conceptual frameworks, topics, and approaches. Arising out of the field of ethics, it foremost has to be sensitive to a multidimensional and deep anthropological nature of human being and the recognition of this in educational processes. The relational and communitarian nature of ethics (arising out of the recognition of a human being as relational being, a being of community, and a being of dialogue) is extremely important and dictates reflections on justice, solidarity, compassion, and cooperation in the spirit of a genuine dialogue in the field of ethics and values education, which further call for openness, reciprocity, and mutual recognition. These aspects are of key importance for ethics and values education, since one of its main goals is to strengthen such dialogical and emphatic stance on all levels of educational process. These should...

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Strahovnik, V. (2016). Ethics and Values Education. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_167-1

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Importance, types, and methods of Value education

What is value education?

Education today is not just confined to textbooks and classrooms. Activities & events taking place in everyday life also play a role in your holistic development. This is where the concept of value education comes into play. Here is everything you need to know about the importance of value education.

Table of Contents

An overview to the value education, a life-long foundation , what is the importance of value education , value education in school, what are the different methods of teaching , key takeaways .

Renowned personality Nelson Madela rightly states, “Education is the most powerful weapon through which you can change the world.” However, in this quote, Nelson Mandela referred to two kinds of education: academic education and value education. 

In today’s world, where there are several moral crises taking place, the need for value education is essential. Education, as a process, continues throughout life and occurs both, inside and outside the classroom. 

If you want to learn more about the importance of value education and its role in your holistic development, keep reading! 

Value-based learning is a form of training that emphasizes the personality development of individuals. This type of education allows you to tackle real-life situations with ease, helping you take the reins in shaping your future. 

The importance of values lies in molding the youth, and aiding them in adapting to changing circumstances. Value education also plays an important role in helping individuals carry out social, moral, and democratic obligations. 

Character, citizenship, emotional, and spiritual development are all its forms.

High-quality learning sessions can dramatically alter your personality and character. This form of training also emphasizes responsibility and ethical principles in organizations such as families, education institutions, businesses, and sports. 

In today’s world, where moral crises are replete across the globe, the need for value-based learning is slowly gaining recognition. Value education is now seen as a discipline that must be inherent in traditional systems. 

Here are some points highlighting the importance of value education in the global training system – 

• Value education plays an important role in helping you make the right decisions in difficult situations by weighing the different influencing factors. Therefore, such training can significantly improve your decision-making abilities. 
• The importance of values helps in overall character and personality development. Value training is an excellent way to improve mental & emotional strength. This allows you to realize and work through your emotions and thought processes in healthy and acceptable ways. 
• Through this excellent tool, you gain the skill of empathy. Empathy involves putting yourself in other people’s shoes (cognitively & emotionally). Empathy is a remarkable skill that can improve your overall ability to resolve conflicts and understand other opinions. 
• With age, the number of responsibilities you handle will significantly increase. One of the core skills taught by education is knowing how to manage all your responsibilities efficiently. 
• Finally, the importance of value education is emphasized with the concept of democratic thinking and applying the same practically. It can shape the way you think and respond to societal influences, allowing you to be a mindful citizen of your country. 

Once you have learned the importance of this critical subject, the next step is determining what type is more suited to your requirements. 

The teaching of values can begin at an early stage (from primary school) to the tertiary stage of learning and beyond. Therefore, finding the right fit for you is as simple as understanding what the different types of opportunities are – 

• Early age training

Several primary, middle, and high schools around the world are now including value education as a part of the course curriculum. Training to know its importance from an early age is one of the best ways to pick up the skills taught in this training. 

• Student exchange programs 

Student exchange programs or gap year programs are one of the best forms of value education that create a sense of belonging and responsibility amongst pupils. Student exchange programs are also a unique way to explore different cultures and increase your awareness of human behavior & functioning.

This is an excellent opportunity for 1st and 2nd-year undergraduate students.  

• Workshops for adults 

An alarming statistic worth noting is that people who are four to five years into their careers often display signs of irritation, unhappiness, fatigue, and burnout. 

The relevance and importance for adults is, therefore, a concept that is now steadily gaining popularity across the global community. 

Currently, there are two distinct theories about the unique nature of values. This has given birth to two different types of teaching methodologies, traditional teaching and innovative teaching. 

Traditional teaching methods adopt a textbook and classroom-oriented approach to training students on ethics and values. Teachers often interact directly with the students, understanding their concerns one-on-one and answering accordingly. 

Classroom activities often include direct presentations, discussions, reading & listening activities, and more. 

On the other hand, innovative teaching is a more real-life-oriented approach to studying value education. Innovative teaching methods include practical activities, social situations simulations, and incident learning (sharing life experiences with students). 

Often a combination of both traditional and innovative teaching methods is opted for by education systems around the world. 

Together, these two types of training help in – 

• Rejecting discrimination and initiating debate & discussion on moral matters, thereby promoting collaborative leadership. 
• Emphasizing the idea that change begins with yourself. 
• Denouncing harmful societal norms and attitudes that stigmatize different cultural groups. 
• Value education is a discipline that is fundamental to all-around student learning and development. 
• Understanding the importance can help you gain all the relevant emotional and spiritual tools needed to work in different situations. 
• The learnings can be spread out across the course of your academic career. You can also opt for special education opportunities designed for a specific age group. 
• A combined form of the two types of value education training is one of the best ways to make the most of your learning experience. 
• It is also important to note that value education is a life-long process and is not limited to the classroom. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this blog. In case of any queries, reach out to us or drop a comment below!

Liked this blog? Read next: Complete list of 100 graduate schools with low GPA requirements

Q1. Can I learn value education through co-curricular activities? 

Answer – Absolutely! Several educational institutions around the world impart value education through co-curricular activities in school, such as creative writing & music. These activities help in enhancing physical, mental, and disciplinary values among students. 

Q2. Does value education increase emotional intelligence (EQ)? 

Answer – Yes, value education is known to increase emotional intelligence (especially if it is administered at an early age). EQ is a critical factor tested for a wide range of personal, academic, and professional opportunities. 

Q3. Will I learn how to socialize better if I study value education? 

Answer – Yes, you will! Value education helps you gain a newfound perspective on individuals and groups from different communities & walks of life. This bird’s eye understanding of different people is an excellent way to sharpen your socialization skills.

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• Jan 18, 2024

What is Value Education? Value-based education emphasizes the personality development of individuals to shape their future and tackle difficult situations with ease. It moulds the children so they get attuned to changing scenarios while handling their social, moral, and democratic duties efficiently. The importance of value education can be understood through its benefits as it develops physical and emotional aspects, teaches mannerisms and develops a sense of brotherhood, instils a spirit of patriotism as well as develops religious tolerance in students. Let’s understand the importance of value education in schools as well as its need and importance in the 21st century.

Here’s our review of the Current Education System of India !

This Blog Includes:

Need and importance of value education, purpose of value education, importance of value education in school, difference between traditional and value education, essay on importance of value education, speech on importance of value education, early age moral and value education, young college students (1st or 2nd-year undergraduates), workshops for adults, student exchange programs, co-curricular activities, how it can be taught & associated teaching methods.

This type of education should not be seen as a separate discipline but as something that should be inherent in the education system. Merely solving problems must not be the aim, the clear reason and motive behind must also be thought of. There are multiple facets to understanding the importance of value education.

Here is why there is an inherent need and importance of value education in the present world:

• It helps in making the right decisions in difficult situations and improving decision-making abilities.
• It teaches students with essential values like kindness, compassion and empathy.
• It awakens curiosity in children developing their values and interests. This further helps in skill development in students.
• It also fosters a sense of brotherhood and patriotism thus helping students become more open-minded and welcoming towards all cultures as well as religions.
• It provides a positive direction to a student’s life as they are taught about the right values and ethics.
• It helps students find their true purpose towards serving society and doing their best to become a better version of themselves.
• With age comes a wide range of responsibilities. This can at times develop a sense of meaninglessness and can lead to a rise in mental health disorders, mid-career crisis and growing discontent with one’s life. Value education aims to somewhat fill the void in people’s lives.
• Moreover, when people study the significance of values in society and their lives, they are more convinced and committed to their goals and passions. This leads to the development of awareness which results in thoughtful and fulfilling decisions. 
• The key importance of value education is highlighted in distinguishing the execution of the act and the significance of its value. It instils a sense of ‘meaning’ behind what one is supposed to do and thus aids in personality development .

In the contemporary world, the importance of value education is multifold. It becomes crucial that is included in a child’s schooling journey and even after that to ensure that they imbibe moral values as well as ethics.

Here are the key purposes of value education:

• To ensure a holistic approach to a child’s personality development in terms of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects
• Inculcation of patriotic spirit as well as the values of a good citizen
• Helping students understand the importance of brotherhood at social national and international levels
• Developing good manners and responsibility and cooperativeness
• Promoting the spirit of curiosity and inquisitiveness towards the orthodox norms
• Teaching students about how to make sound decisions based on moral principles
• Promoting a democratic way of thinking and living
• Imparting students with the significance of tolerance and respect towards different cultures and religious faiths

There is an essential need and importance of value education in school curriculums as it helps students learn the basic fundamental morals they need to become good citizens as well as human beings. Here are the top reasons why value education in school is important:

• Value education can play a significant role in shaping their future and helping them find their right purpose in life.
• Since school paves the foundation for every child’s learning, adding value-based education to the school curriculum can help them learn the most important values right from the start of their academic journey.
• Value education as a discipline in school can also be focused more on learning human values rather than mugging up concepts, formulas and theories for higher scores. Thus, using storytelling in value education can also help students learn the essentials of human values.
• Education would surely be incomplete if it didn’t involve the study of human values that can help every child become a kinder, compassionate and empathetic individual thus nurturing emotional intelligence in every child.

Both traditional, as well as values education, is essential for personal development. Both help us in defining our objectives in life. However, while the former teaches us about scientific, social, and humanistic knowledge, the latter helps to become good humans and citizens. Opposite to traditional education, values education does not differentiate between what happens inside and outside the classroom.

Value Education plays a quintessential role in contributing to the holistic development of children. Without embedding values in our kids, we wouldn’t be able to teach them about good morals, what is right and what is wrong as well as key traits like kindness, empathy and compassion. The need and importance of value education in the 21st century are far more important because of the presence of technology and its harmful use. By teaching children about essential human values, we can equip them with the best digital skills and help them understand the importance of ethical behaviour and cultivating compassion. It provides students with a positive view of life and motivates them to become good human beings, help those in need, respect their community as well as become more responsible and sensible.

Youngsters today move through a gruelling education system that goes on almost unendingly. Right from when parents send them to kindergarten at the tender age of 4 or 5 to completing their graduation, there is a constant barrage of information hurled at them. It is a puzzling task to make sense of this vast amount of unstructured information. On top of that, the bar to perform better than peers and meet expectations is set at a quite high level. This makes a youngster lose their curiosity and creativity under the burden. They know ‘how’ to do something but fail to answer the ‘why’. They spend their whole childhood and young age without discovering the real meaning of education. This is where the importance of value education should be established in their life. It is important in our lives because it develops physical and emotional aspects, teaches mannerisms and develops a sense of brotherhood, instils a spirit of patriotism as well as develops religious tolerance in students. Thus, it is essential to teach value-based education in schools to foster the holistic development of students. Thank you.

Importance of Value Education Slideshare PPT

Types of Value Education

To explore how value education has been incorporated at different levels from primary education, and secondary education to tertiary education, we have explained some of the key phases and types of value education that must be included to ensure the holistic development of a student.

Middle and high school curriculums worldwide including in India contain a course in moral science or value education. However, these courses rarely focus on the development and importance of values in lives but rather on teachable morals and acceptable behaviour. Incorporating some form of value education at the level of early childhood education can be constructive.

Read more at Child Development and Pedagogy

Some universities have attempted to include courses or conduct periodic workshops that teach the importance of value education. There has been an encouraging level of success in terms of students rethinking what their career goals are and increased sensitivity towards others and the environment.

Our Top Read: Higher Education in India

Alarmingly, people who have only been 4 to 5 years into their professional careers start showing signs of job exhaustion, discontent, and frustration. The importance of value education for adults has risen exponentially. Many non-governmental foundations have begun to conduct local workshops so that individuals can deal with their issues and manage such questions in a better way.

Recommended Read: Adult Education

It is yet another way of inculcating a spirit of kinship amongst students. Not only do student exchange programs help explore an array of cultures but also help in understanding the education system of countries.

Quick Read: Scholarships for Indian Students to Study Abroad

Imparting value education through co-curricular activities in school enhances the physical, mental, and disciplinary values among children. Furthermore, puppetry , music, and creative writing also aid in overall development.

Check Out: Drama and Art in Education

The concept of teaching values has been overly debated for centuries. Disagreements have taken place over whether value education should be explicitly taught because of the mountainous necessity or whether it should be implicitly incorporated into the teaching process. An important point to note is that classes or courses may not be successful in teaching values but they can teach the importance of value education. It can help students in exploring their inner passions and interests and work towards them. Teachers can assist students in explaining the nature of values and why it is crucial to work towards them. The placement of this class/course, if there is to be one, is still under fierce debate. 

Value education is the process through which an individual develops abilities, attitudes, values as well as other forms of behaviour of positive values depending on the society he lives in.

Every individual needs to ensure a holistic approach to their personality development in physical, mental, social and moral aspects. It provides a positive direction to the students to shape their future, helping them become more responsible and sensible and comprehending the purpose of their lives.

Values are extremely important because they help us grow and develop and guide our beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. Our values are reflected in our decision-making and help us find our true purpose in life and become responsible and developed individuals.

The importance of value education at various stages in one’s life has increased with the running pace and complexities of life. It is becoming difficult every day for youngsters to choose their longing and pursue careers of their choice. In this demanding phase, let our Leverage Edu experts guide you in following the career path you have always wanted to explore by choosing an ideal course and taking the first step to your dream career .

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Your Article is awesome. It’s very helpful to know the value of education and the importance of value education. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Anil, Thanks for your feedback!

Value education is the most important thing because they help us grow and develop and guide our beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Susmita, Rightly said!

Best blog. well explained. Thank you for sharing keep sharing.

Thanks.. For.. The Education value topic.. With.. This.. Essay. I.. Scored.. Good. Mark’s.. In.. My. Exam thanks a lot..

Your Article is Very nice.It is Very helpful for me to know the value of Education and its importance…Thanks for sharing your thoughts about education…Thank you ……

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The Role of Personal Values in Learning Approaches and Student Achievements

Kelum a. a. gamage.

1 James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

D. M. S. C. P. K. Dehideniya

2 Department of Education, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya 20400, Sri Lanka; moc.liamg@ayinedihedkpcs (D.M.S.C.P.K.D.); moc.liamg@anammagitayukas (S.Y.E.)

Sakunthala Y. Ekanayake

Associated data.

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy.

Personal values play a significant role when adopting learning approaches by individuals during their studies. Particularly in higher education, these values significantly influence the character that individuals play within their learning community and ultimately influence their academic achievements. The purpose of this paper is to investigate personal values in their choice of learning approaches and, subsequently, how it impacts one’s academic achievements. It also investigates the importance of developing an individual’s personal values as a part of their wider studies, while aligning these with graduate attributes and balancing them with knowledge and skills, to produce successful graduates in a society.

1. Introduction

Values are the fundamental beliefs, behaviours and attitudes that have been approved and accepted as what is good by society for a long time. In the most general sense, they are considered as the virtues that a person holds in his or her life. However, philosophers, researchers, practitioners and many others have defined and addressed values from different perspectives concerning the respective discipline or contexts. Generally, values are viewed as inner realities of an individual that are reflected through habits, behaviours, beliefs, expectations and relationships. Values lay the foundation for an individual’s pattern of thinking and way of acting. They play a vital role in how one makes decisions, choices and builds perceptions and attitudes. Additionally, various studies on personal values have shown that they often guide decision making in all aspects of life such as career, religion, social circles and self-identity [ 1 ]. Another aspect of personal values is that they can be viewed as desirable motivational goals and interests of an individual or the guiding principles in life. In addition, they have been seen as the non-existent mental entities and as the outcomes of mental development. Consequently, values can be seen as the perceptions of psychological expressions or frame of mind. Moreover, they are consequential issues that manifest the personality of an individual. Hence, the realisation of personal values by the self is crucial and determines the growth and the existence of the self in any situation. Conversely, understanding another person’s respected values is also important.

As a consequence of the constant transformation of society in terms of culture, economics and politics, value and value systems have been unusually changed and distorted. In favour of the same idea, Daniela et al. [ 2 ] justify this by arguing, “with modernity it is normal that personal value systems support changes to harmonize itself to current requirements”. Initially, some of the personal values may be determined by birth and later greatly influenced and molded by education, experiences, society, culture and many other factors. According to Matthews et al. [ 3 ], an alteration in lifestyle, cultural environment and economic circumstances, individually or a combination of these factors, can cause values to change. Personal value systems can be viewed as a relatively permanent framework that exists within an individual which decides what is good or bad for himself or herself and his or her companions. In addition, it shapes and influences the general nature of an individual’s behaviour. Researchers have found that personal values developed early in life may be resistant to change and may be derived from those of particular groups or systems, such as culture, religion and political party. However, personal values are not universal. Genetically inherited features and external factors including education may determine one’s personal values. Essentially, the antecedents of values are culturally embedded in society and its institutions [ 3 ] and are socially determined [ 2 ]. Although a personal value is an internal phenomenon, the motivating force to adopt the value is seen as emanating from a diverse range of external sources [ 4 ]. As values directly influence one’s entire lifestyle, a discussion of values and value systems, their place within changing socioeconomic contexts and how they affect individuals and society has universal relevance.

The value systems of a society always determine human activity in social life, education and professional life. Values are seen as a key component of organisational culture and are repeatedly defined as the principles accountable for the successful management of the organization [ 5 ]. Arambewela and Hall [ 6 ] support the same issue, stating [ 7 ]: personal values have long been considered an important variable in understanding consumer behaviour and decision making. As a result, the interest in knowing the drivers behind consumer attitudes and behaviour has encouraged marketing researchers to investigate human values [ 8 ] (Anana and Nique, 2014). Hence, many researchers have emphasised the need and advantage of studying the impact of personal values on the sustainable existence of an organisation.

Investigating the influence of values on assessments made by people on their career choices is another trending research area. In general, professions such as teaching, medicine and nursing are strongly attached and influenced by values. The results of a research study by Anana and Nique [ 8 ] has concluded that students choosing some careers are more typical, based on their values than others, and that some values are more typical of some careers than others. Thus, personal values have been taken as the main focus in the research in a variety of fields and academic disciplines ([ 3 ] cites Feather, 1975). In this regard, the need for identifying different scopes of human values is a timely requirement. Since professional values are also shaped and influenced by personal values, indeed a discussion on personal values can be regarded as an issue that unchanged over time.

There has been a growing concern over the erosion of values among youth during the past few years, and it is continually progressing. At the same time, the need for facilitating value development has become the greatest challenge ahead in the field of education. The effects of the value given to material comforts, money, fame and success are prominently reflected through the present younger generation. Hence, there is a considerable emphasis in this new century on the development of values: tolerance, social justice, open-mindedness, empathy and deep respect for others. Since realizing values and adopting and displaying them as one’s personality is closely associated with education, values education is given a greater emphasis today to ensure the continuity of societies. The functions of education in molding student’s moral, spiritual and sociocultural life are some of the areas that have received renewed attention in the recent past. In addition, they have long been considered important variables in understanding student behaviours, attitudes and achievements. Consequently, the outcomes of Branson [ 4 ] provide an insight into the benefits of value-based studies in educational management and administration. The realization of value can offer assistance in organizing the learning process by explaining and understanding students’ reactions to various situations and tailoring and evaluating the learning experience. Though students’ learning takes place within the self, it is not an isolated process. Research has confirmed that learning is affected by a variety of internal and external factors. Researchers have observed variations in students’ learning approaches, and furthermore, they have found qualitative differences in learning outcomes that were related to the approaches taken (Matthews et al. [ 3 ] refer Marton and Saljo [ 9 ]). Accordingly, if the personal values deal with the behaviour of a person, learning may also have influenced by personal values. Based on that assumption, a number of researchers study the composition and structure of students’ learning approaches and personal values [ 10 ] and their interconnections have been observed in various contexts. Research in this area confirms that values are related to different approaches to learning and they may change according to the circumstances. Considering the students’ behaviour in different academic situations, researchers have categorized the learning approaches into different groups. Furthermore, researchers have attempted to build up the connections between learning approaches and specific personal values. For example, as referred by Matthews et al. [ 3 ] and Tarabashkina [ 10 ], personal values such as achievement and power were related to the achieving approach, security and tradition values to the surface approach, and self-direction and universalism to the deep learning approach. In addition, this relationship was confirmed by a number of studies with some variations.

The values occupy a pre-eminent position on the agenda of researchers in education and many other domains as they impact behaviour, attitudes, expectations and all the other personal characteristics and constructs. Hence, this paper seeks to contribute by reviewing the available literature on the role of personal values concerning learning approaches and student achievements. The review centres on the following given objectives.

• To investigate the role of students’’ personal values in their choice of learning approaches;
• To investigate the impact of personal values on one’s academic achievement;
• To investigate the importance of developing individual’s personal values as a part of their academic life;
• To investigate how one’s personal values shape the learning community around that person and vice versa.

2. Background Literature

The background literature aims to synthesise the most relevant research outcomes for the main topic of study under the four main areas: personal values, personal value theories, value education and learning approaches. The concept of personal values is quite closely connected with value theories and value education. In reality, they are inseparable and cannot be treated separately since they are branches of the same root. About the very same idea, to define, describe and to understand personal values, several frameworks have been used by the researchers. Thus, the historical evolution of personal values can be identified through the presented frameworks. Moreover, as the literature suggests, through empirical evidence, there exists a relationship between personal values and students’ learning. Hence, uncovering the background literature through the above four areas are important for the total comprehension of the reader.

2.1. Personal Values

As a whole, personal values significantly influence all aspects of one’s life. It is also obvious that values contribute to the building of one’s personal and social identity. Understanding the concept of personal values is indeed a complex process. Over the past years, it has been viewed diversely analysing from the individual level and up to organisational, institutional, social and cultural levels [ 2 , 11 , 12 ], resulting in several definitions addressing different scopes.

Personal values or individual values are the values to which an individual is committed and which influences his behaviour [ 13 ]. As Ledden et al. [ 14 ] view, value perceptions are the result of a cognitive trade-off between benefits and sacrifices. According to Rokeach [ 7 ], a value is a long term belief that a certain path or purpose of existence is preferable from the social and personal point of view over another one in the opposite [ 2 ]. Furthermore, values can be referred to as interests, desires, goals, needs and standards of preference [ 3 ]. (Ros [ 15 ] supports the same concept and states, “a value is a desirable state, object, goal or behaviour transcending specific situations and applied as normative standard to judge and to choose among alternative modes of behaviour” [ 2 , 15 ].

Moving a little from the basic components mentioned in the previous definitions, Anana and Nique [ 8 ] say that a value is a reference people use to judge themselves and others or to influence the values, attitudes and actions of other people, such as children. People who use the features obtained through the sense organs in defining other beings can benefit from the impressions they have emotionally in attributing importance to that being and appraising it [ 16 ]. These emotion-based impressions are generally called “values”. Another definition suggests that values are systematic and, to some extent, precise ideas that ensure the interaction of an individual with the environment [ 17 ]). Regarding the concept of personal values, Mashlah [ 5 ] and Daniela et al. (2013) [ 2 ] refer to Schwartz and Bilsky’s [ 18 ] and Schwartz’s [ 19 ] definition of values as a combination of five main features: values are (a) concepts or beliefs (b) about desirable end states or behaviours (c) that transcend specific situations, (d) guide the selection or evaluation of behaviour and events and (e) are ordered by relative importance. Analytical observation on the definitions of values shows that they are more or less diverse in meanings. Basically, terms such as interests, beliefs, desires and behaviour have been used in common in definitions. However, when focused, it is evident that values have been defined as concerning the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects of an individual.

In contrast to the above, Ledden [ 14 ] calls attention to another two important points referring to the relevant literature. Firstly, based on the literary evidence, researchers state that value’s loose definition and the diverse nomenclature used by authors have collectively led to some authors using the term value interchangeably with concepts such as satisfaction, quality and values, particularly with the personal values that guide human behaviour such as beliefs of right and wrong. Secondly, as Ledden states [ 14 ], despite the consensus on terms and definition of values, the literature evidences some confusion in differentiating between the concept of the value and the notion of values. The argument is supported with an important distinction between value (singular) and values (plural) marked by Holbrook [ 20 ], defining the former as a preference judgment and the latter as the criteria by which people make such preference judgments; thus, value is related to, but distinct from, the concept of values. In a general sense, this diversity possibly emerges through the variations in values referred to in different research domains.

Adhering to the research outcomes, Branson et al. [ 4 ] discusses the adoption of values by a person. As explained by values theory, a person’s values are dependent upon his or her consciousness and those values are unique to the person. Research shows that people do not learn values, but rather, they unconsciously adopt values. For example, values are adopted subliminally rather than being consciously selected and deliberately adopted by the individual [ 4 ]. Each person sees a unique and specific view of their world due to the influence of his or her conscious perceptions.

Turning to the historical traces of debates and discussions on personal values, values are abstract concepts that have been studied since ancient times [ 21 ] and can be traced back to the lessons from Aristotle, Plato and Socrates [ 15 ]. Evidently, research into value education has been carried out for almost centuries [ 3 ] and continues today. As a result, several definitions and models have been suggested and empirically studied over the past years. Despite the key components and focuses, several models are found frequently cited in the research literature. As Hanel, Litzellachner and Maio [ 11 ] suggested, the following are at the forefront of all the other individual value models.

• Spranger’s (1921)—Model of types of people;
• Rokeach’s (1973)—Instrumental and terminal values;
• Schwartz’s—The Schwartz (1992) theory of basic human values;
• Gouvela’s (2013)—Functional theory of values.

Value theories focused on values at the individual level as well values can also be described on a cultural level. As Hanel, Litzellachner and Maio [ 11 ] refer, three prominent approaches of this type were proposed by Inglehart, Hofstede and Schwartz [ 19 ].

Particularly for this article, Schwartz’s model of human values is adopted as the fundamental theory to discuss the issues highlighted in the objectives since it has been referred to as the theoretical ground of a number of recent research studies on personal values in a variety of contexts. Specifically in the studies which examined how the basic values relate to various attitudes, opinions, behaviours, personalities and background characteristics. In addition, it has been used in hundreds of studies that assessed value transmission and development in an individual from childhood to adolescence and value change over time. Moreover, the theory itself concerns the basic values that people in all cultures recognize [ 19 ]. Thus, it can be accepted as universally applicable without any bias. Additionally, considering the very diversity of meanings of the construct of values, the sociopsychological aspects of values are focused on throughout this article.

2.2. Personal Value Theories—Schwartz Theory of Human Values

Values can range from the simplest forms, such as punctuality and kindness, to pretentious forms such as self-direction, universalism and conformity. Over the past years, various value models have been proposed and empirically supported [ 11 ]. All of them have often defined human values as abstract ideals that guide people’s behaviour and are crucial for explaining social and personal organizations and tracing their changes due to various factors. Among the different value models that have been suggested, the Schwartz [ 18 ] theory of basic human values is found frequently cited in the literature.

As Schwartz described, there are six main features of values according to the theory [ 18 , 19 ]: values are beliefs linked inextricably to affect, values refer to desirable goals that motivate action, values transcend specific actions and situations, values serve as standards, values are ordered by importance relative to one another and the relative importance of multiple values are guides to action. These six features apply to all values. Furthermore, theory distinguishes ten basic values (value types) which encompass the range of motivationally distinct values recognized across cultures. These values are likely to be universal because they are grounded in universal requirements of human existence. However, they differ in their motivational content. The definitions of the ten values in terms of the broad goals they express in Table 1 .

Values and the motivational goals—the Schwartz theory of personal values.

He presented the structural model of basic values which takes the form of a circle. Complementary values, i.e., values that are similar to motivational content, are located side by side on this circle while competing values are located at opposing sides [ 18 , 19 ]. The closer any two values in either direction around the circle, the more similar their underlying motivations; the more distant, the more antagonistic their motivations [ 19 ]. It seems that the whole set of ten values relates to each other closely or distantly and by that mean they may interrelate with any other variable such as behaviour, attitude, age, etc. ( Figure 1 ).

Theoretical model of relations among ten motivational types of values.

2.3. Value Education

The concept of values has been defined differently in the literature depending on the contexts and the situations. However, along with the rapid changes in the world, the concepts of values and value education have gained renewed attention due to the increased social immorality [ 21 ]. Value education can address different forms and definitions. In religious senses, it is most possibly defined as moral and spiritual development. To sociological concepts, it can be termed as the part of socialisation and personality development or the transmission of cultural elements. In the dimension of education, it is addressed through citizenship education. However, in the most general sense, value education stresses the process by which people develop moral values and transfer them through factors such as social relationships, religion and education.

The values, attitudes and personal qualities of young people and the role of the school in spiritual, moral, social and cultural development have received renewed attention in recent years [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. As education is a personality-building process [ 24 ], school education is challenged by preparing students to face the complexities of future life. Rapidly changing socioeconomic structures and their consequences in terms of patterns of work, family life and social relationships requires an educational response. In that context, experts have recognised the 21st century school curriculum as the most influential mode of transferring values to the younger generation other than the family and other immediate social units. Sahin [ 16 ] suggests that implicit or planned values education in schools plays an active role in transferring values from society to society. By its definition, value education refers to those pedagogies that educators use to create enriching learning experiences for students and addresses issues related to character formation [ 25 ] and moral development. Moral values are the values that make individuals distinguish between what is good or bad and right or wrong and simply it gives the ideas about the good personal and social life. Halstead and Tylor [ 21 ] refer to a discussion document on Spiritual and Moral Development and highlight that the moral values that school should promote are telling the truth, keeping promises, respecting the rights and property of others, acting considerately towards others, helping those less fortunate and weaker than ourselves, taking personal responsibility for one’s actions and self-discipline. Moreover, schools reject bullying, cheating, deceit, cruelty, irresponsibility and dishonesty.

Sahin [ 16 ] has identified the four main characteristics of values education as:

• To raise individuals’ awareness of universal (ethical), cultural values, and their importance;
• To relate democratic attitudes and tolerance to multiculturalism;
• To evaluate all values with the criteria of improving people’s living conditions and facilities;
• To turn life into knowledge and/or knowledge into life considering concrete problems related to ethical values.

Sahin [ 16 ] views the main purpose of values education as to make values permanent behaviours in students. Providing students with the knowledge and insight into values and beliefs that enables them to reflect on their experience in a way that develop their spiritual awareness and self-knowledge, teaches them the principles which distinguish right from wrong and teaches students to appreciate their cultural traditions and the diversity and richness of other cultures are among the basic functional aspects of value education provided through the school education [ 21 ]. Accordingly, the particular theme of value education is directly related to inculcating moral values in students, and it can be identified as another phase of personal value development since the same aspects are named and described in personal value models and frameworks in more or less similar terms. For example, the features that institutions wish to promote through moral or value education are discussed in the ten basic values in Schwartz theory of basic values under the themes of conformity, benevolence, tradition, security and universalism. As Schwartz [ 19 ] views, benevolence and conformity values both promote cooperative and supportive social relations and both values may motivate the same helpful act, separately or together. Traditional values imply one’s affection towards religious beliefs and respect for tradition and customs while security values inspire one’s need for safety and harmony. Hence, through value education, it develops values such as conformity, security, universalism and benevolence.

In developing values in individuals, it is widely recognised that schools are not the only nor are they the greatest influence on the values, attitudes and personal qualities of young people, but parents, communities and other agencies are also influential [ 21 ]. The early-stage value development through the family, neighbours, practice of religion, culture and nursery forms the foundation for the personal values system that one holds. It can be further sharpened through the formal and informal educational and cultural practices in the school or any other institution.

2.4. Learning Approaches

Approaches to learning mainly focus on how children engage in learning referring to the use of skills and behaviours. In addition, they are discussed incorporating emotional, behavioural and cognitive domains. Learning is a process of changing behaviour through experiences and is relatively a permanent product. Hence, it is important to understand student learning approaches to improve and maintain the quality of the learning experience. Beyaztas and Senemoglu [ 26 ] define learning approaches in terms of how a learner’s intentions, behaviours and study habits change according to their perception of a learning task to the context which the learner regards.

According to Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ] two major perspectives have guided theory and research into student learning: The first is The Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) rooted in North America, and the second is The Students’ Approaches to Learning (SAL) that is prominent in Europe and Australia/Southeast Asia. In parallel to that, Matthews et al. (2007) [ 3 ] cite Biggs’ [ 28 ] findings on Asian student learning approaches, and according to it, learning is based on two types: the Information Processing Approach and the Contextually and Experientially Based Learning Approach. The above findings specifically refer to the geographical region and it is reasonable to pose the argument that the variation patterns in learning approaches are existing to the sociogeographical factors such as country, region and culture.

Biggs [ 29 , 30 ] specified three distinct approaches (see Table 2 ) to learning namely, The Surface, The Deep and The Achieving approaches to learning [ 3 , 27 ]. In addition, each approach is composed of a motivation that directed learning and a strategy for the implementation of the learning approach [ 3 ].

Motivations and strategies in student approaches to learning.

Note. MNNote. Matthews et al. (2007) [ 3 ] following Biggs [ 29 ] and Murray-Harvey [ 31 ].

Li’s [ 32 ] perspective on student learning approaches is quite different from the above and states that students are smart in different ways and have different learning approaches. According to Na Li, the two major perspectives of learning are the constructivist and student-centred learning approaches: Inquiry-based learning, Problem-based learning, the Situated and embodied cognition model, Self-regulated learning and Cognitive apprenticeship model and Technology-enhanced learning approaches.

Research into learning approaches has focused on studying the impact of background factors such as gender, sociocultural backgrounds, discipline area, personal values and the learning culture of students. As highlighted by Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ], Cano-Garcia [ 33 ] has shown that older female students tended to score higher on the deep and achieving approaches to learning than younger male students. In addition, studies of Jones et al. [ 34 ] and Smith and Miller [ 35 ] reflected strong relationships between learning approaches and academic disciplines. Beyaztas and Senemoglu [ 26 ] reveal another dimension of research on learning approaches in relation to the examination on students’ learning and studying behaviour towards exams and exam types. Results of these interventions revealed that students’ learning approaches change according to the examination type they were preparing for and Ramsden [ 36 ] has proposed strategic learning approaches for students who have more exam-oriented study behaviours.

Another major area that researchers concentrated is changes in the learning approach over time. A number of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have investigated changes in learning approaches over time [ 3 , 10 , 37 ]. Both Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ] and Tarabashkina and Lietz [ 10 ] refer to the same group of studies that investigated changes in learning approaches over time. As they arranged into the chronological order the earliest, Watkins and Hattie’s [ 38 ] study on a sample of undergraduate students found that the longer students had studied, the more they displayed characteristics of the deep approach to learning. Contrary to the results of their first study, Watkins and Hattie’s longitudinal study [ 39 ] showed no evidence of students’ deep learning approaches intensifying over time. However, Biggs [ 29 ] reported a general decline in the deep approach from the first to final year of study in a sample of undergraduate students in Australia. However, no significant changes were observed for other learning approaches. In the study by Gow and Kember [ 40 ], results showed that older students used the deep approach significantly more often than younger students. In addition, students at the beginning of their studies appeared to prefer an achieving approach compared to students who were further advanced in their studies. In addition, the more time that had elapsed since leaving school, the fewer the number of students who displayed characteristics of the surface approach. In another study by Kember [ 41 ], it was uncovered that younger students showed a preference for a more superficial approach in a comparison of first, second and third-year students. In contrast to the results of his study in 1990 [ 40 ], he found that first-year students showed significantly higher scores on the deep approach to learning than second and third-year students. Zeegers’s [ 42 ] study on a class of chemistry students over 30 months has shown a significant decline in the achieving strategy and a significant increase in the surface strategy over the time of the study. For the deep approach, no statistically significant changes emerged over time. Another study carried out by Matthews [ 3 ] on the same issue discovered that students’ approaches to learning generally became deeper over time. In contrast, Cano’s [ 33 ] study observed a significant decline from junior to senior high school with regards to the deep and surface learning approaches both in boys and girls.

In general, preference for a deep learning approach has emerged as the major concern of all studies, and there is no specific pattern of applying a particular approach for learning among the students. Hence, there may be some other background factors influencing the selection and application as well as the changing of a specific approach to learning. In the point of factors affecting students’ learning approaches, Beyaztas and Senemoglu [ 26 ] summarize the 3P model (Presage, Process and Product), and according to it, prior knowledge, abilities, preferred ways of learning, values and expectations, teaching context (including the curriculum) and teaching methods affect the student’s selection.

As revealed through the research studies, approaches to learning are probable to change in response to gender, ability, formal teaching authority, time, personal values [ 3 , 27 ], the requirements of and as an adaptation to new environments, the learning culture and the academic discipline and its nature [ 10 , 27 ]. Additionally, as Beyaztas and Senemoglu [ 26 ] state, referring to an early study of Ramsden [ 36 ], students’ perception of their teachers and departments also have important effects on their learning approaches. In addition, the curriculum and sociocultural environment also may have an effect on selecting the learning approach. Thus, it can be concluded that students’ preference for learning approach is influenced by several factors and they may be inborn or situational. In other words, learning approached may be a result of a combination of several internal and external factors including personal value traits.

3. Methodological Design

This research is based on a systematic review of the literature with a narrative summary that exclusively depended on online databases. The predetermined selection criteria, which are given in Table 3 , were applied during the database search screening of the text titles, abstracts and whole texts.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Following the above-mentioned criteria, full texts that were reported within 20 years were purposely selected due to the availability of a limited number of accessible resources to retrieve the literature. In relation to the year of publication, the search action was conducted with the use of online databases. As the main sources of data, Google Scholar, JSTOR and Elsevier were used. The ResearchGate database was also used for the search of resources.

The comprehensive search resources were completed based on a wide range of key terms and phrases including “values”, “personal values”, “learning approaches”, “learning communities” and “learning approaches—academic achievement and value education”. However, similar terms that are often used interchangeably in the literature were also used. In particular, with regards to the concepts of personal values and value education, they have also been searched through the terms “humanistic values”, “soft skills”, “social skills” and “moral education”.

As the search action resulted in a limited number of appropriate and accessible sources, the reference section of the found texts were studied in the search for more relevant texts. After the exclusion of sources that did not satisfy the criteria in Table 3 , 38 texts were selected for analysis. The content of the selected resources was studied and analysed in detail. Then, the required data were organized under four main themes following the study objectives.

4.1. Objective 1: To Investigate the Role of Students’ Personal Values in Their Choice of Learning Approaches

In the most general sense, approaches to learning describe what a student does when he/she is learning and why he/she should do it. In other words, it is the way that students perceive and value the learning process and how they behave during the process. As suggested by the aforementioned facts and information, education correlates with personal values. Hence, a considerable number of educational studies have been carried out to examine the composition and structure of personal values and their relationships with learning approaches. Values are considered to be precursors as well as predictors of behaviour [ 3 ]. In the same way, studies have proven that a tendency towards certain types of behaviours depends strongly on the structure of one’s values. Conversely, learning can be seen as a type of individual-specific behavioural pattern. In that respect, it is justifiable to accept that there is a relationship between personal values and the learning approaches of students. In addition, the values are believed to be influenced by background factors such as religion, culture, political factors, age and many others. Assuming that they also definitely influence in preference of a student’s learning approach, research into learning approaches has focused on a variety of backgrounds. According to Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ], research studies have focused on studying the differences in choice of learning approach and personal values relationships depending on gender, discipline area of study, prior performance and the experiences of students, especially the students who undertake higher education in another country. With regards to personal values, researchers in this context have confirmed that values are correlated with different learning approaches.

The influence of personal values on life goals are better described as follows: “values refer to desirable goals that motivate action” [ 19 ]. Wilding and Andrew’s [ 43 ] study results of “Life goals, approaches to study and performance in an undergraduate cohort” can be discussed taking that as the ground. According to them, the deep approach and the surface approach are the two main approaches to studying that have been distinguished by several researchers. In addition, an achieving or strategic approach employs either deep or surface strategies, depending on the demands of the task. The research aimed to investigate factors contributing to the choice of the preferred study approach at university and relations between these factors and academic performance. Based on the results, as the researchers state, this study has shown that approaches to study are related to wider attitudes to life or the general life goals and relations were found to be consistent with the deep approach being associated with altruistic life goals and the surface approach being associated with wealth and status life goals. The achieving approach was related to both types of life goal, but more strongly to wealth and status life goals.

The most frequently referred research of Matthews [ 3 ] on sojourner students in Australia has found interesting relationships between values and learning approaches. From the three pairs of canonical variables that emerged out of the analysis the first pair of variables illustrated that students with clearly defined value structure had equally well-defined learning motivations and strategies. The second pair of variables showed that students who had low integrity values showed a higher preference for surface or superficial learning. In contrast, the third pair of variables indicated that students who had a lesser emphasis on values associated with the Confucian ethos showed a strong preference for the deep strategy [ 3 ].

In the study of “Values and Learning approaches of students at an international University”, Matthews, Lietz and Darmawan [ 3 ] relate the ten values postulated by Schwartz et al. [ 18 ] to Biggs’ [ 29 ] six subscales and the relationships between values and approaches to learning has been estimated by canonical correlation analysis. It has revealed that values can be linked to learning approaches even in a situation where students have left their home countries to undertake tertiary studies in a new social, cultural and educational environment. There, the results have been interpreted to the higher-order values: self-aggrandisement, conservatism, self-directedness and benevolent change, which were initially termed as self-enhancement, self-transcendence, openness to change and conservation, respectively, as proposed by Schwartz [ 18 ]. Four distinct pairings between values and learning approaches were established: (a) self-aggrandisement (Achievement and power values) is linked to the achievement learning approach, (b) conservatism (universalism and benevolence values) relates to the surface learning approach, (c) self-directedness (self-direction and stimulation values) is linked to the deep learning approach and (d) benevolent change (conformity, tradition and security values) is related to the learning strategies variables were emerged as the results.

In terms of the main research question, the impact of students’ personal values on learning approaches and changes in them over time of Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ] longitudinal study on “The Effects of College Students’ Personal Values on Changes in Learning Approaches” has given mixed results. The three-year study results have shown no changes within students in the deep and surface approaches to learning but a significant decline for the achieving approach, particularly for students who previously experienced a more formal teaching authority. As they described, the students who identified to a greater extent with the achievement, hedonism and security values have demonstrated a higher achieving approach to learning at the start of their higher education. Conversely, but in line with expectations, students who valued having fun and a good time more than other students have displayed fewer characteristics of the achieving approach to learning. However, none of the personal values were found to influence how the achieving approach to learning changed over time. Based on the research outcome they have concluded that, while personal values appear to explain differences in learning approaches at one point in time they do not seem to contribute to explaining changes in learning approaches over time. In that case, as explained in a similar study by Matthews (2007) [ 3 ] students are likely to change both their personal values and learning approaches due to the influence of the new environment or it may result to pursue their education.

Parallel to the theme of the above studies, Tarabashkina and Lietz [ 10 ] carried out a longitudinal research study on “The impact of values and learning approaches on student achievement: Gender and academic discipline influences” using a cohort of international students who started their three-year Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degrees in September 2004 at a university in Germany. According to the results, hedonism and achievement were consistently related to the achieving approach over three years, whereas the achievement value probably had a large positive effect on the achieving approach, and hedonism (that is, the tendency to have fun) was negatively related to this approach across all occasions. Hedonism was also consistently and negatively linked to the deep approach throughout all years, whereas self-direction had a positive impact on this approach over a two-year period. Self-direction emerged as a constant predictor of the surface approach, although in the opposite direction to this effect for the deep approach.

Accordingly, the reported literature provides insights that the personal values and learning approaches are two components that occur at the same time with parallel construction. In addition, it establishes the relationship regarding how personal values are linked with different learning approaches and how these interrelationships change over time.

4.2. Objective 2: To Investigate the Impact of Personal Values on One’s Academic Achievement

Personal characteristics such as skills, abilities and values, academic adaptability, concern on learning objectives, decision making, innovation and communication are some of the main features of any valid evaluation criteria. When elaborating on the state of personal values in line with its impact on one’s academic achievement, knowledge as a human-specific activity is in direct relation with the way a person through his values perceives the world, the phenomena and events Daniela et al. [ 2 ]. The values favoured by different individuals can be more or less equal or different. Similarly, within each unique and specific view of the world, each person attributes different values to the same experience or the same value to different experiences [ 4 ]. Accordingly, the existing similarities and differences in values cause much diversity in behaviour. Typically, human beings tend to adapt their values according to the circumstances. In addition, it can be assumed that the values do reflect themselves through all the activities of individuals. Identifying the worth of studying these variations, in addition to exploring the link between values and learning approaches, the relationships between personal values and academic achievement, including the effect of factors such as gender and academic discipline, has been carried out by scholars. As the literature notes, the achievement motive and achievement goal are different in their nature, but they both share a commonality in terms of the role that individuals’ values may play as their underlying antecedents [ 44 ]. The argument is further confirmed citing Kaplan and Maehr [ 45 ], and they contend that individuals’ achievement goals are associated with their values. Similarly, values are considered desirable goals and individuals work hard to pursue them. Hence it is justifiable to say that in the academic setting students personal values or their personal goals substantially influence the academic achievement of the students.

Among the several research studies made to study the impact of values on academic achievements, Bala [ 46 ] discusses the values and adjustment problem of high achievers and low achievers based on a sample of 100 students from two senior secondary schools. There, the researcher has considered values in terms of theoretical, economic, aesthetic, social, political and religious values and adjustments related to social, health and emotional, school and home values. Achieving one of the specific objectives to determine the nature of the values of High and Low achievers, it arrives at several conclusions: (a) Higher achievers are more theoretical and social in comparison to low achievers and they have a dominant interest in knowledge, learning and believe more in kindness, charity and love; (b) High achievers and low achievers are similar as far as religious value is concerned; (c) Low achievers are more economic in comparison to high achievers. They believe more in materialistic life than high achievers; (d) High achievers are more political in their approach in comparison to low achievers; (e) Low achievers are superior on the aesthetic value in comparison to high achievers.

There has been little research to study the effect of a school’s disciplinary climate on improving students’ learning and academic achievement. However, the available past and present research support the view that student learning is immediately affected by the nature of the school’s disciplinary climate [ 4 ] as it controls students’ conduct by restricting the engagement in misbehaviour during school time and, thus, enhance student learning.

According to Ma and Willms [ 47 ], research findings based on a sample of grade 8 students in the US, the two most important disciplinary factors that affect academic achievement pertain to whether students were concerned about class disruptions, the proportion of students who talked to a school counsellor or teacher about disciplinary matters and the effect of the teacher–student relationship. As they revealed, with respect to the effects of indiscipline on academic achievement, the disciplinary measure that had the strongest relationship to academic achievement pertains mainly to classroom disruption. Additionally, they say that the effect of behaviour concern, which is a more traditional indicator of disciplinary climate, was negatively related to academic success. As they have found that students’ indiscipline has a significant detrimental effect on their academic achievement, to improve academic achievement from the perspective of a disciplinary climate, providing an orderly classroom environment has been suggested as a remedy.

Research conducted at the individual level has consistently shown a correlation between low cognitive ability, poor academic performances, learning disabilities, delinquency and particularly the relationship between academic performances and discipline [ 47 ]. In schools where advantaged students are concentrated, there will be fewer discipline problems and higher achievement levels as they completely target academic success rather than other issues, whereas schools serving disadvantaged students will have even worse discipline problems and lower levels of academic achievement. Ma and Willms [ 47 ] support that claim with Hawkins and Lishner [ 48 ], who have framed the relationship between academic performance and discipline as a circular process. School misconduct in the early elementary grades, combined with low ability or learning disabilities, are antecedents of poor academic performance in the late grades; poor academic performance in the late elementary grades leads to a low commitment to educational activities, disaffection toward school and an association with delinquent peers. These factors lead to dropping out or to delinquent behaviour. Value education is another concerned faculty that is gaining much concern in education. The results of a study on students attending character education and some of which did not have shown that the scores of those who underwent character education were higher than the scores of others [ 49 ]. As a whole, according to these authors, schools’ or any other learning community’s disciplinary climate acknowledges that better-behaved students generally are higher academic achievers. On that basis, as highlighted in the aforementioned discussion, if personal values are considered as abstract ideals that guide people’s behaviour, then there should be a correlation between delinquent behavioural patterns, cognitive ability level, academic performance and the personal values of an individual.

Liem et al. [ 44 ] examined the relationships between values, achievement motives, achievement goals and academic achievement among Indonesian high school students. There, in terms of the relationships between values and achievement motives, findings indicate that security and conformity values are positive predictors of the social-oriented achievement motive; self-direction is a positive predictor of the individual-oriented achievement motive, whereas hedonism is a negative predictor of both achievement motive orientations. There is also evidence for the direct effects of values on academic achievement. How personal values influenced students’ learning approaches and in turn, how they related to students’ achievement has been examined several times, and they have resulted in more or less similar results, as in Liem et al. [ 44 ]. Accordingly, Wilding and Andrew [ 43 ], based on their study cohort behaviour, have observed that those with less interest in wealth and status life goals produced better academic results. In other words, the successful students would seem to apply themselves more (or more effectively) to the immediate task rather than wider ambitions. Hence, they concluded the two variables associated with better performance were a self-reported achieving approach to learning, reflecting good organization and a systematic programme of study and a lower emphasis on wealth and status achievement in life. Furthermore, they stress that Biggs’ achievment approach to learning has consistently been shown to be positively related to academic performance, but neither the surface approach nor the deep approach has shown any such consistent relation. In contrast to that, the results of a study on a sample of university students by Tarabashkina and Lietz [ 10 ] showed that specific combinations of values were related to each learning approach and their relationship with the academic achievement of students over three years. In general, certain consistencies of these relationships have been observed throughout the study period. The deep and achieving learning approaches were associated with higher achievement, whereas students who displayed more characteristics of the surface learning approach had lower academic performance. Through statistical analysis, they built up the positive and negative relationships between personal values and learning approach: (a) Achieving learning approach—self-direction, achievement and hedonism; (b) Deep learning approach—self direction and hedonism; (c) Surface learning approach—conformity and self-direction. As they found, if the deep and achieving learning approaches were associated with higher achievement, then it can be assumed that self-direction, achievement and hedonism values are consistently associated with academic achievements, affecting them negatively and/or positively.

Similarly, the research findings of the study on learning approaches of successful students done using freshman students ranked in the top one percent portion in a university placement exam (2013) in Ankara by Beyaztaş & Senemoğlu [ 50 ] were supported with the similar research literature and has shown that students can enhance their level of success by increased use of the deep learning approach and decreased use of the surface approach. Furthermore, references made in Watkins’s [ 51 ] meta-analysis of 60 studies addressing learning approaches and academic achievement found a negative relationship between academic achievement and surface learning approaches in 28 studies, a positive relationship between academic achievement and deep learning approaches in 37 studies and a positive relationship between academic achievement and strategic learning approach in 32 studies. Additionally, in a study by Senemoğlu [ 52 ] a positive and meaningful relationship was found between Turkish and American students’ perceived level of success and learning approaches. This study reported that students who perceived themselves to be successful tended to adopt deep and strategic learning approaches, whereas students who thought they were less successful used surface learning approaches in both countries. According to the outcomes of the above-mentioned research studies, any consistent assumptions cannot be made about the correlation between the effectiveness of the learning approaches and students’ academic achievements or about how learning approaches influence academic performance. As emerged in the previous research literature, students’ learning behaviour along with personal values may change according to the circumstances and, in turn, it makes a direct effect on the students’ academic achievement.

4.3. Objective 3: To Investigate the Importance of Developing Individual’s Personal Values as a Part of Their Academic Life

Education is a combined process in which the advancement of knowledge, development of skills and the acquisition of beliefs and habits progress from an earlier age. Education providers, especially schools, play an important role in helping young people to develop and manage their physical, social and emotional well-being, and to live and work with others in different contexts. Specifically, they are partly responsible for enlightening an individual in both personal and professional areas. In that sense, personal value development is given a prominent place in most of academic interventions since they are considered as the concepts of beliefs that guide behaviours, attitudes and social norms. Education is naturally and inevitably directly related to a person’s goals and values [ 53 ]. The objective of developing an individual’s personal values as a part of academic life has been discussed, mainly concerning the theme of value education in many of the studies. In general value, education occupies an impressive place in contemporary society and school education is the most influential means of developing an individual and the schools are meeting places of value and are also full of values [ 54 ].

Values education itself has been defined simply as a purposive attempt to teach what is good or bad. As Iscan and Senemoglu [ 49 ] define it, values education is an open initiative aimed to provide instruction in values, value development or value actualization. According to the definition underpinning the Value Education Study, Australia [ 55 ], ‘Values education’ is broader and refers to any explicit and/or implicit school-based activity to promote student understanding and knowledge of values and to inculcate the skills and dispositions of students so they can enact particular values as individuals and as members of the wider community. Beena [ 56 ] says that value education given at schools is much concerned with striving for personal wholeness as well as generating a responsible attitude towards others and an understanding of wrong and right behaviour. For Thornberg and Oguz [ 57 ], all kinds of activities in schools in which students learn or develop values and morality are often referred to as values education. It seems that through the value education at school, children are encouraged to explore the powers of good and bad while unconsciously setting appropriate limits to behaviour. In relation to the Schwartz theory of personal values, the school value education promotes the values (benevolence, universalism, tradition, conformity, security) that primarily regulate how one relates socially to others and affects their interests. Security and universalism values are boundary values primarily concerned with others’ interests, but their goals also regulate the pursuit of their own interests [ 19 ]. Particularly, schools being sites for ethical practices, it seems that they focus much on social value development rather than personal development. According to Kunduroglu & Babadogan [ 53 ], that may be because the values students get with values education affect firstly their families and circle of friends, then their acquaintances and at the end, all the community.

As Thornberg and Oguz [ 57 ] emphasize, referring to several studies, value education is accomplished in two distinct ways such as explicit values education (schools’ official curriculum of what and how to teach values and morality, including teachers’ explicit intentions and practices of values education and implicit values education (associated with a hidden curriculum and implicit values, embedded in school and classroom practices). Bergmark [ 54 ] also mentions that schools are full of implicit and explicit values which shape school leaders’, teachers’ and students’ perceptions and actions. Furthermore, Thornberg and Oguz [ 57 ] mention two general approaches to values education as described in the literature. The first is the Traditional Approach: adult transmission of the morals of society through character education, direct teaching, exhortation, and the use of rewards and punishments. The aim is to teach and discipline students to develop good character and virtues (being honest, hardworking, obeying legitimate authority, kind, patriotic and responsible) and to conform to the dominant values, legitimate rules and the authority of society. In contrast, the Progressive or Constructivist Approach emphasises children’s active construction of moral meaning and development of a personal commitment to principles of fairness and concern for the welfare of others through processes of social interaction and moral discourse. Reasoning and explanations, deliberative discussion about moral dilemmas and participation in decision-making processes are viewed as typical methods for this approach. The aim is to promote moral autonomy, rational thinking, moral reasoning skills and democratic values and competence among the students.

Values education has always been a part of the school curriculum in many countries aiming to inculcate religious beliefs, moral values, duties and social responsibilities as the social values are of crucial importance for an individual’s life [ 53 ]. Therefore, the personal value development of students is important as it is beneficial for the individual in academic, professional and social life. Academic development achieved without personal value development is worthless because individuals who are not disciplined find it difficult to survive in the long run of professional and social life. They lack positive qualities such as punctuality, flexibility, the willingness to learn, a friendly nature, an eagerness to help others, sharing and caring and many more. In addition, they do not believe in themselves and others and lack self-confidence, self-efficacy and self-courage, which are considered the main components of personal development. Obviously, educating people on an only cognitive level is incomplete and not functional [ 53 ]. Henceforth, academic growth must be supplemented with personal value development to strengthen the individual to fit in the competitive society and do away with negative behavioural traits. That gives the sense that better personalities yield positive results in academics, social and professional life.

The research study by Iscan and Senemoglu [ 49 ] on the effectiveness of values education curriculum for fourth graders to equip students with the values of “universalism” and “benevolence” on students’ value-related cognitive behaviours, affective characteristics and performances has resulted in important findings. The experimental group of the study has shown higher values-related cognitive behaviour acquisition level and used more expressions reflecting values in the interviews during and after the implementation of the program. Additionally, the experimental group has displayed a larger number of positive value-related behaviours during the study than the control group. In parallel to the particular study, Iscan and Senemoglu [ 49 ] highlight the the importance of value-based educational interventions. As they revealed, exposing students to such experiences may make them aware of moral issues, establish empathy with others and understand their moral values, decreasing bullying and violence. Furthermore, they have made students more tolerant, polite, compassionate and forgiving, and [ 58 ] it has led to positive changes in students’ respect and responsibility levels along with a decrease in unacceptable behaviour. A similar study on “Values Education Program Integrated with the 4th Grade Science and Technology Course’’ [ 53 ] has revealed that at the end of the 6-week intervention period, students in the experimental group improved their perspective on the values, being more open-minded, unbiased and scientific. In addition, they have interrogated values concepts and developed positive behaviours for the relevant values.

As a whole, it proves that value education is an essential component in the general teaching-learning procedure since it highly encourages positive personal quality development and value gain which in turn benefit the whole community, society and the world.

4.4. Objective 4: To Investigate How One’s Personal Value Shape the Learning Community around That Person and Vice-Versa

Definitions for learning communities that have been given by a variety of journals, top universities and educational experts indicate a common set of characteristics. Considering them all together, a learning community can be defined as the same groups of students taking the same subjects or studying in the same class together. In addition, they see and meet each other frequently, share the same learning experiences, work across boundaries, spend a considerable amount of time together and engage in common academic activities in two or more classes as a specific unit. Additionally, they hold common goals, characterize collaboration, peer review and relationship building.

Sometimes the learning community can be the whole class or a group of students. Otherwise, it can be the whole learning institution: a school, university or any other institution where the individuals of the community develop their intellectual and professional skills and abilities while improving socioethical values. In addition, they work collaboratively as a single unit for achieving a set of common academic goals, sharing and bearing all kinds of similarities and differences [ 58 ]. In a more formal sense, according to the literary evidence, developing and implementing an intentional learning community (LC) has emerged as a popular method for improving the quality of the undergraduate experience at a range of higher educational institutions. Learning communities have a long history in higher education, dating from the 1920s when Alexander Meiklejohn introduced the “Experimental College” at the University of Wisconsin [ 59 ].

It is known that, from early ages, pupils are greatly influenced by their peers [ 21 ], and this has been empirically studied. Zhao and Kuh [ 58 ] state that students who actively participate in various out-of-class activities are more likely to connect with an affinity group of peers, which is important for student retention, success and personal development. Peer communities sometimes encourage and sometimes discourage value development as the students encountered different learning activities. Ma and Willms [ 47 ] view peer relationships are associated with delinquency in early adolescence. So, the potential role of peers as an influential factor on others in the process of values formation at the schools has been studied several times. In this respect, the study of Garnier and Stein [ 60 ] confirms that peer groups in which people interact and share norms and goals are another significant matter that affects the personal values of an individual. One important source of values is that of a ‘pivotal’ person: a person observed as displaying values that would produce advantageous benefits for the observer [ 4 ]. In a learning community, there is a possibility of a friend or friends becoming a pivotal person or persons other than the teacher or the instructor. Hence, it is evident that learning communities trigger personal value development through peers, their behaviours and attitudes and all the personal attributes.

To address the above features through the teaching and learning process, different approaches have been taken by the educational practitioners to figure out the best way to teach their students, and many have failed. However, some have succeeded and are still on the ground with alterations and developments. Among them, the cooperative learning strategy has continued to be developed and used by the teachers at all levels. Hence, by exposing students to collaborative or cooperative learning experience, they are encouraged to work together with colleagues to achieve common targets. As the word sense, it is not just group work but a very dynamic strategy [ 61 ] that provides room for students to experience different personalities, to promote social interaction, to identify sociocultural dynamics, to transfer ideas, and to develop group leadership skills among students. Cooperative learning is a teaching practice that breaks students into groups of three to four, with each student having a particular role within the group [ 61 ]. However, collaborative learning goes beyond working together, and it inspires self-management, self-monitoring and self-directed earning while developing a core skill required for employment [ 62 ]. In that sense, when comparing the intended outcomes of collaborative and cooperative learning approaches with the Schwartz’s [ 19 ] categorisation of values, they enhance values such as self-direction, achievement, benevolence and universalism.

Zhao and Kuh [ 58 ] refer to several studies, and according to them, most learning communities incorporate active and collaborative learning activities and promote involvement in complementary academic and social activities that extend beyond the classroom. Such approaches are linked with such positive behaviours such as increased academic effort and outcomes such as promoting openness to diversity, social tolerance and personal and interpersonal development. In parallel to that, Stassen [ 59 ] points out the results of the empirical studies collectively and show that “living-learning communities have a significant positive effect on several student outcomes, including: student gains in autonomy and independence, intellectual dispositions and orientations, and generalized personal development and socialization”. Stassen [ 59 ] mentions that students in learning communities show greater institutional commitment, greater intellectual development and opportunities to analyse and integrate ideas, greater tolerance for difference and appreciation for pluralism and demonstrate higher persistence and academic performance as measured by college grade point average.

Taken together, by taking classes together and/or engaging in peer-to-peer learning as a learning community, students get to know each other better, learn from each other and support each other. Along with that, students experience more social relationships. A connected learning environment increases the potential for academic success while creating more opportunities for students to adapt themselves to the individual needs of each other, to adjust their schedules and to work with diverse groups since learning groups are a mixture of different intellectual abilities, academic interests and goals and learning styles. Then again, social relationships established as a result of learning communities will continue through the end of the academic experience and will last even after promoting social harmony. As explained in Schwartz’s [ 1 ], benevolence values provide an internalized motivational base for voluntarily promoting the welfare of others. Equally, conformity values promote prosocial behaviour to avoid negative outcomes for oneself. Hence, both benevolence and conformity values motivate the same helpful act of promoting cooperative and supportive social relations, separately or together. As discussed above the learning communities also directly or indirectly enrich the development of values such as benevolence and conformity in learners, since they support the natural integration of academic life with social life providing opportunities to interact with a variety of individuals. In turn, the learning community will be benefited or disturbed by the certain characteristics of the personal values held by the individual.

5. Discussion & Conclusions

Based on the above literature on the themes of personal values and related directions, it is clear that there is no universally accepted definition for personal values. However, despite the diversity and gaps in the definitions, values and personal values have been viewed basically as the concepts or beliefs which are depicted through behavioural patterns, selections and personal goals. Furthermore, intrinsic and extrinsic factors including family, social and economic background, neighbourhood, religion and education have been identified as the influential factors on value formation and development. Their effect on the life of a person alternate according to the circumstances. Jardim et al. [ 63 ] identified this nature of values as the two main functions: as a motivator (materialist or humanitarian law) or as guidance (personal, social or central). Furthermore, based on the different attributes of values and priorities given to them in different contexts, they have been defined, named and grouped in various ways with more or fewer similarities to each other. However, both Schwartz [ 19 ] and Jardim [ 63 ] explained the similarities of values and value systems. As they state values have a basic universal structure and character which make them to be believed as the judgment of truths. The emphasis given to values in many areas has resulted in a number of theories and frameworks, and they have been used as the theoretical grounds to evaluate the research outcomes. According to the search results of this particular study revealed that Schwatrz theory of personal values has been frequently used in many of the recent education-based research studies in comparison to the other theories.

The study of personal values can provide greater insight into the entirety of human behaviour. Therefore, it has been studied concerning a variety of disciplines including education. Although there are a limited number of educational studies dealing with values, attempting to explore the relationship between personal values and learning approaches, personal values and academic achievement, influence of one’s personal values on learning community and vice versa and value education are important trends that emerged in educational research. Those studies mainly focused on identifying students’ preferred learning approaches at different stages of academic life and underlying values that are likely to influence the preference. In addition, the positive and negative behaviours of the underlying values with the learning approaches over time and the changes were aimed at. When concerned with the learning approaches that are found frequently in studies, the deep, surface, achieving and strategic approaches are prominent. According to Wilding and Andrews [ 43 ], the two main approaches to studying are the deep approach and the surface approach, as distinguished by several researchers. In addition, an achieving or strategic approach employs either deep or surface strategies, depending on the demands of the task. Contrastingly, Matthews et al. [ 3 ] and Lietz and Matthews [ 27 ] cite Biggs [ 29 ], and he has specified three distinct approaches to learning, namely, The Surface, The Deep and The Achieving approaches to learning. The classification of Biggs’ [ 29 ] learning approaches appeared in many of the studies related to personal values, learning approaches and academic achievements. Research by Matthews et al. and Lietz et al. [ 3 , 27 , 37 ] based on personal values and their effect on students’ preference for learning approaches have revealed similar relationships and their changes over time, mainly related to the underlying values along with the other factors. In fact, revealing the correlation among value, learning approach and academic achievement is extremely important for educational practices. However, as they conclude, there is no consistency in those changes, and it has been further revealed that one learning approach is influenced by several value attributes. In general, deep and strategic learning approaches are found to be positively related to the academic achievement of successful students, whereas the surface learning approach is reported with less successful students. Self-direction and achievement values were identified as the most influential in students’ success through the above approaches. Collectively, the above study results offer potential insights that may be useful when designing new academic courses or in any teaching-learning intervention. Furthermore, though personal values are not the sole determinant of educational or career choice, the correct understanding of values is useful in addressing the arising needs and issues in any discipline. Especially to address a wide range of issues relating to schooling and any educational outcomes such as academic achievement, retention, participation, dropping out, discipline and career selection.

With regard to today’s transforming society, value education has identified a crucially important requirement. Both the cognitive and affective domains of a child need to be developed through education. Kunduroglu and Babadogan [ 53 ] stressed that the purpose of education is to furnish students with affective behaviours. Mainly, schools and other educational institutions are the places where students continue their value education process, which begins at home. One of the objectives of values education in schools is to develop a healthy, consistent and balanced personality in students [ 16 ]. In that sense, formal educational interventions are better focused on enhancing the values that children have already started to develop and help children to reflect, understand and implement their own values accordingly. At this point, direct or indirect inclusion of themes such as moral, religious, civic, democratic, national, personal and social goals and issues in the school curricula has been stressed as important. Furthermore, the need of treating value education as a high priority in terms of ensuring the continuity of society and cultural transmission at a personal level also highlighted in many studies. The effectiveness of curricula including value education has been studied several times, and the results revealed the robust links between value education, student disciplinary conduct and academic achievements. Additionally, the consideration given to the respective roles of formal and informal education, learning communities, peers, parents and other institutions and agencies in making sense of values and forming personal values is emphasized in much of the value-education-based research.

Another concept that emerged as important in the dimension of personal values is its close relationship with the learning community and vice versa. The peer group influence on shaping academic behaviour and personal behaviour have long been studied by scholars over different perspectives. Concerning that, many researchers have focused on cooperative/collaborative learning interventions as the means of establishing social relationships and value development.

In general, when analysing the contents of research studies, it was notable that research related to personal values and learning approaches have been the major focus of many scholars in comparison to the other directions. A few studies found online databases discussing the relationship between personal values and academic achievement. Study reports directly focusing on the correlation of personal values and learning community and vice versa and the importance of personal values as a part of academic life are found lacking in online databases. Methodologically, it was found that many of the studies tend to apply mixed method designs and only a few have taken qualitative and quantitative research as their main research method. Other than that, literature-based reports are also available as useful academic resources. In the data collection process, questionnaires and interviews were found as the most commonly used instruments.

The discussion of personal values includes many distinct dimensions and can be approached through numerous perspectives: education, personal and social life, professional world, culture, political, religion and so on. It is realized that focusing only on a part of it cannot result in a holistic study of the concept but still it would be important to understand the depth of the concept. Depending on online resource availability and the time period set for the selection of resources for the current review may have resulted in the exclusion of some valuable research outcomes and directions. However, the comparative analysis based on available literature would probably shed light on the variety of interpretations, findings and research tendencies.

Finally, as the research literature reveals, the insight gained through the results of value-related studies facilitate the clear identification of the role of value in personal life and partly as a deciding factor of academic life. If one is not clear of his or her own values, then he/she is not clear with aims and is ineffective in controlling their life. Hence, further investigation on value-related topics over the wide range of its interrelated dimensions would give a more holistic and profound view of the role of personal values in education.

6. Recommendations

Based on the above discussion, it is apparent that still there is much room for future research studies on the theme of personal values since they affect all the avenues of human life, individually or in common as a group or a community. Conversely, several factors influence personal values and their changes. Therefore, a detailed further examination of the complex interplay of factors influencing personal values and how personal values influence an individual and in common to the whole human community seems to be valuable.

According to the analyses presented in this article, it is implied that the topic of personal values is very much important in the field of education to identify students’ behaviours, life goals and expectations, learning styles and how these change over time. Furthermore, increased attention is given to value education since values are considered as essential social or soft skills that one must acquire and practice in the 21st century world. Therefore, education, regardless of the level of junior, secondary, tertiary or professional, should aim at making human life better not only through professional or economic enhancement but also through social, moral and spiritual strengthening. At present, schools and other educational providers have adopted several co-curricular programmes that uplift values in students, such as peer support systems, community service projects and student action teams. These interventions provide students with opportunities to develop a sense of responsibility, empathy, unity, appreciation of others and their views, lifestyles and cultures and work with others to resolve the problems. These programmes have been recorded with notable achievements. This is a common feature of almost all the educational contexts that ensure values are incorporated into teaching programmes across the key learning areas to develop students’ civic and social skills. Thus, there is a need for a realistic and balanced curriculum in which the programs that inspire the value acquisition and internalisation of socially beneficial skills and behaviours are emphasized. In addition, the integration of such features into the disciplines in the curriculum is also important. Along with that, research studies to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses and the positive and negative aspects of such programmes need to be continued. According to the general and most practiced procedure, during or at the end of the academic experience, cognitive behaviours are always tested, but testing effective behaviours is always neglected. Hence, it is a noteworthy point to mention the importance of assessing processes for the progress of value development in students.

Finally, the current study based on the available literature has shown that students probably tend to adjust their approaches to a specific learning strategy due to several factors: learning environment, subject area, expectations, curriculum, teacher and teaching style, origin and cultural context, gender, religion, etc. Furthermore, there is no significant pattern of selecting learning approaches such as deep, surface or achieving, etc., at different levels of the context of learning. Therefore, deep study into how learning approaches are changed, on what basis and what the most influential motives for such alterations are will be beneficial to understanding students’ learning behaviours. Hence, research studies further investigating such dimensions would probably useful and needed at present and in future.

Author Contributions

Conceptualisation, K.A.A.G.; methodology, D.M.S.C.P.K.D. and K.A.A.G.; formal analysis, D.M.S.C.P.K.D. and S.Y.E.; investigation, D.M.S.C.P.K.D. and K.A.A.G.; resources, K.A.A.G.; writing—original draft preparation, D.M.S.C.P.K.D.; writing—review and editing, K.A.A.G.; supervision, K.A.A.G. and S.Y.E.; project administration, K.A.A.G. and S.Y.E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

Characteristics, Scope, Objectives, Need and Importance of value education

Back to: UGC NET Paper 1 Unit 10

Value education refers to the process of imparting moral values from one person to another. Powney defines it as, “Powney et al. define it as an action that can occur in any human organisation. During this time, people are assisted by others, who may be older, in a condition they experience in order to make explicit our ethics, assess the effectiveness of these values and associated behaviours for their own and others’ long-term well-being, and reflect on and acquire other values and behaviours that they recognize as being more effective for their own and others’ long-term well-being. There is a distinction to be made between literacy and education.”

Objectives of Value Education

The main objectives of value Education include sensitivity, punctuality, neatness, scientific attitude, dignity of labour, sportsmanship, equality, brotherhood, patriotism, secularism, cooperation, tolerance, respect for elders, non-violence, national integrity, universal brotherhood.

Scope of Value Education 

1. To contribute to society through good residence and trust.

2. Moral education, personality education, ethics and philosophy have tried to do similar things.

3. To develop the intrinsic value of good behaviour, empathy and cooperation.

Need and Importance of Value Education

1. It enables the students to learn the real purpose of life and gives them a progressive way for their future.

2. Value education helps students to become more responsive and practical which helps them to recognize the perception of life more effectively and lead a positive life as a responsible resident.

3. It also enables them to develop a better and strong relationship with family and friends.

4. It improves the personality and character of the students.

5. Value education adds a positive opinion about life in the student’s mind.

6. It revolves around teaching and learning about the ideals that society considers important.

7. The objective of the students is not only to recognize the values but also to reflect them in their behaviour and attitudes.

“Value education is essential for building the character of future citizens, teaching them good values, helps them choose the right path, and it gives moral value to students.”

Value education

Value Education is a process of increasing the overall character of a student, it also includes character development, personality development and spiritual development, it develops a sensible person with strong character and values.

It is an action that can take place in human society, during which the people are helped by others, who may be older.

The purpose of values-based education is to make the student work with the right attitude and standards to face the outside world.

Some people may think that personality is a natural character of a child and can never be developed; however, this is not correct.

A personality development conference and a good school selection can lead to a fundamental change in a child’s character.

We had discussed what are the main objectives of value education, along with the types of value education and much more.

Importance of value education:

• It gives the students a progressive way for their future and also helps them to know the real purpose of their life.
• This makes it clear to them, the best way to live a life that can be helpful to individuals as well as people around.
• Value education helps students to become more responsive and practical.
• This helps them to better recognize the perception of life and lead a positive life as a responsible resident.
• It also helps in developing a strong relationship with family and friends.
• It changes the personality and character of the students.
• Value education changes a positive opinion about life in the student’s mind.
• In the current political climate, you can claim that it is more important than ever.
• Values education is teaching and learning about the ideals that society considers important.
• The objective of the students is not only to recognize the values but also to reflect them in their behaviour and attitudes.

Scope of Value Education:

To contribute to society through good residence and trust.

Moral education, personality education, ethics and philosophy have tried to do similar things.

In the United States, character education defines 6 character education programs in schools which aim to teach important values, such as friendliness, fairness, and social justice, and to influence the behaviour and attitudes of students.

Components of value education:

The intrinsic value of good behaviour, empathy and cooperation. Interaction with the environment that includes living and non-living beings.

• National History and Heritage
• Constitutional right
• Community Development
• National integration

Need for value education:

Moral awareness must be recognized to bend the progress of science and technology towards the pleasure of manhood.

Common values must be rediscovered to unite the human with the over-failure of traditional values.

Teachers allow students to value consciously and intuitively through their classroom rooms, therefore the need for a consciously strategic value education program to establish prescribed learning is noticeable.

Students may be more complex in making decisions about matters related to values. They should be helped to develop the ability to make the appropriate selection in such situations through value education.

The rise in childhood crime is a disaster for the youth, which comes under the process of personal development. In such a situation, value education has different importance.

It develops curiosity, appropriate interests, attitudes, values and the ability to think and judge oneself. Also, helps in social and natural unity.

Types of value education:

Personal Values:

Personal values mean whatever a person needs in a social relationship.

Some of the personal values are beauty, morality, confidence, self-motivation, regularity, ambition, courage, vision, imagination etc.

Social Values:

A person cannot live in the world without communicating with others.

People want social values like love, affection, friendship, noble groups, reference groups, impurity, hospitality, bravery, service, justice, freedom, patience, forgiveness, coordination, sympathy, tolerance, etc.

Social values are more important for a healthy and good environment for every organization.

Moral Values:

Ethical values, value others and themselves respect the authority of others, keep promises, avoid unnecessary problems with others, avoid cheating and dishonesty, thanking others and making them work Encourage.

Spiritual values:

The ultimate moral value is called spiritual value. Spiritual values are purity, meditation, yoga, discipline, control, clarity and devotion to God, etc.

Spiritual value education highlights the principles of self-discipline. Self-discipline satisfaction, lack of needs, general greed and freedom from seriousness.

Universal Values:

It is universal values that specify the sense of the human condition. It is through universal values that we associate ourselves with humanity and the universe.

Universal values can be experienced as life, joy, brotherhood, love, sympathy, service, heaven, truth and eternity.

Cultural Values:

Cultural values are concerned with right and wrong, good and bad, customs and behaviour.

Cultural values are reflected in language, ethics, social hierarchy, aesthetics, education, law, economics, philosophy and social organizations of all kinds.

After classifying the values, we should determine which of the above values is the most meaningful. Universal values are our foundation if we enjoy a prosperous, deep, full life.

Objectives of value education:

Educative ego and growth towards a sustainable lifestyle.

Our cultural heritage, constitutional rights, national integration, public development and increasing accountability to the environment about our national history.

Creating and improving awareness of values and their importance and role.

To know about many living and non-living organisms and their interactions with the environment.

Value education in schools:

Value education in school is important because it teaches about the world around us and prepares us with the tools that will be needed for future success. In the classroom, students also learn valuable lessons, such as social skills, behaviour, work ethic and gaining a sense of personal achievement.

Value of education in our life:

In this competitive world, we all know the importance of education in our lives, it plays an important role in shaping our life and personality.

Education is very important to get a good position and a job in society, it not only improves our personality but also makes us mentally, spiritually, intellectually advanced.

Early in life, a child dreams of becoming a doctor, lawyer, IAS officer. Parents also want to see their child as a doctor, lawyer or high-level officer. This can only be possible when the child gets a proper education.

Therefore it can be concluded that education is very important in our life and all of us need to earn it to get success in our life.

Value education stories:

Conclusion of value education:

In short, Value education means learning or studying existing knowledge and cultural heritage.

It means achievements for our families, advancement in existing technology and transfers it to the next generation.

Humanity has achieved a lot, the only way to preserve it is to transfer the knowledge and technology we have by educating people properly.

‘Value education’ is essential for building the character of future citizens, teaching them good values, helps them choose the right path, it gives moral value to students.

Also helps students to follow their interest and find answers to the extreme laws of the universe, it helps in preserving healthy life socially, economically and mentally, also helps in the cumulative ability of children by increasing their skills

The civilized purpose of education is the physical and intelligent development of the child because through education we are living in a peaceful society.

It is only because of “ value education ” that we have some answers to the laws of the universe and are able to use the knowledge of our families with modern technology.

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13 thoughts on “Value education”

helpful, thanks. 🙂

Thank you Sherli for your valuable comment! Read our other articles as well…

It’s gave a vast knowledge in value education. Can you give me a note of Philosophical bases of value education.

Thank you, Jagannath Nayak, for your valuable comment! Read our other articles as well…

Great job sir!!

Very helpful 👍👍

Education is the key of success

So nice, excellent information. Really great one.

Dhanyavwadm, kafee madadgar raha ye.

very helpful , thank you

A helpful article. Thank you. It’s better to talk about the issues/problems in Value Education too.

Thank you very much

very helpful thank you🙏

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• > What is Value Education?

What is Value Education?

Education should promote ethics, morals, and principles that help a child in their life. Value Education is a concept which showcases how important it is to impart fundamentally good values in education to develop self-aware human beings. It can be defined as a set of fundamentally ethical values which can act as guidance in life. A student needs a good guiding hand to differentiate between right and wrong.

It is a set of principles that guide the behavior standard. Values are desirable and highly regarded. They fortify a person's character by occupying a central place in his life. It represents the individual's views, choices, decisions, judgments, relationships, dreams, and vision. Value Education is defined as learning about self and wisdom of life. The major aim of value education is to build the overall personality of a student. This will help increase the student’s intellect, which can help build a fundamentally strong and moral nation.

These values should inculcate pride towards the nation. Furthermore, it helps to become an abiding global citizen who empathizes with other humans and other beings.

Need of Value Education

There is a wide gap in values that should be ideally practiced vs. values that are used today.  

Value Education's major goal is to instill moral and value-based teaching in schools and colleges and learn about intermediate students' attitudes about moral principles. This will make sure students develop a conscience to think independently and distinguish between right and wrong. Mahatma Gandhi was also of the opinion that education is the solution to all problems. Therefore, if teachers and mentors properly use technology and other resources, it is not difficult to impart value education to students.

The modern-day concept of Education is more than academic knowledge. In fact, when we define value education, it is incomplete without mentioning how it instils fundamentally good morals in students and guides them towards becoming self-aware and morally upright individuals from a young age. Promoting these besides academic training created responsible students, and ultimately mature & self-reliant capable adults.

It shapes a student's character and accelerated their thinking process to distinguish right from wrong. By incorporating moral values in education, institutions and educators promote the development of well-rounded personalities for their students.

What is Value Education and why is it Important?

Value Education refers to the process of ethical and moral education, that guides students towards making responsible choices in life. It helps them develop self-awareness and empathy. They understand the importance of academic learning too. A curious child might question, but what to question and how to answer correctly is something they are taught as ethical values by their parents and educators, both at home and at school.

What are the different types of Value Education?

Value Education is diverse in its nature and its methods

• Innate values - love and compassion
• Acquired values - culture and traditions
• Personal values - kindness and loyalty
• Social values - hospitality
• Cultural values - language and ethics

Political values

Religious values.

These are a few standard classifications schools consider when designing the methodologies for value education classes.

Why are certain values important for children to learn early in life?

Certain values, such as empathy, honesty, curiosity, ambition, compassion, love, and forgiveness, are important for children to learn at an early stage of their life. These values form the ethical base that helps them make the right decisions and grow into responsible individuals who contribute positively to society.

Value Education is not just an addition to the curriculum; it is the essence of creating compassionate students. By teaching children the importance of ethical values, we prepare them with the tools to navigate life wisely. Educators approach students both theoretically and practically to give them valuable moral lessons that improve their quality of life.

Types of Value Education

Values can be classified into various types:

Innate Values

Innate values are values that a child has since birth. Values like love, compassion, empathy, mercy, and peace are values that a person learns innately. A child has these values in some form but develops them better, improving their emotional quotient. Parents need to practice the value of love and compassion with their children.

Acquired Values

These are the values that we inherit from our culture, our place of birth, our mother tongue. These values help to keep our culture and traditions alive. Furthermore, these values keep us connected with our traditions which are very important in the modern world. Values like culture, customs, dress code, and habits come under this.

Besides this classification, the value of education can also be categorized in different values sets, which is useful in daily life.

Personal values

Personal values are those that a person follows all through his life. It is a critical part of your personality and is something you carry with you always. Values like beauty, regularity, ambition, courage, vision, imagination are some personal values.

Social values

Social values are values that show the social aspects of your life. This includes the way you communicate and interact with people . For example, these values showcase your national pride when India does great, or any social mishap happens in the country. Some of the values that are categorized in social values are hospitality, bravery, service, justice, freedom, patience, forgiveness, co-ordination, sympathy, tolerance, and more.

Cultural values

Cultural values are values that we learn from our culture. Cultural values are concerned with what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, and customs and behavior. Language, ethics, social hierarchy, aesthetics, education, law, economics, philosophy, and various social institutions are cultural values. These values make us connected to the rich heritage of our parents as well as the nation.

Political values are ideological values for any specific political party or path to governing a country. These values define how a person views a political situation and reacts to it. Furthermore, the values can either be right or left-leaning or can be centrist. Despite any leanings, these values show how a person thinks in a certain way to govern a country through welfare schemes, civic responsibility, and future vision.

Religious or Spiritual Values are the spiritual values and give the essence of how a person views the world and shows its beliefs. Spiritual value is the greatest moral value. Purity, meditation, yoga, discipline, control, clarity, and devotion to God are examples of spiritual virtues. It emphasizes self-discipline concepts. Satisfaction with self-discipline, lack of needs, general greed, and freedom from the seriousness

Values a child must learn

While it is necessary to learn all the ethical and moral values, Some values are important for students to learn before facing the world. These values give students an excellent ethical base to make the right decisions when required.

Values such as empathy and honesty are essential for a child to learn at an early day in his life to grow up being a responsible human being. Likewise, values like curiosity and ambition can help a student grow in their life. Compassion, love, forgiveness are values that should also be practiced to become better human beings.

Human Civilization has made significant progress over the years, and value education has taught us that its preservation is our responsibility. It is critical for developing the character of future citizens, teaching them excellent values, assisting them in choosing the proper route, and instilling moral value in students. It also assists kids in following their interests and discovering solutions to the extreme laws of the universe; it aids in the preservation of a healthy existence on all levels, socially, economically, and cognitively; and it aids in the cumulative ability of children by growing their talents.

Teachmint is keen on changing the future of education with its advanced LMS and ERP tools. With more than 20+ modules for educational institutions like admission management , attendance management system, performance management, and more; it is changing the teaching-learning experience.

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How the humanities can prepare students for jobs in any field

Studying humanities creates a more well-rounded person, says ASU dean

Jeffrey Cohen is the dean of humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News

As the dean of humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, Jeffrey Cohen knows better than most the value of humanities training.

How it helps prepare students for a variety of careers.

How it teaches students to have empathy and to be good listeners. 

How it gives students a worldview that helps them connect with others.

Whether a student is interested in medicine, tech, big business — really, anything — Cohen said, humanities training will help them excel at their jobs. 

ASU News spoke with Cohen about the value of humanities and the new courses that are being offered this coming school year.

Note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.

Question: Why do you believe a humanities degree will help students as they embark on their careers, no matter the field they’re in?

Answer: It’s funny. These days students think that if they get a certain degree, they’ll get a job. The heavens will open and all will be clear, and all will work out. In fact, most students have to prepare themselves for a job market they don’t even know. In some ways, there’s no use training yourself for a specific job. What you really want is a wide training that prepares you to be ready to go for whatever comes down the line. 

I was thinking about this recently with the number of jobs in (artificial intelligence). These were not even a possibility a few years ago, but many of our humanities majors fit seamlessly in to the AI field because they’re ready to go because of their deep training in language and because their wide interdisciplinary training made it so that jobs that didn’t exist when they got their degrees were there for them.

Q: Is that what people maybe don’t understand, that a humanities degree can lead you down so many different career paths?

A: When I was a kid, I used to think that you had to choose a job and then work your entire life towards it. I think what happens is you think there is one job out there and you’ll spend your life at that job. That isn’t true. In fact, most people these days should plan on between eight and 12 different jobs, and those different jobs are their career. So, really, the question to ask is what kind of training can make it so that I’m capable of going from job to job and well equipped with skills. 

I think humanities are really well situated to enable anyone to get the skills they need for a shifting career landscape.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because among the things that we emphasize in the humanities are things like how to write well, how to present well, how to make good arguments, how to do good research, how to be a good collaborator, how to be a visionary, how to think of the world at its best and move toward that, and how to live a good life. 

I think that's a question we don't ask enough, right? We focus so much on how to live a life where we have enough resources. How do we live a really good and satisfying life? Well, philosophers have answers to those kinds of questions. 

Q: Can you give a couple of examples of how humanities training has helped people in their careers?

A: One of my favorite students is Phillip Pipkins .  Phillip came here not knowing what to do. He was a first-generation student raised by a single mom. Phillip found in film and media studies, which is one of our humanities disciplines, a way of thinking about framing stories and being able to ask questions and explore the world. He’s gone through a series of careers. Most recently, he is a venture capitalist. If you ask Phillip, what is it about your humanities training that allowed you to succeed, he would say it’s the ability to tell a story. He can tell a compelling story and get people to buy into the ventures that he needs them to buy into. 

Another person I think about a lot is Amanda Ventura. Amanda is now a public affairs manager at Waymo. There were no robot-driven cars when she was an English major. But she was well equipped to move into a company that needed somebody who could use the skills that she learned as an English major, put them into practice and really thrive in a competitive world.

Q: Can you explain how humanities training could help someone entering, say, the medical field?

A: One of the pillars of the new ASU medical school is a grounding in humanities, and humanities faculty are helping to build the curriculum for future doctors who will also be engineers. Why do they need humanities? Being able to connect with people is a humanities-based skill. 

The other thing I’ll say is that humanities is built on expanding your world. Someone who studies the humanities does serious work in the study of a culture that isn’t your own. You’ll learn a language that isn’t the language you grew up with. Your horizons will broaden as a result.

Video by EJ Hernandez/ASU News

Q: Why do you think there’s a perception that a humanities degree isn’t worth what it once was?

A: I think at this moment, we’ve made a grave mistake, which is to think that students need to study in a discipline that’s aligned with one job. There’s a way in which humanities are old-fashioned. They come from the past and they teach us to regard deeply everything that humans have done and dreamt for centuries. To be in touch with the ways in which we’ve been the same cultures and species, and the ways in which we’ve differed. I think that opens up the mind and makes things possible. 

Another important humanities skill is world-building. By world-building, what we really mean is being able to imagine the world differently configured than the one that we seem to receive. And to think about a more just version of that world, a world where more things are possible for more people.

Q: What is new in humanities studies this fall?

A: One of the things we’re most proud of is an array of new humanities programs. We will always be dedicated to things like history, philosophy, linguistics, English, film and media studies. But we’re adding to that. We’ll be in the second year of a new degree in culture, technology and environment. We have a new degree coming out on global citizenship that really focuses on the study of language. We have a new degree in narrative studies because storytelling is just as important to, say, the novels of yesteryear as it is to digital gaming. We have another degree that should be launching soon on sports society and the contemporary experience. And new certificates on things like Holocaust and genocide studies and public history. 

These are times when we need to remember the lessons of the past, and we’re dedicated to making sure that people never forget and have learning opportunities.

Q: It sounds like no matter what you come to ASU for in terms of a degree, there’s value in humanities training because it makes you a more well-rounded person.

A: It’s important to have this knowledge. No matter what you’re studying, whether it’s engineering or biological science or sociology, you name it, you will gain something by coming into a humanities class. In fact, you’ll find a community. I’ll even predict that you’ll have a class that you will remember the rest of your life.

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• Essay Editor

The Influence of Family, Education, and Personal Values on Career Choices

1. introduction.

This essay tries to inquire into the impact of family, education, and personal values on career choices, for which a qualitative approach has been used throughout a review of the literature. It was found that, in the vast majority of families, tradition plays a major role in forming children's professional preferences. Moreover, it is demonstrated that parents usually do influence their children's career choices, their authority being based on a "natural leadership" which sometimes is questioned by students when they become aware of their personal qualities and responsibilities as opposed to those of the person who desires them to have these or those qualities and responsibilities. It was possible to conclude that school is another major influence in youngsters' choices because reasons such as the length of the course, the connection it has with reality, and the compulsory nature of the decision have huge significance. It has also been found that currently, influences such as friends, the need for roots, the application of prestigious professions, wear form tutors down, social image, the media, economic situation, competitiveness, commercial interests, and discrimination cause significant distortions in the formation of students' occupational perspectives.

2. The Role of Family in Career Decision-Making

This role is extremely important, as it provides the first phase in the process of value development in children. Parental child-rearing styles and outcomes, while a function of parental personality characteristics, beliefs, values, goals, and life management skills, may communicate values and goals, and anticipatory socialization in relation to career exploration and decision-making process. Through modeling and communication, the significant adults in a child's life communicate the values and aspirations they have for him or her. Additionally, execute social and economic controls by setting the number of constraints and rules, and establish a model for appropriate behaviors and interpersonal relationships. Socialization interaction theory provides understanding of vocational choice data in terms of the array of reinforcing, discriminating, and punishing responses children receive from significant adults in a variety of role models providing a constant stream of information about activities not eligible for consideration, only a few of which may be professionally defined. Children receive by direct implication knowledge about the demands of future work, the work climate, and the rewards associated with various occupational roles. These significant adults modify and shape what parts of the world are referred to and what the relative preferences among those are. Ideally, a diversified socialization might lead to the development of a vocational network. If pursuing this network would be adventitious, the individual might find the decision-making process easier or develop a general index of vocational exploration related to family interaction; and these indices imply different family structures and processes.

3. The Impact of Education on Career Choices

Many students report that their former education led them to expect work to resemble school, where rules are made by others and vary little. Yet, many neither like school nor unquestioningly accept all its rules and classes, social groups, and free time outside influence values and skills. In high school, a significantly larger percentage of students dropped out, whereas more students failed to graduate, and there were more disturbances in class. The overall quality of school life was better in the top 10 schools. The preponderance of chauvinism has led many through research, preschool children, as well as many mothers in home-training programs, to view non-sexist sex role training as foreign to the type of instruction in which the child involved is found and alien to his needs. The acculturation effects of schooling indicated in the origin of schools, its initial reluctance or refusal to educate girls, and its function in reinforcing social class differences and enforcing civic virtues on a heterogeneous population clearly cannot be dismissed when we are evaluating the merit of calls for systemic change.

4. Personal Values and Career Selection

The values that parents and early experiences transmit to an individual are often fiercely held and enduringly important. Childhood experiences and especially values in a transactional process that moves from the individual child to the nuclear and extended families to nonfamily kin and local social mobility networks. Yet the match between the ethos of an individual and the ethos of an occupation can be quite loose. This is so for at least two reasons. First, the common characteristics of members of an occupation or career are not at all strong, especially within the range of occupations a person is likely to be interested in. Second, clever people try to combine value attainment and occupational security in looking for careers, and few occupations reward the postponement of payment and position in order to have the pleasures of the task. If one receives little income and social regard from a job task, it would seem that the values one satisfies are important, even unique, contributors to any judgment that the job and occupation are worthwhile. However, data from the Educational Testing Service Affiliate Research Center suggest that of 12 occupational value differences, only two signaled job shift probabilities: (1) the number of extrinsic reasons to be an economist were positively related to returneeship to that occupation and (2) the rank differences between some other occupations and economist predicted that some economists would shift to teaching jobs. The lack of richer findings, which one ought to expect when mentioning value satisfaction about a job, encourages a sensitivity to alternative methods of measuring personal values about different jobs and careers.

5. The Interplay of Family, Education, and Personal Values in Shaping Career Paths

This chapter explored how family, through such ways as parental occupation, family financial resources, and childrearing patterns, as well as the traits of the children themselves, influenced academic achievement and choice of a career in a science, engineering, or business field. The focus is particularly on the processes of socialization and the intergenerational links within the family that play major roles in an individual's understanding of self and experience of his or her social world. Besides family, education was found to play an important role in shaping the career tendencies of the subjects. A distinction was drawn between formal school effects and socialization into the hidden curriculum, each with different policy implications. The analysis suggests that insights on career choices may be obtained more effectively by careful joint consideration of family background, school-related factors, and personal values, reflecting mutual reinforcement among these three sources. This chapter aims to demonstrate that social inheritance processes can be understood more effectively through the study of the independent and interactive effects of family background, formal and hidden educational experiences, and personal values from a life course approach. We shall show that by such an approach, these three areas of influence are consistent with the "risk and protective" or cumulative perspective that has come to be emphasized in the literature. In the last decade, there has been a rapid accumulation of empirical evidence on factors that shape the social patterning of career choices. Many sociological contributions have emphasized occupational segmentation in the emphasis on the labor market pathways and differential career opportunities associated with stratification parameters, such as social class, social origins, and educational attainment. Such scholarship has been of important help in interpreting changing patterns of social mobility. Research on these topics has been conducted, almost exclusively, on people already in the workplace. The sociological examination of career orientation during the school years has been much less common. This study is an exception.

6. Conclusion

This paper provides a literature review of topics related to educational and career decisions with an emphasis on the influence of family, peer, and religious networks, personal values, and other relevant issues such as the relationship between effort and intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and the value of skills. Given a huge amount of literature covering these issues, our conclusions are quite simple and indicate the importance of these economic, sociological, or psychological aspects of educational and career decisions for designing policies in the fields of education or labor concerning early school leaving, schooling choices, setting up specific training programs in order to supply firms with skilled workers, forming migrants, and promoting integration. Families and educational systems are crucial in shaping children's and adolescents' preferences, dispositions, as well as the available sets of choices or future wage profiles. While some preferences and personal characteristics are deeply rooted into individuals, such as IQ or the demand for cognition, these results also shed doubt on the relevance of personal values, as measured by values circle or other sociology surveys. The observed relationship between education levels (the quality of) cognitive or non-cognitive skills on the one hand, and future individual outcomes such as earnings, unemployment, health, or satisfaction on the other, deserve more attention. It should be interesting to analyze how individual choices influence their outcomes, and conversely, how these outcomes may feedback onto earlier decisions, and if the latter implies redistribution policies. These questions are addressed by the last group of studies reviewed in Section 3, which related studies on subjective well-being or health and educational and career choices.

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The Importance of Good Nutrition on Physical Fitness: Why You Need Both

Verywell / Alexandra Shytsman

Nutrients and Your Athletic Performance

What to eat for optimal performance, hydration makes a difference, sustainable nutrition habits, frequently asked questions.

Physical activity has many health benefits, whether you're a competitive athlete, play a recreational sport, or practice yoga. Nutrition and physical activity go hand in hand when maximizing your workouts or improving athletic performance.

What we eat before and after exercise—and every day—greatly affects how we feel and perform during activity. The right balance of macro and micronutrients may vary depending on your fitness level and the activity you perform. Still, it is important to get enough nutrition to maintain your health and optimize performance.

Proper nutrition is imperative to maximize athletic performance. Without enough carbohydrates , proteins , and fats, athletes may feel sluggish during a workout or ravenously hungry. Athletes may also need to focus on specific vitamins and minerals for fitness performance, such as iron, vitamin D , and zinc.

Nutrition for physical activity is highly individualized, so it is helpful to consult a sports dietitian to review your needs and make specific recommendations for your body and activity level.

Good Nutrition Supports Physical Activity

While we frequently think about the health benefits of nutrition and physical activity separately, there is evidence that integrating both nutrition and physical activity produces greater benefits than focusing on one or the other.

Additionally, research shows that exercise informs food choices, and individuals who exercise may make more nutritious choices. Nutrition may also support muscle recovery by reducing inflammation. One study showed that individuals who were more physically active and had higher antioxidant intake had lower levels of systemic inflammation.

The Importance of Balance and Timing of Macronutrients

Consuming adequate amounts of macronutrients—carbohydrates, protein, and fat—to fuel our bodies is imperative for optimal exercise performance.

• Carbohydrates are our bodies' preferred source of fuel. They give us the energy we need to go about our day and maximize workouts and athletic performance.
• Protein is important for building muscle and the recovery of bones, joints, and ligaments after a workout.
• Fat keeps us satiated, helps cushion our bones and joints, and increases the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, E, D, and K.

When it comes to fueling for exercise, finding the right balance and optimal timing of macronutrients for your body is key. Physical performance and recovery after exercise are enhanced by consuming carbohydrates and protein.

One study reviewed the effects of protein and carbohydrates on skeletal muscle regeneration given to athletes by shake or meal. Thirty-five individuals ran 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) and consumed either a protein and carbohydrate shake, a meal of white bread and sour milk cheese, or nothing. The study indicated that consuming carbohydrates and protein by shake or food was preferable, as it reduced exercise-induced skeletal muscle damage and had anti-inflammatory effects.

"Superfood" is a word used frequently by the food industry to market specific foods as offering maximum nutritional benefits or being exceptionally nutrient-dense.

While some foods are more nutritious than others and may positively affect health, it is essential to note that no single food is responsible for optimal health or disease prevention.

If you want to increase the nutrient density of your diet, including some of the following nutritious foods is an excellent place to start. These foods—including leafy greens, berries, eggs , sweet potato , and turmeric, contain antioxidants, complex carbohydrates , and protein and are beneficial for athletic performance.

Dark Leafy Greens

Dark green leafy vegetables are packed with important nutrients such as folate, zinc, calcium, magnesium , iron, vitamin C, and fiber. Eating leafy greens, such as spinach , kale , collard greens , and Swiss chard, can muscle function in men and women engaging in physical activity.

Additionally, nitrates in leafy greens convert to nitric oxide, opening blood vessels and improving blood flow during exercise . You can incorporate dark leafy green vegetables into your diet by making kale salads, sautéing spinach into eggs for breakfast, or blending them into a smoothie .

Berries are known for their powerful antioxidant properties, making them an important part of an athlete's diet. Exercise causes oxidative stress, which results in the production of free radicals, muscle damage, and fatigue. Including antioxidants in the diet may help enhance athletic performance by decreasing muscle damage and inflammation.

Top a yogurt parfait with blueberries , blend strawberries into a smoothie, or add raspberries or blackberries to a salad to get an antioxidant punch.

Eggs, including the yolks, are rich in B vitamins , choline, iron, antioxidants, and high-quality protein, which is important for muscle recovery and repair. The protein in eggs is considered to have high bioavailability, meaning it is easily digested and efficiently metabolized by the body.

Additionally, eggs contain fatty acids that are important for heart health as well as vitamins and minerals that help with cell growth and tissue repair. Eggs are an easy and quick breakfast, scrambled with veggies or hardboiled for grab-and-go.

Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes are root vegetables packed with potassium, fiber, and vitamins A and C. They are an excellent source of complex carbohydrates needed by athletes for fuel. Getting enough potassium also reduces fatigue, muscle cramps, and the feeling of weakness.

Sweet potatoes can be incorporated into your diet in several ways. Top a baked sweet potato with Greek yogurt and almond butter for breakfast, roast potato wedges and add them to a salad, or bake until crispy and enjoy as sweet potato fries with a burger .

Turmeric is a bright yellow spice, originally from India, used for cooking and medicinal benefits. It is best known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects and may play a role in preventing chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

Turmeric is also a more recent focus of post-exercise recovery research. Evidence suggests individuals who use turmeric after a workout reduced muscle pain and damage, and decreased inflammatory markers.

Incorporate turmeric into your routine by sprinkling the spice on roasted vegetables , adding it to a curry , or making golden milk . Turmeric is also available in supplement form .

Adequate hydration is imperative to overall health and exercise performance. We all lose water through normal bodily functions like breathing, digestion, and sweating. Athletes need to replace additional water and electrolytes lost through exertion during exercise.

Dehydration can lead to cardiovascular strain, altered metabolic function, and increased body temperature. Individuals also lose sodium , potassium, calcium, and magnesium with sweat. To avoid dehydration, it is important to ensure you are drinking before , during, and after exercise to maintain adequate hydration levels.

Whether you're training to run one mile, your first 5K, or a marathon, start with small and realistic nutrition and hydration goals. Trying to overhaul your entire diet at once can feel overwhelming, and is likely unsustainable. Small goals are more sustainable and, therefore, more beneficial in the long term.

If you feel your hydration is lacking, try investing in a fun water bottle . Flavor your water with fresh fruit or liquid beverage enhancers if you like your water to have a taste. Try adding one extra glass of water to your day.

Looking to include more antioxidants in your diet? Try adding one fruit and one vegetable to your meals each day. Pick one new nutrient-dense food and add it to your weekly meal plan . Add one each week, and soon enough, you will have greatly increased the variety of vitamins and minerals in your diet.

A Word From Verywell

The importance of good nutrition on physical fitness cannot be overstated. Sustainable, enjoyable nutrition habits are key to reaching your goals. It can be tempting to follow a fad diet or social media trend, but frequently these diets are restrictive and unsustainable. If you have questions or concerns or want individualized nutrition recommendations, seek advice from a registered dietitian .

S.M.A.R.T goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. S.M.A.R.T goals serve as small, doable action steps to help you change your behavior and achieve your goal. An example of a S.M.A.R.T goal is "I will include one vegetable at dinner 3 nights this week."

Nutrition impacts so much of our ability to function, from our physical to mental wellbeing. Incorporating nutritious foods in your diet and eating a balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat appropriate for your needs can positively affect your everyday life and fitness performance.

Nutrition needs vary based on many factors, including age and life stage. As we age, we may experience some changes, such as bone loss, loss of muscle mass, thinner skin, and less stomach acid. Some of these changes may make you prone to nutrient deficiencies and you may need to increase your intake of certain foods or add supplements. Aging also causes a slower metabolism and decreased calorie needs.

Several factors affect your nutritional needs, including genetics, health status, environment , gut health, stage of life, fitness and activity level, and medications. Speak with a registered dietitian to better estimate your individual nutritional needs.

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Gustafson CR, Rakhmatullaeva N, Beckford SE, Ammachathram A, Cristobal A, Koehler K. Exercise and the Timing of Snack Choice: Healthy Snack Choice is Reduced in the Post-Exercise State .  Nutrients . 2018;10(12):1941. doi:10.3390/nu10121941

Draganidis D, Jamurtas AZ, Stampoulis T, et al. Disparate Habitual Physical Activity and Dietary Intake Profiles of Elderly Men with Low and Elevated Systemic Inflammation .  Nutrients . 2018;10(5):566. doi:10.3390/nu10050566

Vitale K, Getzin A. Nutrition and Supplement Update for the Endurance Athlete: Review and Recommendations .  Nutrients . 2019;11(6):1289. doi:10.3390/nu11061289

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• Di Noia J.  Defining Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables: A Nutrient Density Approach .  Prev Chronic Dis . 2014;11:130390.
• Emilio Ros,  Health Benefits of Nut Consumption , National Institutes of Health, 2010

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Dear Members of the McGill Community,

Welcome to a new academic year!

We are thrilled to see our university spring to life as students and colleagues from across the globe – indeed, more than 150 countries – unite on our beautiful campuses following the summer break. The promise and anticipation – of discovery, of new friendships, and of intellectual adventure – is palpable as we all get set to begin the Fall term.

The start of a new academic year offers us the chance to reaffirm our shared commitment to McGill’s Mission and Principles : academic freedom, integrity, responsibility, equity, and inclusiveness.

Drawing on these principles, each of us is entitled to be part of a campus community that affords us respect, inclusion, and support in our efforts to flourish in our academic pursuits. At the same time, we are all called upon to do our part to ensure that those around us also enjoy a respectful, inclusive, and supportive campus climate.

These commitments to a respectful, inclusive, and supportive campus are elaborated on in our policies, notably those related to academic freedom , harassment and discrimination , and sexual violence . We urge you to become familiar with these policies and the rights and responsibilities they confer.

Our return to campus this year is, however, marked by heightened global tensions, which have had reverberations for universities everywhere, including here at McGill. In this moment of social polarization, many intense forces stand to divide or alienate us from one another. Nonetheless, we are committed to working tirelessly to sustain collegiality, respect, and engagement even across stark difference and disagreement.

We invite you to join us in this work, as this critical juncture necessitates our collective commitment and engagement.

What does this mean, concretely? To begin, it requires us to understand that our words and actions affect others, whether we are in the same room or engaging via social media. Regardless of our intent, we must consider how others might receive what we do or say. We are therefore called to practice compassion, grace, and care for others, even – perhaps especially – when our instincts propel us firmly in the other direction.

This cardinal rule, of thinking about the effects of our words and acts on others, is especially important in our shared spaces, such as classrooms, labs, and residences. It is equally critical in situations where we exercise power and influence over others, which is the case of instructors, teaching assistants, and coaches in relation to students.

Our collective spaces, notably where students learn and engage in campus life, must be learner- and knowledge-focused. In these settings, personal and professional integrity and trust are paramount. This means that these spaces can never be misappropriated – especially by those in positions of authority – as a platform to persuade others of their political position. This would be diametrically opposed to the University’s Mission and Principles, named above, and to the academic responsibilities of those responsible for teaching, learning, research, and student life at McGill.

Over the weeks and months ahead, we will be sharing news about forthcoming initiatives at McGill that seek to focus campus connections and dialogue on crucial and contentious questions. Please be on the lookout for invitations to participate. We welcome a plurality of voices at these important tables, which will centre respectful and thoughtful engagement.

Normally, a message of this kind would close by wishing you a happy, healthy, and successful academic term. This is, of course, our wish for you. This year, however, we add an expression of hope that we can collaborate to centre outreach, dialogue, collegiality, and peace in our relations with each other.

Christopher Manfredi Provost and Executive Vice-President (Academic)

Angela Campbell

Interim Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning)

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How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics

Education is at the heart of this country’s many divisions..

Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004 .

John F. Kennedy lost college-educated voters by a two-to-one margin yet won the presidency thanks to overwhelming support among white voters without a degree. Sixty years later, our second Catholic president charted a much different path to the White House, losing non-college-educated whites by a two-to-one margin while securing 60 percent of the college-educated vote. The latest New York Times /Siena poll of the 2022 midterms showed this pattern holding firm, with Democrats winning 55 percent of voters with bachelor’s degrees but only 39 percent of those without.

A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one. In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America’s income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America’s white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich.

In political-science parlance, the collapse of the New Deal–era alignment — in which voters’ income levels strongly predicted their partisan preference — is often referred to as “class dealignment.” The increasing tendency for politics to divide voters along educational lines, meanwhile, is known as “education polarization.”

There are worse things for a political coalition to be than affluent or educated. Professionals vote and donate at higher rates than blue-collar workers. But college graduates also comprise a minority of the electorate — and an underrepresented minority at that. America’s electoral institutions all give disproportionate influence to parts of the country with low levels of educational attainment. And this is especially true of the Senate . Therefore, if the coalitional trends of the past half-century continue unabated — and Democrats keep gaining college-educated votes at the expense of working-class ones — the party will find itself locked out of federal power. Put differently, such a development would put an increasingly authoritarian GOP on the glide path to political dominance.

And unless education polarization is substantially reversed , progressives are likely to continue seeing their reform ambitions pared back sharply by Congress’s upper chamber, even when Democrats manage to control it.

These realities have generated a lively intra-Democratic debate over the causes and implications of class dealignment. To some pundits , consultants, and data journalists , the phenomenon’s fundamental cause is the cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class. In their telling, college graduates in general — and Democratic college graduates in particular — tend to have different social values, cultural sensibilities, and issue priorities than the median non-college-educated voter. As the New York Times ’s Nate Cohn puts the point, college graduates tend to be more cosmopolitan and culturally liberal, report higher levels of social trust, and are more likely to “attribute racial inequality, crime, and poverty to complex structural and systemic problems” rather than “individualist and parochial explanations.”

What’s more, since blue America’s journalists, politicians, and activists are overwhelmingly college graduates, highly educated liberals exert disproportionate influence over their party’s actions and identity. Therefore, as the Democrats’ well-credentialed wing has swelled, the party’s image and ideological positioning have grown more reflective of the professional class’s distinct tastes — and thus less appealing to the electorate’s working-class majority.

This theory does not sit well with all Democratic journalists, politicians, and activists. Some deny the existence of a diploma divide on cultural values, while others insist on its limited political salience. Many progressives attribute class dealignment to America’s pathological racial politics and/or the Democrats’ failures of economic governance . In this account, the New Deal coalition was unmade by a combination of a backlash to Black Americans’ growing prominence in Democratic politics and the Democratic Party’s failures to prevent its former working-class base from suffering decades of stagnant living standards and declining life expectancy .

An appreciation of these developments is surely indispensable for understanding class dealignment in the United States. But they don’t tell the whole story. Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every western democracy . It is therefore unlikely that our nation’s white-supremacist history can fully explain the development. And though center-left parties throughout the West have shared some common failings, these inadequacies cannot tell us why many working-class voters have not merely dropped out of politics but rather begun voting for parties even more indifferent to their material interests.

In my view, education polarization cannot be understood without a recognition of the values divide between educated professionals and working people in the aggregate. That divide is rooted in each class’s disparate ways of life, economic imperatives, socialization experiences, and levels of material security. By itself, the emergence of this gap might not have been sufficient to trigger class dealignment, but its adverse political implications have been greatly exacerbated by the past half-century of inequitable growth, civic decline, and media fragmentation.

The college-educated population has distinct ideological tendencies and psychological sensibilities.

Educated professionals tend to be more socially liberal than the general public. In fact, the correlation between high levels of educational attainment and social liberalism is among the most robust in political science. As early as the 1950s, researchers documented the tendency of college graduates to espouse more progressive views than the general public on civil liberties and gender roles. In the decades since, as the political scientist Elizabeth Simon writes , this correlation has held up with “remarkable geographical and temporal consistency.” Across national boundaries and generations, voters with college degrees have been more likely than those without to support legal abortion, LGBTQ+ causes, the rights of racial minorities, and expansive immigration. They are also more likely to hold “post-material” policy priorities — which is to say, to prioritize issues concerning individual autonomy, cultural values, and big-picture social goals above those concerning one’s immediate material and physical security. This penchant is perhaps best illustrated by the highly educated’s distinctively strong support for environmental causes, even in cases when ecological preservation comes at a cost to economic growth.

Underlying these disparate policy preferences are distinct psychological profiles. The college educated are more likely to espouse moral values and attitudes associated with the personality trait “ openness to experience .” High “openness” individuals are attracted to novelty, skeptical of traditional authority, and prize personal freedom and cultural diversity. “Closed” individuals, by contrast, have an aversion to the unfamiliar and are therefore attracted to moral principles that promote certainty, order, and security. Virtually all human beings fall somewhere between these two ideal types. But the college educated as a whole are closer to the “open” end of the continuum than the general public is.

All of these distinctions between more- and less-educated voters are probabilistic, not absolute. There are Catholic theocrats with Harvard Ph.D.’s and anarchists who dropped out of high school. A nation the size of the U.S. is surely home to many millions of working-class social liberals and well-educated reactionaries. Political attitudes do not proceed automatically from any demographic characteristic, class position, or psychological trait. At the individual level, ideology is shaped by myriad historical inheritances and social experiences.

And yet, if people can come by socially liberal, “high openness” politics from any walk of life, they are much more likely to do so if that walk cuts across a college campus. (And, of course, they are even more likely to harbor this distinct psychological and ideological profile if they graduate from college and then choose to become professionally involved in Democratic politics.)

The path to the professional class veers left.

There are a few theoretical explanations for this. One holds that spending your late adolescence on a college campus tends to socialize you into cultural liberalism: Through some combination of increased exposure to people from a variety of geographic backgrounds, or the iconoclastic ethos of a liberal-arts education, or the predominantly left-of-center university faculty , or the substantive content of curricula, people tend to leave college with a more cosmopolitan and “open” worldview than they had upon entering.

Proving this theory is difficult since doing so requires controlling for selection effects. Who goes to college is not determined by random chance. The subset of young people who have the interests, aptitudes, and opportunities necessary for pursuing higher education have distinct characteristics long before they show up on campus. Some social scientists contend that such “selection effects” entirely explain the distinct political tendencies of college graduates. After all, the “high openness” personality trait is associated with higher IQs and more interest in academics. So perhaps attending college doesn’t lead people to develop culturally liberal sensibilities so much as developing culturally liberal sensibilities leads people to go to college.

Some research has tried to account for this possibility. Political scientists in the United Kingdom have managed to control for the preadult views and backgrounds of college graduates by exploiting surveys that tracked the same respondents through adolescence and into adulthood. Two recent analyses of such data have found that the college experience does seem to directly increase a person’s likelihood of becoming more socially liberal in their 20s than they were in their teens.

A separate study from the U.S. sought to control for the effects of familial background and childhood experiences by examining the disparate “sociopolitical” attitudes of sibling pairs in which one went to college while the other did not. It found that attending college was associated with greater “support for civil liberties and egalitarian gender-role beliefs.”

Other recent research , however, suggests that even these study designs may fail to control for all of the background factors that bias college attendees toward liberal views before they arrive on campus. So we have some good evidence that attending college directly makes people more culturally liberal, but that evidence is not entirely conclusive.

Yet if one posits that higher education does not produce social liberals but merely attracts them, a big theoretical problem remains: Why has the population of social liberals increased in tandem with that of college graduates?

The proportion of millennials who endorse left-wing views on issues of race, gender, immigration , and the environment is higher than the proportion of boomers who do so. And such views are more prevalent within the baby-boom generation than they were among the Silent Generation. This cannot be explained merely as a consequence of America’s burgeoning racial diversity, since similar generational patterns have been observed in European nations with lower rates of ethnic change. But the trend is consistent with another component of demographic drift: Each successive generation has had a higher proportion of college graduates than its predecessor. Between 1950 and 2019, the percentage of U.S. adults with bachelor’s degrees increased from 4 percent to 33 percent.  

Perhaps rising college attendance did not directly cause the “high-openness,” post-material, culturally progressive proportion of the population to swell. But then, what did?

One possibility is that, even if mass college attendance does not directly promote the development of “high openness” values, the mass white-collar economy does. If socially liberal values are well suited to the demands and lifeways inherent to professional employment in a globally integrated economy, then, as such employment expands, we would expect a larger share of the population to adopt socially liberal values. And there is indeed reason to think the professional vocation lends itself to social liberalism.

Entering the professional class often requires not only a four-year degree, but also, a stint in graduate school or a protracted period of overwork and undercompensation at the lowest ranks of one’s field. This gives the class’s aspirants a greater incentive to postpone procreation until later in life than the median worker. That in turn may give them a heightened incentive to favor abortion rights and liberal sexual mores.

The demands of the professional career may influence value formation in other ways. As a team of political scientists from Harvard and the University of Bonn argued in a 2020 paper , underlying the ideological divide between social liberals and conservatives may be a divergence in degrees of “moral universalism,” i.e., “the extent to which people’s altruism and trust remain constant as social distance increases.” Conservatives tend to feel stronger obligations than liberals to their own kin and neighbors and their religious, ethnic, and racial groups. Liberals, by contrast, tend to spread their altruism and trust thinner across a wider sphere of humanity; they are less compelled by the particularist obligations of inherited group loyalties and more apt to espouse a universalist ethos in which all individuals are of equal moral concern, irrespective of their group attachments.

Given that pursuing a professional career often requires leaving one’s native community and entering meritocratic institutions that are ideologically and legally committed to the principle that group identities matter less than individual aptitudes, the professional vocation may favor the development of a morally universalistic outlook — and thus more progressive views on questions of anti-discrimination and weaker identification with inherited group identities.

Further, in a globalized era, white-collar workers will often need to work with colleagues on other continents and contemplate social and economic developments in far-flung places. This may encourage both existing and aspiring professionals to develop more cosmopolitan outlooks.

Critically, parents who are themselves professionals — or who aspire for their children to secure a place in the educated, white-collar labor force — may seek to inculcate these values in their kids from a young age. For example, my own parents sent me to a magnet elementary school where students were taught Japanese starting in kindergarten. This curriculum was designed to appeal to parents concerned with their children’s capacity to thrive in the increasingly interconnected (and, in the early 1990s American imagination, increasingly Japanese-dominated) economy of tomorrow.

In this way, the expansion of the white-collar sector may increase the prevalence of “high-openness” cosmopolitan traits and values among rising generations long before they arrive on campus.

More material security, more social liberalism.

Ronald Inglehart’s theory of “ cultural evolution ” provides a third, complementary explanation for both the growing prevalence of social liberalism over the past half-century and for that ideology’s disproportionate popularity among the college educated.

In Inglehart’s account, people who experience material security in youth tend to develop distinctive values and preferences from those who do not: If childhood teaches you to take your basic material needs for granted, you’re more likely to develop culturally progressive values and post-material policy priorities.

Inglehart first formulated this theory in 1971 to explain the emerging cultural gap between the baby boomers and their parents. He noted that among western generations born before World War II, very large percentages had known hunger at some point in their formative years. The Silent Generation, for its part, had come of age in an era of economic depression and world wars. Inglehart argued that such pervasive material and physical insecurity was unfavorable soil for social liberalism: Under conditions of scarcity, human beings have a strong inclination to defer to established authority and tradition, to distrust out-groups, and to prize order and material security above self-expression and individual autonomy.

But westerners born into the postwar boom encountered a very different world from the Depression-wracked, war-torn one of their parents, let alone the cruel and unforgiving one encountered by common agriculturalists since time immemorial. Their world was one of rapid and widespread income growth. And these unprecedentedly prosperous conditions engendered a shift in the postwar generation’s values: When the boomers reached maturity, an exceptionally large share of the cohort evinced post-material priorities and espoused tolerance for out-groups, support for gender equality, concern for the environment, and antipathy for social hierarchies.

Since this transformation in values wasn’t rooted merely in the passage of time — but rather in the experience of abundance — it did not impact all social classes equally. Educated professionals are disproportionately likely to have had stable, middle-class childhoods. Thus, across the West, the post-material minority was disproportionately composed of college graduates in general and elite ones in particular. As Inglehart reported in 1981 , “among those less than 35 years old with jobs that lead to top management and top civil-service posts, Post-Materialists outnumber Materialists decisively: their numerical preponderance here is even greater than it is among students.”  

As with most big-picture models of political development, Inglehart’s theory is reductive and vulnerable to myriad objections. But his core premise — that, all else being equal, material abundance favors social liberalism while scarcity favors the opposite — has much to recommend it. As the World Values Survey has demonstrated, a nation’s degree of social liberalism (a.k.a. “self-expression values”) tightly correlates with its per-capita income. Meanwhile, as nations become wealthier, each successive generation tends to become more socially liberal than the previous one.

Critically, the World Values Survey data does not show an ineluctable movement toward ever-greater levels of social liberalism. Rather, when nations backslide economically, their populations’ progressivism declines. In the West, recessions have tended to reduce the prevalence of post-material values and increase support for xenophobic parties. But the relationship between material security and cultural liberalism is demonstrated most starkly by the experience of ex-communist states, many of which suffered a devastating collapse in living standards following the Soviet Union’s fall. In Russia and much of Eastern Europe, popular support for culturally progressive values plummeted around 1990 and has remained depressed ever since.

Inglehart’s theory offers real insights. As an account of education polarization, however, it presents a bit of a puzzle: If material security is the key driver of social liberalism, why have culture wars bifurcated electorates along lines of education instead of income? Put differently: Despite the material security provided by a high salary, when one controls for educational attainment, having a high income remains strongly associated with voting for conservatives.

One way to resolve this tension is to stipulate that the first two theories of education polarization we examined are also right: While material security is conducive to social liberalism, the college experience and demands of professional-class vocations are perhaps even more so. Thus, high-income voters who did not go to college will tend to be less socially liberal than those who did.

Separately, earning a high income is strongly associated with holding conservative views on fiscal policy. Therefore, even if the experience of material security biases high-income voters toward left-of-center views on cultural issues, their interest in low taxes may nevertheless compel them to vote for right-wing parties.

Voters with high levels of education but low incomes, meanwhile, are very often children of the middle class who made dumb career choices like, say, going into journalism. Such voters’ class backgrounds would theoretically bias them toward a socially liberal orientation, while their meager earnings would give them little reason to value conservative fiscal policy. Perhaps for this reason, “ high-education low-income voters ” are among the most reliably left-wing throughout the western world.

In any case, whatever qualifications and revisions we would wish to make to Inglehart’s theory, one can’t deny its prescience. In 1971, Inglehart forecast that intergenerational value change would redraw the lines of political conflict throughout the West. In his telling, the emergence of a novel value orientation that was disproportionately popular with influential elites would naturally shift the terrain of political conflict. And it would do so in a manner that undermined materialist, class-based voting: If conventional debates over income distribution pulled at the affluent right and the working-class left, the emerging cultural disputes pulled each in the opposite direction.

This proved to be, in the words of Gabriel Almond, “one of the few examples of successful prediction in political science.”

When the culture wars moved to the center of politics, the college educated moved left.

Whether we attribute the social liberalism of college graduates to their experiences on campus, their class’s incentive structures, their relative material security, or a combination of all three, a common set of predictions about western political development follows.

First, we would expect to see the political salience of cultural conflicts start to increase in the 1960s and ’70s as educated professionals became a mass force in western politics. Second, relatedly, we would expect that the historic correlation between having a college degree and voting for the right would start gradually eroding around the same time, owing to the heightened prominence of social issues.

Finally, we would expect education polarization to be most pronounced in countries where (1) economic development is most advanced (and thus the professional sector is most expansive) and (2) left-wing and right-wing parties are most sharply divided on cultural questions.

In their paper “Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948–2020,” Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty confirm all of these expectations.

The paper analyzes nearly every manifesto (a.k.a. “platform”) put forward by left-wing and right-wing parties in the past 300 elections. As anticipated by Inglehart, the researchers found that right-wing and left-wing parties began to develop distinct positions on “sociocultural” issues in the 1970s and that these distinctions grew steadily more profound over the ensuing 50 years. Thus, the salience of cultural issues did indeed increase just as college graduates became an electorally significant demographic.

As cultural conflict became more prominent, educated professionals became more left-wing. Controlling for other variables, in the mid-20th century, having a college diploma made one more likely to vote for parties of the right. By 2020, in virtually all of the western democracies, this relationship had inverted.

Some popular narratives attribute this realignment to discrete historical events, such as the Cold War’s end, China’s entry into the WTO, or the 2008 crash. But the data show no sudden reversal in education’s political significance. Instead, the authors write, the West saw “a very progressive, continuous reversal of educational divides, which unfolded decades before any of these events took place and has carried on uninterruptedly until today.” This finding is consistent with the notion that class dealignment is driven by gradual changes in western societies’ demographic and economic characteristics, such as the steady expansion of the professional class.

The paper provides further support for the notion that education polarization is a by-product of economic development: The three democracies where college-educated voters have not moved sharply to the left in recent decades — Ireland, Portugal, and Spain — are all relative latecomers to industrialization.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the authors established a strong correlation between “sociocultural polarization” — the degree to which right-wing and left-wing parties emphasize sharply divergent cultural positions — and education polarization. In other words: Countries where parties are highly polarized on social issues tend to have electorates that are highly polarized along educational lines.

It seems reasonable then to conclude (1) that there really is a cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class in the aggregate and (2) that this gap has been a key driver of class dealignment. Indeed, if we accept the reality of the diploma divide, then an increase of education-based voting over the past 50 years would seem almost inevitable: If you have two social groups with distinct cultural values and one group goes from being 4 percent of the electorate to 35 percent of it, debates about those values will probably become more politically prominent.

And of course, mass higher education wasn’t the only force increasing the salience of social conflict in the West over the past half-century. If economic development increased the popularity of “post-material” values, it also made it easier for marginalized groups to contest traditional hierarchies. As job opportunities for women expanded, they became less dependent on the patriarchal family for material security and thus were more liable to challenge it. As racial minorities secured a foothold in the middle class, they had more resources with which to fight discrimination.

And yet, if an increase in sociocultural polarization — and thus in education polarization — is a foregone conclusion, the magnitude of these shifts can’t be attributed to the existence of cultural divides alone.

Rather, transformations in the economic, civic, and media landscapes of western society since the 1970s have increased the salience and severity of the diploma divide.

When the postwar bargain collapsed, the center-left failed to secure workers a new deal.

To polarize an electorate around cultural conflicts rooted in education, you don’t just need to increase the salience of social issues. You also need to reduce the salience of material disputes rooted in class. Alas, the economic developments of the past 50 years managed to do both.

The class-based alignment that defined western politics in the mid-20th century emerged from a particular set of economic conditions. In the early stages of industrialization, various factors had heightened the class consciousness of wage laborers. Such workers frequently lived in densely settled, class-segregated neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of large labor-intensive plants. This close proximity cultivated solidarity, as divisions between the laborer’s working and social worlds were few. And the vast scale of industrial enterprises abetted organizing drives, as trade unions could rapidly gain scale by winning over a single shop.

By encouraging their members to view politics through the lens of class and forcing political elites to reckon with workers’ demands, strong trade unions helped to keep questions of income distribution and workers’ rights at the center of political debate and the forefront of voters’ minds. In so doing, they also helped to win western workers in general — and white male ones in particular — unprecedented shares of national income.

But this bargain between business and labor had always been contingent on robust growth. In the postwar era of rising productivity, it was possible for profits and wages to increase in tandem. But in the 1970s, western economies came under stress. Rising energy costs and global competition thinned profit margins, rendering business owners more hostile to labor’s demands both within the shop and in politics. Stagflation — the simultaneous appearance of high unemployment and high inflation — gave an opening to right-wing critics of the postwar order, who argued that the welfare state and pro-labor macroeconomic policies had sapped productivity.

Meanwhile, various long-term economic trends began undermining industrial unionism. Automation inevitably reduced the labor intensity of factories in the West. The advent of the shipping container eased the logistical burdens of globalizing production, while the industrialization of low-wage developing countries increased the incentives for doing so. Separately, as western consumers grew more affluent, they began spending less of their income on durable goods and more on services like health care (one needs only so many toasters, but the human desire for greater longevity and physical well-being is nigh-insatiable). These developments reduced both the economic leverage and the political weight of industrial workers. And since western service sectors had lower rates of unionization, deindustrialization weakened organized labor.

All this presented center-left parties with a difficult challenge. In the face of deindustrialization, an increasingly anti-labor corporate sector, an increasingly conservative economic discourse, an embattled union movement, and a globalizing economy, such parties needed to formulate new models for achieving shared prosperity. And they had to do so while managing rising cultural tensions within their coalitions.

They largely failed.

Countering the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality would have required radical reforms. Absent policies promoting the unionization of the service sector, deindustrialization inevitably weakened labor. Absent drastic changes in the allocation of posttax income, automation and globalization redistributed economic gains away from “low skill” workers and toward the most productive — or well-situated — professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.

The United States had more power than any western nation to standardize such reforms and establish a relatively egalitarian postindustrial model. Yet the Democratic Party could muster neither the political will nor the imagination to do so. Instead, under Jimmy Carter, it acquiesced to various policies that reinforced the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality, while outsourcing key questions of economic management to financial markets and the Federal Reserve. The Reagan administration took this inegalitarian and depoliticized model of economic governance to new extremes. And to highly varying degrees, its inequitable and market-fundamentalist creed influenced the policies of future U.S. administrations and other western governments.

As a result, the past five decades witnessed a great divergence in the economic fortunes of workers with and without college diplomas, while the western working class (a.k.a. the “lower middle class”) became the primary “losers” of globalization .

The center-left parties’ failures to avert a decline in the economic security and status of ordinary workers discredited them with much of their traditional base. And their failure to reinvigorate organized labor undermined the primary institutions that politicize workers into a progressive worldview. These shortcomings, combined with the market’s increasingly dominant role in economic management, reduced the political salience of left-right divides on economic policy. This in turn gave socially conservative working-class voters fewer reasons to vote for center-left parties and gave affluent social liberals fewer reasons to oppose them. In western nations where organized labor remains relatively strong (such as Norway, Sweden, and Finland), education polarization has been relatively mild, while in those countries where it is exceptionally weak (such as the United States), the phenomenon has been especially pronounced.

Finally, the divergent economic fortunes of workers and professionals might have abetted education polarization in one other way: Given that experiencing abundance encourages social liberalism — while experiencing scarcity discourages it — the past half-century of inequitable growth might have deepened cultural divisions between workers with degrees and those without.

The professionalization of civil society estranged the left from its working-class base.

While the evolution of western economies increased the class distance between college graduates and other workers, the evolution of western civil societies increased the social distance between each group.

Back in the mid-20th century, the college educated still constituted a tiny minority of western populations, while mass-membership institutions — from trade unions to fraternal organizations to political parties — still dominated civic life. In that context, an educated professional who wished to exercise political influence often needed to join a local chapter of a cross-class civic association or political party and win election to a leadership position within that organization by securing the confidence of its membership.

That changed once educated professionals became a mass constituency in their own right. As the college-educated population ballooned and concentrated itself within urban centers, it became easier for interest groups to swing elections and pressure lawmakers without securing working-class support. At the same time, the proliferation of “knowledge workers” set off an arms race between interest and advocacy groups looking to influence national legislation and election outcomes. Job opportunities for civic-minded professionals in think tanks, nonprofits, and foundations proliferated. And thanks to growing pools of philanthropic money and the advent of direct-mail fundraising, these organizations could sustain themselves without recruiting an active mass membership.

Thus, the professional’s path to political influence dramatically changed. Instead of working one’s way up through close-knit local groups — and bending them toward one’s political goals through persuasion — professionals could join (or donate to) nationally oriented advocacy groups already aligned with their preferences, which could then advance their policy aims by providing legislators with expert guidance and influencing public opinion through media debates.

As the political scientist Theda Skocpol demonstrates in her book Diminished Democracy , college graduates began defecting from mass-membership civic organizations in the 1970s, in an exodus that helped precipitate their broader decline.

Combined with the descent of organized labor, the collapse of mass participation in civic groups and political parties untethered the broad left from working-class constituencies. As foundation-funded NGOs displaced trade unions in the progressive firmament, left-wing parties became less directly accountable to their less-educated supporters. This made such parties more liable to embrace the preferences and priorities of educated professionals over those of the median working-class voter.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a thriving civic culture, voters became increasingly reliant on the mass media for their political information.

Today’s media landscape is fertile terrain for right-wing populism.

The dominant media technology of the mid-20th century — broadcast television — favored oligopoly. Given the exorbitant costs of mounting a national television network in that era, the medium was dominated by a small number of networks, each with an incentive to appeal to a broad audience. This discouraged news networks from cultivating cultural controversy while empowering them to establish a broadly shared information environment.

Cable and the internet have molded a radically different media landscape. Today, news outlets compete in a hypersaturated attentional market that encourages both audience specialization and sensationalism. In a world where consumers have abundant infotainment options, voters who read at a graduate-school level and those who read at an eighth-grade level are unlikely to favor the same content. And the same is true of voters with liberal and conservative sensibilities — especially since the collapse of a common media ecosystem leads ideologues to occupy disparate factual universes. The extraordinary nature of today’s media ecology is well illustrated by this chart from Martin Gurri’s book, The Revolt of the Public :

This information explosion abets education polarization for straightforward reasons: Since the college educated and non-college educated have distinct tastes in media, in a highly competitive attentional market, they will patronize different outlets and accept divergent facts.

Further, in the specific economic and social context we’ve been examining, the modern media environment is fertile terrain for reactionary entrepreneurs who wish to cultivate grievance against the professional elite. After all, as we’ve seen, that elite (1) subscribes to some values that most working-class people reject, (2) commandeers a wildly disproportionate share of national income and economic status, and (3) dominates the leadership of major political parties and civic groups to an unprecedented degree.

The political efficacy of such right-wing “populist” programming has been repeatedly demonstrated. Studies have found that exposure to Fox News increases Republican vote share and that the expansion of broadband internet into rural areas leads to higher levels of partisan hostility and lower levels of ticket splitting (i.e., more ideologically consistent voting) as culturally conservative voters gain access to more ideologically oriented national news reporting, commentary, and forums.

What is to be done?

The idea that education polarization arises from deep structural tendencies in western society may inspire a sense of powerlessness. And the notion that it emerges in part from a cultural divide between professionals and working people may invite ideological discomfort, at least among well-educated liberals.

But the fact that some center-left parties have managed to retain more working-class support than others suggests that the Democrats have the capacity to broaden (or narrow) their coalition. Separately, the fact that college-educated liberals have distinct social values does not require us to forfeit them.

The commentators most keen to acknowledge the class dimensions of the culture wars typically aim to discredit the left by doing so. Right-wing polemicists often suggest that progressives’ supposedly compassionate social preferences are mere alibis for advancing the professional class’s material interests. But such arguments are almost invariably weak. Progressive social views may be consonant with professional-class interests, but they typically represent attempts to universalize widely held ideals of freedom and equality. The college educated’s cosmopolitan inclinations are also adaptive for a world that is unprecedentedly interconnected and interdependent and in which population asymmetries between the rich and developing worlds create opportunities for mutual gain through migration , if only xenophobia can be overcome. And of course, in an era of climate change, the professional class’s strong concern for the environment is more than justified.

Nevertheless, professional-class progressives must recognize that our social values are not entirely unrelated to our class position. They are not an automatic by-product of affluence and erudition, nor the exclusive property of the privileged. But humans living in rich, industrialized nations are considerably more likely to harbor these values than those in poor, agrarian ones. And Americans who had the privilege of spending their late adolescence at institutions of higher learning are more likely to embrace social liberalism than those who did not.

The practical implications of this insight are debatable. It is plausible that Democrats may be able to gain working-class vote share by moderating on some social issues. But the precise electoral payoff of any single concession to popular opinion is deeply uncertain. Voters’ conceptions of each party’s ideological positioning are often informed less by policy details than by partisan stereotypes. And the substantive costs of moderation — both for the welfare of vulnerable constituencies and the long-term health of the progressive project — can be profound. At various points in the past half-century, it might have been tactically wise for Democrats to distance themselves from the demands of organized labor. But strategically, sacrificing the health of a key partisan institution to the exigencies of a single election cycle is deeply unwise. Meanwhile, in the U.S. context, the “mainstream” right has staked out some cultural positions that are profoundly unpopular with all social classes . In 2022, it is very much in the Democratic Party’s interest to increase the political salience of abortion rights.

In any case, exactly how Democrats should balance the necessity of keeping the GOP out of power with the imperative to advocate for progressive issue positions is something on which earnest liberals can disagree.

The case for progressives to be more cognizant of the diploma divide when formulating our messaging and policy priorities, however, seems clearer.

Education polarization can be self-reinforcing. As left-wing civic life has drifted away from mass-membership institutions and toward the ideologically self-selecting circles of academia, nonprofits, and the media, the left’s sensitivity to the imperatives of majoritarian politics has dulled. In some respects, the incentives for gaining status and esteem within left-wing subcultures are diametrically opposed to the requirements of coalition building. In the realm of social media, it can be advantageous to make one’s policy ideas sound more radical and/or threatening to popular values than they actually are. Thus, proposals for drastically reforming flawed yet popular institutions are marketed as plans for their “abolition,” while some advocates for reproductive rights insist that they are not merely “pro-choice” but “ pro-abortion ” (as though their objective were not to maximize bodily autonomy but rather the incidence of abortion itself, a cause that would seemingly require limiting access to contraception).

Meanwhile, the rhetoric necessary for cogently theorizing social problems within academia — and that fit for effectively selling policy reforms to a mass audience — is quite different. Political-science research indicates that theoretical abstractions tend to leave most voters cold. Even an abstraction as accessible as “inequality” resonates less with ordinary people than simply saying that the rich have too much money . Yet Democratic politicians have nevertheless taken to peppering their speeches with abstract academic terms such as structural racism .

Relatedly, in the world of nonprofits, policy wonks are often encouraged to foreground the racial implications of race-neutral redistributive policies that disproportionately benefit nonwhite constituencies. Although it is important for policy design to account for any latent racial biases in universal programs, there is reason to believe that, in a democracy with a 70 percent white electorate and widespread racial resentment, it is unwise for Democratic politicians to suggest that broadly beneficial programs primarily aid minority groups.

On the level of priority setting, it seems important for college-educated liberals to be conscious of the fact that “post-material” concerns resonate more with us than with the general public. This is especially relevant for climate strategy. Poll results and election outcomes both indicate that working-class voters are far more sensitive to the threat of rising energy prices than to that of climate change. Given that reality, the most politically viable approach to reducing emissions is likely to expedite the development and deployment of clean-energy technologies rather than deterring energy consumption through higher prices. In practice, this means prioritizing the build-out of green infrastructure over the obstruction of fossil-fuel extraction.

Of course, narrowing the social distance between college-educated liberals and working people would be even better than merely finessing it. The burgeoning unionization of white-collar professions and the growing prominence of downwardly mobile college graduates in working-class labor struggles are both encouraging developments on this front. Whatever Democrats can do to facilitate labor organizing and increase access to higher education will simultaneously advance social justice and improve the party’s long-term electoral prospects.

Finally, the correlation between material security and social liberalism underscores the urgency of progressive economic reform. Shared prosperity can be restored only by increasing the social wage of ordinary workers through some combination of unionization, sectoral bargaining, wage subsidies, and social-welfare expansion. To some extent, this represents a chicken-and-egg problem: Radical economic reforms may be a necessary precondition for the emergence of a broad progressive majority, yet a broad progressive majority is itself a precondition for radical reform.

Nevertheless, in wealthy, deep-blue states such as New York and California, Democrats have the majorities necessary for establishing a progressive economic model. At the moment, artificial constraints on the housing supply , clean-energy production, and other forms of development are sapping blue states’ economic potential . If such constraints could be overcome, the resulting economic gains would simultaneously increase working people’s living standards and render state-level social-welfare programs easier to finance. Perhaps the starting point for such a political revolution is for more-affluent social liberals to recognize that their affinity for exclusionary housing policies and aversion to taxation undermines their cultural values.

Our understanding of education polarization remains provisional. And all proposals for addressing it remain open to debate. The laws of political science are more conjectural than those of physics, and even perfect insight into political reality cannot settle disputes rooted in ideology.

But effective political engagement requires unblinkered vision. The Democratic Party’s declining support among working-class voters is a serious problem. If Democrats consider only ideologically convenient explanations for that problem, our intellectual comfort may come at the price of political power.

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