The implementation of Values Clarification

Teachers would use various activities to encourage students to think about the different ideas and behaviours that people might have towards a special issue.

Students should consider the consequences of each of these responses, through which their beliefs and valued behaviours would be clarified. In order to develop their personal values, students are required to make thoughtful considerations of choices and evaluate the consequences of such, and to incorporate their values into actual behaviour.

Teachers can implement the Values Clarification strategy in different ways. The most commonly used methods including clarifying response, writing activities and group discussion.

● Clarifying Response

To guide a student into thinking about the related values behind his ideas and behaviours, the teacher responds to what s/he has said or done through dialogues.

The purpose of clarifying response is to encourage students to investigate their words and deeds that characterised their understandings, aspirations, feelings, hopes, attitudes and beliefs. Topics which are the concerns of students such as rule-following, love affairs and life planning are worth exploring with sufficient learning support from teachers.

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● How would you comment on those who betray friendship for money and why?

● I want / do not want to have more friendship because …

● Can money bring friendship?

● Can friendship bring money?

● How could you get more money or friendship?

● What are the disadvantages of having a large amount of money?

● What are the disadvantages of having too much friendship?

● Would having a large amount of money denature friendship?

● Other than sharing one’s material belongings, how could people nurture friendship?

Example: Clarifying Response – Money and Friendship

Topic: If you could have either more money or more friendship, which would you choose and why?

Teachers would give responses to students while they are having clarifying dialogues on money and friendship. They may also use the following questions to help students further clarify their values.

● I want / do not want to have more money because …

● Writing activities

Writing provides better stimulus than speaking. It involves detailed thinking which reinforces self-reflection. Writing activities often start with personal matters like ‘what is your ideal distribution of a days’ time among work, leisure and entertainment?’ Students think about how the time used a day before, make a record and compare it with their ideal. Sorting out the related values behind the two, list and prioritise them on a value sheet. Students’ values are clearly shown and they could consider whether changes about the ideal way of spending their own time should be made. Writing activities can be used as a basis for group discussions and are suitable for assignments in concluding a unit.

● Group discussion

In discussion activities of Values Clarification, teachers play the role of facilitators.

In order to help students see that an open and free discussion can take place, teachers should not immediately judge students’ views. Careful planning is important in designing group discussion of Values Clarification. In order to get

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students involved, discussion wind down into private conversations among a few big talkers should be avoided. Teachers should consider these four steps, they are:

to select a topic, encourage student to think before talking, structure sharing, and help student extract what they have learned.

(d) Strategies for teaching controversial issues

Generally speaking, controversial issues are problems and disputes that divide society into significant opposing groups. Consensus could hardly be reached with respect to most of these problems such as the local legislation on minimum wage, or the future development of the local political system. Conflicts and controversies are unavoidable in pluralistic societies at local, national and global levels. One contributing factor of this phenomenon is that social groups attach different values to an issue. Another one is that different social groups attach different priorities to the same issue and they disagree about the means to a particular end. Also, different social groups may give different interpretations to the same value.

Many of the learning elements of this curriculum may involve controversial issues. If teachers can discuss with students issues relevant to this curriculum at the right moment, and if properly handled, the discussion can facilitate students’ understanding of the issues through multiple perspectives, in particular the views and perspectives held by different groups. Concurrently, students’ critical thinking skills and their attitudes of open-mindedness and rationality can be fostered.

Apart from the relevance of the issues to this curriculum, teachers have to cater for students’ competence and interests when choosing issues in order to give the discussion more meaning. This is particularly important when junior secondary students start thinking about abstract and complicated issues. To help students overcome the barriers of limited prior knowledge and capabilities, teachers should provide them sufficient suitable reference materials and skill training. Teachers should also carefully handle issues that may elicit an emotional response in students or incur the wrath of students and their parents. These issues could easily lead to impulsive acts and individuals will cling to their own views. This will discourage rational discussion in the classroom and the learning effectiveness will be adversely affected.

During the learning and teaching of controversial issues, teachers should foster an open classroom atmosphere and encourage students to respect evidence and be open to the views and values of others. Teachers should refrain from intentionally giving

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authoritative legitimacy to one particular view, for otherwise students would be intimidated into withholding their own views and opinions, or may even be prompted to make every effort to meet the teachers’ advocacy and standpoint.

Example: The orientation of “affirmative neutrality”

Ms Wan usually relies on classroom activities such as role play, debates and forums to facilitate student discussions of controversial issues. She is cautious and strict in choosing issues. She has also set a list of classroom tactics to remind herself to maintain a degree of “affirmative neutrality”. The following are her tactics:

● Set ground rules for classroom discussion such as respecting different views and standpoints, no emotional words, no name-calling, and no threatening gestures.

● When a student is presenting views and standpoints, s/he can adopt a more detached manner, for example, by saying that “some people take the position that …” or “some people believe that …”. It can help prevent an individual student being identified as having an unpopular standpoint by fellow students.

● Lead students to distinguish between fact and opinion, identify the sources of information, and assess the accuracy and objectivity of the information, etc.

during discussions.

● Guide students to distinguish the assumptions, beliefs and biases behind a reason, determine whether an argument is reasonable, and give adequate support to the conclusion.

● Make sure that different views and standpoints of an issue are presented and no single authoritative view and standpoint will be emphasised. Students are led to discuss related value conflicts.

● Help students discover and evaluate their own values by using Values Clarification.

● If the discussion gets out of hand, stop the discussion for a moment until emotions have cooled off a little.

● When a discussion is being rounded up, remember that controversial issues are open-ended and can never be completely resolved. It is difficult to come to a clear-cut verdict or conclusion. Thus, the emphases of students’ learning should be on the recognition of multiple perspectives with respect to the issue as well as the development of related skills and values.

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(e) Participatory learning