The Bashful Blogger

Trevor Bond

We all have a world view (knowledge) – how we see ourselves, relationships and surroundings.

This drives personal beliefs and opinions – convictions based on experience, knowledge, understanind and perhaps faith.

Beliefs lead to values – a range of concepts, attitudes, behaviours and skills. A value is the level of importance you attach to something – concepts, attitudes, behaviours, skills, relationship, object or person. “Values” is an attempt to pluralise a verb.

From what you value comes attitudes – a choosable state of mind which governs how we react and behave in any given situation.

Attitudes drive behaviours/skills.

A visual representation could be used with learners. Changing any of these is a result of learning.

Teachers can’t learn anybody anything. We are responsible for providing learning experiences and providing opportunities to broaden world views. World views can be used as a filter to ignore new information or to alter beliefs and opinions.

What we value is derived from our beliefs and opinions. The best indicator of what we value is how we act and interact in different cirucmstances.

You don’t need to have a values programme. What long term impact does it have? What is the purpose? How do you measure it’s success?

The primary NZC mandate is the development of the key competencies. If you are working on “thinking” how about working out existing beliefs and based on them what you value. What attitudes will be foster and encourage, what skills/behaviours to facilitate?