In the independent school world, institutional values get a lot of press. We talk about our missions, visions, founding principles, and strategic plans, and embedded in all of these documents are values. In a school, institutional values help a diverse faculty and staff understand their common purpose and work toward it. But what about the individuals within the institution? What is the place of a teacher’s own values in his or her work?
A Definition of Values
Our “values” are what we consider to be the important qualities we want to make manifest in our actions,1 often labeled with abstract nouns like “creativity” “empathy,” and “excellence.” To describe living in ways that genuinely matter, or behaving in ways that serve values, we add verbs to the abstract nouns: “using creativity,” “showing empathy,” or “encouraging excellence.”
Psychologists who write about values often distinguish between values and goals. Unlike goals, which can be checked off a to-do list, values are ongoing and thus present both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand, we’re never off the hook; if we truly value creating a playful learning environment, we wouldn’t say, “Yesterday’s lesson was playful, so now my class can be rote and boring.” On the other hand, we always have new opportunities to teach in accordance with our values. We can always ask central questions, such as, “How can the class be playful today?”
As employees, we’re agreeing to serve the values articulated in our school missions, but our own values matter, too. For one thing, it’s impossible for our values not to affect our teaching. No matter how standardized, scripted, or “teacher-proof” the curriculum is, we’re the actual people in classrooms with our students, and our values will seep into our work and our relationships with students. But more important, understanding our own values has the potential to make us better educators.
Values-Congruent Curriculum Design
How do teachers know what belongs in a unit and what doesn’t? How do we decide how to teach different topics, and in what order? One easy answer is to follow tradition. Surely the teachers who came before us couldn’t have been wrong about how to teach grammar or the Revolutionary War; after all, we managed to learn about these things. Another answer is to look for examples of “best practice” and model our teaching after them.
In a philosophical stance called formism, something is “good” if it looks like a predefined image or form.2 Both the tradition-following and the “best practice” approaches are formist ways of designing curriculum: The curriculum is “good” when it resembles something already defined as “good curriculum.” An English teacher with a formist stance might have her students read A Raisin in the Sun because “it’s a classic” and “seventh-graders have always read Raisin.” She might assess her students’ understanding by having them act out scenes in groups because when she was a student one of her favorite assignments involved acting out scenes from Inherit the Wind and at a workshop on the 21st-century English language arts classroom she watched a video in which students worked in acting troupes to produce mini-plays.
Whether our images come from our own childhoods, our schools’ traditions, or exemplars of 21st-century education, it’s understandable when we model our teaching upon them. Administrators often compare our work to their own images of “best practice” when they evaluate us. Popular and professional media inundate us with images of “good teaching” — and “bad teaching,” which serves as our counterexamples. Our schools’ documents and websites communicate what “mission-driven” education is supposed to look like.
I am suggesting a different approach, grounded in a philosophy called functional contextualism.3 In a functional contextualist approach to curriculum design, teachers aren’t holding their units of study up to a predefined form; they’re focusing on how well the units function. If a unit can be said to function well when it causes important learning to happen — since causing learning to happen is the very definition of “teaching” — then how “good” the unit is depends on how well it gets students to understand concepts, master skills, and perform tasks that are deemed important. And which concepts, skills, and tasks are deemed important depend on values.
An English teacher with a functional contextualist stance would have her students act out scenes from A Raisin in the Sun because the project serves values: It helps students learn how to make decisions collaboratively, or it allows them to practice the kinds of expressive communication skills they’ll need in the real world, or it gives their developing brains a multi-sensory and kinesthetic experience of language, or it enhances the students’ access to a text they’ll need to know well when they take standardized tests that will affect their futures. In turn, the acting project is “good” if it serves its valued purpose.
Our schools’ missions and strategic plans might provide some guidance about what’s important to include in the curriculum, whether it’s multiple literacies, character education, or rigorous critical thinking, but they usually don’t give us specifics on how to teach fractions or soccer or the Harlem Renaissance. Almost always, we can find multiple ways to teach and assess our students in ways that serve our institutions’ values. Teachers might therefore have room to design a unit that reflects their own values as well as the school’s.
We can look at the focus of the unit — fractions or soccer or the Harlem Renaissance — and ask ourselves, Why does this matter? What do I most want my students to get out of this? What do I want my students to be able to do next? How does this connect to the students’ daily lives, their other classes, or the real world? Questions like these help us articulate our values and use them to design purposeful, coherent units of study, making conscious decisions about what to emphasize in the unit, what to leave out, how to structure lessons so they build to a larger understanding, and how to assess that understanding.
Values-Conscious Collaboration
Being aware of our values can also help us collaborate more effectively. Suppose my colleague, Jessica, and I are discussing how we should teach our upcoming unit on A Raisin in the Sun. She wants the major assignment to be an acting project, and I’d like to have the students write their own plays.
If all we talk about is the assignment itself and not the values it serves, then here’s what could happen:
- We “agree to disagree.” Jessica’s students do the acting and my students do the playwriting. Our students benefit from our strengths as individual teachers but not from our collective strengths.
- We argue over which approach is “better.” We both arm ourselves with research and expert opinion to support our positions, but undermine our relationship and our English program.
- We come up with some sort of compromise; for example, our students can spend a week doing acting and a week writing mini-plays. This approach is likely to serve neither of our values.
- One of us goes along with the other person’s approach for the sake of preserving our relationship and avoiding conflict. This approach is likely to breed resentment.
Now imagine that instead of focusing on the form our assignment takes, we listen for each other’s values. As Jessica talks about her acting assignment, I notice that she values making sure her students have solid speaking skills, which will matter in the real world, and building in opportunities for movement and interaction, which are key ways of learning for many students. As I describe my playwriting assignment, she notices that I value using the classics as mentor texts for the students’ own work so they can make literature relevant to their lives and build their writing skills.
As we talk, we might even realize that underneath our different approaches are many of the same values: providing opportunities for students to express their creativity, developing skills that endure beyond the task itself, and making literature personally relevant. Understanding these common values would help us defuse tension and proceed from a place of mutual respect. Even if Jessica and I don’t give the same assignment, we’re developing a healthy working relationship and an appreciation of each other’s strengths. I can ask for Jessica’s feedback as I design my assignment knowing she’s not judging it as inferior to hers, and in the future, when I want to teach speaking, I know just who to go to for help.
Values clarity helps us listen, in our colleagues’ talk about their work and lives, for values that are similar to ours — even if our experiences and interests are different — and thus find new allies, partners, and mentors. Instead of trying to narrow a department’s or team’s repertoire to the “best” assignments and practices everyone must use, we can expand and diversify our collective repertoire to include more ways to help students learn.
Values-Relevant Professional Development
Values clarity can also expand what counts as “relevant” professional development, helping us see beyond the limits of our goals, scope, and sequence. Let’s say I get an email about an upcoming makerspace workshop for K–6 teachers. I could easily imagine ignoring it: “I teach seventh-grade English. Why would I be interested in little kids making robots?” But with an understanding of my values, I might sign up for the workshop to see how makerspaces encourage collaboration, risk-taking, and resilience. At the workshop, I might learn something I can apply to my English class. I also might meet people I might not otherwise have met who share my values. If we seek values-relevant professional development, we might find meaningful learning, creative ideas for our classrooms, and interactions with different groups of people.
Moreover, being clear about our values might make us more likely to notice them in action in our everyday lives. In paying closer attention during these moments, we might get ideas for enhancing our curricula or improving our classroom practices. For example, if I know I value 100 percent participation, then in my daily life — at family dinners, in town conservation board meetings, on TV shows — I’m more likely to notice participatory events as such, and from them learn things I might be able to apply in my classroom. Awareness of our values not only makes more professional development count as relevant; it makes every experience a potential source of professional development.
Clarifying Your Values
One way to get at your values is to imagine the thank-you note you most wish a student would write to you at the end of the year, or the speeches you’d hope your colleagues would give at your retirement party. Writing about your work from a student’s or colleague’s perspective, and imagining the end of your year or even your career, lets you clear away the moment-by-moment challenges of school life and pay attention to what you truly want to stand for as a teacher.
Another way to find your values is to consider your colleagues. If a colleague impresses or inspires you, her actions might tell you something about the teacher you hope to be. If you have colleagues who teach in ways you doubt or even oppose, your disapproval might signal that your own values are being compromised. The point here is not to judge who’s better or worse or right or wrong, but to use your feelings of resistance or admiration as guideposts to help you see your values.
A third option is to focus on concrete images of the past and present (as opposed to visions of an ideal future) and on your own classroom and practices (as opposed to your colleagues’). Identifying “magic moments” in your own teaching can help you discover the values that were being served in those moments.
Values and Willingness
Our jobs are hard. We’re busy all day and exhausted at night even if we do the bare minimum of what’s required for us to keep our jobs. Why on earth would we work even harder to design a better curriculum, collaborate more effectively, and seek more professional development? It’s not like we’ll get paid more for our efforts. Isn’t it less stressful to just do what we’ve always done? Our students are happy and successful. Why put in the time and effort to fix what isn’t broken?
In Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life, psychologist Steven Hayes4 describes the difference between wanting and being willing. When we want something, we seek it out, enjoy having it, and miss it if it goes away. I want longer vacations and a latte bar in the faculty room. Willingness is different. When I say I’m willing to go to an extra meeting on Thursday afternoons to be part of a scheduling task force, I don’t mean I want to attend an extra meeting. I’d much rather have the time to prepare for class and grade assignments. But even though going to an extra meeting is inconvenient, I’m willing to do it because building a more collaborative and ethical community is something I deeply value, and designing a better schedule serves that value. Becoming more aware of the values that guide our teaching allows us to make a meaningful choice: stopping, saying no, going home — or willingly doing the work that matters to us.
Notes
1. Steven C. Hayes, Steven, Kirk D. Strosahl, and Kelly G. Wilson, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford, 2012.
2. Eric Fox, “Constructing a Pragmatic Science of Learning and Instruction with Functional Contextualism.” Educational Technology Research and Development 54.1 (2006): 5-36.
3. See Steven C. Hayes, Steven C., Linda J. Hayes, and Hayne W. Reese. “Finding the Philosophical Core: A Review of Stephen C. Pepper’s World Hypotheses.” Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 50.1 (1988): 97-111; Eric Fox, 2006. (Hayes, Hayes, and Reese 1998; Fox 2006).
4. Steven C. Hayes, with Spencer Xavier Smith. Get Out of Your Mind & into Your Life: The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2005. Steven C. Hayes, with Spencer Xavier Smith. Get Out of Your Mind & into Your Life: The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2005.