Teacher Training and Values Education

“Teacher Training and Values Education” was the selected theme for the 18th Annual Conference of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) which took place in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Departamento de Educação da Faculdade de Ciências de Lisboa in September 93.

The process of choosing the theme was considered then to be an important decision for the scientific reorientation of the Association as well as for the European educational community. It was assumed that it would draw the general attention more strongly towards the issue and give input for a more grounded reflexion, as the community itself was showing more openness whenever confronted with the major question of public schooling and values education. It was important for the Association, because it would challenge it to take risks when involving itself in more ideological discussions, considering that the ongoing educational debate till then was emphasizing more scientific, organizational and technical features than issues of philosophical and political nature. As far as the educational community is concerned, many other organizations and associations began indeed considering the issue of education for values as an updated theme lying in the center of many important discussions and actions. And as a result educational systems are also geared again to take and share responsibilities in what concerns the personal and social education of their students, thus trying to meet the expectations of society in general and families’ in particular. These ones are less and less available to take up the clarifying educational encounter with their children who are feeling more and more vulnerable and confused regarding the multiplicity of contradictory values emerging from a variety of instances around them, and where media, especially television, have played a capital influence. In line with this the school curriculum also became the object of continuous analysis and criticism, curricular matters being requested to decode and consider more explicitly the valuing processes associated to the expression of those areas within the various contexts of daily life where such processes act upon or are underlying.

The theme was envisaged in a broader context ranging from more general viewpoints on the social culture and values change, with an analysis of some intercultural issues, to aspects more directly tied to educational systems and teacher training, namely those of explicit school curricula for values education, and those of the recognition and permanent vigilance of the hidden curriculum in the culture of the school, of the classroom and of those who take part in it.

The title of the book is the same of the Conference theme, the book being organized in two parts: the first one comprehends the texts of the lectures givenat plenary and concurrent sessions, and the second one includes some selected papers presented at the ATEE Permanent Working Groups. In the first part all texts are directly concerned with the theme, this relation being less explicit in the second part; however, all texts are considered to implicitly address the theme at least in their underlying assumptions, or proposals.

We hope the book will be a source of information, arguments, and different perspectives for looking at values issues, all contributing to strengthen the unique responsibility of educators for the imprevisible XXI century, thus opening the pathways for young people to be able to encounter great meanings for their fulfilment and feel gratitude for life.

Ano de publicação: 1996
Editora: DEFCUL & ATEE