The Impact of Social Interdependence on Values Education and Student Wellbeing

Abstract

This chapter introduces the reader to the distinctive contribution to the field of values education that the Australian Values Education programme has made by identifying a ‘new values education’, one that acts as a catalyst for ‘best practice pedagogy’ and, in turn, as an effective means of assuring student wellbeing. This goes to the essence of the thematic organiser for this first section of the handbook, Values Education: Wellbeing, Curriculum and Pedagogy. It refers to key research that justifies and explains how values education works to enhance positive student effect across the full range of measures, personal, emotional, social, moral, spiritual and intellectual.