Teachers ’ Preferences and Practices Regarding Values in Teaching

Values are a key component of any teaching situation, yet they are rarely addressed explicitly in mathematics lessons, in comparison with values in science education. In this report, data are presented from a research study into teachers ’ value preferences and their teaching practice preferences in both mathematics and science. A volunteer group of primary and secondary teachers participated in the questionnaire-based study which revealed some significant differences between both levels of teaching and also the subjects taught. Despite research into values education having a long history (see for example, Peters, 1970; Halstead and Taylor, 1996) research into values in mathematics education is relatively new, and rudimentary at present (Bishop, 1999). Indeed the construct of ‘values’ is itself not well defined for mathematics educational contexts, which makes research into the area both complicated and necessarily exploratory. An earlier study “Values and Mathematics Project ” (VAMP) made a valuable start in exploring the topic, and in particular, data from that project showed that teachers of mathematics are rarely aware of the values associated with teaching mathematics (FitzSimons, Seah, Bishop & Clarkson, 2000). Furthermore, any values ‘teaching ’ which did occur during mathematics classes, seemed to happen implicitly rather than explicitly. Therefore general curriculum goals which emphasise certain values are unlikely to be realised if teachers have little idea about what they are doing, or what they could do, about values teaching. This could be one reason why curriculum developments in mathematics in various countries often appear to have little effect on student outcomes. Various relevant papers from that study, and from other authors, are available from this website