Conference Agenda

While values play a key role in formal education, as highlighted in policies at European level (Council of Europe (CoE), 2016) as well as worldwide (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2019; The international Group of Seven (G7), 2016; United Nations (UN), 2015) very few empirical studies have collected data from children and their teachers. This gap in research is particularly wide in preschool and early primary school years. The four presentations in this symposium are aiming to help close this gap, analysing data from five-to-eight-year-old children and their teachers across three countries. Schwartz’s (1992) theory of human values with its ten key values of universalism and benevolence (self-transcendence values), achievement and power (self-enhancement values), tradition, conformity, and security (conservation values), and hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction (openness to change values) forms the theoretical framework. This framework has been particularly strong in facilitating approaches to the assessment of children’s values, explaining dynamics of value development and value change in social and educational contexts, and understanding how values direct children’s actions (Döring et al., 2016). Thus, gaining empirical evidence on children`s value development in an early school education has a particular importance for pedagogical practice in an increasingly diverse educational settings where values has been recognized as a pathway to inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2002; Booth, 2011).

The contribution of the symposium maps the diversity of value research in early school education with particular focus on value transmission in classrooms of three different countries (Switzerland, the UK, and Israel).

Scholz-Kuhn and colleagues are presenting a multi-level study with 952 Swiss children in primary schools, showing how children’s self-reported values of self-transcendence versus self-enhancement and openness to change versus conservation are systematically related to their supportive versus performance and learning-oriented versus disciplined behavior in the classroom as observed by their teachers.

The following presentation by Jones and colleagues gives voice to ten British primary school teachers and applies deductive content analysis as well as inductive thematic analysis to interview data. The emerging themes speak to the different routes to value transmission inside and outside of the classroom and facilitators of value change (see Bardi & Goodwin, 2011), such as identification, adaptation, and priming.

The third presentation by Habermann and colleagues explores data from both countries, Switzerland and the UK and reflects the reality of today’s primary school classrooms in Europe, which is often multilingual. The findings show how children’s value priorities (the importance children give to specific values) are systematically related to language as well as cultural background.

The fourth presentation by Elizarov and colleagues adds data from a new country, Israel, and lowers the age range to kindergarten age. In the same vein as the first presentation, it demonstrates how children’s values predict their prosocial behaviour, but it adds a potential mediating mechanism via social information processing as well as children’s feelings toward school.

The discussion by Döring will review these novel insights in view of children’s developmental background during these early stages of formal education, focusing on how values predict children’s actions and vice versa.

There has been little research on the relationships between children's personal values and the behaviors that express such values in the school context. Hence, the promotion of prosocial values of children in school could be a mean to encourage a positive school climate, an effective learning environment and especially an approach to reduce negative and disruptive behaviours in class, which has always been one of the predominant challenges to effective teaching-learning processes (Turhan & Akgül, 2017). Previous research indicates the association between disruptive behavior and individual demographics such as gender and ethnicity (Kellam et al., 1998; Pas et al., 2010; Pas et al., 2011). Furthermore, it has been shown that process characteristics (e.g., the quality of relationships within a classroom) are more important than structural characteristics (e.g., percentage of girls in class) to explain behavior problems (Schönbächler et al., 2011). In the present study, we examined for the first time with children at this young age, the relations between values and their value-related behaviors, i.e., supportive, disciplined, learning-oriented and achievement-oriented, in the primary school context. The sample consisted of 952 primary school children (51.5 % boys; Mage: 7.93, SD=.35). Data used in this study were collected in 2022 in Switzerland. A multilevel analysis confirmed the hypothesis that systematic relationships between values and teacher-rated behaviors can be demonstrated with young children. However, gender was the strongest predictor of teacher-rated children’s classroom behaviors. The results highlight the significance of understanding children’s value-behavior relations, teachers’ possible gender stereotypes of children’s behaviors and its practical importance in the school context. Overall, this study strengthens the idea that focusing on value theory, understanding, development and education might be a way out to reduce disruptive behavior and to create a positive school climate to foster children’s learning.

Kellam, S. G., Ling, X., Merisca, R., Brown, C. H., & Ialongo, N. (1998). The effect of the level of aggression in the first grade classroom on the course and malleability of aggressive behavior into middle school. Development and Psychopathology, 10(2), 165-185. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579498001564 Pas, E. T., Bradshaw, C. P., Hershfeldt, P. A., & Leaf, P. J. (2010). A multilevel exploration of the influence of teacher efficacy and burnout on response to student problem behavior and school-based service use. School Psychology Quarterly, 25(1), 13-27. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018576 Pas, E. T., Bradshaw, C. P., & Mitchell, M. M. (2011). Examining the validity of office discipline referrals as an indicator of student behavior problems. Psychology in the Schools, 48(6), 541-555. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.20577 Schönbächler, M.-T., Herzog, W., & Makarova, E. (2011) 'Schwierige' Schulklassen: Eine Analyse des Zusammenhangs von Klassenzusammensetzungen und wahrgenommenen Unterrichtsstörungen. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 39 (4), 310-327. Turhan, M., & Akgül,T. (2017). The Relationship between Perceived School Climate and the Adolescents' Adherence to Humanitarian Values. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5(3), 357-365. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2017.050308

Values are the trans-situational goals guiding human attitudes and behavior (Schwartz, 1992). As education has a responsibility to equip individuals with democratic values of citizenship, attitudes and beliefs, teachers play an active role in promoting and transmitting values, in order to create a more inclusive, fair and sustainable society (OECD, 2019). Despite being the earliest socialization agents outside the home, little empirical evidence exists on the important role that primary school teachers play in value transmission. By facilitating social cognitive development through social interactions, the school setting helps to spark curiosity, leading to reflection and adaptation (Goswami, 2015). Teachers use a range of strategies (including imitation and modelling, priming and discussion) to help children to make sense of the world (Oeschger et al, 2022) which they apply across a range of subjects and in a range of ways. The present study aims to give voice to educators through the personal experiences of 10 UK primary school teachers, with between 7 and 28 years of primary teaching experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted lasting between 50 and 90 minutes. Data was analyzed in two stages. First, a deductive content analysis was conducted to identify how values, as defined in Schwartz’s (1992) model, were reflected in the interview data. Next, questions were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis. The following themes emerged: the mechanisms of values transmission (modelling, priming, discussion, social stories and questioning); the implicit and explicit ways that values are promoted across the school setting and curriculum; values which are more difficult to teach (power values, self-direction values); value transmission through taught lessons (including PSHE, Maths, PE and Geography); opportunities for value transmission in the wider school environment (lunch and play times, Forest School and collective worship); and the role that a school culture and ethos (including the Head Teacher) play on the transmission of values. Future studies might consider comparing qualitative data from teachers with quantitative data or observations of pupils in the school setting in order to understand how pupils interpret the values taught.

Goswami, U. (2015) Children’s Cognitive Development and Learning (CPRT Research Survey 3), York: Cambridge Primary Review Trust. ISBN 978-0-9931032-2-3. Oeschger, T., Makarova E., & Döring, A. K. (2022). Values in the School Curriculum from Teachers‘ Perspective: A mixed-methods Study. International Journal of Educational Research Open, Volume 3. https://doi:10.1016/j.ijedro.2022.100190. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2019). OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030: Conceptual Learning Framework. http://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/learning-compass-2030/OECD_Learning_Compass_2030_concept_note.pdf, [26.3.2019]. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 25(25), 1-65. https://doi.org 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6

One of the biggest challenges for the educational systems in our constantly changing world is managing ever increasingly diverse classrooms, and creating equal learning opportunities for multilingual, multicultural, and multi-competent students. According to the UN, ”education (…) shall be directed to the development of respect for the child’s (..) language and values” (Convention on the rights of the child, 1989). However, little is known about the influence of multilingualism on the ten basic human values (Schwartz, 1992). Gross and Dewaele (2017) found that multilingualism was linked to higher scores on conservation, and that children with a migrant background scored higher on conservation and self-enhancement, and lower on openness to change. When comparing monolingual and bilingual children in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, we would therefore expect to find similar patterns in value priorities. The present study investigates how speaking two languages is related to the ten basic human values of 6- to 8-year-old children in the UK and Switzerland. 537 primary children in the UK, 1103 in Switzerland primary children in Switzerland completed a comprehensive questionnaire on children’s values, including the Picture Based Value Survey for Children (Döring et al., 2010). More than half of the children were monolingual, and almost all of the monolinguals were born in their country of testing, compared to only two thirds of the bilingual children. Similar to Gross and Dewaele (2017), the results showed that bilingual children score higher on conservation and self-enhancement, and lower on self-transcendence and openness to change, compared to their monolingual peers. Bilingual children with a migrant background did not score differently than bilinguals without a migrant background. The findings of this study provide valuable conclusions for teachers in diverse classrooms.

Convention on the rights of the child (1989) Treaty no. 27531. United Nations Treaty Series, 1577, p. 13. Available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-14%20AM/Ch_IV_11p.pdf (Accessed: 8 January 2023). Döring, A., Blauensteiner, A., Aryus, K., Drögekamp, L., & Bilsky, W. (2010). Assessing values at an early age: The picture-based value survey for children (PBVS–C). Journal of Personality Assessment, 92(5), 439-448. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2010.497423 Gross, B., & Dewaele, J.-M. (2018). The relation between multilingualism and basic human values among primary school children in South Tyrol. International Journal of Multilingualism, 15(1), 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2017.1318885 Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theory and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1-65). New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60281-6

The value-behavior relationships are evident in different contexts and age groups and include a wide range of behaviors (Benish-Weisman et al., 2022; Schwartz et al., 2010). However, much remains to be learned about the mechanism underlying these relationships. In our study, we introduce a possible socio-cognitive mechanism that may play an important role in this context, which involves kindergarten children’s social information processing and attitudes toward class acting as mediators between the children’s values orientations and their social behavior in kindergarten. Study participants included 121 children (59 girls; Mage = 67.45 months, SDage = 6.56 months). Children’s values were obtained via the Animated Values Instrument (Lee et al., 2017). Children’s values-oriented SIP patterns were measured using a new measure entitled The Social Information Processing and Values Interview (SIP-VI) which is based on The Social Information Processing Interview for Preschoolers (SIPI-P; see Ziv & Sorongon, 2011). Children’s attitudes toward class were examined using the Feeling About School scale (FAS; Valeski & Stipek, 2001). Lastly, children’s social behaviors were reported by teachers using the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman, 1997). As hypothesized, this study’s overall model fitted the data (NFI = .93, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .04; Kline, 2016). Specifically, children’s preferences of self-transcendence values over self-enhancement values were positively linked to their prosocial behaviors and negatively linked to their antisocial behaviors, and these associations were mediated by the children’s bias toward more self-transcendence-oriented SIP patterns (over self-enhancement-oriented SIP) and their subsequent more positive attitudes toward Kindergarten.

Benish-Weisman, M., Oreg, S., & Berson, Y. (2022). The contribution of peer values to children’s values and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 48(6), 844-864. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F01461672211020193 Goodman, R. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: a research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(5), 581-586. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1997.tb01545.x Kline, R. B. (2016). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (4th ed.). The Guilford Press. Lee, J. A., Ye, S., Sneddon, J. N., Collins, P. R., & Daniel, E. (2017). Does the intra-individual structure of values exist in young children? Personality and Individual Differences, 110, 125-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.01.038 Schwartz, S. H., Caprara, G. V., & Vecchione, M. (2010). Basic personal values, core political values, and voting: A longitudinal analysis. Political Psychology, 31(3), 421-452. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00764.x Valeski, T. N., & Stipek, D. J. (2001). Young children's feelings about school. Child Development, 72(4), 1198-1213. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00342 Ziv, Y., & Sorongon, A. (2011). Social information processing in preschool children: Relations to sociodemographic risk and problem behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(4), 412-429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.02.009