Importance Of Personal Values In Education

As human beings, we all have personal values and attitudes that we develop during the course of our life. Personal values and beliefs play an important role in developing our way of thinking and looking at the world around us. According to the New South Wales, Department of Education and Training (2009), “Values are principles, standards or qualities that an individual or group of people hold in high regard. Whereas attitudes are beliefs towards something”. Thus, our values and attitudes decide the way we look at other people, their values and attitudes, society and communities. Bektas (2012) speaks about the impact of the teacher’s personal values and attitudes on the students and education programs is known to be much higher than any other

Every family has a different structure and functioning. Bowes (2004) considers families as primary context for child development. The learning that takes place in family context has an everlasting impact on a person’s personality. Kearns (2010) highlights the various functions of family in different forms of physical, social, economic, emotional, cultural moral and religious. Similarly, my family life has contributed to a great extend to form my values and attitudes. I had been brought up in a nuclear family with my mum, dad and four siblings. My dad used to do his own business while my mum used to stay at home looking after the family. My family was attached to each other with an emotional bond, where one person’s sadness could make all the family members sad, whereas one’s happiness could give happiness to all. I grew up with this ideal picture of family with love, care, commitment, emotions, respect, reliability and responsibility. Thus, my belief of an ideal family is based on my family life as my values about the community developed from the community life I saw and lived in

As Lister (2003) defines citizenship as practice enables people to exercise their rights as citizens (as cited in Inter-Agency Working Group on Children’s Participation, 2008). Before doing this unit, I was not aware of the term children’s citizenship. The reading material and the activities helped me to look in my past and link my childhood rights to citizenship. For example, the freedom of play; express my opinions regarding food, clothes and study; the equal rights from my parents as my brothers got. So, I developed my values of equal rights for boys and girls, freedom of play and study, unbiased attitudes, responsibility from my experiences as a child. These values and attitudes can be seen in my relations with my children, children at the workplace and children in the community. Children should be given the opportunity to take decision, freedom of choices, equal rights for boys and girls, express their opinion and freedom of expression.
Thus, my view of family has been impacted by my life circumstances. My personal democratic values and attitudes of fairness, dignity, freedom, respect, self-expression, unity and independence are the lens to look through at my teaching practice. Through these lens, I can look at the impact of my teaching practice and relationships with the families, communities and