Values Education

– educators in general including trainers of teachers and youth leaders.

It started out as a project called theRIGHTSperspective that was then extended into the life of RICK’S cafe’ network.

This course builds on this experience to bring a new approach to values education in school or in youth leadership environments.

The approach is divided into three levels:

i. looking at values in one’s own perspective categorising approaches from absolute (categorical and maybe fundamentalist) to compromise that varies between the justifiable and the excusable circumstances in which one sees values as mere point of departure rather than an absolute variable.

ii. looking at analogies that help one understand how society has worked with levels of compromise with values seen in absolute terms. Analogies are taken from legislation, religious doctrine and knowledge and other social rules that take into account situations in which the human element and circumstances come into play.

iii. looking at the social dynamics and the mobilisation of social players in a democratic state or a society aspiring for more democracy into discussion about the role and importance of values in democratic and political systems.

Preparation

Participants will join the RICK’S cafe’ network as members and will take part in an online discussion forum on the social media platform of RICK’S cafe’. This will help them know each other and the trainers to know more about their perspectives. This will also help participants know what to expect in the days of the course. It is also a start up of the mental readiness to publish one’s own thoughts be they in a closed community like a discussion forum or with the general community of players in education and youth leadership. It is the start of the preparation for a course that is delivered by a network and that is therefore also an opportunity to create friendships and new cooperation with organisations around Europe that share ideas in spite of a variety of contexts.

Objectives

The training has two objectives :

– giving hands on exposure to participants in new approaches to values education that is in many cases conveyed to young people in inert contexts often to some level tainted by the personal opinion of the trainers. The course will therefore enable teachers and youth leaders to bring a wider vision to values education that views the subject from a social, historical and cultural point of view. It dons them with the tools to enable their young audience to build an informed opinion about what is happening in their social environment. It makes bridges between values, morals, ethics and friendship.

– it gives teachers and youth leaders ample techniques on the use of media (especially video making) and the creative arts in activities with young audiences in order that through video and artistic projects teachers, youth leaders and young people can work together in a creative environment without the inhibitions and social or religious baggage that often weightens such topics of discussion.

Methodology

The training will be in part plenary and in part in break out groups. The training will be high in practical element and it will engage the participants in all the stages of project work in a way that they can later evaluate and understand the benefits of the Value Variables approach and later on emulate or transfer what they see and learn during the training within their own context.

The provider of the training is a network and the content will therefore be delivered in a networking and cooperation approach. It will seek to secure friendships and lay the bed and foundation for future cooperation between participants, their respective sending organisations.

The methodology will also tally with the philosophy of RICK’S cafe’. This means orientation towards the generation of a working environment that brings into the school a international vision that forms part of a strategy in order that the school may become a window onto the world for its students, its teachers and non-teaching staff as well as for the community around it.

Follow up

At the end of the course the participants will prepare a classroom or youth activity based on the activities in the course and emulate it in their classroom. The result will be shared in the social media platform of the RICK’S cafe’ network to close the process that will have been started at the beginning of the course and so that participants now part of the RICK’S café network may share the same even with their colleagues in the network.